Test Feedback: Spikes Return

Tried a few slime-spiked floors, and had a few thoughts that may be worth considering:

1. Dead/dying enemies should not be able to pick-up spikes. This happened randomly to me in a slumbering cradle level, a dead chromalisk (during its dying animation where it whirls around) got bumped into a pile of 3 spikes left by a lichen, and since the game still considered the dying chromalisk spiked aswell (it had 4 or so spikes before dying) it was still able to pick up those 3 extra spikes left on the ground and shot all 3 of them as mortar attacks, destroying all of them. This probably shouldn't happen as it just punishes accidental bumps of dying enemies. I believe this should be possible to implement as dying enemies are treated differently by the game already (can't be damaged or status'd by vials for example).

2. The new system for vertical or "grounded" spikes as I'll call them needs an immediate change. I do like the idea of being able to 'spend' them to try and attack an enemy for large damage but the way its handled now, with the delay of the pick-up animation and the fact you have to do this for ALL grounded spikes (even if there are no enemies alive and you just want the material) is far too much of a detriment. My initial idea was that you should be able to attack/destroy grounded spikes to make them drop their material, but this makes the distinction between wanting to attack/pick-up a spike difficult to distinguish (if implemented with no other changes).
I did consider that turning the grounded spikes into mineral-like objects (still able to be picked up but could also take 3 hits to break instantly into their material drop) could work, but this would require them to be "pass-through" so they still take damage from weapons but DON'T block weapons like bomb blasts or projectiles from hitting enemies (as this then turns them into barriers for enemies and makes the whole problem even worse). I'm not sure if this is the best solution though, but it is difficult to balance a system that allows a quick attack/break interaction (for players who just want mats) and pick-up interaction for them to be used as projectiles all on the same single object.

As a further note on this, some layouts greatly hinder the potential for spikes to be used as intended projectiles/attacks (mainly rooms/layouts with disappearing block walls or gates that require an attack to get through). Perhaps bringing back the spike counter on the hotbar ONLY for vertical/grounded spikes could work, and adding a keybind to use those spikes as a throwable attack (like a vial); this would likely require a cooldown though, to prevent storing spikes to spam in arenas or against a boss. Any spikes not used up by the end of the level would be converted into their normal material and shared to all other players in the level (still maintaining the existing individual choice of a player to use the grounded spike they've stored as an attack to kill an enemy, or keep it so everyone can get the material at the end) - this would cause issue with disconnecting players though, as their own unique supply of stored spikes would need to be distributed to everyone before they leave, otherwise a player could grab all the grouned spikes and leave suddenly, making everyone else lose their spikes.

Overall I like the new idea for throwable spikes as an attack but the forced long interaction of picking them up and throwing them just to get the material must be reworked into a quicker option (if the player just wants the material).

Other than that, I'd still really like to see more unique 'buffs' for spikes, preferably enemy-specific ones that play on their existing behaviours/attack patterns, though this is more of a general suggestion instead of an issue.

-Feels like the rates on lower difficulties are nerfed overall compared to before. This is okay, though it would be nice if higher difficulties would be more rewarding than before.

-Picking up vertical spikes adds more time to the whole looting process (you have to pick up and throw to shatter any remaining vertical spikes on the ground), it feels slow for something that gives you only a single material, so gathering spikes feels overall slower than before. It would be good if picking up and throwing vertical spikes onto enemies would be more rewarding in some way (making vertical spikes drop more spikes on shatter?) - the idea seems fun overall

-Also related, it doesn't feel very worth it to pick up and throw spikes during combat - with groups of enemies you tend to get overwhelmed (especially with spiked enemies around) despite the spikes doing high damage. It could use an AoE explosion effect (the AoE damage part could be the same or bit less) that staggers everything within the radius

-Spikes shattering on pick up is pretty satisfying, throwing spikes could use a bit more flair to VFX (like with the AoE idea!)

Okay so the chance per enemy spawning a spike previously was 75% across the board, now on ELITE difficulty its 78% only a 3% increase. Everyone was farming on normal because enemies were so much weaker but now that chance is 52%. IMO not the biggest deal but its such a small increase for much harder enemies.

EDIT: I was completely wrong and misremembered how spikes dropped before, ignore the next paragraph I'm just leaving it for context with other posts.

The main complaint I have is: 1 floor on preview yielded 15 spikes, previously that number would've been 60 with 4 players picking them up and 4x'ing the loot. With no changes to drops/recipe costs its 4x harder to craft a Mandolin (16x if for the many players that alt farmed, now with this change to combat that it's not possible/worth, which is how it should be) now what is the solution? Either increase drops of shattered spikes to yield 3-4 materials on shattering or drop the material cost down to 3-4x the spikes. It was already a grind to get a Mandolin before and now it's a damn marathon if you want it in 1 event.

To the above, the amount of spikes does not seem like such an issue to me. I am a player who works alone yet managed to finish my Mandolin in the first event, with time to spare to help one of my friends get some progress. The intention seems to be that some players will need multiple events to finish the Mandolin, which seems okay if the event will re-run often.
It's still a large grind, don't get me wrong. Personally I did not really like going through depths of crystals I was finished with in order to reach the ones I needed, as sometimes the latter outweighed the former heavily. But I don't think the answer is tripling or quadrupling the spike counts, that's a bit too far.

Alt farming is not the way to go. Pooling your spikes together from other players is a privilege that should not be taken for granted.

