Money Making

Introduction

So, you want to do a lot of things in Spiral Knights eh? But what's this?! Everything you want do make and get costs crowns and energy! It's so expensive :/ . Fear not! This guide will teach you how to make all the Crowns and Energy in Spiral Knights. Going over the basics of trading and using the Auction House to your advantage. It will teach you the basics of being a merchant and how to efficiently grind levels, as well as the best places to grind.

General Grinding Tips

Remember to run every level on elite. This increases the payout of a level by roughly 50% compared to normal. It also improves Rarity drop rates and will increase the amount of event materials you'll get when you're farming those.

The Sovereign Slime

This is the first mission you'll unlock that'll be a prime place for grinding. The Sovereign Slime is a Rank 5-2 Mission that'll offer plenty of Crowns, Jelly Gems, as well as Slime Coins which you can spend at the Casino. To effectively run this mission you ought to get yourself a Nightblade, Tundrus, or a Dark Chaingun. Once you have those, this mission will take roughly 14 minutes to run and will net you 3.2kcr, 3-4 Jelly Gems, and some Golden Slime Coins. Once your equipment gets better you can reduce the run time down to 10-11 minutes or even shorter!

Jelly Gems can be redeemed for various items at brinks. The most profitable of which is the Rock Salts. People buy rock salts for 500-1kcr each. And these only cost 2 Jelly Gems, meaning you're getting 1.5 per run. I recommend selling them on the Auction House.

Theses Golden Slime Coins should not be taken lightly, they can be used at the Golden Slime Casino to win CROWNS and Slime Lockboxes. Slime Lockboxes are gambling so I recommend that you stay away from that. And instead sell them to a player for even more crowns.

Built to Destroy

This is the second great crown grinding mission you'll unlock. Built to Destroy is a Rank 6-2 Mission that'll offer a good amount of Crowns and Bark Modules which can be redeemed at Brinks. Ironclaw is more profitable than The Sovereign Slime by quite a bit. As the redeems from brinks are highly sought after. Especially the Schemer Scrap. Schemer Scraps are worth roughly 20-26kcr each! They cost 18 Bark Modules to redeem. Once you first unlock the mission, your runtime will be around 15-20 minutes. But as you get better gear you'll be able to cut it down to 12 minutes or faster.

The King of Ashes

The final signifcant grinding mission you'll unlock on your journey. The King of Ashes is a rank 9-3 Mission and it's where many Vanguards grind their crowns. Each round nets around 8-9kcr + Almirian Seals which can be redeemed at brinks. The most important of these brinks redemptions is the Ancient Stuff as those can be vendored for a bonus 30kcr. Making each Almirian Seal worth 1kcr. When you first unlock it your runtime will probably be around 40 minutes or longer. But as you get better, you can reduce the runtime to 24 minutes or faster! The King of Ashes makes a lot of money and many see it is the #1 crown grinding spot. However, there are other ways to make a lot more crowns if you decide to get into merchant

Becoming a Merchant

So what is a Merchant? Well to put simply, a merchant is a person who trades various goods to other players to make a profit. How they obtain these items can vary tremendously, but they'll find one way or another to get their goods to the people. Starting out a merchant can actually be very difficult as you don't know what anything is worth and other merchants may be trying to make a profit off of you! Thankfully, you have this guide and other resources. There is a good resource, https://sites.google.com/view/skmerchant/home, this attempts to price various items in the economy. Some of these prices are outdated but you can do a price check in haven to see what something is worth.

As a merchant, you'll be utilizing the Auction House to sell most of your goods. With that in mind, remember to ALWAYS put items on two days. There is no reason to put items any shorter. With a two day listing, many people will see your item and consider buying it.

Finding Merchandise

So now you are starting to build a decent database of prices, but what do you sell? Basil Exclusive Recipes are a good place to start. These are recipes that can only be found at Basil and nowhere else, and they include:

Elemental, Piercing, and Shadow Blaster Lines. Flaming, Freezing, Heavy, and Kilowatt Pulsar Lines. Lightning Capacitor Line. Dark Chaingun Line. Tundrus Line. Blackhawk, Silversix, and Raptor Lines. and the Blackened Crest Line.

People are constantly buying these recipes, the best ones are the 3* exclusives as there is a much bigger market for those recipes than the 4* and 5*. However, there are some good 5* exclusives as well. The average 3* exclusive nets a 3kcr profit, the average 4* exclusive nets a 2kcr profit, and the average 5* exclusive nets a 7kcr profit. Once you get the ball rolling with Basil, you may even be producing more Crowns than Firestorm Citadel(The King of Ashes)!

Additionally, some materials are great sales. Such as Warp Dust, Zee Cores, Rock Salts(as mentioned earlier), Primal Ores, Monster Bones, and potentially some more. Those are the materials with the biggest demand.

However, these are just starting points and should not be used for consistent reliable income. At some point you have to move to a bigger frontier. Promotional Items. You notice how almost every month there's a new Prize Box for sale? Well the contents of these boxes are very popular among the players. And they inflate, a lot, over time. Once you have built up a good amount of bank. You can invest into these items via trading with other players or on the auction house. Be sure to price check them before you begin buying, as often players will overprice items at the beginning of a promotion. Over time the items value will appreciate and you'll be able to sell it for much more later on in your Spiral Knights career. Sometimes you can sell items for more almost immediately as the market for these items can vary drastically.

Final Words

With all that in mind you should now know how to produce a good amount of crowns in Spiral Knights. This guide has given you the best places to farm crowns and a good starting point for entering the world of trade. Now you should have no problems making crowns, remember to enjoy the game!