Graveyard: Where Knights Should Fear To Tread Again

It's in the name. GYs used to be pretty scary places, but with Phantom respawn increased timers and the latest Zombie nerfs, GYs have turned from "Oh crap...a GY...run through, or fight?" into "Booyah! A GY; free heat!"
GYs need to be badassified. Whether the heat/crown intake is increased accordingly doesnae matter much, but the difficulty needs to be severely increased.
I want to load up a Graveyard again and the first thing I think be "oooh crap..." and have to seriously consider whether to fight for the goodies or just run through at breakneck speed and avoid a horrible death.
Simple as that; they should be made harder, nothin' more, nothin' less.
THE LIST
The list below is of all the possible suggestions as to what will make GYs harder. Note that this isn't a suggestion that every GY should have all of these implemented, rather just all the possible suggestions as to what can be implemented, based on what's considered the most balanced to the tier etc at the time; but that's not our job right now, we're just coming up with suggestions.
As per Skold's idea, there's enough suggestions on the list now that it's probably time to start refining them off. From now on, anyone can make a post on their opinion of the list (feel free to continue adding more suggestions, if you can think of any). This will be a simple +1/0/-1 to the ideas. ( "+1" is obviously an idea you particularly like, "-1" is an idea that you'd hope to never see happen, and either "0" or just ommiting it from your post will imply that you're not fussed, don't care etc) I'll keep an eye on posts and keep a tally of the overall score on each idea. Any idea that reaches -10 will be moved to the "trash" list, and any idea that reaches +10 will be boldened and moved to the "badass" list. I'll start us off with my own opinion of the ideas!
(Note: it should go without saying that each person only gets one "vote" per suggestion; altough you're allowed to vote again on ideas that you previously omitted or ideas that have been added since your vote)
For credits sake, it should be noted that these ideas are updated from post suggestions and not all of them are mine. Feel free to read through the thread to find who posted what.
::The Badass List (Ideas that reached +10 in popularity)
- [+10] Let Zombies spawn from other flavour-appropriate areas, such as climbing up the edges, falling off roofs, from the ceiling etc. Even "being catapulted" as suggested, with a sinister warning laugh. Graves should mean zombies, but zombies should also spawn from elsewhere, to create more of a surprise or unexpected spawn.
- [+10] Add Howlitzers.
::The Regular/Original List
- [+9] Increasing Zombie numbers.
- [+6] Have "special shape" spawns that have different summoning properties. e.g, a pentagram of graves might summon a Trojan in the middle, or a square of graves might summon Howlitzers at the corners, or a circle might be surrounded by Shadowfire with Howlitzers inside et cetera...
- [+3] Increasing Zombie damage.
- [-1] Giving Zombies a post-mortem "homing skull" ability akin to Howlitzers.
- [+5] Increasing Phantom numbers from 1/knight to 2/3 per knight.
- [+7] Decreasing Phantom respawn cooldowns.
- [-4] Make Phantoms (maybe even Zombies too, within the GY) resistant to special damage, like Vana's mask.
- [+4] Buffing (or undoing the nerf) Zombies/Phantoms inside Graveyards only.
- [+5] Adding Silkwings, or creating a Necromancer, or Undead Healer or sorts, akin to T3 Menders.
- [+6] A "Zombie Wolver" or undead animal type creature as well to run around fast and nippy, to contrast the current slow zombies. A shadow/piercing type damage monster that's fast and scurries around between slow mobs of zombies would add something extra to really watch out for.
- [+8] A "Zombie Daddy" that boosts and powers up nearby zombies in the same fashion that wolver daddies power up wolvers.
- [+5] A "Graveyard Vulture" that flies in and attacks you with the express intention of stealing your collected goods thus far that run, then attempts to fly away with your goodies forever. In a similar fashion to Klepto's, it will worry more about stealing your goodies and escaping than killing you, making it a problematic distraction, but not dangerous, as such.
- [+2] A "Grave Wisp" that inflicts poison, curse and stun all at once. These demons patrol the GYs and make sure that anyone unlucky enough to be hit by one is landed with inflicting less damage, receiving more, moving and attacking slower and having weapons/items cursed off from them, all while surrounded by the normal baddies of the map. Dangerous stuff!
- [+3] Add Carnavons.
- [+5] Add Trojans.
- [+9] Add a lot of scattered Totems across GYs.
- [+6] Give Phantoms a revival radius around them, in the same fashion as Totems.
- [+8] Allow killed zombies a %-based chance to either completely just get back up again and keep fighting, or let half of their body crawl towards you in a continued fight to kill you at reduced speed/damage etc
- [+4] Adding an undead ankle-biter of sorts that's expressly there to hinder your movement and slow you down, by doing nothing other than jumping at/on you and reducing your m.speed, while letting everything else kill you.
- [+3] Including more obstacles and giving less space to move.
- [+8] Reducing visibility/view by creating a fog/darkness around the sides of the screen, only letting you see a few blocks in front of you. NOTE: this will not be like the "fog" graphic in current GYs/CSKs, but an actual opaque black template around the screen that completely blocks visuals, therefore low gfx settings would get it too. Higher gfx settings would just make this template look prettier.
- [+6] Disable minimap in the same fashion as SLs, making navigation that bit trickier. Couples nicely with the "fog".
- [+1] Adding a random status theme to GYs.
- [+7] Adding more hazards to the environment than just the occasional branch or spikefloor.
- [-4] Have the torches/walls fire ghost bullets endlessly (not too fast or too regularly, but hitting hard enough to care about) and have no way to kill the source, just to create more things to avoid within the GY.
- [-2] Make GYs closer in design to Unknown Passages, and have the zombies spawn infinitely, but have no drops (allowing heat/cr to be collected elsewhere).
- [+5] Ambushes after/before the Elevators.
::People who've voted:
Darkbrady
Skold-The-Drac
Iridescent
Milkman
Wolfkit
Severage
Dukesky
Imperialstriker
Lordofnecromancers
Diamondshreddie
Serell
::The Trash List (Ideas that reached -10 in popularity)