After a bit more thinking, I've had a couple more ideas:

1. What if thrown spikes acted similar to Mandolin projectiles, re-using the boomerang projectile behavior the Mandolin is unique for (minus the very expensive and rare orbitgun and mixmaster of course) with the spikes that act as its components would make sense thematically, and it would make collecting them easier if you just throw them for the material. I do like the explosive AoE effect someone suggested, so perhaps it could be thrown as a mandolin-esque projectile, exploding on impact (like a long-range pulsar projectile) with any enemy for decent AoE damage (and destroying the spike of course), but if no enemy is hit then it simply homes back in on the player and spawns the material for everyone instead (making it quicker to collect for the main thrower and especially for solo farming). You could even include the damage bonus of it doing more damage if it hits an enemy when flying back towards the player too.

2. I believe shieldbashing and dashing should immediately break/collect grounded spikes into their material, as this offers a fair counter for players to beat enemies to some grounded spikes. Currently the player only has time to collect maybe 1 or 2 grounded spikes with the long pick-up animation before enemies naturally swipe the rest, but this way a player can use their shield bash/dash tactically to immediately get a nearby spike and either bring themselves closer to another spike in the same direction or bash an enemy (either to stun and neutralize them if the enemies already spiked or to bash them away from collecting a spike early). Dashing could work similarly, acting as the more risky but quicker option to try and grab spikes early, as the player gains advantage from quickly dashing into spikes to prevent enemies getting them and can also put themselves closer to the enemy to kill them in the same move, while also risking the great disadvantage of dashing too later/not far enough and having to deal with a close-range spiked enemy that will likely hit back hard.
Notably this is how the spikes already were before (i'm realizing while writing this :P), so I'd like to hear from other users here if this is a behaviour they want returned (if they used it during the 1st spike event).

3. In terms of cost and grinding, I really think the requirements need to be lowered considering the drop in spikes gained from lower difficulties, the reduced spikes from people using the new projectile feature of them and the heavy nerf to alt-farming (not an intended feature I know, but it undeniably was the only thing that made the 1st mandolin grind bearable for alot of people). I'd also like to see the trade-in values adjusted for spikes (e.g. 15 huge for 5 radiants is a much fairer trade I believe).

The things that I wanted to bring up correlates with the issues that Destroy-Destroy already has brought up.
Something that has bothered be since the last storm, I'd love to see some tweaks about how that whole spike stacking works.
Enemies that already have enough spikes stacked are extremely fast, especially the more "responsive/aware" ones like from the Gremlin and Lichen family.
So while you're busy dealing with a horde, the already spiked ones can just quickly run to the back and gather even more spikes.

Two (or three?) things:
- Enemies carrying more than four spikes shouldn't be able to mortar them immediately but rather have it be on a timer & cooldown whenever the next spike gets fired out
- Some enemies like Lumbers have a prolonged dying animation, they should not be able to fire out spikes during said animation

And here for the new Spike Shower preview:

I'm not so sure about the throwable Spikes idea.
While personally I do like the thought and mixing an alternative way to attack that actually does some damage (looking at you throwable pots and Battle Sprites to an extend (which is a completely different issue)), it might cause some issues during some more "hectic" moments when everything has to go fast.

Picking up spikes individually and throwing them takes a bit of your time away.
Not a lot of time is lost but enough for enemies to swoop in and catch the other available spikes.
Especially since enemies can pick up the spikes in an instant while Knights have to wait patiently to "drop" first.

I should've also voiced my opinion on the now non-existent Spike Counter:
I liked it.
Sad to see it being removed honestly.

Sorry I completely misremembered how spikes dropped in the first event, I just ran a quick run of a level and got a super low amount of spikes and figured the wrong numbers. sorry for the confusion :(

Why do you keep referring to it as being 4x harder, or getting 4x as many spikes last time? The amount of spikes obtained per individual player is the same, no?

I like the new update, I'd just like it if it didn't eat up so much time. Maybe increase pick-up movement speed?

Or, spikes are added to inventory slots like previous event. Spikes would still tossable, but aren't added to inventory until reaching elevator, like minerals.

Edit:
Similarly it'd be great if we could break the upright spikes with sword strikes, bullets, or explosions; upright spikes essentially functioning like minerals.

Oh, and can spike explosion please be buffed to something like oil/fire jars or vials? The explosion radius seems lacking, it feels like it should be able to hit enemies in larger area

It's was simple and comfortable... But "many where confused" so confused that they lost their way to the forums to say it themselves...
Now, I'm talking for my self, I liked the counter was a nice way to know how many spikes we had and if the aurora glitched and wasn't visible the counter would reassure you that you where on a level affected by the Aurora... those things where Nice. Can I have Nice things even when "many, ohh! so many said otherwise"

For the most part I really Like the Update and testing the spikes pickup the animation is similar that the one for bombs and keys and sometimes it feels weird! and is worse when using bombs... as a compromise, Can we have the 'pick up' by way of walking to them and having to throw them?

A lot of players have voiced the glaring issues that mostly result in the event taking even longer to farm through the use of mostly zoning out alt abuse, and I'm here to throw yet another hat into the very same ring.

The variance of spike frequency depending on difficulty is... fine? Admittedly I'd like a bit of a higher bonus than just 3% on Elite, but from the amount of pain some people have gone through with some fights against several spiked giant lichen colonies at once on Elite, I don't expect myself to be in the majority for this.

I do get the approach to trying to remove reliance on alts, yet the understanding for why the previous event was alt abused so much seems to have been misunderstood. The event was grindy as hell, even with alts. The egregious spike costs for the mandolin basically encouraged it far more than penalized it, as any player who didn't make use of them were at a severe disadvantage for the time spent. Not everyone plays this game day in and day out, after all. If the intention was for progress to be made over the course of several events, it definitely hasn't worked here.

