low down energy prices! who is with me!

I personally think that CE prices will level out pretty soon, at least, I hope they will. If they don't, I hope the developers will do something about an in game materials market for players. Because, basically - new players will be looking to buy CE for the crowns they make in T1 runs. Assuming the game has a healthy number of new players, that's going to be a big chunk of the market and every time you exceed that affordability, the demand for energy at that price drops. Players may not quit over it, but as long as they log out for the day, that's still a decrease in demand. So if the price doesn't level out soon, that means even new players are selling T1 materials for the extra to be able to keep playing. If selling materials is necessary, well... yech. I don't want to be part of a haven that has ten times more sales-chat-spam than we already have. Just create another market interface similar to the CE market but with many rows showing only the single best offer on each material and save the game from inane chat! (Actually, this should be done even if the game is still manageable on pure crowns, just to reduce said inane chat even at its current levels)

Ah, also... if T3 pays worse than T2, that needs to be fixed. Rewards should certainly go up with difficulty. If it's just less profitable because people respawn a lot, well, that's a different case. Nobody said you had to -win- those rewards every time!

Well I just picked this back up after not playing since the Beta, and honestly the energy prices are still pretty reasonable at this point. One t1 run with 4 people gets you around 3000 crowns, I've been able to keep ahead so far.

"its incredible that prices are all time high, all most a wopping 3000 crowns for a small 100 energy refill..."

I've only read this sentence and I immediately burst into laughter. The Preview Event's CE was over 9k for 100 CE, and you're complaining about a third of that price.

Do you really expect people to not increase the prices? ALL CE on the market is created through actual purchase. At what point are people going to go "Yeah, I'll willingly get less for my actual money."

I guess the main issue of people complaining is the cost-to-time ratio between the buyer of energy vs the cost of energy to non-buyers.

It's $10US for 3500 energy. That's 43 runs of T2 or 258k crowns (averaging 6k per 80e). If you sold your energy at 3k you would make 129k but you would also have no materials at all and you would get the crowns instantly instead of having to run T2 43 times.

You're basically getting 129k crowns whenever you want at 3k/100e for $10. You can get this amount of crowns as fast as your fingers can make the payment online.

I'm not really sure how long it takes to run T2 entirely but I'll be optimistic and say 30 minutes for a good team.

If you profit 3k per run 43 times you get 129k. So 22 hours = 129k crowns for a non-buyer.
What a buyer gets instantly requires 22 real life hours of grinding for non-buyers.
That comes out to a whopping 45 cents an hour.

IMO it's greedy asking for 6k per 100. You're asking to get the benefits of playing 22 hours for nothing and then you're paying your workers 22 cents an hour for their time. If this was the price in beta then I'm pretty surprised. Maybe this style of game just isn't my thing but I can't imagine grinding the same maps day in and day out for basically nothing.

Attempting to play without purchasing energy from other players is simply ridiculous. 30 minutes of game time for 6k crowns. It costs 15k for a 4* recipe, 2.5k to craft it, then an additional 100 energy that must be purchased (100 for free after not playing for 22 hours). Let's say the price is 6k for 100e. That's 23.5k total or 4 days.

You need 7 items (shield, cap, armor, 4 weapons). That's 28 days just to make a set of 4* gear not counting the price of 3* stuff. You would also need an additional 500 energy per month to use your 2 additional weapon slots for another 30k crowns/months, good luck with that. Multiply that by 3 + add some for 5* gear and you're looking at a grand total of about 112-115 days. It would take a non-energy/crown buyer a third of a year to do something that someone can get in 5 seconds while spending $20 and then playing through T2 86 times.

So let's see if we can agree on some numbers. Feel free to correct me if anything looks off.

Six floor T1 run is around 3-4k crowns for 60-70 Energy. This ignores mats (particularly token).

T2 floors are worth significantly more.

You need four two star items to access T2.

Two star gear is currently going for around 1.5-3k Crowns.

You can get to T2 in two or three day's worth of Mist if you don't purchase any CE.