The list is more of a "mix and match", just a pile of suggestions that could be picked out from, either single ones, or a mash-up or any or all of them, just w/e would be deemed the most balanced or fair. This is just a suggestion and all, and if ever read by the Devs I don't want to tell them what changes shold be made, but rather give a selection of potential changes and let them use that list as inspiration for ideas towards said idea.
Obviously any changes to GY would need to be implemented in such a way that they still tier up nicely between T1~T3.
The main thing is just that it kinda feels like they added Candlestick to replace GYs as "the scary floor" rather than ever actually fixing GYs again. Adding new content is great and all, but kinda double-edged when it feels like it's only replacing current content; I'd like to see the GY become as scary as it used to be, but in a different context than Candlestick. Candle is more of a pressured rush, fast moving and "running from godzilla" kinda scary, whereas GYs should be more claustrophobic and tense, kind of scary.

I think candlestick keep was here before the massive nerf.
And yeah, I like these ideas. But I'm not sure how bullet shooting walls are actually graveyard themed, or silkwings. And if you added more hazards, decreased visibility on top of that would just be annoying. Here would be my choices:
De-debuff the zombies (everywhere)
Lower the Phantom respawn time
Reduce visibility (this would be cool because it's supposed to be night in the graveyards)
Add the status themes

The Candlesticks came out before the zombie nerf, but after phantom nerf and in general jut sorta replaced the scary vibe, as Candles were worse.
The bullets was just the idea of some more hazards flyin' around, like being shot from the torches in the walls. Not the most relevant idea, though. Silkwings was only a suggestion because fiends/undead are put together in some floors, and I'd expect that Devs would rather just add current healers rather than made new monsters entirely, just for them, altough aye; given the choice personally, I'd rather a wee necromancer over just some silkwings.
Aye, some of them won't mix together well, but I figured just put the whole list together, anythin' can be mix'n'matched from there as ideas :)
Also, "debuff the zombies"? You'd want them even weaker, or did you just mean "buff" and typo'd? I expect the latter, but you never know o.o

How about adding totems to the graveyards instead of adding healers?
And (I may get raged on for this) make Graveyard Phantoms resistant to all damage types except normal.