And that's when you could pick up spikes NORMALLY.

The concept of using spikes as a throwable means of combat came out of nowhere, and while I do find it a little funny to do, the extra time taken to pick up a spike, toss said spike, make it shatter either against an enemy or a wall, then walk over to the dropped material to collect it really adds up- fast. I don't think the idea should be fully axed to be clear, but there's definitely better ways they could've gone about it. Here are a few suggestions both that I've seen from others, as well as my own:

1. When a spike is picked up and thrown, have it shatter into multiple materials at once. I suggested 3-4 regardless of difficulty, while others have suggested 1-5, depending on difficulty. If the objective was to both combat alt farming while making the event more enjoyable and engaging to farm, upping the materials gained is a good start.

2. Reduce the costs of crafting mandolin. Same as above, except instead of increasing materials earned, it's decreasing the (ridiculous) cost. Would be fine with both, honestly.

3. Have spawned spikes able to be shattered simply by attacking them. Would help save a bit of time while keeping the spike throwing mechanic for those who want to utilize it.

4. Speaking of- give the spikes an AoE explosion when they hit something. The combat utility of them is currently rather lackluster. While the damage is respectable, it being limited to a single target definitely hurts its utilization in large groups, where slimes are often found anyway.

5. Reimplement the spike counter in the UI. I liked it a lot, sad it got removed. Maybe a toggle of some sort could be added?

Originally during the first crystal event you can deny enemies from pick it up crystals if you were fast enough making that heavy grinding nightmare “more” manageable (less annoying) and a little more interactive.

Now every Crystal who isn’t pick it up by any enemy yet, you’ll have to manually pick it up (Like statue, pot or water) and manually throw it into something so it can explode and then you can took it into your inventory.

In real gameplay, you rarely can pick it up before an enemy does and even when you can it’s just not worth it throwing it in combat.

Most of the time, this interaction slows your already heavily farming and more often than before it causes an enemy to be overloaded with crystals making you lose material just because lols.

My 100% "needed" changes:

• Increasing difficulty should grant you more crystals than the game is giving you in this preview.

• Reverse that picks it up crystal mechanic because is un-interactive and not fun at all.

Alternatively, you can make some crystals a "bigger" version from the rest when it falls either enemies or you can pick it up without breaking first (You need damage the crystal to create small pieces the enemies and you can now pick) but this "bigger" versions drop more crystals (maybe can drop 2-3 from the current tier is falling in that floor considering this crystal like a lucky bonus instead of balancing the amount around this mechanic).

• After enemy dies, allow a margin of time to allow us the players to pick up crystals before the enemy.

I don’t want to be a party pooper but the changes of how the crystals are stored (now every knight need to individually pick their crystals) are not gonna stop people of using alts or exploits, if you want to really stop people doing that you have to reduce that breach between players using cheats and players who aren’t, so people don’t have to recurring to use exploits, third party software to control multiple knights at once, using more devices, or doing worm holes yadda yadda, the more heavy the grind is, the more "walls" you put, the more harder people are gonna cheese the way out. don't spend you little resources trying to patch something people are gonna unfix day 1, people are gonna play the beta just to find any way to chesee it and they're gonna zip it until live update.

I don't recomended by any means you can make the weapons from the event uncapable to unbound (like the rocket hammer) so using alts is pointless (bad idea?)

Optional changes for the sake of the event: to reduce the grinding

• Increase the duration of the event so people who play legally can obtain that weapon without playing 24/7 (in comparison to the last event more than 11 days)

• Reduce the amount of crystals needed to craft weapons or increase the amount of crystals you can obtain.

Personally I don't care about the alts I just wanna a fair and fun event for people who aren't stupily tryhard.

Perhaps the purple spikes could do shadow damage instead of normal, or in addition to.

So far I personally like many of these changes, although, just like how most recent preview events have been going currently, a bit of polish could help making the update feel much better.

First of: Compounds. These have been very useful during spike events, however it seems that compounds containing Glop Drops (and by extension other slimes) do not spawn spikes due to being classified as an other monster class (which I imagine are construct, gremlin or fiend, considering icon colors of the levels I've seen). Considering levels like Scarlet Fortress (which contain both slimes and undead) seem to spawn spikes during this slime-spike event, I think it would make sense for compounds containing Glop Drops (slimes) to spawn spikes, too.

Second of: Throw-able spikes. I will start off saying I personally like the mechanic, it's fun and the spikes themselves deal pretty heavy damage, it's a very interesting way to interact with spikes that takes a bit of it's own risk since you are pretty vulnerable while picking it up and throwing it! However, it is extremely slow to have to pick one up and throw it out of combat just to obtain the spike material from it, I feel being able to attack it or walk right to it to break it could help with the current pacing issues the new throwing mechanic introduce.