???

Oh, I missed people talking about T2 now. Wtf, why do you guys make so little in T2 content? Are you dying? Are you doing the entire floors?

Also like, include mats. You get more in mats and heat than you do in pure crowns.

Edit: Just to clarify, I haven't paid any money yet. I have gear to access T3 content two times (nearly three) over now. The game has been out a weekish. I'm sitting on a lot of crowns, a lot of energy, and a lot more mats. If the market were at 10k per 100, I'd still be at T3 now without having spent a cent.

What do you mean more in mats/heat than you do in crowns? You can sell heat for crowns?

Are you selling your mats to the NPC too because trading in town takes up a ton of time and is not fun for a lot of people and there's no way in hell you can count trading mats to people as profit. I spent close to 20min just hopping around the channels trying to sell random mats for dirt cheap and had almost no buyers. I was selling stuff really cheap too, like scrap metal for 15 crowns (not a single buyer) and things like swordstone for 300 (no buyers), even though other people were spamming the same items for much more. I sold a toxic core for 500 the whole time.

There's no incentive at all to sell mats because mats tend to be the last thing holding you back to make an item. By the time you get the recipes you want from the NPC you'll have more mats than you know what to do with.

That 6k figure is the average crown made per run over 10 runs with no deaths and no opening/going to secret rooms.

Auction House would give a good basic, get some money 2 keep up with the price for CE, i dont wanna say its the answer that solves the problem completly but it would help a lot 4 every one getting materials, Recipes... maybe weapons/armor or simply getting crowns to buy CE espescially new players would get a lot more crowns from the first runs they makin...

Mmh i forgott how much energy you recover OT but i think it was like 1 or 2 per hour right? Maybe a slight encrease of that could help out plus increasing the capability of the Tank itself to 150 / 200 i dont talk about a high increase like getting every minute 50 Energy its more like getting round about 5 per our :P beside that i believe there are a lot players that allready working daily and dont have big problems with that becouse they cant even play some days longer than 2 hours cuz they got some other stuff 2 do :P

Death Penaltys with Energy are allright 4 my opinion cuz that keeps the player focused on not dying every second so you really getting into the game thinking out a strategy, Death shouldnt be something that you can let happen ....... of coures you could GET some energy from surving Rocket puppies at T2/T3 ;P

The Price reflects the way of thinking these days...... i take what i can get i can earn a lot of money from selling ce :DDD what are you saying? you want me to lower the prices to share my fun with others? gtfo D:

Probalby like someone said before you only need a view gamers that dont give a damn about others and you got a selfdestroing system OT

Maybe some kind of voting system where every player can take his position to the current prices and can change that price 4 the next week
would work like this:

Current : (As a Sample) 3000 Crowns / 100 CE

Vote 4

-10% [ ] -8% [ ] -6% [ ] -4% [ ] -2% [ ] +/- 0% [ ] +2% [ ] +4% [ ] +6% [ ] +8% [ ] +10% [ ]

So yes its about fixet prices but still with a chance to regulate it by all players or maybe to regulate it by those how obtain those CE cuz i dont think that everybody want to sell them 4 highest possible amount of money (Hope)

The week thing would keep the prices from jumping high in a few days.

Some other way i thougt about is using diffrent energy´s 4 diffrent Tiers Like Low Energy 4 Tier1, Energy 4 Tier2 and so on....
This way you could make Low energy optainable ingame so newbies would be able to build up an basic to go further

Just some suggestions so plz dont rip my face of 4 that :P

Greetz from Good ol Germany :P

It's just like the gas prices...you can't lower them down.

I'll let the thinkers here take a shot at my suggestion. /Holds up "dun tase meh bro" sign.

How about ooo do this... ocassionally input ce into the market on their own accord? Don't ask me about numbers, I wasn't around when there was talk of 10k. Goodness gracious if they were the case right now. I'm just talking concept (and out of my a.r.s.e it seems).

Conceptually ooo can then do the following.