Haha, yeah, I meant buff. It's late... don't judge me. And not just buff, but remove the last debuff completely.

@Imperial:
Excellent; totems never even occured to me! Added them into the list :)

@Imperialstriker
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

*Hides in corner and clicks on Nitronome*
"Stand back or this won't end well for the both of us."
And on topic:
Another idea would be to tack on the occasional Howlitzer here and there. I've always thought that the sound the Howlitzer makes while firing is kinda creepy.

@Imperialstriker
Haha, imagine a couple phantoms and a howlitzer head all locking on to one player, coming from different directions...

@Aemicus:
You have a point there. Idk... shield and pray? Or be nifty and have a phantom take the explosive blow for you? (I love doing that with rocket puppies, and I think I've done it on a Kat ghost with a howlitzer once)

Then again, that tricksy hard bit is exactly what we're after ;)

Some T3 graveyard tiles already have totems.

Aye, but there's only a couple of totems in the entire GY, and that's only one or two GY maps in all of the possible maps, and afaik there's none in T1/2. Just doesnae seem enough, feels more like the occasional extra wee thing rather than a "GYs are hard because of this" :/

So what to do to make things better?
I agree the zombie count needs to get bigger, my bombs and blades need hoards to chomp through.
Phantoms are the ultimate lords of the realm right? Make them be the ones to necro the zombies, and have them come out WITH the zombies. Smaller radius than totem but same effect.
Recharge time on phantoms is laughable for me atm.
Anybody ever wonder if a flamethrowing mausoleum option would be available in GYs? I do. Can they be implemented? (make some hazards)
Make an undead with a similar function as post-mortum gun puppies (homing zombie skull or something). You know, where they chase down a player and try to kill them? THAT!
Phantom to player ratio gets a little higher, 1.5/player round down. Give phantom a minor buff on the odd numbers. (health or damage)
Make an ambush right before the elevator... 3-4 part battle giving a doubled zombie count, zombies get the stunning breath option no matter the tier in this battle.
Yes? No? Too much nightmare for ya?

Agreed. Graveyards became too easy with the phantom nerf.

I would say, increase the over all bulk of zombies EVERY where, (They are not meant to be scary all on their lonesome, and enough zombies can even swamp a DA! How would you like to be sitting in a corner, spamming the DA charge, while the slowly creep closer, and then you see a totem-like phantom appear on the edges.>:) and when they die, give them a 35% chance to lose the bottom half of their body and start crawling toward you, living for a short time and grabbing you (As if they leaped) and noming on your feet.
That would be nice and evil, keeping in mind that zombies have numbers, not speed.
Evil Mastermind
~Tsu

I always liked the idea that when zombies die, they have a %-chance to just get back up again, fully intact. Shame it seems like totems sorta just replace that idea, but you never really see them enough.

How about make all the zombies, literally all of them, infinitely respawning. They obviously couldn't drop loot, so move an equivalent amount to party boxes near the elevator at the end.
To keep people from just running through at top speed, make gates that only drop after a certain number of zombies are killed, like the ones in the Unknown Passage.

Already got that near the bottom of the list.
I couldnae decide if the idea would be dismissed as being too hard or too boring or too simlar to UP, but I thought it would really add to the standard zombie vibe of just an endless onslaught of zombies.
Sayin' that, I personally also like knowing that there's the option to just leg it through there if it gets too scary, and making them infinitely respawn would detract from that, forcing you to stick around for set times. I imagine there's a compromise somewhere in the mix though.

I disagree with fog and other graphics added. To maintain fairness, it has to be present in low quality. But then it gets taxing on less than optimal computers.
Infinite respawn is a great idea.
How about zombies dropping from the ceiling? Or some sort of catapult that launches zombie(s) at you off screen? It would fit into the amush theme of certain areas. Add in a creepy laugh just before it happens, and have nothing happen for a minute or so, to make everything much more intense.
Tl;dr: I want flying zombies.

