Yea the rise in CE costs for crafting is TOTALLY contradicting what OOO intended for the update. They wanted to "promote crafting" lol

a. A lot of people rather run MORE than 1 run.
> 100 mist covers slightly over 1.5 full runs

b. The profit is becoming less and less (with the rising of CE prices)
> u gain around 9k per vanaduke run, 6k per jelly run, at the cost of 2000-3000 crowns worth of energy, if you have people on ur list / in ur guild who are half way through, you pretty much gain 5k / 3k in ~3 floors (30 mist or ce)

c. Time. A lot people prefer to play a lot in one day, than play for 2 hours a day for a long time.
> these people either need to pay or learn to earn money efficiently, if youre playing 2+ hrs, 7 days a week, spend a while figuring out the basics of this game, and you'll be making around 500-1k ce (20k+ of crowns) of profit in a short while without actually needing to go into clockworks or anything

d. Yes you can "play" the energy market, but barely.
the bid ask spread is constantly around 100-200, at 2% transaction cost of selling ce, it doesnt even make sense to "play" the energy market on spot trades. the profit doesnt make up for the time spent, esp when there are better alternatives out there.

You make a lot of assumptions, which sadly are incorrect.

Tier 1 consists of 6 floors if you don't count the Terminal. Counting the same way, Tier 2 has 8 floors and Tier 3 has 9.

Not every floor contains a danger room. Much rather, each Tier contains one or two. And "provided you don't mess up", danger rooms do have a way of messing you up. ;) Even when you're well equipped, a simple mistake usually means you're paying a resurrection cost. Depending on the depth you're at, you can see where this is going.

And one other assumption: what's enough for one person may not be enough for another. This is probably the assumption that gets you the most aversion in this thread.

That said, thanks to the fact we get mist energy for free, you can play for free indefinitely (unlike in many other games where the Pay Wall is much harder). On top of that you can acquire currency without paying real money (which, again, is not present in a lot of free to play games). Playing on ME only, you can currently even make well over 100 CE profit each day, without any "playing the market" or selling items.

For me personally 100 ME is enough.

I'm still suggesting they should add a WEEKLY mist energy bar of 100.
Allows for longer continuous game time for new (bad) players, on their first or second day. and Theoretically allows for crafting 1 3* item a week on mist alone. and it's only 14~ ME more a day.

I used my 100 ME wisely and now I have 18,000 CE and 500,000 crowns.

"100 ME / day + initial Mist Tank + T2 clearance mist tank, that's already a lot" you forgot a mist tank there, you get the initial one as well as one for reaching t2 as well as t3
the point is there's people who need over 100ME to even get to d4, as well as people who quit the game after playing for 2 hours because they'd rather not play a game that limits em to 1 hour a day. They never got to figure out the whole exchange market thing, and can't figure out how to get through the second half of a stratum without ressing several times. (Because it's their first time playing and they are bad at games)

I mean isn't that obvious?

"and why would you need to craft a 3* item per week on mist alone ??? if you're at the point where you craft 3*"
to make people feel better about the game. they wont magically limit themselves to crafting 1 item per week unless they play so casually they never got out of t1 anyway.

Not obvious either?

And if you can break even on crown payout, you are obviously going to spend CE for different reasons than the majority of the paying playerbase, so arguing why YOU dont need more mist is rather meaningless. I just feel new players could need 14 more mist a day (in a weekly bar) from a marketing perspective. I mean they could even lower the daily mist gain to balance that. (edit: which would also mean, it'd not change a thing for people who barely break even currently and feel they should speed up their progress with CE; just possibly more bad players in this segment)

First of all, I think that there are 8 floors. Depth 9-12 is 4, not counting 13, and then 14-17. Coupled with a start fee, a complete run will cost you 90 CE. This is a T2 Jelly King gate.

I also believe that you are missing the point. Certainly 100 ME and all profits gained are enough to sustain you indefinitely for dungeon running; this is not the issue as to why most people are complaining about CE prices. Jelly Palace runs will net you at maximum ~8k, and profits from materials may get you 1 or 2k extra, but the sales from those are finicky at best. Based on Luden's experience, he gets 6k for a Jelly run. Now you buy another 100 for 5k and you're left with 2k as a profit.