-Tinker, not tilt, the prices.
-Prevent market bubbles. Highs and lows are a given in any economy. But when your ENTIRE economy is run by 2 pieces of currency devoid of federal regulation (sorry couldn't resist), it's a risky situation (I think).

-Help new players. Granted, they might not need help. Mist tank cough cough. And I sincerely hope it shouldn't have to come to that. But to quit a game because "everything takes WAY too long and it's just too expensive" would suck. Not all of us are hardcore. (I'm a bomb-setting wuss :P)

Flame on.

I had been writing down how many crowns I was getting from each run (all 8 levels of a tier) already, before I saw this thread. Hope these numbers help.

Current 100CE cost: 3,550
Current CE cost per tier run: 2840

20 Tier 1 runs: 2,847 Crown average per run - 7 Crown profit
36 Tier 2 runs: 3,322 Crown average per run - 482 Crown profit
0 Tier 3 runs

These runs are all solo with 0 deaths.

5,500 + 15,000 Crowns for the recipes for each slot of gear to get into Tier 3. Not taking into account the Energy and Crown cost required for alchemy.

So, it looks like I can farm Tier 2 for a year and maybe afford a 4* Sword :)

JK, soon it will be 9,000 Crowns per CE and in a year this terrible system will have been rehauled.

Your numbers fail to mention the materials you gained in that run. The mats you gain in a run are worth 2-3 times what you gained in crowns. Heat also has a value. If your short on cash you can monetize your heat gain, giving you even more crowns per run.

t2 run
Crowns- 3,322
Mats - 6,765
Heat- 5,000

Total profit for people that have a clue: OVER 9000!

Out of curiosity, robot5656, how does one monetize heat? You can't sell bound weapons, so how do you propose we make money from heat?

I don't think leveling a 3* item to 5, crafting the 4* version, and selling the 4* is either efficient or reasonable, if that is what you are proposing.

"Out of curiosity, robot5656, how does one monetize heat?"
^ This?

I don't think leveling a 3* item to 5, crafting the 4* version, and selling the 4* is either efficient or reasonable, if that is what you are proposing.

That's exactly the way. It's the only way to create a a 4* item in a series, so it's the most efficient and reasonable way by default. The most common example is that it is priced into items like Faust or Avenger.

It will never be unprofitable to go down gates, because they are the only way to introduce new crowns and mats into the game.

Imagine that 100 CE sells for 10k crowns, but if you spend 100 energy going down the most profitable gates, you can only make 5k in crowns, mats, minerals, heat, whatever. Why would anyone go down go down a gate? You can convert your ME to CE by doing free crafting. People would sell CE and buy the items from other players instead of generating new mats from running gates. Soon the amount of mats in the game would dry up, and mat prices would go up, until it is more profitable to go down gates. The problem solves itself.

It could be possible that only certain tiers or certain gates are profitable, of course. This is a more complicated discussion, but one that the game is The game is well set up to deal with. For just one example, imagine that tier 3 is profitable, and tier 1 is not. This could be changed by increasing the drop rate of shards (which are consumed by high level players in vast quantities) in tier 1, and/or lowering it in tier 3.

For high-level crown sinks, don't forget boosting gates.

Your calculations fail to accommodate the free 100 mist energy you get each day. If CE was the only way to get energy then yes, the game would be broken and be truly pay to win.

"Your calculations fail to accommodate the free 100 mist energy you get each day. If CE was the only way to get energy then yes, the game would be broken and be truly pay to win"
Then I guess the key to this game is indeed sitting around waiting for free Energy =p

F*ck it I'll go play Farmville or something

For somebody who thinks Spiral Knights is worth no money at all you're awfully desperate for wanting to play it.

And we both know you won't play Farmville, so let's not even pretend that was a constructive comment.

The trick is to not sit around and wait for the energy, it's to log off and do something else with that time. When you return tomorrow you'll have a fresh pool of ME to play with.

@SirNiko yes, thank you, exactly.

