Spiral Knights - New enemy suggestions (again)

New enemy suggestions (again)

18 replies [Last post]

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 13:54

Verodius

Enemy 1: Hive (Beast)
A Beast-themed turret.

Appearance:
A small tree with a large insect hive in it, the higher the tier, the larger the hive.

Attack:
A large Wasp flies out the Hive and attempts to kamikaze a Knight. These wasps aren't as damaging as Gun Puppy bullets, but have mild homing capabilities to make up for it. Higher tiers have more damaging and faster-moving (but not faster-turning, which can be used against them) projectiles.

Ability:
Hives also spawn mini-wasps over time (with higher tiers spawning them faster), which orbit around the hive, to a maximum of 8 mini-wasps at a time. Mini-wasps serve 3 purposes:

- If a Knight bumps into a mini-wasp, it explodes and hurts him.
- Every time a large wasp is 'fired' two mini-wasps will accompany it if available.
- Mini-wasps can be killed by shooting, slashing or bombing them, meaning that while they can be cleared out they can also 'take hits' for the Hive.

Variants:
Status Hives are just recolors.

Shock: Lightsting Hive
Fire: Thermax Hive
Poison: Mandivile Hive
Frost: Frosquito Hive

EDIT: Changed variant names a bit.
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Enemy 2: Totem (???)
No idea what family this guy would belong to, but I like the concept too much to just let it rot, plus not much point starting a thread to suggest just one new enemy.

Appearance:
A Trojan-sized plantlike humanoid clad in polished wooden armour, it has no lower half and 'slithers' around on a bed of vines. It's head resembles an upside-down 3-sided pyramid, each side having a different mask on it. Higher tiers have fancier masks and armour

Ability 1: Each side of the Totem's head has one of the following masks on it:

- A Determined-looking face with an intense stare (Piercing)
- A Calm, serene face (Elemental)
- A Blindfolded face with an angry snarl (Shadow)

The Totem gains a large resistance to the damage type of their currently active mask, which is indicated by said mask having a glowing aura, the Totem can change its active mask at anytime, which will be signified by it rotating its head so that the new active mask is facing forwards. There is a 3-6 second cooldown between each Mask change, with higher tiers being able to change masks more often. Tier 3 Totems will change masks depending on what the Knights they're facing have equipped (i.e. if they see a Blitz Needle, they'll change to the Piercing mask for damage resistance)

Attack 1: A 3-hit combo consisting of a forward jab, a sweep from one of its arms and finishing with the Totem spinning its entire torso 360 degrees to hit everyone around it.

Attack 2 (Tiers 2 & 3): The Totems hands begin to start growing thorns, it then throws out around 8 of said Thorns in an 180 degree radius.

Attack 3 (Tier 3): The Totem roots itself into the ground, while rooted it regenerates, attacks faster and grants health regeneration to all nearby enemies, but cannot move.

Variants:
Each status variant has a 'Season' theme to it, so the Poison/Autumn Totem is a mottled red and yellow, the Frost/Winter Totem is more dead-looking etc.

Shock: Spring Totem
Fire: Summer Totem
Poison: Autumn Totem
Frost: Winter Totem

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 14:02

Aureate

Processing Thoughts of You Always

Beast-themed turrets?
Indecisive damage-dealing monster types?
/e gusta

The names for the turrets could do with some tweaking; they seem a little... uninspired, somehow.
Hornet Hive? Buzz Burner? I don't know, I'm just trying to come up with something a little more subtle.
The rest of the idea is awesome, though. I like the idea of another enemy that can provide buffs, too.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 14:29

Luguiru

Not the bees

Clever way to make a beast turret. Beasts usually have good mobility, homing projectiles for a normally immobile object is a pretty good advantage even if it loses some damage. Cue Nick Cage references.

Totem reminds me of something from the old Transformers movie in 1986 with Unicron, meaning it has to be gudd. Would its defenses change with the face or would it be neutral to everything except whatever face is active to make normal damage weapons more useful?

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 14:29

Grittle

Amazing explaination, Originality through the roof, NOT A PET THREAD?!?!? , you got my vote!

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 14:33

Verodius

@Luguiru:

Totems are just resistant to whatever damage type their active mask corresponds to, they don't have any special resistances. So there's no way for a Totem to defend itself from Normal damage (though I did consider giving it a 'Normal' mask as well)

The Transformers thing is pure coincidence, though I don't think "Many-masked creature" is that original a concept to begin with.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 14:43

Luguiru

Nothing wrong with it being similar

I just wanted to make the reference because Transformers (excluding the nonsense from Michael Bay) is a great series.

In Dofus one of the classes, Masqueraider, also has the different face-mode system: Cowardly, Classic, and Psychopath. Each mask mode has different skills, though the skills for each mask tend to be very similar: Cowardly has fleeing and projectile skills, Classic has health theft and locking to prevent the enemy from escaping, and Psychopath just has a bunch of damage vomiting around everywhere. Cowardly to chase or flee something relatively far, Classic to chase in closer range then stop them from running, and Psychopath to rip their limbs out. Exquisite.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 15:02

Toxicyoccm

Butterfly Bites

(oh horse...)

There is everything I love about the Beehive. I had a similar suggestion once, actually.

What if the larger wasps were enemies in and of themselves, being spawned by the hive, like the Royal and Toxoil polyps?

