"Gold Sale!"

[Flash33]

As decent as this sale is they honestly should just remove the gold tab from the shop as it's pointless with all the gold farming spots available in the game. Also, I've read the comments on the Twitter thread about it and almost everyone is unhappy with it. Will things change? Probably not but there you go.

[Crystal Calligraphy]

Honestly, as long as there is a market for it, they will continue doing whatever it takes to push sales to their full potential.

I'm really glad I started this game 12 years ago, when the crown shop wasn't even a thing. There's no way I'd make it in this game now with the measly $5-$10 chore money I had back then. While everything in the Crown Shop is considered "optional" to play the game, they know how to target their young audience well. It really doesn't sit right with me.

[JaredSpellFrost]

Nah, there really is a legit market for it. My friends hoard empowers that they trade for packs on a regular biases.

A much more efficient method for making Empowers is to buy* Couch Potato seeds and garden those. Plus, who wants to drop $10 to get 50,000 Gold?? That won't fetch you too many Packs, methinks. The exchange rate just doesn't add up- if you have the Crowns, you'll cut out the middleman and just buy the Packs directly!
There's a market for Gold and Empowers, that is decidedly true- but there has never been a legitimate reason to purchase Gold for Crowns.



*Ofc, farming Troubled Bears or Secret Tunnel is better than buying Couch seeds

[Grumpy Cat]

Nah, there really is a legit market for it. My friends hoard empowers that they trade for packs on a regular biases.

Idk if this is allowed here so mods remove if not. Just wanted to give some clarification here and this is not my endorsement of what goes on outside the game.

Empower exchange rate is typically .25 for <5000 and .3 for >5000. Smaller items are usually separate from this scale.
So for example; Pack = 399 crowns = ~90 empower = (max) ~180,000 gold.

You can argue all day over if this sort of secondary market is permissible, ethical, whatever, but the point is it exists and is very active. And under that system, we're looking at 400 crowns (.40) being the trade value of 180,000 gold. That's the fact of it, and KI's scale is way out of line with this. KI prices gold at about 1000 gold/700 crowns (using the base price) or 1000 gold/270 crowns based on that random sale price listed now. So with that price between the projections, I'd assume it's some exploratory test of the market to see if gold sales rally or stay consistent. Obviously people are getting empowers in game, and you can't remove that aspect completely, but I think there's a decent chance at getting people back to the crown shop at the right price. Time is money, and this game is grind-y with gold.

So IMO, that's a clear measure that KI's understanding of value in the game is quite lacking. People want gold, and people want it quickly. The point of an aftermarket is to be cheaper and easier than the existing system as far as my understanding goes, and until KI can put their own prices in line, this sort of thing isn't going to appeal to anyone but new people to the game with a lot of cash to burn or who don't know otherwise. For that section to even be relevant and not sketchy, the secondary market and understanding how to bring that business back directly to the crown shop will be a big thing, at least if they want to do it effectively.

[SeptenaryRavens]

There's a trick I learned this past weekend that might be of help to new and/or crowns players out there - there's a boss in Ravenscar named Eitri Shadowmirk that drops the Tricksy Dragon Charm. I sold a few after farming for ~20 minutes and they sell for a good 12,932 gold or so in the bazaar. The boss has less than 1700 health, and if you're farming in a pair, it should take the same amount of time as Halfang. In this case, you don't even need to quest into Wintertusk (or even buy the areas) to get decent amulets for a nice payout.

A better investment is to buy areas where you will have access to them forever. No membership required. In total, you would have to buy all areas in Grizzleheim up until and including Ravenscar (~10k crowns), which if you are planning to play the game longer than a week, is a huge money saver since you could farm for an hour or two and more than make up for the 200k gold you'd get for spending 10k crowns that way.

Just my 2 cents.

[Spellbinder]

A much more efficient method for making Empowers is to buy* Couch Potato seeds and garden those. Plus, who wants to drop $10 to get 50,000 Gold?? That won't fetch you too many Packs, methinks. The exchange rate just doesn't add up- if you have the Crowns, you'll cut out the middleman and just buy the Packs directly!
There's a market for Gold and Empowers, that is decidedly true- but there has never been a legitimate reason to purchase Gold for Crowns.