Moxay and everyone like him want to complain despite the fact that this game is FUN and can be played for free (as advertised). if you don't want to put time into, spend some money. if you don't want to do either, scram. no ones loss.

If you want to play for a longer time, you have three kinghts. Use the second like alt accounts and run em till they run out of mist. Then, sell all the non-crucial items you get with em', and send all the crowns and crucial items they get to your "Main". With two alternate knights, you can get plenty of crowns for buying CE, Equips, and recipes, not to mention more play time.

Actually a friend of mine discovered that creating secondary accounts from the same computer and/or network will share your mist energy amongst them if they remain free (i.e. unpaid). Thus you can create a hundred accounts and combined they will only have 100 mist energy, depleted by any of them that logs in and does stuff.

As for crying about not being able to play all day every day, there are plenty of free games. If you really, truly want to play Farmville, go for it. But keep in mind that when you wake up after a good night's sleep, you've got more than half your mist energy back in Spiral Knights. If you're anything like the average person, your day is spent doing the school/work thing. So when you get back home, surprise, full account. This is the free they spoke of. This is the free LOTS of games have spoken of since the earliest days of modem usage.

"And we both know you won't play Farmville, so let's not even pretend that was a constructive comment"
Obviously... the point was that Farmville and other such Facebook games are very similar to SK.

Do you go out of your way to complain about those too?

You can play so much of this game entirely for free, I find it a little disturbing that people will get pissed off at the developers for not making it even more free. Come on people, get over your entitlement. Enjoy the game. When you can't play, do something else. Or, pay to play longer, which is how this whole game is supported.

You're probably the same folks who "don't believe in paying for music".

Besides "turns per day", in what was is Farmville anything like Spiral Knights? But you know what? If you don't like the energy constraints, you can pay real money for your energy, buy energy with crowns, or go play Dungeons and Dragons Online.

Still waiting for the "game failure" that conjh13 was so vehemently insisting upon several days ago. It would appear that the game is still going strong. :P

Simple truth: when energy prices get too high, it means that the people who were never going to pay for energy with real money in the first place will hit that breaking point, which doesn't hurt OOO one little bit. The ones who would've paid given enough incentive will also hit that breaking point, and invest the few bucks. A few enterprising people may even put down 2-5 dollars just to take advantage of the rising energy prices to make some quick crowns. Once they do, the CE supply will go up, and the crown prices for that same CE will start to go down. The CE prices start to come down, and newer players stay longer, and old players hear about it and come back.

Basic economics, supply and demand. This system has been tested in other games, and it really works.

"Still waiting for the "game failure" that conjh13 was so vehemently insisting upon several weeks ago. It would appear that the game is still going strong"
Several weeks ago? You mean a week ago. And since then the CE prices have over doubled. It's gonna happen when CE reaches 8k or something stupid

"when energy prices get too high, it means that the people who were never going to pay for energy with real money in the first place will hit that breaking point, which doesn't hurt OOO one little bit"
When the cheap players, like me, all leave the game, the P2P'ers will get bored of knowing the name of every single other person who still plays SK, since there will only be about 50, and quit too. (Inb4 some stupid American thinks I mean literally 50)

"This system has been tested in other games, and it really works"
Alright, name 1

I can guarantee you there are more than 50 people paying for energy. Without seeing the metrics I'm willing to bet you there's at least a thousand people actually paying money into this game, irregularly or not.

As for naming a game with a system you can trade game time for? Lunatix. Old school BBS door game. You could trade with or wager turns against other players and if you win you get to play longer. You only have X turns a day (set by the BBS admin) and when you're out, you're out. A mini-economy would arise on some BBS' where people would trade equipment for turns. You could also contribute to the BBS for additional turns. It worked then. It works now. Live with it.

@Moxay

You're right, I meant "several days" ago. I edited my post.

That's where you stop being right, though.

Itemizing your post:

When the cheap players leave -- there are fewer of you and more of us than you imagine. You falsely place yourself in a super-majority. The percentage of people that will outright QUIT that are free players now just because they don't like increasing difficulty in purchasing their play time with crowns is an even smaller fraction of the portion of people that are free players.