Third of: Time concerns. I believe that a pretty talked about subject in the previous spike event was the large spike quantity needed for creating a slicer weapon, specially Mandolin (5 star variant). While I personally find reasonable to make a powerful weapon locked behind a considerable lengthy grind, I'm also worried that I'll have to go through that again for some other weapon, piece of gear, cosmetic and/or any other item. I'm (unfortunately) an adult, and that means I won't always be available to play the game whenever the event is online due to studies, work or other factors outside the game.
This is, of course, a much more subjective problem, and I am most likely to not be the target audience for the game (specially considering I don't tend to give a cent to live service games like this one, I rather have a whole new game over a couple of cosmetics, for the most part).
However, from what I've seen within the community, it feels people get the feeling that they *have* to get the new content of an event right away due to the limited availability of the event itself, even if progress is kept between events (the fact you removed the original Obsidian Obstacle from last Apocrea probably doesn't help with this either! People may feel this is their only chance to get something new if stuff like this happens).
I think a way to mitigate this issue would be to make this specific event more available in a way that gives players either more control or more information.
From my experience, players don't tend to like to have certain aspects of the game to be extremely obscured (a good example of this is how Hollow Knight Sinksong, which has boss healthbars and your location being shown on the map at all times, as some of of the most endorsed and downloaded mods in Nexus Mods) and maybe this is more of a me-thing but I am quite sure frustrations may also arise when the game arbitrarily stops you for anything outside improving the player experience (looking at you, Warframe's foundry system!).
I know communication and giving information is generally not something GH likes to do a lot (mostly because they can't, according to some GMs words), they seem to want to keep event availability to be a bit spontaneous, too, and once again, seeing how things are going, I doubt the game is really focused on someone like me who doesn't have a massive amount of time to spare, but it's probably better to leave my grain of salt here than stay quiet, specially considering I am capable of using the preview server again.

I'm not so sure on the idea of attacking spikes to break them for mats anymore. I think it'd greatly disadvantage melee/sword players vs gunners and bombers who could get multiple spikes much quicker via attacks. Regardless if the spikes are passthrough or not (blocking or not blocking projectiles and attacks like regular obstacles/blocks) making them an attackable target would give gunners (and perhaps bombers) a massively unfair advantage in farming spikes. If grounded spikes are made attackable then they need some HP to not negate melee's main benefit of high single-target damage at close range.

If the current gates are intended to be slime themed in certain stratums, the current slime compounds don't count as being slime themed for spikes

If we are going with the previous spike event approach with gates, that might need to be adjusted

Thrown spikes make for good single target damage. I haven't tried them with multiplayer scaling, but if they can't one shot unbuffed enemies, I think they should act like stun vial (basically 100% stun and a bigger area of effect) or a free Iron Slug charged projectile. There could even be a reaction where throwing spikes at "vertical" and dropped spikes can cause them to explode, so a well timed throw could cause some damage to tunnel visioned enemies.

I need some time in multiplayer before I can say with more confidence because I haven't been able to catch anyone.

There are some situations where I just want to send a spike to my inventory without picking them up, maybe shielding next to them or moving next to them while charging a weapon could do such. The animation where you pick up and throw a spike could be sped up if this can't be put into consideration.

Enemies should have at least half a second of standing over a spike before they pick it up. With server latency being unavoidable, this at least gives an illusion that a player touching a spike at the same time gives them priority.

I'd like to try other methods of picking them up before we consider removing the ability to throw, its a fun gimmick but at the moment it needs to be refined a bit more make it more seamless in denying the enemy buffs.

I still think spikes difficulty wise are a bit overtuned for T1 and T2. Again, its fine for us with T3 gear but I can see it being overwhelming for players climbing the gear ladder.

Slime Compounds oddly do not have a spike event.

I miss the spike counter in the HUD. It made it very easy to tell how well the floor was for spikes. Now you have to note your before/after count.. please add this back.

Spikes should be reworked
It's terrible idea that we have to fight for the same spikes few times. I defeated buffed enemy, i have to get reward, but instead of it another enemy picks up my spikes and shoots it at me, cause he already got some spikes before.

Some improvements that can make event interesting and fun:

• At first, spikes from defeated mob should be material, no more reusing of spikes
• Pick up spikes like pot is bad idea
• Player picks up spikes like enemies just standing on it and gets buffs like enemies. 3 spikes is fine. 4+ - player has to drop extra spike as fast as possible (existing mechanic of spike throwing - attack + dropped material)
• If player doesn't throw extra spike in a time, it will be dropped as artillery strike aimed at player(existing mechaniс for mobs) - damage to player and no loot
• Bring back spikes counter, but this time it should be player's active amount of spikes
• All active spikes convert to material on elevator
• Add more items to spikes shop, boxes will be great

ATM it's nasty event, if player doesn't want to craft Mandolin, he will avoid slime levels. Extra difficulty, spending sparks of life for nothing, unfair mechanics of reusing spikes. If player wants Mandolin he will sttruggle and suffer for it.

Everything about it feels wrong; only the reward makes things bearable. (Was it, though?)

Overall, recent changes cause the whole event to feel worse to grind. I understand about combating alt farming. But this just costs too much.
There are a few changes I wish to keep.

I will lay out comments on the change list and then suggestions

>>> Spikes no longer accumulate in a "party" tally in the HUD. Instead, the first person to reach a spike "shatters" it into per-player material pickups. The resulting total of spikes per player should be the same as before.

I dislike having to open my inventory to check the spike I got from each level in this event. The old HUD ui was fine. If people don't like them, you can add an option to toggle them or move it next to player heat or the middle top of consumable pockets.
Here is an example: https://i.postimg.cc/85YYx4H8/image.png

>>> If you reach a spike in situ (vertical), you can now do the "pick up" action on it. Carry it overhead and throw it. When a thrown spike hits, it also "shatters" as above.

I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE this change. And wish to see it removed.

Here is why: One of the golden rules of combat flow is do not disturb it. The old event with spike is ok. It created a little race between the player and the mob. current "Pick up and throw" system is too much for everything.