Well it wouldn't be like Candlestick, where there's a graphic intensive "fog", it would be a more basic darkening, to flat out blanket the image completely, rather than add an otherwise translucent effect. Higher graphics settings could make it look pretty, while lower graphics settings could simply leave it as blackness.
Being launched sounds kinda weird from a zombie standpoint, but jumping from the ceilings, or roofs, or even climbing up the sides of the walls would be cool; zombies just come from literally everywhere, even the sky!

I like the idea of a zombie/skeletal gremlin mender. I also like "give them a 35% chance to lose the bottom half of their body and start crawling toward you". Like the Cyborg Soldiers in Tiberian sun.

Aye, I think it'd be great fun havin' some old magey Necromander scurrin' around just revivin' every Skelly in sight, or havin' a revival aura around him while you're tryin' to kill. Just like gremlin warfare, forcin' you to worry about the healer:fighter balance, but on a much more numbers orientated type of pressure.

The only suggestion I want to add on that I don't think I saw:
Add a wolver-based Undead. Fast, agile, weak to elemental, hits for shadow or piercing damange (or a blend, since hardly no one has ultimate defense against both at once so it'd be a viable threat). Don't make it impossible to kill but don't make it a glass cannon either. Or something that increases the speed of other Undead, akin to how Alpha Wolvers boost regular Wolvers' attack power. If there was an undead wolver-themed monster boosting everything around it to make it hit faster, at least enough to counteract the recent zombie nerf, that'd be a -great- start and it'd introduce more monster variety at the same time that can be implemented in other undead areas, perhaps even in a few rooms of FSC.
But I digress.
There's so much potential wasted in graveyards. When I first played the game I was legitimately running for my knight's life in a T2 graveyard and loved it so much that I found a custom music file to play in graveyards JUST to fit the theme. Now I might as well play Super Happy Fun Time Show instead because even in lower-tiered armor I feel absolutely no threat. Phantoms were a much bigger deal and zombies were something to be afraid of. Instead of hoping for a treasure vault to avoid dying, I usually hope for a treasure vault to get free minerals and materials with a lot more chances of an item drop than graveyards offer.
I'm really hoping that someone on the OOO Dev Team will see this because I would love to have some fear put back into graveyards again. I understand that difficulty must cater to all audiences and completely respect that, but graveyards are just one of few things that really should give a knight a challenge, whether they solo or play as a team.

May I humbly request you remove the suggestion about them being resistant to special damage?
Gunners REALLY rely on getting the right damage, so it would just shift the balance more away from us than swords.
Also, FYI, the fog effects in some levels doesn't exist on low graphics :P

Fog? WHAT IS THAT? I play on low graphics so my laptop doesn't fry hard and fog is either non-existent or barely there.
I've played high-quality and lag becomes an issue in some rooms, medium quality just can't seem to grasp boss levels, so low is my way for now.

@Skold are you playing on a macbook too? Forever screwed playing games

I remember when in T3 people would actually run to the end without fighting anything, instead of like "Yay heat!" and joyride through the zombie park.
I think Candlestick Keep is the new "oh crap, this place" level, and I'm surprised they haven't nerfed it yet. I find CSK more annoying than challenging, with enemies that can't be harmed or shielded from guarding almost worthless minerals and the like. I do enjoy the occasionally challenging small square rooms with Howlitzers that live up to their name with so many spookats that projectiles are literally unavoidable.
I think fighting true hordes of zombies with totems would be awesome..but I'd prefer increased numbers/different spawning/increased damage over more Phantoms...just because Phantoms are annoying when the next level is a possible Arena and you're waiting for it. Blah.
~Sev

