Didn't everyone else get like 5 bucks from their grandparents or something on Easter? I know I did. I have around 4 billion CE, so I didn't use it on here. But I imagine many others did.

I think it went down more because buyers in general didn't need as much energy in the same span of time due to the difficulty of Tier 2 in the weekend set of gates. Demand went down, and price right alog with it.

Energy prices will always be bound by what buyers are willing to pay. It does no good for a seller to sell at a price that has no buyers. I think if we see, for instance, very profitable tier 1 and tier 2 gates, crowns go up and so do prices as demand for energy goes up because people will want to, and can make, more runs more often. When we see a drought of crown-earnings from gates, people need crowns more and so the price of energy drops as more sellers need to quickly sell energy.

I know my own lack of crowns to buy recipes and such was causing me to dump energy onto the market like mad.

@Feynt, ease of waltzing probably depends on skill of player and/or stars of gear. The Palace itself likely stayed at the same difficulty; but there are some killer levels above the palace itself, depending on how lucky/unlucky you are.

yeah...I got a slight surprise today when I logged on and was greeted with one of those poison city zombie kind of things. I have played them but its been a long time.

My theory is that energy prices will stay bound by the average number of crowns earned by 1 full run between towns, with tier 1 being a heavier influence than tier 2. So likely the price will never go above 6k and will often be around 4-5k.

Energy prices were relatively sky-high during preview because all crown sinks were 3x cheaper. Crowns were not in high demand; energy was.

So I think people have little to fear. We can't compare preview to release; the economic conditions are very different.

@feynt/G3/ajericho,
ajericho has the right of it. I play mostly with my brother, I bomb and sword, he swords and guns. His armor was a smattering of 2star lvl 1's. We generally do fine in tier2 (for example when jelly palace was at the 1st gate on the left), but we do a lot of kiting and crowd control. When we played the t2 gate at the right with the palace, there was more enemies. Like the floor with a million gremlins that someone posted pics of a while ago. And then there was more floors with devils that use projectiles. We are in the most basic of armors, cobalt w/defender shields. So when you have more constricted areas (tougher crowd control), more projectile enemies (tougher crowd control/less kiting) and more enemies that exploit the weakness of standard-city bought-cobalt armor, it all added up together to be a tougher road for me, and i guess i just assumed for everyone. It seems ajericho also found a similar experience since he mentioned the weekend gates being harder.

In fairness, i imagine if you have better weapons and more versatile armor, it may have been just as easy as ever.

PS. It was actually a relief when we reached the Jelly Palace, because it was the same as always and at least to me felt like the easiest few floors of the tier, when last week i found them to be (comparatively) the toughest few floors of the t2 run at gate 1.

"Jelly King run is harder now? I found it about the same difficulty/length."

Totem Trouble is probably annoying for newer players and the Poison Retrodes are a bit more difficult than any mobs that were in Amber Lion. The lichen level just before Jelly Palace is also a bit harder, with flame turrets and the oil lichens that get caught on fire.

Honestly, I like it better because the Retrodes are great for swordstones and if you're patient you can get a guaranteed arena on every run. I solo all three rooms every time I do an arena and it's great cash and heat for the investment. Also I managed to get a Blaze Pepper from those flame turrets. Muahahhaaa.

I would not be surprised if there's a price spike around next week when the upgrade tokens start to expire, and require replacing.