Elaborate. Why are do you hate them?

Not new to the game, but I haven't experienced whatever it is he's talking about. Are they incredibly hard to aquire, or is he complaining about shadow lairs?

If you don't think it's worth it don't bother then.

My bro got me one for me birthday, which was October. I still haven't touched it because he isn't 5* yet. But true: it is mostly P2P. If you can find players that are good at the game, they could share the price, so everyone only needs to give 400 energy.

Respect lost. This is ridiculous and pointless.

Let's say I'm a bored endgame player with nothing to do, and there's this difficult, tough-to-get-into dungeon that sounds like fun. I talk to a few similarly bored end-game players, and figure out that they're able to do a run this weekend, which is a few days away. I derp about until then doing whatever it is I normally do, until when the weekend rolls around, the money I've made from that is enough for my bit of the entry fee, and we're all set to go.

The above describes me perfectly, and moreover describes everyone I've ever gone into a Lair with perfectly. If I'm at the stage of the game where I'm going to spend 450 CE just to walk in a door, I'm not going to be at the same stage of the game where I need to be saving resources for gear, which means I'm likely to have some disposable income about. Additionally, actually getting people you trust together to do something that takes more than an hour to accomplish is usually not all that simple (as anyone here who plays tabletop RPGs can relate to), so you have plenty of time to gather resources "naturally" without resorting to grinding the same mission over and over.

Consider this as well: anything in the game that requires resource expenditures requires "farming" to a certain degree. Making a 5* item from its initial 2* form, for instance, costs quite a bit more than a Shadow Key, and F2Pers are going to have to put a lot of time into the game to get there. One could even make the argument that regular clockworks content requires farming, since you have to expend energy (and therefore crowns, for F2P) to access it! That's the nature of better things in games: players must work to get there, otherwise the reward seems cheap. You can certainly argue that the work/reward balance isn't satisfying, but complaining that it requires work at all is ridiculous.

assembly shadow lair party in these days is extremely hard, i need go shadow lair too, but all who i ask just say:

he: shadow lair? for free?
me: no u pay 1/4 key price
he: sorry not profitable...

grr ppls care only about proffit..;(

The game really does need a difficulty boost though - Vana used to require you go through 4 extra t3 levels to get to it (usually fiend). Although you might have been able to get a boost down - at least one person in your party had to make that trip and if they were alone that was usually costly for revives.

Vana also used to be hell for 4* players so it would cost them extra in revives.

On a good day you would have some extra mist left over - now you can put two runs in without breaking a sweat on a full mist tank.

The enemy nerfs are one thing but the lag nerf really made everything easier - lag used to be the hardest enemy in the game. You would fear Vana's hammer swing not because of the damage but because the lag was so great will the ceiling tiles animation coming down.

IMHO King of Ashes should be combined with The Gauntlet - this would make it so you couldn't farm it twice a day and help to increase it's difficulty. Vana and trojans need a heath buff. (and possibly falling tile damage needs to come back)

Either that or KoA has to put out only 5.5kcr instead of 7.5kcr (sad but necessary truth to see other content get played more and see CE prices drop)

Is this a wacky text effects thread? Because boy do I love wacky text effects that make messages hard to read. So sad Eury edited your masterpiece.

A Tier 3 run with a couple nice recipes has both variety and enough profit to at least cover the mist I used to get through it. It's true that I'll run FSC sometimes in the course of my weekly playing, because it's where a lot of friends and guildies are to be found and social interaction matters, but FSC is challenging and interesting enough to where I don't mind. There's plenty to do while I'm "waiting" for a bigger event.

All in all, I get enough money from playing like I normally would, with my priority being having fun and not just making profit, to get my part of a Shadow Key every three or four days. Since I work, date, study, cook, et cetera outside of Spiral Knights, I usually don't even have time to do them even that often... and that's fine. This is a casual MMO. It's built for people who play casually. If you like it enough to play more than that, you can be a good person and pay; if not, mist is perfect for the amount of time that the target audience is likely to spend playing.

I'll reiterate a key point that you seem to have missed:
Consider this as well: anything in the game that requires resource expenditures requires "farming" to a certain degree. Making a 5* item from its initial 2* form, for instance, costs quite a bit more than a Shadow Key, and F2Pers are going to have to put a lot of time into the game to get there. One could even make the argument that regular clockworks content requires farming, since you have to expend energy (and therefore crowns, for F2P) to access it! That's the nature of better things in games: players must work to get there, otherwise the reward seems cheap. You can certainly argue that the work/reward balance isn't satisfying, but complaining that it requires work at all is ridiculous.