This might be nothing, but it's really eating away at me.
I've been running the Tier 2 Ruby Clover gate for a while now. Up until recently, things had been perfectly normal. However, over the last two days, 5 out of my 6 runs had a Tortodrone Scenario Room pop up. More specifically, these two rooms. And the one run that didn't have a Tortodrone was one where I didn't go through a Wolver Den. Is this happening with other people, or am I just seeing a pattern that doesn't exist?
Tortodrone event rooms in wolver dens have not increased in frequency.
Wolver dens themselves currently are at a high frequency due to the existing gates [compounds are at a lower than average frequency].
Similarly, the one of the best gates currently is shock themed.
As for specifics, I can only supply anecdotal evidence that droprates for all things increase as more players are consuming [sparks during tortodrones/grinchlin, orbs during the gunner update]. Perhaps the release of the Spiralhorn sprite and players feeding them materials is influencing this.
There was a reason I dated all of my treasure box research, but alas I did not have nearly enough data to narrow down the "normal" drop rates enough to tease out if the anecdotal evidence actually supports a droprate theory.
I've had numerous Tortodrone scenario rooms appear during my arcade runs, most notably the Ruby Clover Gate. My thoughts on this is that it's either a really odd coincidence of getting those during consecutive runs, or that since it's March, then it could be hinting at the March of the Tortodrones event coming up soon (assuming it still occurs during the time frame it did last year)?
I also recently had this occur earlier this morning; something that hasn't happened in quite a long, long time. This was found on depth 21, on the level "Jigsaw Valley - Jade Tangle".
As another odd note, I've been constantly getting the same room during he mystery floor at depth 22 in the Copper Queen Gate: "Cooling Chamber - Gremlin Grounds". However, after a few runs of getting it over and over again, I got the "Deconstruction Zone - Savage Salvaging" level for a change, but I've done this gate 7 times in total since I woke up (I stopped at the terminal due to just recipe hunting; no Vanaduke fighting right now!), and I'm about to run through it again as I type this out.
While I have been getting that tortodrone vibe from the way development has been going recently, I'm under the impression that you're just imagining things. If this weren't the case and there really were a ton more tortodrone rooms showing up (like at every possible opportunity) then I would expect there to be quite a few more reports (since players tend to look for such patterns) being found or possibly even patch notes or twitter posts hinting at it.
The tortodrone vibe mentioned above comes from the shortened Apocrean event, the fact that it's March, and the less graphically intensive work done on the year of the ram promotion- one new horn type and a mediocre battle sprite, as well as the shorter event w/ nothing new feel rushed to me. These had to come there, first because the Chinese New Year doesn't wait for Spiral Knights and then because the events are always rotated to ensure "fairness", and our last event was Kats with Tortodrones before that. Since the solstice (and therefore UV-ticket + 1%-item-designed-to-make-Fehzor-salty celebration) falls in late March (the 20th, 2 days after the tortodrones would end if they took up ~2 weeks), there is a clear window of time from March 4th to March 18th with nothing obvious happening.
Though none of this is a concrete indicator of tortodrones, it's still my best guess as to what to expect. We could also receive something in that time slot like a new prize box with god knows what in it or dare I say it- an actual update. A curious upcoming Wednesday indeed.
Sorry, I have not run enough Arcade recently to address your question. (In a typical month I run the Arcade a lot, but this past month has not been typical.)
Here's my own paranoia, which posters can confirm or not: Plasma Cells are dropping much more frequently than they used to. I used to get about one a month under heavy playing. In the past month of light playing I've gotten about 10, including 3 in one mission run.