I don't see an end date....

Ok, thanks Narfle!

I'm going to get onto the Testing Server this time! I'm excited to see the recon changes (as a die-hard recon) as well as the dashing. It's also been too long since I've play tested this game. (Last time I did that was in the beta)

Thanks for the bug report Glitchedpixel, this will be fixed with the next update.

@neo: Just got done playing recon--what was broken? Seemed to be working fine... I will say, the shield could take maybe 3-4 hits before breaking, which made playing recon feel much more substantial as a class. Only problem: now guardians are going to be underpowered.

Re: testing dash in LD, it seemed fine, though as several players in the matches mentioned, a.) it's still difficult to use because it is another key to juggle, and b.) there is still a feeling that players will find a way to make OP. It was difficult to test against polaris and bombs because most people were just playing normally, but I found that it was useful for coming out of recon cloak to quickly close distance for swording, and noticed a few people using it to escape strikers chasing them back to their locker room.

It's a test server so i figured id report stuff that was buggy since you don't want it to be that way when you release it to the public.

Looking forward to the full release BTW.

Would it be possible to make it so Bash makes you Invulnerable from the Front while Bashing?

Its a similar concept to the Trogans where they're invincible from the front all the time. I'm saying take that ability and put it on your knight while they are bashing. Seems that it should be able to do that since half the shield energy is being put on the face of the shield, meaning that you should be shielded from attacks from the front while doing so.

Think of it as, normally your shield produces a field of energy that surrounds your knight 360 degrees, Your knight to perform a Bash, removes the limiter on the shield unit and Overcharges the shield to produce a temporary wall of energy which, as well as giving the Knight a boost forward, also gives the ability for the shield to do damage, and because the limiter was removed it overheats the unit which causes you to have to wait for it to cool-down/recharge before it can be used that way again.

Sounds cool when you put it into technology of the Spiral Knights don't ya think?

buff guardians

Since when could striker shield take multiple hits?

by the way, dash just sound cheap.
"ermagawd im gona dash in2 deez bombz and kil dis bomba cuz he cnt charge wit me hitin him tr0lolol0l"
"ermagawd 6 playa block of path wit polares? i gona dash and GF combao all dem and getz 99999dmg tr0l0l0l0l0l0lolol0l"

Do we have an ETA on when this update will come out? I'm not looking for an exact date more like a timeline, one to two weeks maybe?

It's possible to skip spike traps by shield walking into them, then dashing. I find this to be a problem.

A detailed response to smoother bombing, bunny-hopping and shield-dashing, but for real this time

While my previous response really, honestly, says it all, I am nothing if not an author of walls of text. I didn't get a whole lot of time with these features, but I felt like what I saw was enough. This post is basically just going to be a compilation of what I've said elsewhere on this subforum.

On smoother bomb-lifting

For me, this was the big one. Dashing and shield-bashing are really nice, but neither were half as welcome as this right here. It feels so natural to be able to move while lifting bombs. Like I'd been able to do it all the time. Like it should've been that way all the time. At this point, I really have no idea why, indeed, it wasn't that way all the time.

More than anything, it's a great help with shardbombing. Enemies get- Get back here, I'm not ranting about shard bombs, this is praise! Enemies get bounced around in erratically with them, and you really, really need to be able to move constantly in order to avoid them properly. I have no idea how I used these bombs before this tweak! Anyways, it's here now, and it's fantastic. On behalf of every knight who ever picked up a bomb, I would like to say thank you. Thank you for this.

On bunny-hopping

This move is a lot of fun! It looks cool, it feels good, it sounds nice, and it's useful to boot! People are worried the bunny-hop and the shield-dash will make this game easier, which I think is a really silly concern to have. The game can already be easy-mode if you want it to be. Bring a shivermist, blitz, glacius and Polaris and just about nothing in the game will be difficult.

Sure, if you want to play defensively, bunny-hopping is going to let you play even safer than before, but where's the fun in that? I think what the bunny-hop brings to the table is that it lets you play the game faster. I don't mean that in the sense that it lets you move faster, being able to skip 5 tiles every 8 seconds is not a very big deal, but it lets you play more aggressively in battle and finish fights faster since you can delay dodging for longer. With the bunny-hop, you can simply dodge at the very last second, and then run right back into the fray again.