Also, "stupid American"? You don't think Europeans, Canadians, whatever .... jump on those kinds of assumptions? How can you be so certain you're dealing with a bunch of Americans, anyway? Irrational hostility is never an attractive feature in anyone, almost as unattractive as petty jabs that mean nothing. Such as using the word "stupid" to describe a large group of people you've never met.

Puzzle Pirates has already been named as having a similar system. Nobody plays that game for long without venturing into doubloon territory, or subscribing. That means they use the market, paying their way with Pieces of Eight.

When (and if) you leave, there'll be a healthy population that you leave behind. That's all I can tell you. You're entitled to basically nothing as a free player, anyway .... it's difficult to comprehend your almost vicious "these guys owe me" state of mind. :/

@Feynt

I can guarantee you there are more than 50 people paying for energy. Without seeing the metrics I'm willing to bet you there's at least a thousand people actually paying money into this game, irregularly or not.

Oh, I'd say even well more than a thousand. Maybe approaching a solid five digits, or well beyond, at this point. Who can know for sure?

All I do know is that Spiral Knights has been making its rounds across Internet gaming forums, and the praise is lathered on fairly heavily. I keep seeing people posting something along the lines of "....after four days I broke down and bought $10 worth of energy because I was loving the game so much..."

There's a following, and a paying subset in that following, and it's growing daily. Not even close to shrinking. The loss of those who just stubbornly can't ever see themselves paying for online play would barely make a dent, but something tells me that even those threats are ultimately empty in the hearts of most. The ones that are serious about it are loud and vocal, but seem to represent a pinprick on the overall map.

$10 worth of energy can last an average player a month or more, if they're not just utterly wasteful with it, by the way. Not unreasonable. Many people will see it the same way. The question of whether or not enough people could be found to pay semi-regularly for an online game they found compelling was answered a long, long time ago.

At some point energy will be too high that no one will buy it and energy price will Lower. For me, i don't use more than 100 energy a day, maybe 150.

@tehcool you never craft anything above 3 stars?

edit: for the purposes of staying out of any hate in this thread, No i don't care for the height of the prices but I'm not here to complain, and Yes I did buy into the game during preview.

"This system has been tested in other games, and it really works"
Alright, name 1

Kingdom of Loathing just turned 8 this year. Unlike SK, you cannot buy more 'turns'. You absolutely must wait until the next day to regain your energy. Playing poorly will cost you even more turns than that. It's even more draconian.

KoL has grown steadily since it first launched. It currently boasts an active player count of 140,000.

Good news for everyone who thinks energy prices are too high, pretty soon you'll be paying 2k for energy again. Right now, the energy market isn't based on supply and demand - it's based on speculation of the future market. People who are purchasing energy with cash are holding onto all their energy and only selling a few bundles when they are short crowns. People are also purchasing energy with every extra crown they have even though they don't need it. All this is happening because energy is rapidly increasing in price. When looking at a simple supply and demand model, the supply is far greater than what we currently observe, and the demand is far lower than what we currently observe. My estimate is that the current 3.7k per 100 energy is much higher than the equilibrium price. There are a large number of people sitting on a treasure trove of energy just waiting for the price to reach the peak. All it takes is one of them to finally decide that the price is high enough, and then two days later, energy will be at 2k again.

I'd have to agree with Tumble. -- the market is probably not based on supply and demand right now.

It seems more based on sellers trying to get more than the last guy, and the customers willing to pay these climbing rates (because hey, we all need more CE). Its a competetive market, but people aren't interested in underselling someone else when the energy is getting MORE profitable each day. As long as there are buyers at these prices, the sellers will control the market.

CE is only going to go up.

Until materials start actually costing a damn, and until transmuting requires more than only a handful of crowns, then expect the worst when people obtain the lasts recipes they need to craft their final tier gear.

can you elaborate what you mean by that? what exactly is it you think players are going to do when theyre tier 3?