I remember one time when I actually got a fright in a graveyard.
So, I had come upon a split in the path. The path that I took led me into one of the arena rooms. During the fight, a phantom spawned, and I dispatched it. Moving forward, I came to a locked gate. I then realized that I could actually see the key from the arena.
I headed back to the split in the path, and came to a small loop filled with brambles and a few graves, with a small room with the key in it at the top. As usual, zombies spawned from the graves, but were quickly slaughtered.
I was just about to grab the key when I heard a phantom respawn, and saw it the phantom orb in arena room making progress towards me.
After realizing that it couldn't cross the gap, I turned my attention back to the key, picked it up, and headed back into the bramble lo-
OH S***! ZOMBIES?! Did I miss a grave or two? Oh gawd, there are several of them? Where'd they come from?
After taking care of them, I realized the spawn was triggered by the key.
The moral of the story is, the only reason I got a fright was because I was distracted. Zombie spawns are way too predictable, and the only thing that can surprise you/distract you to make suprising easier, is phantoms. Graveyards need more suprises, and more types of monsters. While Kats wouldn't quite fit, howlitzers would work quite well. Maybe even Trolljans.
Also, while graves should always mean zombies, zombies should spawn from more places. And there should be formations that can mean multiple things. (say, a pentagon of gravestones could mean that a Trojan will spawn, or that Howlitzers will spawn at the edges of the room opposite the gravestones, or that 5 waves of five zombies each will spawn five seconds apart from the center of the pentagon... or that once you're several blocks past the pentagon, Howlitzers will spawn inside... Or shadow fire will spawn inside to discourage people from rushing in blindly)

Not mac... just a dell from QVC with a fan that probably needs to be a couple inches larger. T.T No money.
Course I could always just try to frankenstein this baby into a monster with liquid cooling system and all... but it wouldn't be a laptop anymore unless I wanted a bunch of techie-steampunk gear. (AKA gear extremely close to SK stylization)
Which, while good in a game, isn't so good in real life for me XD.
I've said my peace regarding the OP, my suggestions were made and taken. And again, I'll say CSK pwns GY

@Gfjmember:
Keep in mind that these are all just the possible suggestions to make things harder, although I do like [i forget who's] suggestion about making them resistant to special, as it puts everyone on an equal playing field; no one has orange damage against them and are forced into weak damages; this would apply to swords as well. Altough also keep in mind that, the same as Vana's Mask, they would still take normal damage as usual, and there's some pretty good normal guns; Valiance, V.Pepper, Supernova. Either way, it's just a suggestion :)
As for the "fog", I have mentioned it in earlier posts, but I've put it on the OP list now; the idea with the fog is that it wouldn't be a fancy graphical fog, but a basic black template simply to block visuals. It'd be there regardless, gfx settings would only change how pretty it is.
@Wolfkit:
Love it :D

Is adding the UFSC Curse zombies too much?
Not on the whole level, but some here and there. Will also make curse resist a bit more wanted.

Not really, as most swords are split damage between normal and special, so it is likely that a swordy will already own a blade which does significant normal damage. Gunners would need to get a gun only for that level.
Furthermore, Nitrome is considered a really good bomb (apart from BSOD and KB for team mates), Calibur is considered decent, however no gunner uses Valiance.
Anyway, on the topic overall, I agree with Juances latest proposal.
I have posted before though, on putting Graveyards as normal levels and putting CSK in the ? level lotto.

Lots of good suggestions in this thread.
Personally I'd pick those:
- Increasing Phantom numbers to 1 + 1/knight (2 phantoms, when solo; 3 when there are 2 players and so on)
- Decreasing Phantom respawn cooldowns.
- undoing the nerf of Zombies/Phantoms - everywhere ;-)
- Add Howlitzers (some, not too many)
- Give Phantoms a revival radius around them, in the same fashion as Totems (very good one, two thumbs up)
- Ambushes after/before the Elevators

Ahh, I'm with you now, I always forget that guns are pretty exclusively pure damage, would be extra tricky for them I suppose. That idea may need to be revised somewhat then.
Also, added Carnavons to the list, fantastic idea; would be good to see them outside of SFSC and that one single scenario room where only one Carnavon ever appears.
Replace all zombies with slag guards? :D
That would be awesome.
( Or more realistically: maybe just a kat version. That would be fun, too. )

Well I think the only good idea adding carnavons would be a good idea. Also, number of carnavons should depend on tier.
Maybe they should put trojans in the graveyard consider they are dead or lost knights, kinda reminds me of skull kids from legend of z. Definitely scary trying to handling trojans and phantoms simultaneously.