You will have to rush before the mobs and "pick up," and then have to throw somewhere just to eliminate Spike from getting picked up by the mob. This looks fun for the first time. But in practice. A busy room, or the moment you have to do something else besides just run and automatically get picked up, is not it. You cannot do it all in time, unlike the previous event. This overall makes the combat more Slog And same issue with Mortafire mobs. Their pickup can get in your way in the middle of comboing or attacking a high-priority target. This completely ruined my combo, and I got killed by it because Spike decided to spawn in front of me. Mobs can always get the spike before you, even though they are dead.

Adding more layers to the player to get the spike off the ground is not it.

In a spread-out crowd room >> can be manageable
In a busy, crowded room >> problematic and quickly snowballs because you cannot tell, or it's hard to tell, which can be picked up or not. With spike "automatic" pickup radius nerfed on top (which is now shatter).

>>> Spike rates per level vary by Difficulty

This change looks good on paper until you look at the number...

• normal: 52% chance
• advanced: 65% chance
• elite: 78% chance

what...

Whole 3% from the previous event. That is nothing. And why make it less than the former instead of buffing and rewarding whoever goes for it with extra challenge?

SUGGESTIONs to make this thing more bearable or feel more rewarding

• Remove the "pickup" and "throw" situ spikes mechanic. Or make it a consumable with buffed AoE and damage. This will not interrupt combat flow, and those who like the mechanic get to keep it.
• If the above request cannot be met. Make all types of spikes shatter when being walked over by a knight and turn into material form.
• If the above request cannot be met. Make all spike cannot be reuse by monsters once the spiked monster is defeated. Other monsters cannot pick up the said spikes.
• If the above request cannot be met. Reduce the cost of the Mandolin and its lesser version recipes.
• Dead mobs during their dying animation should not be able to pick up spikes and turn them into artillery.
• More items to exchange for spikes, like unique variant tickets
• Reduced cost of spikes for fire crystals from 15 to 5
• Spike spawn rate increases by difficulty should be this following: Normal >> 60% | Advanced >> 80% | Elite >> 100%
• Some mobs with spike stats are still slightly over-tuned. This scaled badly with danger room mobs. A few giant-class mobs are simply too fast and can one-shot you. Giant Lichen colony, for example.
• Return the Spike counter UI to the HUD

Currently, this event is not enjoyable for anyone. Too many difficulty steps. Only thing that people willing to farm it for is the gun. And if there's no gun. This event isn't worth the effort.

It is not directly to the main post but....

GreyHavens.... There is no Slime themed compound.

Having compound with glop drop isn't automatic turned into slime level, thus no aurora and spike being spawn.
Change this to Lichenous Lairs or anything with pink level icon will work.
Picture below is an example which level will work.
https://i.postimg.cc/bwLVhfcR/image-6.png

Thank you

While these changes take steps to address alt-farming, they also add new pain points which will likely become common complaints if pushed to live. Thoughts and suggestions below:

Throwable Spikes
A cute novelty in smaller fights, but a tedious extra step in empty rooms, and a detrimental handicap in dense fights (arenas, danger rooms, etc).
Having to manually pick up each spike makes it much harder to intercept spikes before monsters reach them. Holding a spike over your head locks out your weapons and shield until you get rid of it, making it highly imprudent during more intense combat when monsters and projectiles are piling down on top of you.
Having to manually break every single spike also horribly slows down the farming process, by forcing players to go through an entire animation loop every single time they pick up a spike. Over the course of thousands and thousands and thousands of spikes, that animation loop will waste a lot of time and get extremely tiresome.

Proposed tweaks:
A) Allow players to break spikes simply by running over them
B) Add a new hotkey/interaction option for instantly breaking spikes, instead of picking them up (so E to pickup, X to break, something like that)

Rates/Costs
Reduced spawn rates on Normal/Advanced difficulty, the new per-player material drops, and the forced animation delays for breaking spikes will all significantly slow down the farming process for this event.
The sheer material costs for a single gun were already a complaint during the first spike storm, and those complaints will only intensify now that players have to fight through higher difficulties for the best rates, without materials getting vacuumed away to alts or party members.

I don't think the idea of a weapon you slowly craft over the course of multiple storms is going to resonate with players in practice. People want their hard work to pay off. If you dedicate time to farming down an event, you're going to want a real chance of reaching completion during that event itself. Spending all that time only to get partway and have to wait for the next storm will just burn and frustrate players. Sure, you can buy spikes, but I feel like that should be an option for convenience, not a necessity for reaching the finish line during one storm.

Proposed tweaks:
A) Increase Elite spike spawn rates to 90/100%. Perhaps a monkey's paw suggestion, as it would also increase the difficulty.
B) Reduce the material costs of the gun recipes. Simple, fast, hard numbers fix. Players were already complaining about the recipe costs during the first storm, and plainly speaking 7200 mats for a single item is insane. If we're going to move forward with making alt-farming harder, then the total material costs for a full 5* gun could stand to be dialed down by a few hundred. Giving players a little more breathing room on the material costs would be universally appreciated.

Minor Issue: Spike Counter UI
I actually liked the old spike counter on the HUD - it gave a clear sense of progress per-level without being particularly obtrusive (it was just a single little box on the hotbar, it wasn't blocking anything or adding any real clutter). Certainly it was more convenient than opening the entire inventory UI to do quick-math on my entire pile of spikes.
If we're experimenting with whether or not to have that Spike Counter, I would prefer to have it back, rather than get rid of it.

Noted Oversight:
Slime Compounds do not count as Slime levels for this variation of the spike storm, and generate zero spikes/have no aurora effect.

