I’ve been having a great time with Infinity Nikki. I do my dailies, grind for materials, and desperately search for an outfit that works with the single ugliest piece of clothing in the game: a red vest. But as I’ve progressed, the game has given me — a gacha newbie — an unfortunate crash-course education on how these games really work and what not to do if you want to keep your sanity and your wallet intact.

The trouble began right before the current Lunar New Year event, when I started obtaining every piece of a special outfit called Wings of Wishes. In Infinity Nikki, special outfits like Wings of Wishes are gated behind what’s called Resonance Events, which are essentially slot machines available for a limited time. When you spend currency in the game, you’re not buying outfits outright; you’re paying to “pull” the lever on that slot machine in hopes that it’ll spit out the pieces you want.

Throughout the month Wings of Wishes was available, I managed to earn eight of its nine pieces, even though I wasn’t really trying to get it. And as the event wound down, I was confident that even if I ran out of currency, I’d simply earn enough back for the final piece. But once I exhausted all the story and event quests, I learned that the game does not reward currency at a pace that can keep up with even casual, intermittent pulling. I went from earning enough to pull 10 or 20 times a week down to four or five times. It was like that paycheck meme, where, in the first week after you get paid, you’re eating steak and caviar for dinner, but by the second, you’re having ice soup. It got so dire that, by the end of the event, I started spending money hoping I’d pull the last piece, but I never did.

I was crushed, not only for obvious reasons but also because playing this game wasn’t supposed to change my spending habits. And I learned through consulting with my gacha veteran friends and the Infinity Nikki subreddit that I made the rookiest of mistakes in thinking I could outsmart a game engineered to part me from my money in ways I wouldn’t really notice or feel.

Gacha games have a poor reputation because of the way they can exploit players to extract their money. I got got because I thought I was above that, not realizing the game had already tapped into my FOMO and my wallet. Nothing, not even Wings of Wishes, was ever so desirable that it was worth focusing on. It only became a focus when I realized I needed one more piece right before the event ended. On top of that, I never noticed my spending. I wasn’t concerned because I wasn’t dropping $30–$50, but I was spending two dollars, three dollars, 99 cents, two and three times a day, because again, all I needed was one more piece.

True blue gacha veterans will tell you that if there’s something you want, be prepared to either pay for it or plan for it. Players who don’t want to spend money for outfits skip two and three events in a row, hoarding their currency, waiting for the right outfit to spend their entire warchest on all for free. On the other hand, if a player wants to pay for an outfit, they know to be prepared to spend bill money for it. Pulling is the same as working a slot machine: you’re not guaranteed to hit. But Infinity Nikki guarantees a high-value piece every 10 pulls. With the currency used for pulls going for a dollar apiece, a nine-piece outfit like Wings of Wishes will run you at least $90. That amount goes up dramatically because the guarantee is for any high-value piece, and Resonance Events often contain multiple high-value outfits that have anywhere between eight and 10 pieces.

I understand that my problems likely don’t extend to the majority of other players. From perusing the game’s subreddit, I get the feeling most people either already understand the level of preparation required to obtain coveted clothing effectively, don’t mind spending eye-watering sums, or are content to either engage with the system casually or ignore it altogether. I planned on being the latter, someone who tossed the developers a few bucks here and there to obtain the occasional outfit I fancied.

And in my naivete, I assumed that’s how gacha games worked. You could either grind out the resources you needed or spend money only when you chose to for items you wanted. Yes, I understood there were elements of random chance to compete against, but I genuinely thought that I could guarantee myself the desired outfits through a mix of casual play and light spending. I will not make that mistake again. Thankfully, the current Lunar New Year event doesn’t have any premium outfits I want. Plus, the ones being given away for free are more than cute enough to soothe my sartorial spirit.

The real tragedy of all this is that I don’t even like how Wings of Wishes looks. I only wanted it for its special ability to make Nikki’s floating animation look like she’s gliding on a magical paper crane. I have multiple substitutes for the white stockings I’m missing, so I can easily complete the look. But without that final piece, the outfit’s ability won’t trigger, and I don’t like it enough to wear it casually. So it’ll sit, incomplete and unworn, in my wardrobe, possibly forever.