I want my radiant crystals back.
I really loved things the way they were.

1:10 radiant to shining on stratum 6.
A bit more? Previously you could get about 1 crystal every minute, 30 mins fsc run and 30 crystals. Now you get 3 crystals per run. It's mean that you have to farm much more and buy some 5* crystals for ce or cr, otherway you will spend about 50 hours instead of 5 for getting 300 crystals.
Also you got fire crystal recipes, use radiant crystals if you want shining cryslals. I can't make the same with shining to get radiant.

Boss missions aren't the only missions with fire crystals in them...
Now instead of getting radiat crystals, all I get is shinnies... And not that many either.
I wonder how much profit OOO has made when they decreased the crystal drop rate as well is dramatically decreased radiant crystal collectibility.

In Cold Blood gave around 20 shinings for a full run. Maybe half a dozen less if you're unlucky.

In Cold Blood is also speed runnable. All you need is a fast gun like Sentenza to conveniently hit switches or blow up blocks, and you can pretty much skip all of the first 2 maps and most of the last map. For added convenience, having a Maskie's cloak helps a lot.

There are relatively few times you have to kill anything in In Cold Blood, and you mostly have to make sure you don't get boxed in by ice cubes in the second map. Otherwise, easy peasy.

The point is, it was actually fast and easy to farm shinings before the update. Just do 3 or 4 speed runs in In Cold Blood and you'd have enough to forge your lvl 9 to lvl 10. Assuming it took you 15 minutes per run, that's 1 hour per high level upgrade.

Whereas if you wanted to forge a 5* from lvl 9 to lvl 10, you need to do 2 FSC runs. Which would take about an hour each.

Of course, there are variations and caveats and so forth. If you're unlucky, you might have to do 5 shining runs. But you can break down those runs to pace yourself. With FSC, you have to do 3 runs if you're unlucky, and it's 1 hour each time. On the other hand, FSC provides way more heat and payout.

But the point is, Shinings were never really that hard to gather. Not if you do your research first (ie Google "spiral knights shining crystals farm").

Since the update to orbs instead of energy, I think I've crafted well over 10 lines of items (basically all the bombs). I currently have 4 5* items I need to forge, but can't. And is actually kind of nigh impossible to do so without hundreds of thousands of crowns (or real cash). Because I was reluctant to commit to the time needed to run FSC, but was able to do so with ICB due to its short run time.

I suspect the only real difference between me and those who were experiencing a shortage of shinings is that I used Google to find threads which asked where the best shining farm maps were. And I suspect the main difference between my having insufficient Radiants against those who have thousands leftover is that I've been using mine. Considering how many 5* I've already maxed out and was in the middle of levelling, I've pretty much used over 4000 radiants by now (guesstimation).

But that's all beside the point because pre-update, you had a choice. It might not have been an optimal choice in many people's eyes, but it was still there. Now? Unless this gets "fixed", you're screwed once you hit 5*. It'll be worst for the new guys. Once they max out their 4* and upgrade to 5* in order to get certification, they'll actually be handicapped by the low level 5* gear.

I used to do In Cold Blood strictly for shining crystals... It was easy to speed run and i obtained a decent amount of crystals (lowest = 12 ;_; highest = 33).
Followed that with arcade runs for radiants..
Truthfully with the removal of elevator costs i can see that OOO are trying to make the arcade a more viable option...
Fsc was the past grinding area for heat/crowns/radiants..
With the update, less people would be grinding fsc for the radiant crystals :)

Just my thoughts..

I agree. I have more than a dozen of 5* items halted due to the lack of Radiants. I find it silly that people find Shinings to be hard to obtain; there's a downgrade recipe for it, people, and there are also 3 to 5 farmable missions for them.

As stated in alot of other forum posts, Radiants are now only obtainable during Depths 24+ (approximately 90% over at Depth 28). Everything I've been working for in the past week has come to a standstill.

On another note, Devs have been mentioning the addition of a new Arc for the game; could this be a precursor that the arc will be added soon, and in consequence, more depths to travel?

(Edited a spelling mistake.)

Honestly, I just used to craft shinings from radiants, getting 5 shinings per 3 radiants was a good deal considering the amount of radiants you get in FSC and T3 clockworks...but theres a problem, and that problem is that 4* players cannot craft shinings from radiants. I like the idea of having a lot more shinings in the clockworks but the way it has been implemented is just purely unbalanced, there are so few raidants now that when you find them you get excited, and thats just for 4-5 at a time, but that's a bad sign for heating 5* equipment, seeing as how it will only be possible to heat maybe 1 5* item in any amount of time that could be called close to acceptable, much less an entire set/other weapons for different playstyles you want to try.

so in the end, keep the shinings, but balance it to where radiants drop at around the same rate

I love running the arcade, but now running it is useless in terms of fire crystals, as I could make more with one firestorm citadel run. I've been running stratum 5 a lot recently to stock up on crystals and check Basil recipes, but now I can make more profit while getting the same fire crystals in stratum 6.

This problem affects those who farm certain rarities, and those who enjoy diversity that comes with rewards.

"People need to do something BESIDES FSC and In Cold Blood for once...stop whining about not getting the right crystals/orbs/mats when you're only doing the same two missions every single time."

Except that no where else provides good radiant crystals, and if this represents 000's intent, pushes players more towards FSC because getting crowns and spending energy to get fire crystals will be more efficient.

Think before you post.

@khamsin
I got plenty in my last arcade run, I don't know what you're talking about. (Also they're not Three Zeroes)

@zipb
You're joking. How is ~400 energy per person CHEAPER than 0?

I have 4k radiants and could not be happier about this.