In the early stage of the game the developers tried food as a way to control the Beast Family, They realize that if people have access to sword they are likely to use the sword. I'm not saying is bad, I'm saying feels counter intuitive in some cases...

The issue at hand is that the spikes follow the Carried Entity tag, which is not bad but really dependant on lag.
It is not so different in combat than to have to grab a totem and move it, is a trade between Attack or move the object. The difference is small but NOT less important: The enemies are walking to the spikes, that's not the case with the other Carried Entities.

Is the desired effect is to prevent Alt Farming and mindless rushing thru the levels? Good, the interaction witht the spikes do that. But is punitive to the average player, it's faster to let the enemies grab it than to grab it ourself even when we can throw it for a lot of damage, does this prevent the Speedruners from picking spikes indiscriminately and ignore the enemies? sure. Do they use bombs? not likely. The Bob-oms are specially affected by the pick up Entity mechanic animation.

I have no problem with the "slow down You are a knight not a ferrari", but also the Cost to make the weapons need revision if Anti-alts/speedruners mechanics are going to be implemented.

Is it possible to Add a new hotkey/interaction option? Instead of having to relly on the click... the Environment interaction key have been used in several games and could be useful here.
Bob-oms suffer the most when having to interact with objects while not having a separated Key. Charging time and such.

Spikes Spawns. The amount have been re-estructured: and in some cases the chance of spawn feels hurtfull, personaly I've tested 2 dificulties, Elite and Advanced... I suggest the next chances:
Normal to above 60%.
Advanced to above 70%.
Elite to above 80%.

Scarlet Fortress is considered Jelly for the Aurora the 1st depth of Jade knight Gate is affected by. Yes does spawn jellies, also kats.

And I will state this again, the counter was neat, good design Philosophy: clarity when conveing information, clean design, good integration. May I have it back please?

I have mixed feelings about changes, but overall I think this was a downgrade.

I'd like to start off saying that I do like the idea of throwing the spikes and it seems like it could be quite fun, but it needs a little work around the edges. I think I speak for many when I say that I don't like being forced to slowly pick up each spike and throw them at a wall just to loot them when enemies aren't around. Worse yet, it's very slow and restrictive being required to walk up and pick them up in the middle of a fight to prevent them being grabbed by enemies, and it was already a very tight window to get to them first during the first spike event. Before, we could dash through the spikes to pick them up, but now we usually need to walk up to them, and then interact (which is very inconsistent with any amount of lag.) Enemies also have priority and can interrupt the pick up animation. It feels like it's safer to kill the enemies before they pick up spikes instead of grabbing them first; which brings us back to our first problematic scenario: looting spikes while enemies are gone.

I think of it as 2 separate issues, first being that when enemies aren't around, looting spikes is slow and tedious. This slows down the grind considerably, and makes grinding for spikes a lot less fun when the moment of acquisition feels like a chore instead of satisfying. The second issue is that it's too dangerous, inconsistent, and most importantly slow to grab spikes during combat.

Now, here's my suggestion. Make in situ/upright spikes pick up just like vials or other consumable items when a knight touches them. This way, we don't need to walk up and interact, wait for the pick up animation, and throw immediately. We can pick them up just by touching them, while dashing or doing other actions, and we can throw them when it's safe to do so. If there's any fear of this being too strong, then just limit the number that knights can hold in their hotbar to 1. However, it's important that having a full hotbar or max spikes in the hotbar does not prevent us from picking up the spikes. If it's full, the spikes should shatter as if they were resting.

Having now access to the preview server, i have some opinions on the changes to the Spike Storm event

SPIKE THROW MECHANIC
I am conflicted on this new spike throw. On one side it’s always nice to see new ways to fight enemies, bringing a little variety to the game. The damage is pretty decent and it could be a good way to take out an enemy real quick. On the other side, having to grab and throw each “grounded” spike after the fight is done is very tedious. Moreover, denying monsters from grabbing spikes is now a difficult task as you need to grab and throw them instead of just walking over.
My thought on how to improve this new spike throw:
Make the “grounded” spikes work as a pickup, same as vials, barriers etc. Walking over a spike will put it in one of the 4 slots for pickups. It may then be used to throw at an enemy just like a vial or kept in the quickslot until the end of the depth. At elevator, all the spikes that are still in a quickslot be moved to inventory. Needless to say, the spikes shouldn’t be limited to just 3 like other pickups, but 15-20 for example.

SPIKE RATES VARYING BY DIFFICULTY
Playing on elite difficulty, the spike rates are barely better than what we used to have across all difficulties during the first event. On normal and advanced difficulties, the spike rates are simply too low. During the last event everybody played on normal difficulty and the time to get one Mandolin was already long enough. This time, i suspect playing on elite will be the most sensible way to obtain spikes, but with the enemy HP increase with difficulty, it will be even harder to get enough spikes for the gun.

I really hope either the spike rate gets increased or the amount of total spikes needed is reduced. Making spikes more tedious to farm, killing alt farming and having us go through higher HP enemies on elite difficulty… Every single change makes the spike farm harder, slower and more boring.

Hi! I think this event shows a lot of potential for things. I like the experimentation - please don't take the feedback as an insult when people say they hate this or that! I am glad that GH is trying to go a bit further with some things and are willing to try new things and better yet, let US try.

Anyway, to my feedback. This will be my first post for it when testing about 2 hours through T2 and T3 arcade on Elite difficulty.

I like throwing the spikes. It is fun and it can lead into more things down the road. But there's obviously some problems, some of which are still from the previous spike events.