Prices are getting to high and it's forcing newbies out, I heard a bunch of them complaining they were going to quit because of it.

It's time for OOO to get their *&$^ in gear and break it up into a tier system.

People should not feel they have to pay for a game, and I'm getting to that point.

I'm stuck in T2 and I can't even manage to get 3* items because of the goddamn prices. This (*^$ is (*^$ing ridiculous.

EDIT: Please do not swear on the forums. Thank you.

an auction house would make it a lot cheaper to get items for the new players and in general too

"Inb4 some stupid American thinks I mean literally 50"
"I can guarantee you there are more than 50 people paying for energy. Without seeing the metrics I'm willing to bet you there's at least a thousand people"
Sigh.

"Oh, I'd say even well more than a thousand. Maybe approaching a solid five digits, or well beyond, at this point."
No. Probably about a thousand. And that really isn't a lot at all by the way

"The question of whether or not enough people could be found to pay semi-regularly for an online game they found compelling was answered a long, long time ago"
We're not talking about paying for online games in general; we're talking about SK. If I were compare SK to say, World of Warcraft, I could progress a lot further in WoW in 1 month for $15 than I could progress in SK, because I could play it however much I wanted to.

@GodofSkype

People should not feel they have to pay for a game, and I'm getting to that point.

I hate to have to say it again, but the question of whether or not people are willing to pay regularly for an online game they find compelling was answered a long, long time ago. I'm not even talking about WoW, but that's certainly example enough. The question was settled by the likes of Everquest and Ultima Online a decade before WoW was a twinkle in anyone's eye. Is the concept of paying for a game more than once absolutely foreign and unimaginable to some people? Sure, okay.

But, is an absolutely very GOOD game that is constantly receiving updates and evolving over the course of time worth an occasional investment of dollars to more than enough people to allow such games to make a profit anyway? Absolutely. No question of it. They can, so they will.

You need to get over this idea that calling something "free to play" means "free as long as I darn well please." It doesn't. A handful of "free" MMOs may mean that, but several other "free" MMOs say it and actually mean ten times less than even Spiral Knights offers. There's a whole spectrum of where the "okay, you have to pay for that at this point" limitation comes in. This is the system in place here. Love it or leave it, but stop griping about it, because it was going to come in at SOME point.

@Moxay

We're not talking about paying for online games in general; we're talking about SK. If I were compare SK to say, World of Warcraft, I could progress a lot further in WoW in 1 month for $15 than I could progress in SK, because I could play it however much I wanted to.

Yeah, uh .... WoW has a different pricing structure in other parts of the world. Take China, for example. People pay HOURLY over there. There is no "as long as you like." There's "as long as you can afford." It's still exploding like a package of firecrackers hurled on a bonfire.

Let me say it one more time -- your attitude that you absolutely will NOT play, there are many that feel that way. Not enough that the game becomes unprofitable, however, and those that will quit outright because their play time isn't perpetual are but a smaller subset of the people in your group. You're over-estimating the size of your own demographic.

Finally, yet another point I have to repeat -- $10 worth of crystal energy can last most daily players (I'm talking hours of play a day) a month or more, as long as they're not outright rezzing for 80 energy a pop in the clockworks, or don't spam 20 tier runs over the course of 13 hours. That's about how much I've paid so far, and I've barely made a dent. Throw in another $5 to match a standard MMO's monthly rate .... you'll have almost more than you know what to do with, especially if you occasionally play the market and are smart with how you invest it.

I have friends who are in T2 without ever having bought CE (either with real money or with Crowns). I have yet to spend any real money and I have more CE than I know what to do with at this point.

I didn't say that I had problems with energy, I said the newbies are.

Lrn2read

If you got in right when the game launched, it's now wonder you are ahead of the newbs. Prices were freaking gutter cheap at the time.

Did you miss the part about my friends not having used any crystal energy whatsoever to get to T2 or were you too busy telling me to learn to read?

You must be a very casual player then, I play for many hours a day.