Now we come to the crux of the matter: using this very rough scenario, at 2k a run, how long will it take you to get a full set of 5* armor/weapon? Assuming you are already at full 4*, you will have to grind JK 20 times to pay just the CE transmute cost for one item. That is roughly 80 JK runs to pay for a helm, armor, shield and one weapon. Add another 10 to pay for the CR cost, and you are looking at NINETY (90) JK runs just to transmute... Not including the four 5* materials you will need. And you will need at least another weapon if you even plan on visiting T3, so lets add another 22 for that transmute cost.

Grand total of 112 JK runs from 8-17 to get you ready for T3.

This leaves almost no margin of error for you to get KO'd in T3- which, if you are new to it, will happen. We're not even talking about FSC, just regular T3. Now lets say you found out your armor doesn't cut it, or you don't like it, or you need more weapon slots or trinket slots or you just want to change it up...

If you're going to paint a "very rough scenario" at least paint it correctly. Even if you assume a net profit of only 2k crowns per JK run (which in my opinion is quite low, but fair enough, you said "very rough"), you're still not taking ME into account.

If you would do only one JK run per day, you would get to keep all the CE you buy!

If you're doing JK runs back-to-back then sure, you're funding most of it out of your own pocket. But I'll never believe that you do 80 JK runs back-to-back, so I'm gonna go with the assumption that you only spend your 100 ME and log off (hey, you made assumptions too).

So making 2k crowns and 100CE per day, you'd have the required 800CE in 8 days. After that, if you stop buying CE, you have the required 30k crowns (recipe + crafting) in 2 more days. That's 10 JK runs, not 20. And this is a very rough scenario, likely exaggerated.

Any player who makes 8k per JK run (80 energy, maybe 85) and buys CE smartly will get there sooner. I doubt anyone gets there later, because then you your scenario would be worse than "very rough". You'd be doing it wrong.

It's 5* gear, the ultimate equipment to get. It's allowed to take a little time on free players IMO.

Lol. I based my story on your assumptions. If we're gonna change this into a full fledged scenario now, then I think a lot of your old points will be moot too. ;)

I generally don't finish 8 levels in 30-40 minutes. At least I don't think I do. I don't have the actual numbers.

A player who is more active than just logging on to kick the JK's slimey butt might also venture into selling some items, playing on the auction house, convert their leftover mist into crowns, maybe (re)sell recipes for a profit, craft for others on days when they don't have time to do a run (= converting ME to CE for free!) etc etc etc. There are so many (fun!) ways to make CE in this game.

The 5* recipes come from T3, which is not included in a JK run. Naturally these runs are much tougher, might take a revive (or not, or two), and it will probably take you more than just 4 runs to get the 4 recipes you want. These runs also give you crowns. Whether they pay for the energy spent to reach Basil, I don't know. You could also argue that this player just does one extra JK run and uses the extra 8k to buy a recipe off the Auction House.

You did say this was a rough scenario. Very rough indeed. In practise you get your gear faster. And with more fun. And without paying a single dollar. It's not so bad at all.

basing on my experience i get 5k ish per depth 15 and 16, at 20ce cost at roughly 20 minutes spent

I think to have a realistic argument about progressing in the game you have to view crowns as not just a function of how much energy it takes to get them. Like Tivv said ..20 minutes. The time it takes to get the crowns is the most important part. And floors 9-13 are just as if not more profitable than floors 14-17, IF and only if you are going to buy and resell recipes. This requires you delay the progress of your equipment now, for even faster equipment progress later.

I don't think i'm some spiral knights genius, and i think it's pretty easy to make money/ce. You give me all 4* gear, 100 ME, and 400 crowns (especially if i get a mist tank) and i can and will be able to make 1-3 5*'s in a week. As importantly, i will have set myself up a cashflow through the auction house. That way i am always making profit. It doesn't have to be huge profit. If i can turn around 3-4 things at 3-400 crowns profit it seems almost a waste, but i take 5 minutes to set that up, and then do a run and i get my estimated 8k-5K (for energy) 3k profit+my 1200 AH profit. Do runs with parties to increase the rate of return crowns via time. Invest some of that profit in some AH stuff, keep some. Do it again. Say now u have 4k spare crowns, do a 9-17 run this time, and buy the best 4k recipe basil has, regardless of what it is. You'll make at least 500 on it, any recipe, virtually garaunteed. If it's horned owlite your looking at leat 5k profit.

Now get out there and be somebody<--as dave chapelle would say bill clinton would say