THE GOOD

- THE POTENTIAL with throwing spikes is great. I like the idea of it because they deal good damage and are actually useful vs a lot of throwables in the game!
- When running through some levels, throwing spikes is fun in small batches of enemies.
- Spikes turning into materials helps mitigate alt farming, which I would like to have as little as possible for the game - I know we can't get rid of it completely.

THE BAD

- Picking up situ (vertical) spikes is very awkward and has too many frames where you are wide open, causing frustration when hit.
- Melee attacks can be interrupted when prompted to pick up a spike.
- Throwing the spikes can hit floor ledges. I know this is for making sure they aren't thrown off a cliff and losing a material but it feels weird not knowing what happens until you REALLY pay attention when throwing.
- Enemies can still pick up the spikes while you are trying to pick up the spike too, which sometimes causes jankiness.
- You STILL have to wait for the animation of spikes dropping to pickup spikes. Please make it so we don't have to wait for it because sometimes enemies can still grab it.
- Fully spiked and dying enemies can still pick up spikes and shoot them which makes us lose a material
- Having the spikes throwable slows down combat A LOT in longer fights and arenas
- SPIKE COUNT UI was a FANTASTIC idea. It being removed for people who simply didn't like it sucks. Are we able to make a compromise on this?
- There isn't too much a uniqueness of spikes for these compared to YELLOW spikes. Unless throwing them is the unique trait they have.

Main Proposals
Throwable Spikes
I LOVE the idea of throwing spikes. They deal good damage. I think, however, they should be changed in some type of way. PLEASE if you DO get rid of the throwable spikes - save them for a DIFFERENT event. Interacting with the game like this is a lot of fun and reminds me of games like Zelda. Here's some ideas:

1. Make situ (vertical) spikes spawn rare here and there and have spikes pop out of the ground already ready to be shattered. This way we can have them as obstacles but not as something that we have to do for EVERY spike.
2. It does NOT feel good to lose a spike from an enemy shooting it. What if the spikes that were shot out by them were not shattered but made into throwable spikes that still give you materials? Aino mentioned this as an idea and its a great one for a type of "revenge" mechanic and you are still not losing out on spikes.
3. When picking up a spike, we know its already going to be shattered. Please make the material drop when we pick one up so you can make spikes throwable off cliffs and such and not worry about the spikes hitting ledges instead of enemies.
4. Maybe add a unique mechanic with pink spikes when throwing them. The yellow ones from the previous event can be a fun stun, and maybe this one can be an AoE.

Alt Farming Mitigation and DIFFICULTY changes
It's hard. And it's a problem that GH will have to deal with every time an event comes around. All we can do is mitigate it the best we can - but the throwable spikes did not close the gap between Regular Players and Alt Users. If anything, it made an even bigger incentive to use alts since farming for the spikes got SLOWER. The difficulty changes I think went in the wrong direction too. I think the gap should be closed as much as possible without slowing it down for players who do not use alts for farming.

This is super important to me because I want to be able to play with friends without thinking "wow the farming sucks, i wish i could have the best of both worlds. Playing with friends AND getting a good rate of materials farming". Here's some ideas that would probably work best in conjunction:

1. Please reduce Slicer recipe requirements. Atleast the amount needed for MEDIUMs, LARGEs, and HUGEs. It's kind of an insane amount for especially LARGEs. The amount needed makes people want to alt farm.
2. If you do not reduce the recipe amount, please make spikes drop more than 1 spike material depending on the DIFFICULTIES (Normal, Advanced, Elite). And maybe make throwable spikes have a higher chance of dropping MORE spike materials. I know you might be saying that this will increase alt farming even more but please look at the next idea.
3. Make Spikes and Spike Materials time out after a while IF AND ONLY IF you increase the amount of spike materials dropping. This can be controversial. But it will take a lot more work for people to keep track of their alts and walking them to the spikes and materials and some may not even alt farm at all if the spikes and materials have a timer and a chance to expire. This way, parties can stay in groups and if you miss some, it'll be okay because spike material drops would have been INCREASED depending on difficulty. So those who farm Normal difficulty with alts... may be getting less than a group of friends playing on Elite.

Other Proposals

1. BRING BACK UI that shows how many spikes we got. Maybe put them in a different place - under the shield bar perhaps?
2. THIS ONE IS SUPER IMPORTANT Please let us know things in more SPECIFIC DETAIL. Im talking numbers and certain details of the game and this pertains to all changes, not just the spike event. Change notes are never ever specific and that's a huge problem with the game currently. What's the cap on spikes now? Do we have to waste time focusing on testing what that cap will be too? If we do, we are taking away from testing actual things instead of trying to find out stuff you could tell us right out of the gate. We only found out spike spawn rates from DATAMINING It is good to know more things about the game in specific detail and maybe it's because you don't want exploits to happen as fast but I think we can help find those exploits faster IN PREVIEW if you tell us more details - We may have found out the infinite spike glitch in the previous spike preview before it hit live if you told us how spikes spawned exactly. We now know there is a rate that they spawn at (after datamining) when an enemy spawns on certain levels. We should've known this from the start when Preview started. Percents, numbers, and specifics go a long long way for testers.

A "Known Issues" list would be greatly appreciated from the team.

Conclusion
This is just some thoughts from playing the Live version of Spikes and playing Preview for a bit this time. But, I really want to work with everyone to meet in the middle for a lot of things and I am super open for changes - ESPECIALLY if they add a bit of spice to gameplay. We all want to have smooth gameplay and have fun - but we also don't want to feel like we have to take time off work to get a satisfying grind in. Notice how i said satisfying grind - which means we don't have to get the event items in one go, but we still want to feel like we made really good progress after a couple hours of playing which these spike events haven't been feeling like.

