I know that crowns are one of the most important things in the Spiral. You can do anything with them. In fact, I bet that everyone has spent crowns or bought something from the crowns shop since the whole time you've played the game. There are 2 ways that KingsIsle makes their money to keep our beloved game running: Crowns and subscriptions.
Crowns are the type of currency that KingsIsle has put in place that player must buy using real money. Almost every MMO game has a currency that is bought with actual money and that is a huge way of making their money. There are many things crowns can do for you. They can buy special outfits that give special abilities, pets with great abilities, henchmen to help you in battles, HOARD PACKS, etc.
There are many ups to this system as well as many downs. Lets start with the positive part. Crowns are very helpful to players who might need an extra boost to help them through a difficult quest. They can be used to assist you by means of gear, henchmen, and pets. The gear that can be bought can give you good stats, or a better card to help upgrade your deck and push you to victory. Most of these outfits can be dropped off of various difficult bosses around the Spiral, so you people who don't buy crowns have a way to obtain them. Henchmen will help a little bit, but you have no control over them. A better alternative would be to bring friends, but a henchmen can help if you prefer to quest alone. Pets are extremely useful in any battle, casting healing spells, giving extra defense or attack, or casting an extra blade to stack. Crowns pets may be hatched from other members if a player decides to, so pets are also available for players who don't use crowns. Crowns are also used to help train pets. You can buy a Mega Snack Pack which gives snacks that are a bit more powerful than regular snacks. Your pet will level up greatly and quickly if you spend money on mega snacks. These amazing snacks can be dropped from bosses, or gardened for.
money on crowns, but that isn't a problem because of drops and other ways of obtaining these items. The bad part comes in with gifting. Gifting allows players to give other players crowns items using crowns of their own. While it is a generous aspect to the game, it is also bad in some cases. You probably noticed hoard packs was in all caps earlier in the article. Well that is because hoard packs are sometimes gifted by a lot of begging. Hoard packs only give a chance of getting the epic items, which may be spells, mounts, or housing items. Some people enjoy hoard packs, as they release a huge amount of new items for players to enjoy. But many people are against them because it is like a gamble, using real money. You aren't guaranteed any good items, no matter how many packs you buy. These packs increase amounts of begging because people want all of the newest items and don't really want to pay for them because they don't have any crowns. The reason there is begging if because begging works, people actually get what they want from begging. I'm expecting that many of you have had people beg for hoard packs from you before, and it gets annoying, doesn't it?
So in conclusion, crowns are loved by many people, but also hated, and KingsIsle can't get rid of them because crowns bring in a good of money for them, and they need money to keep this game running.
Story
Crowns