*Ofc, farming Troubled Bears or Secret Tunnel is better than buying Couch seeds

Not siding with KI, just stating a fact that there is a market. Should things change? Is KI in the right? Do I actually care enough to spend time on this topic?
Nah. I don't care enough to debate what is right or wrong or yada yada yada, morals, shoulds and or shouldn'ts.
I'll leave the debating on that to you all.

[Lightdragon]

Nah, there really is a legit market for it. My friends hoard empowers that they trade for packs on a regular biases.

when i first played the game (april of 2011). Gold was extremely hard to get. you didn't have pet snacks or tcs with 1200 gold selling. you were lucky if you got 150 gold for a pet snack or a tc. it would take a month or so to get enough gold to buy a broom. i helped one person in the game and he gifted me with enough gold (50k gold) to buy a broom and i never asked him to. most players i was aware of back then never really sold pet snacks ,tcs on a regular basis or even gardened. for gold most people farmed the burning hates in DS. well at least that was recommended for gold farming here on central about 10 years ago.(where it was posted i do not know. sorry guys)

[Dylan Windwalker]

Honestly, as long as there is a market for it, they will continue doing whatever it takes to push sales to their full potential.

I'm really glad I started this game 12 years ago, when the crown shop wasn't even a thing. There's no way I'd make it in this game now with the measly $5-$10 chore money I had back then. While everything in the Crown Shop is considered "optional" to play the game, they know how to target their young audience well. It really doesn't sit right with me.

Honestly if I was playing this game at ages 5-7, I could see myself buying things like this (I wasn't much of a bright kid, not that children this age should have any age-related expectations whatsoever). Profiting off of children who do not know any better like this is UNETHICAL in almost every circumstance, even when a parent is around (A parent that doesn't play this game shouldn't be expected to know that the Gold currency in the game is extremely easy and free in this game, nor that buying gold with crowns is wasting money).

[Dylan Windwalker]

There's a trick I learned this past weekend that might be of help to new and/or crowns players out there - there's a boss in Ravenscar named Eitri Shadowmirk that drops the Tricksy Dragon Charm. I sold a few after farming for ~20 minutes and they sell for a good 12,932 gold or so in the bazaar. The boss has less than 1700 health, and if you're farming in a pair, it should take the same amount of time as Halfang. In this case, you don't even need to quest into Wintertusk (or even buy the areas) to get decent amulets for a nice payout.

A better investment is to buy areas where you will have access to them forever. No membership required. In total, you would have to buy all areas in Grizzleheim up until and including Ravenscar (~10k crowns), which if you are planning to play the game longer than a week, is a huge money saver since you could farm for an hour or two and more than make up for the 200k gold you'd get for spending 10k crowns that way.

Just my 2 cents.

The only problem is that we cannot expect 5-7 year old players to understand this nor is there anyway to tell them this directly (assuming they're muted because their parents made their account). Parents shouldn't need to assume that there's a way to get gold easily without paying a cent. I know a family that lets their kid play Roblox during their free time at all and the adult knows nothing about the game other than giving the child some level of investment and obviously the adult isn't overseeing what the kid does in that game all of the time. For the company to take advantage of innocent ignorance like that should be impermissible.

- - - Updated - - -

While I am no way incentivising the Crowns to Gold exploiting of children, I think the amount of crowns itself is likely what bothers the wizard community itself so in light of this and if the Crowns to Gold tab is going to stay for the foreseeable future, I'm pretty sure lowing the amount even more to this will at least make the option somewhat reasonable...

10k gold = 50 crowns
25k gold = 100 crowns
50k gold = 150 crowns
*At the regular price, no-sale
*The intent of this more gear towards helping players rather than the exploitation that is happening now, given that 50k gold is likely difficult to achieve for a very young player and 200 crowns is barely a profit for Kingsisle. This is intended to provide severely less money to the company.

That I think is somewhat ok deal (I'd still hesitate to recommend though even if 10k+ gold is needed for like a hatch)

It's either that or absolutely removing this entire gold tab in the crowns shop instantly (and I'd feel better with an apology)