I have a few questions.
1. Can you explore every floor a gate has to offer with just mist energy (free), or do you have to pay up and get premium energy to get to the core?
2. How many floors are in one gate?
3. If you use your debit card to buy energy, Does it stay on your account forever, or can you remove it and enter it each time you want to buy more energy? I ask because I don't like leaving that kind of info on the internet, No matter how safe a site claims to be.
Thank you :3
if you mean "can the core be reached from depth 1 to 28 using mist energy?" then no, since you'd run out of energy around depth 12, i believe. however, you can skip to emberlight at depth 18 and go down from there, if you don't mind the fee for skipping ahead.
If you run Tier 1 on a gate, you don't have to pay to jump to Moorcroft on that gate anymore. If you run Tier 2 on a gate, you don't have to pay to jump to Emberlight on that gate anymore. So on pure Mist Energy, it would take 2-3 days to reach the core without paying any fee.
You can, of course, buy crystal energy with crowns, so you don't -have- to spend real money, it just makes things easier.
Presuming you've already got access to every tier...
You can clear Tier 1 for 60 Mist, then wait until the next day
Then start at Tier 2 and clear it for 80 Mist, then wait until the next day
Then start at Tier 3 and clear it for 100 Mist.
This assumes you don't use extra energy on reviving yourself or activating Energy-based gates.
It takes 200 energy to build an item of 4* equipment (required for Tier 3 access). You can get Crystal Energy from crowns to cover the 100 you can't get from Mist alone. (It currently costs 4700-5100 crowns per package of 100 Energy. The market is player-operated, so it fluctuates.) Or, you can save up Crowns for a rather long time and buy them pre-made from another player without getting Crystal Energy of your own.
If people are willing to trust you, and you have the recipes for the items in question, you can offer to craft items in exchange for the materials, Crowns and Energy required (i.e. building it at cost). They'll provide Crystal Energy, but you use up your Mist first when you actually build it-- so you'll have some Crystal Energy left over. This is generally seen as... a completely normal transaction, so don't worry about the other guy feeling cheated as long as you hold up your end of the deal and hand the requested item over.
For what it's worth, unlike most games with a micropayment system, if you do decide to buy energy in Spiral Knights, you will definitely get your money's worth. While you can buy CE with crowns, you can progress in the game more quickly if you buy some CE with cash. It's also nice to avoid worrying about fluctuations in the CE market.
I play some days just on mist energy (because it's all I have time for) and other days dip into my CE. I haven't yet used $10 worth of CE, and I've played nearly every day for over a month and I'm in all 4* gear (which I crafted entirely myself, including a few extra tries for UVs) and I've played all the way to the core a few times.
I realize not everyone can pay, but if you're considering spending a bit of cash, rest assured that you can get a very satisfying amount of playtime and crafting for $10.
In response to OP--yes, you can completely explore the gates. But what you'll soon find is that the gates are really just recycled maps, with different mob varieties sprinkled in depending on the crystal strata.
So, basically, there's not much point to attempting to explore them fully. Play the game long enough and you'll see it all. And know the monster spawns, items, etc.
The game does try to add variety into the levels by reversing the starting and ending position, etc, but in general it's pretty predictable. If you see a fork in the path and one way leads to a party switch, explore the other way first. Etc.
1. Yes, by returning to that gate each day while it's still in rotation. A gate is open for 8 days. Keep in mind that you can buy energy with crowns, and that a lot of people get most or all of their energy this way.
2. 28
You should really read the wiki.