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 16:12

Misty-Wellington

I like the idea of a

I like the idea of a beast-themed turret involving a swarm of insects.

I'm at a loss here though; in the real world a common method of getting rid of pests (namely anthills) is to use boiling water, and to get rid of beehives you use pesticides. If you apply Spiral Knights logic to try and figure out what attack style these methods fit best if they were in-game, it's most likely going to count as "Elemental". However being counted as "Beast", it would actually resist Elemental attacks, and being a swarm of insects naturally they're going to be susceptable to Fire, aren't they?

So instead of being Beast themed, I personally think the Hive turrets would go best as a Construct, (they are built by insects after all) which deals piercing. They'd be the first Construct enemies introduced in the game that weren't built by Gremlins.

As for a "Totem", I'd think Fiend would be best for it. Gotta say the concept is nice but I don't like the idea of it having multiple Damage Types but that's just me

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 17:35

Jamesh

New strategies, but not significantly theme-changing. I like it.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 17:58

Alpha-Stevo

@Zenihd-Rol

If we're goin' with that approach then it kinda defeats the purpose of makin' a turret that's weak to piercing, which I presume is the role that Verodius is aimin' for.

Since no monsters deal piercing and is weak to elemental, I think it'd be easier to make an entirely new family FOR them, one that could include other insects like Scorpions, Spiders, etc.

But if we do THAT we'd hafta balance it out with two MORE families, one that deals shadow and is weak to shadow, and one that deals elemental and is weak to piercing.

SO let's just say that the hive's integrity is very important to the bees, or else they cannot survive without it or somethin'.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 18:16

#10

Canine-Vladmir

more difficult monsters to deal with. I LIKE >:)
skills man....your gonna need skills. i like how this thing is hard to beat. sure hope noone suggest a neff.
not gonna elaborate or stuff, cuz im sleepy :} but please dont let the TriGuy have a normal defense. it will make normal-only weapons heavily popular again.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 19:03

#11

Jrhuman

Hey wait a minute!

Looking up the damage types of all the existing enemies, they've done most of the combonations (Fiends:weak to piercing, strong against shadow, ect.) and I've noticed there arent monsters that do shadow damage, but are weak to shadow attacks as well. They did this for elemental and piercing, however.

so I made this: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18165944/whisp.png

Whisps. They would do shadow damage, and are resistant to elemental. Shadow-type attacks are most effective.
about the size of a Retrode, Whisps have these orbiting crystals around them. Kill it, and the crystals will turn into smaller whisps (without crystals). This gives the option to have knights go ahead and fight the smaller ones, or wait for the full-sized one to lob the crystals toward you and make them explode (status causing explosions, of course). Once he's used his 4 explosions, all he has left is his tackling abilities.

I have way too much free time.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 21:20

#12

Misty-Wellington

@Alphastevo

Bare in mind that OP is also suggesting having wasp-like enemies to accompany the turrets so those could easily fall into the Beast category just as insects and arachnids can, so having a whole new monster theme is a little unnecessary if you ask me. He also never once stated that he wanted a turret that was weak to Piercing, just that he wanted it to be Beast themed, so a turret that was found primarily in Beast levels and fit with the general theme around insects.

However I do like Jrhuman's idea for a monster. But one question - aren't wisps usually seen as some sort of spirit? So wouldn't that technically qualify it to be Undead?

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 21:54

#13

Yttriu

1 sheep... 2 sheep... 4923 sheep...

If these totems deal and resist different things and changes frequently, then put under No Type.

No! Do not make new monster families! They are fine the way they are.

@Jrhuman Interesting concept but we already have Wisps.

Wed, 10/03/2012 - 23:23

#14

Jrhuman

@ Yttriu Actually didnt know

@ Yttriu Actually didnt know what they were called to begin with haha oops

Thu, 10/04/2012 - 03:20

#15

Verodius

@Zenihd-Rol:

Yes, but the key phrase there is that Pesticides work against OUR insects, which are seldom much larger than our palms. The Wasps in the Hive are around the same size as a Gun Puppy bullet (about the size of a Knight's head) and, since the amount of poison needed to kill something increases with the body mass of the creature you wish to poison, pesticides probably wouldn't work that well against these guys (and any 'Pesticide' strong enough to kill them would probably kill just about anything else too)

If anything a Piercing weakness actually fits for Insect enemies because Piercing attacks would have an easier time getting through their Exoskeleton.

Thu, 10/04/2012 - 09:47

#16

Misty-Wellington

@Verodius

*facepalm* You didn't read what I said properly did you?

I wasn't talking about pesticides affecting in-game insects, was merely using that as an example. And a Hive is essentially a nest built and maintained by insects, that's why I think it'd be better as a Construct. What is essentially a building made to house insects shouldn't qualify as a Beast. And I never said the insect enemies themselves weren't suited for the Beast family (thus weak to piercing), in fact I welcomed the idea.

Thu, 10/04/2012 - 21:05

#17

Horizonknight

Narf

*facedesk*
@Zenihd-Rol
The big question for any monster to be considered a Construct is this.
Was it built by a Gremlin?

@OP
I like the idea of having a beast turret. At least then it'll justify having slightly different guns other than Polaris for turret control.

Fri, 10/05/2012 - 11:10

#18

Misty-Wellington

@Horizonknight

Let me quote an above post I made on the subject -

"They'd be the first Construct enemies introduced in the game that weren't built by Gremlins."

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New enemy suggestions (again)