Okay, first of all, swearing is not permitted in the forums, if you keep it up, you're going to get banned from posting here.

And the game is obviously free to play, continuously, indefinitely. It is reaching the point where you have to sell materials to buy more energy if you're not good at the game and are in tier 1, but if you kill everything, crack every bush, don't waste energy on gates that never pay nearly enough to replace that energy, explore every path... well, you can still replace your energy on adventuring gathered crowns alone, giving you a stash of materials as profit (plus if you're really lucky, once in a blue moon, an arsenal item.) Even if that -wasn't- enough for replenishing energy, you can still play indefinitely with 100 mist a day (you do have to buy some energy one way or the other to craft, of course.)

Yes, paying players have an advantage. That's how it is. And the game was designed that way from the bottom up, and three rings has used similar payment models in their past work. They are not going to change the payment no matter how much of a four-letter word laden temper tantrum is thrown in the forums.

I also expect crown prices are about peaking, -because- new players are not earning more than the current energy cost in their 100 energy. That means a certain amount of reduced demand on crown prices, partly from players that decide to take time off to let mist regenerate, partly from players that take time to figure out how to sell their gathered materials to afford energy, and partly, yes, from players that don't want to pay money and so have gone ahead and left the game. That's how it goes. The game won't be to everyone's liking.

(Of course, if the 10,000 price in beta was really a stable price, then we might see 5000 in production. Double gate costs means half the return on your energy, of course, so I don't expect there's anyway we'll see 10,000 in production.)

Can't help but say:

I'm playing entirely free.

I'm buying 100-300 CE a day from other players.

I don't see any incipient game failure, prices will go up - and mat prices will go up to match. Things will eventually stabilise at a point where you get just enough money from a run to buy the energy for a run (because if they go up any further, people will stop buying.)

I would LIKE lower energy prices. But I don't expect to get them. And if I did get them, all that would happen is that I would buy much more energy for the same number of coins.

Because there is literally nothing else worth doing with the coins. Sure, I can buy recipes I'll never use (and I probably will, eventually) - but there's a limited number of them.
Energy I can sell - directly, indirectly, or by playing the game (which is, um, the reason I'm playing the game, aftr all)

So yeah, unless energy costs more money than I currently have, I'll buy energy.

But one free tier run a day isn't too bad.

Re: Selling heat for crowns - there are two ways. One is to sell the 4* and 5* items which require levelling up the previous items to craft. The other is to let someone pay you to run a level and have you die near the end so that they can revive you and take your heat, so letting them level up their items faster. I have seen that service offerred for sale only once, and don't think anyone took them up on it, but maybe guilds do it.

Edit2: A lot of people are using CE as the currency of choice, instead of crowns. I strongly suspect that will become the norm for larger transactions. This means I also suspect a lot of people are better than I am at maintaining large stocks of CE and not spending it :)

"$10 worth of crystal energy can last most daily players (I'm talking hours of play a day) a month or more, as long as they're not outright rezzing for 80 energy a pop in the clockworks, or don't spam 20 tier runs over the course of 13 hours"

Wait, so there's something else to do in this game than spam tier runs? That's the ONLY way to progress, and that's what the $10 of CE is for.

"I have friends who are in T2 without ever having bought CE (either with real money or with Crowns)."

What's the point in lying here? Or if they played the beta, that argument becomes completely invalid because it means they have only progressed 1 tier in months of play.

Actually it only takes two days to get to T2 from scratch if you know what you're doing. You can get 2-3k in a T1 run. You can buy a 2 star piece from other players for that much. That's one 2* piece per 60 Energy. When you hit Haven for the first time you have around 180 Energy (including the freebie mist tank mailed to you). Do three T1 runs, do another the next day, start T2 where the real money is.

As for my friends, it took them four or five days I believe but they were really casual about it. And no, they never heard of the game until I sent them an invite on Monday or Tuesday of the official launch.

Edit: Actually it was Wednesday night I sent the invites out as that's our raid night.