The Bank

[Chesshire]

I have to say this is really kind of a garbage biome. All the risk of 3 biomes at once, plus the always unbalanced evolving golems, and you don't actually get tons of gold for the extra risk. Plus the broken scroll numbers, the loan system that makes no sense to use, and the extremely meh blueprints. I've given it too many chances to show where the value is.

[Special Thanks, You]

Eh I don't really think the gold gorgers are unbalanced. A level 3 gold gorger is equivalent to a golem from slumbering sanctuary but easier. If you don't get the obstacle course chest, then you won't get a lot of cash. The biome also isn't necessarily meant to get cash, but also spend it. There's always 3 shops, with one being a food shop (which is nice at 4bc+). The loan system is mainly just a bonus to buy stuff in exchange for a curse at the end of the biome. I sadly haven't had experience with the weapons but they seem really good. Dagger of Profit+Gold digger (with porcupack)/the money on hit mutation gets it to crit basically always, I've heard Gold Digger is a phenomenal survival weapon, and the money slinger does absurd damage (just use point blank and save it for bosses/elites, like a tactics giant killer). Also what is broken with the scroll numbers exactly? If I remember correctly, it should have the highest number of scrolls of whatever biome choice it replaces.

[Bug Devourer]

skill dif

[Tristin]

Personally thought it was a bit underwhelming biome as well. Actually thought there'd be more to it, like the boss of the thieves.

[Pastapockets]

The actual problem with the bank is its sheer exhaustive length rendering it suicidal for 5BC

[Phirestar]

To start with, the wiki states that the Bank will adopt the highest scroll count of the biomes that it replaces. This means that you are not losing out on any extra stats by going to the Bank over the regular biome.

As for the value of the biome, here are all of the rewards that you receive for going to the Bank:

1. Up to 20,000 gold, at the cost of taking a significant curse (which can be halved with Acceptance, as a reminder).
   
2. One guaranteed Curse chest, which equates to 1 extra stat over any biomes that don't contain a Cursed chest.
   
3. Two guaranteed colorless items (1 from the Cursed chest, 1 from the platforming challenge)
   
4. A guaranteed level 10+ weapon OR an extra food shop item: two healing items, two potion charges, or two Cough Syrups (-6 Malaise).

All of those rewards can be acquired on a single trip to the Bank, and the Bank (to my knowledge) has a 100% spawn rate somewhere on the path of your run, meaning that you could go and gain all of those benefits every single run. That is a significant boost that is always available to you.

Now I see plenty of people say that the Bank is quite a difficult biome, and I can agree: it's probably the second hardest level in the game (after the Distillery), in my opinion. But all of those rewards that I listed above are the reason for why it is so hard. It is a high risk, high reward level, and you are able to skip it entirely should it feel too risky for you. No other biome in the game offers that variety of rewards.

As for the enemies, I personally think that the threat is a bit conflated. Yes, you have enemies pulled from three different pools, but you will be seeing far fewer of each enemy that you'd normally encounter when going to their respective biomes, since they all have to compete for spawning. The Bank-specific enemies can certainly be a pain, but the thieves are relatively low health, and the Gold Gourgers require you to feed them a significant amount of gold in order to evolve them to their largest form. In my experience, you have to kill at least 2-3 enemies near a Gourger in order to accomplish that, and a lot of the time you're able kill enemies when they aren't near the Gourger, either by leading them away or waiting for it to move out of range of them. I choose to go to the Bank pretty often, and I've seen a level 3 Gold Gourger maybe once every other time I'm there. At best, they usually only make it to level 2, which is not much more of a threat than the level 1 version.

[Avera]

personally, I go to the bank to knock out a weapon from a mimic merchant