Where?
[apologizes for asking an off-topic question]

There's a candlestick scenario room. 3 downed knights near an extinguished candle and 2 gates, one with treasure and one with a fireball. Seems like carnavons, just one, appear as the enemy. But I've only seen carnavons appear in a T3 csk.

@Meta/Demo:
To add to that, the explanation to it is that there's a log/diary left next to the dead Knights. Two of them are next to each other, the third one is next to the gates, and the diary is next to the two. If you read it, it tells you that the two knights are blaming the third for getting them trapped (and thusly killed) in an attempt to grab the treasure and finish with "Curse his soul" or some such. When you finish, the gates open and a Carnavon appears above the third corpse, next to the treasure.
Would be nice to see them appear in Graveyards, as it's probably the place they're most suited, and we could do with more curse based enemies in the game. SFSC is total end-game and some people want to have their curse res be useful before that, if they don't happen to spam GF charges.
@Kev:
Already have Trojans listed, has been suggested a few times for similar reasons. They're fiends by family, but their flavour and style fits perfectly well I'd say.

I don't know if actually support this idea, but if you really want Graveyards to be feared:
Either enemies, such as the Phantoms, or something else could take your treasure (to the grave!~).
It should only be treasure you've aquired on your run so far, off of the list of items the tally tracks.
I guess this omits crowns, unless there's a hidden tally for that too.
What I'm saying is:
Everything you had before entering the Clockworks would be safe; everything from the current run is at risk.

Sounds interesting, maybe I should actually try a Candlestick Keep to see if I find one.

@Dukes:
Grave robbers? What an evil wee idea! xD
@Meta:
T3 only, however it's a crazy rare Scenario Room afaik. S'definitely cool though, makes you wanna see more of them.

I think everyone should post what they like thus far in the OP and what they dislike... +1 and -1 ratings for each topic... any that breach -10 on the scale after all votes are tallied should be tossed. Any that breach +15 on the scale bolded and any that are inbetween are just left as normal text? Anyone agree with this?

Put a buffed version of Wisp drones in there, they'll put 3 status effects on you if you touch them: poison, curse, and stun.
This means if you have the misfortune to touch a Wisp, you'll take more damage, do less damage, be unable to heal, have 2 weapons disabled, and make your moves at half speed.

@Skold:
S'actually a good wee idea. From this post on, if folk post a wee list of things they particularly (dis)like and just assume that unmentioned ones are +0 (whatever, idc, not fussed etc) then I'll tally them up on the OP :)
@Meta:
Sounds horrible.
I love it :D
Incidentally....why aren't there any curse wisps ever?? D:

Anything involving a mending option: -1 (Great thing about undead is that they'll rise from death again imo, I focus on the "I killed that guy 5 times" factor more than "this thing just won't go down" while they sound the same, the psychological impact is different when you face the same guy 9 different times instead of defeating them once and forgetting about it.)
Anything in the OP mentioning endless (or faster) revival/ multitudes of enemies: +1
Anything Obstacle, however I think floor hazards should be limited to what could 'naturally' occur (no haze/flame spouting lest devils be showing): +1
Varying the monsters to stuff that fits flavour: +1 (don't necessarily agree with grave robber scheme... but it would be an extremely unique element. Let's call it a vulture)
Ambush: +1
Status: 0 (either way, not an honest care for some reason)
Something I've always known to be incorporated in zombie-themed areas is that a brute of some sort always roams about... (possibly Trojans in this case?) and there will at least be 2 encounters with said brutes. So I guess I support trojan addition a little more than others.

Vulture; much cooler concept for the Grave Robber indeed.
Your post was a bit vague, but I think I got it covered enough! :)
Would all these be implemented into T1 graveyards? Because that seems like a bit much.