I would like for the bunny-hop to cancel at least charges. If I'm holding up a bomb, I won't really be able to use the move to get out of trouble at all, since I have to wait for the bomb-canceling animation to finish first and by that time I've probably taken the hit anyway. I'm aware it's really exploitable because it lets you cancel otherwise-punishing weapons such as Blitz Needle, and if you guys think that'd be overpowered, I would have no arguments against that. Maybe it could at least cancel charges that aren't finished yet?

The only negative thing about bunny-hop is that it makes mercurial jelly even more obsolete than it already was. You're making Fehzor sad, guys. :[

On being a comet

Shield-dashing is nice. I think you should do a tier-restriction-thingy where 3* shields are not able to stun T3 enemies so that there would finally be some kind of offensive purpose to not using a swiftstrike, but otherwise it's a good move. I didn't remember to test whether or not Omega Shell can use the shield-dash as often as other 5* shields, it might not be able to since it spends half of the shields health and I have no idea whether or not all shields charge up relative to max health or just star rating. If it can't use the shield-dash as often, I think shield-dash damage should be decided by shield health.

Either way, it's a great move when you're cornered, and if used recklessly you can easily be in more trouble than before you used it, so it takes thought for sure. I foresee that it won't be very popular, certainly not compared to bunny-hopping, but it's still a nice move in its own right.

Someone in some other thread mentioned that it would be a good idea for shield-dashing to be activated if you bunny-hop while shielding, rather than having seperate bindings for the two of them, and I think that's a good idea.

The stun-rate seems to be 100%, or at least pretty dang high. I do like it because it gives a lot of purpose to the move, but at the same time I have no idea why anyone would want a Rigadoon outside of Lockdown now. Your recent developments make me confident you'll sort out that balancing stuff somewhere down the road, and even if you don't you'll never fail to keep SK a fun game. As much as I whine about balance everywhere, it does not take priority over fun, and shield-bashing is fun

On the background icons in the inventory
Did anyone else notice these? I thought they were neato! The left side is coloured with the gear's least significant element while the right side is coloured with the gear's most significant element. So the left side is green for demo suit, but the right side is green for gray feather. If you put the appropriate UV on the suit, the colours even switch places! The only oddity is that if you put a piercing and a shadow UV on a demo suit, you wont' be able to see the colour indicators for normal (blank colour) and elemental (green colour) anymore. It'll be yellow and purple, instead.

It feels like that defeats the purpose of the colour code in the first place. Isn't it there so the player can quickly identify his best gear for the given situation? If I want elemental protection, I'd glaze my eyes over the list of armour until I see green, but I wouldn't be able to see that if I had the double-UVs on it. Instead, I might stop at a skelly suit with a low elemental UV on it and I don't see how that would help me at all. You could maybe find an alternate means of representing UVed damage types, like little bars on the side or making the pattern on the background different so it can accommodate more colours. Then again, maybe the purpose of the colour-code is just to look pretty, and the two-tone theme is doing that well.

On the new inventory icons
I got used to these after five minutes, but I'm sure you're aware that there'll be another ragestorm when you release these.

The mecha knight is pretty.

All in all

Good update, guys! <3

...free to all players like many games?
I Really wanted to see (like all players ofcourse) the new update, and Beta is something serious, i know, but just once, c'mon, who disagrees with me?
Like NOT all games make Beta Testing free, but, many does, at least once, and btw, one of my friends say that the update ill Rock, i think it too, like i can read the All fórum about it, any1 didn't complied it, good thing :)
Know i must take care of the Jellies and fire zombies, without Dash and Bash, ill be hell xD!
I Look further too this update! Keep it up Three Rings!

Nuff said.

why not tuesday (today)? :o

@ Nano-Sec: Beta testing can't be free because then we'd just get a bunch of 10 year olds messing around on it and not being serious testers. Paying stuff discourages most of these 'trolls'. (no offense younger generation but trolls give you a bad name!)