With the influx of new players from steam isn't it time to put Dark Priests back in the merchant, the reason being it's a fairly easy adventure for low levels and it get's them used to the concept of buying and selling loot spots or just swapping with each other.
The concept of attracting new players is obviously to try and get them hooked and I don't think that's going to happen TBH, if you want to get them to stay long enough to start buying gems you need to re-think your strategy especially as your adding enough content to last them 5 years or so.
The rewards are not over-powered so it's not game breaking like IoTP was and TBH after a couple of SFTR I probably wouldn't bother carrying on if I was fresh at this game.