How is it possible...

How is it possible...That some people have insane amounts of CE? After playing for a little while off and on and making some 5* gear very arduously. It takes some skill on balancing ME / Crowns and CE to make sure you can get the gear you want. I am guessing some people either:
A: Use their ME wisely and turn it into CE with RJP runs?
B: Buy their CE and mix it with farming crowns/CE
C: Have enough money to buy massive amounts of CE
D: Get a lucky UV that sells for insane CR on the AH
What am I missing here? I run everything, make decent crowns that turn over into CE, but I've never "hit big" in getting anything great. I am more perplexed than anything, i see posts with TONS of 5* gear all great UV's and it's discouraging!
If you had to guess, whats the average CE that a player has? What's the Max you've seen?
Don't worry, not a troll post - just looking for some insight :)

Alts. If you have a paid account, another account will have its own mist accrual.
You can use these to craft 2* items in hopes of getting an awesome UV, or buy more trinket/weapon slots to sell or something.
Many people have several alts working for them.

There are those who have done all gameplay related in this game. So they merch, roll uv's, and generally do what people do. Try to make as much money as possible.
Those players also tend to have elevator passes. If not, they rarely dive on ce, which many mid ranged players do in an attempt to make more cr to craft with.
Many of them also have the advantage of time, they've been playing/merching for longer, thus they have had more attempts at moneymaking.

The elevator pass is new as of dec 2011, and ppl have earned a lot more money far before that, so that's not really a "secret." Sure it helps, but it won't make people have the "TONS of 5* gear" Thisissmo is referring to.
I forgot to mention:
Playing the market/AH. Buy low, sell high. You can find great deals from ppl who need to sell urgently, and sell high to ppl who want desperately. Then, you can go and buy your super rare UV item.
I need to do this. >.>
At one point in the game, crafting caused an item to unbind. This meant that you could make a bound 4* into a fresh unbound 5* item. There were a lot of end-game people who cashed in on this like crazy. It was cheaper to buy an item from them than it was to make it yourself (since you saved in recipe costs.) This helped create a very wealthy minority. Obviously this is not the case anymore.

Lots of old players abused looping arenas and duping items/love puppies in the past but yeah, nowadays abusing paid accounts is the way to go.

@Sypsy good call - I could add playing the market in as E:. That's one i forgot! But it goes along with the general trend of "getting lucky" to a certain extent. I just started AFTER the unbind crafting fiasco.
so people create multiple paid accounts and use that ME to craft in hopes of a high UV? whats the deal with having multiple accounts? They just create a web one and a steam one? I was under the impression you could only have one account via steam.

@thisissmo
There are other platforms that SK uses, including its own client and whatever the Kongregate players have to put up with to play.

@Dukeplatypus - I hear ya, it has a separate client outside of steam. I guess most people just do 3 paid accounts and craft away!

@Hollafamer - that comes back to playing the auction house and crafting 2* gear with lucky UV's?
Is it possible to launch multiple instances of SK via steam?

Yes, you can launch up to 3 instances of SK on one PC at any time. And yes, you can launch all 3 via Steam, but it's easier to launch one via Steam, then the other 2 via the stand-alone SK client that you download from this site - when you launch a 2nd SK window via Steam, it automatically logs into your Steam-SK account, which causes you to automatically logout in the 1st SK window, so it's not wise to do it if your 1st knight is in th clockworks and you want to bring your alt in.

@Griseolar - Thanks for the info. that seems to clear up a big of how people are getting great UV's. makes sense crafting 2* items 4x a day :)

Note, its not abuse if you work several accounts. If you had somehow circumvent the mist tank being shared without paying, then it is abuse.
But a gm had posted last year regarding multiple accounts. You can have as many paid accounts as you want.
I assume Lepreal sold all this before leaving. That would be a pretty hefty chunk of CE.
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/30545