I always want to thank the entirety of Grey Havens for trying hard. And please. Communicate more with us. We are actually begging.

The throwing mechanic is nice, it also eliminates alt-farming

I'm just gonna cut right to the chase, the overall process of collecting spikes is just slower. This is bad.

However, I don't think removing the throwing mechanic is the way to go. There are a lot of really good ideas on this thread:

• Increasing spike drops on shattered spikes
• Being able to attack/walk over "situ" spikes to shatter them without needing to throw it
• And above all else, reducing the total amount of spikes needed to craft

Adjusting the trade rates for fire crystals is also a must. Currently there's almost no reason to ever spend Mysterious Spikes on fire crystals.

Some replies here mention restoring the Spike counter, if this it to happen I just ask to please make it a toggleable feature. I'm all for more accessibility options. But if it's one or the other I'd rather not see it.

Alt farming prevention ideas. Sponsored by King Krogmo. Should have no effect on people who play normally, and hopefully allow the spike collection system to be simplified.

Example values for T3 elite party of 4. May need scaled for T2/T1, elite/advanced/normal, party size, depth. Conditions reset per level.

1) Loot/crystals/etc can only get picked up to inventory once a player has dealt at least 1000 damage (easy for valid players). Loot still spawns, just cannot be picked up until conditions met so no loss for valid players. Low level alts are tedious to reach this threshold, and high level alts at that point are just playing the game.

- Mist support bombers might get caught by this unfairly, so applying some status to at least 5 enemies could also pass the test.

2) Loot stops spawning or gets vastly reduced for players who have not moved in the last 20 seconds. Macros can easily bypass this if a single SK instance is running, but multiple SK instances on the same computer would require more advanced approaches.

- If someone needs to afk in a party of friends, they can coordinate with party members so everyone waits or eat the loot loss.

These are similar to the checks used in LD to withhold krogmo coins from non-players, requiring movement and either capping/dealing damage. Not perfect and can be bypassed, but at least raises the bar without affecting valid players.

Edit: This also eliminates the need for party member proximity checks for spike spawns, freeing up individual party member movement.

If they want to stop alt-farming, why not just bring back the counter and then only add the spikes to the player's inventory once they finish the level? This plus every player having to pick up their own spikes I think should make alt-farming too tedious to be viable.

Also what is controversial about the spike counter? I thought it was a cool feature just to keep track of how many spikes you earned. I don't know why anyone would not want it.

Why on earth has the new round been pushed out with basically no changes to the actual spike system, including the newly added and DEFINITELY still tempermental pick-up grounded spikes system??? Whats the point of asking us for this feedback and doing preview tests if you're just gonma pump it out less than 3 days later with no changes, no discussion on any of OUR talking points, no response or insight into why this new pick-up system was added in the first place or what your design philosophy behind it was??

I am genuinely baffled how poorly this company and development team seem to respond and behave sometimes, every time I think you might be wising u on how to have a well-designed pipeline of new feature experimentation -> community feedback -> changes based on feedback -> repeat until the final update is ACTUALLY READY something like this happens.

Please can you give us some explanation or reasoning behind this, its unacceptable to pump the update out this soon without even attempting to address the main issues highlighted REPEATEDLY in this forum post alone.

the previous event was already a huge grind (assuming you weren't exploiting) with the spikes at the previous rate on normal difficulty, since you need literally thousands of spikes to actually finish the craft. But now the spikes will be heavily reduced on normal, and the only way to get the previous rate of spikes is on elite (which will take twice as long to clear as normal).

I don't think there's anything wrong with the rates being different based on difficulty, but they need to be adjusted based on this test. Consider how many 'event reruns' you want the average player to have to dedicate to the mandolin. With the way the rates of spikes are in this test, it might take an average player 3-5 reruns to get the mandolin. Unless this event is rerunning every couple weeks, I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect a player to collect the materials for a single weapon over the course of 3-5 events that each run months(?) apart. A player might grind for 8 months or a year for one weapon?

Don't balance the rates around people abusing infinitely re-spawning danger rooms and optimally dragging alts.

Also an important factor to consider, is that more spikes equals more difficult/time consuming, so if there are more spikes on higher difficulties, it acts as an exponential multiplier on the difficulty. My suggestion is to reduce the rate of spikes to 50% on all difficulties, but have advanced spikes give x2 of the material and elite give x3 of the material.

Also make it so spikes can drop from treasure boxes in the affected levels. During the previous event, people who were only interested in farming spikes would skip treasure boxes and sometimes even get mad at randoms who join the party and try to loot treasure boxes, thus wasting time. To avoid this perverse incentive, make treasure boxes actually do something related to the event.

One change I'd like to see is for the player to just automatically pick up spikes that spawn in when they walk over them... rather than having to fight with the pick up mechanic while not only fighting monsters but also having to beat them to the spike

Another change would be to render spikes dropped by enemies to be temporarily inert and unable to be grabbed by monsters allowing players a bit of time to grab them instead of having a killed enemy just be replaced with another ultra buffed enemy.

@Destroy-Destroy you need to read these threads properly before posting. Elements of the new system were designed to combat alt farming, obviously.

As for the spike grind, a solution could be adding a "Spike Booster" item in the supply depot, which would work just like the Krogmo Coin Booster or heat amplifier. Stackable boosters could work too.