I created a new character, got to Haven, and decided to join a party so I could go solo and (hopefully) skip the less profitable part of Tier 1. You could say it worked...
I showed up in a Basil room, went solo... and then I noticed what floor I was on (oh yea, Basil's prices helped too). I had joined a party at floor 23! This is on a noob character. One that doesn't even have access to Tier 2 yet, much less Tier 3. The game also decided to eat my oh so large amount of 268 crowns (instead of the usual 500) for the trip down to Tier 3 like I had gone down there legitimately. I honestly couldn't care less about the crowns, under 300 is downright pocket change. But randomly showing up in Tier 3 when you should be (and are expecting to) joining a Tier 1 party is rather... bad.
Oh, the Jellies loved the taste of Proto-gear too :p
~Gwen
that happened to me once a few weeks back, somehow joined a solo explorer down in d19 in my mighty proto gear. needless to say, he essentially dragged my corpse to the elevator so i could limp back to haven.