Spiral Knights - Scarab hunting, to solo or not to solo?

Scarab hunting, to solo or not to solo?

7 replies [Last post]

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 10:37

Holy-Nightmare

Personally I have done both and would like to point out why soloing could be good for your "class" or not.

Ignoring Zombies when there is a Scarab in the room can get you killed so it is generally best to kill everything in the room when a Scarab shows up.

Striker; you can break blocks easy and move monsters with little trouble, however when dealing with the large masses of zombies that accumulate when hunting scarabs you may want some extra firepower at your back. As a partner you want a support bomber (hazes and vortexs) or a knockback free gunner (alchemers, needle guns, and antiguas). (you can also pick a Knockback Gunner if they are good at crowd control)
(elemental brandishes, WMRH, DA, Flourish/BTB)
(you can solo but support for this class is useful)

Gunner (knockback free); you pick off monsters as you move but you probably aren't the biggest source of damage, find a striker to pair up with and if he has a support bomber try to pick a complementary status (don't bring the same one he has) to pair with his to maximize damage (fire and shock together ruin Zombies).
(Shock and fire Status alchemers, AP, Blitz and Plague needle)

Gunner (knockback); You move the masses and create paths through the horde and when a scarab is found corner it and once your striker or bomber reaches it keep the rest of the undead off your backs. (you can pair with a striker or a knockback bomber)
(Supernova, Polaris, Valiance)

Bomber Support; you need a partner, your job is to slow monsters down and slowly melt them to death, you keep the masses aggroed to you and keep them off your partner who will deal with any scarabs. (pair with anyone)
(suggested bombs: VT, AOA, EV)

Bomber knockback; a real powerhouse if you can play it, you just walk through rooms waking the undead and if a scarab shows up level the place. (the less people in your party the bigger a chunk of monster HP you can take out, percentage wise) If you do end up with a teammate be sure to tell them that you bomb with knockback bombs.
(suggested bombs: Nitronome, Deadly Crystal Shards, ITD)
(Probably the only one that makes sense to solo in)

Hybrid; as a mixed knight take your cues from the above class suggestions.

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 10:50

Sweet-Hope

its up to you if you want to go solo or not no matter your class. when im helping friends and guildies what i do once i reach cementery it just waking up every tomb and ignoring everything, including scarabs. once i reach the elevator i just tell guildies "i got X amount of scarabs" and then invite them to the party, since monster already spawned they will have the HP of 1 player party so they can kill them easily and still get tokens from the scarabs, no matter the class you are.

at least its what i do

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 12:58

Fehzor

Bringing classes into this is an interesting idea, but I don't believe that most players actually use classes beyond a certain point unless they're for some reason set on being that class and refuse to craft any other weapons, in spite of being given additional orbs and the ability to craft chaos/black kat sets. Regardless of whether we consider these odd individuals, the following should be somewhat true-

The advantage to soloing is that you don't have to wait for goofballs to join/leave/'AFK'/etc. and that party buttons will never hinder your progress. Graveyards are however, mostly devoid of party buttons.

The advantage to playing with 2 or more players is that enemies have less health per player and it becomes possible to iterate through multiple segments of a level at once. If a graveyard consists of 3 branches, then you'll effectively skip ALL branches without a scarab on them. Lets say that you and I are on a graveyard, and you find a bug on an alternate path. I would then go down that path to get it...... but you've already killed it, and are now returning to the main path to pick up where I left off checking, which is at worst the same as me going down that path and then returning to check starting from the joint.

Whenever you do find one and if you're with other similar knights, you'll supposedly kill it in around (((players-1)*.33 + 1))/(players) of the time it would take with one person, as that is the ratio of health gain for monsters over supposed damage gain for knights. Basically, if everyone does the average DPS, and no one hinders anyone or works together, you'll end up with:

1 player = 100% as much time as it would take alone because you ARE alone

2 players = 66% as much time as it would take alone

3 players = 55.33% as much time as it would take alone

4 players = 49.7% as much time as it would take alone

A hypothetical 8 player raid = 45.5% as much time as it would take alone

A hypothetical infinite player raid = 33% as much time as it would take alone

Of course like I said that doesn't account for the fact that not everyone does the same damage, that some people don't work together, and that some people do work together, but on the whole if you were to all just hammer away at a bug zombie thing w/out effecting one another, those would be the ratios of damage gain per player. This would really manifest itself if all party members found a special grave at the same time, as they would then kill it in 133%, 166%, or 199% of the time it would take to kill it in a solo party, but would have effectively killed 2,3 or 4 scarabs rather than just the one. And like I said, that isn't how it will pan out at all due to a huge number of factors, that's just how the DPS would be interpreted.

Newer knights should ALWAYS attempt to travel with more experienced knights, as the more experienced knights will bring A LOT more to the table in terms of the damage gain than they would, allowing more effective kills on super scarabs. Experienced knights likely still benefit from traveling with others due to the branching paths phenomenon, but may not experience drastic improvement after the second or third knight joins them, as those knights must join the party for every single iteration of the level, and can become cumbersome.

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 13:23

Fangel

It really depends.

I solo run the graveyards pretty quickly because I just generally find myself moving faster than others when it comes to clockworks navigation. I recommend a mix of offensive and defensive armors, plus a speed perk if you have one. Personally I mix radiant silvermail with my black kat cowl as I get nice shadow defense along with curse resistance nullified and universal damage bonus VS undead of ultra (plus MSI). Bringing a warmaster rocket hammer can down a gourdling on its full combo solo with that high of a damage bonus, and I think I only found myself downed once (from rubber banding of all things).

My advice however is to defeat phantoms and utilize warmaster rocket hammer. Bring a striker of some sort to take care of the roadblocks as well. Damage bonus of ultra VS undead is very helpful.
Also don't forget sprite skills and shield bash. My seraphynx saved me several times when I wanted to simply take out the gourdling while other zombies wanted to chew on my face.

Right and I did this all on elite. I don't know data for finding them on lower difficulties but you might have an easier time with it there.

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 14:15

Holy-Nightmare

This is just my experiences and observations

When I played using my Nitronone (combos UVs, armor perks, and pet perks gave me Max undead and Max CTR) I would hunt Scarabs just by weaving in and out of zombies and when a scarab did pop up I focused on spamming as fast as possible (in large parties this wouldn't have done as much damage (percentwise) and would have annoyed teammates), playing solo I found that I could reduce zombies, scarabs, and even phantoms to dust pretty fast.

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 14:22

Uberer-Alt

Party slows me down too much so i solo. Just use bk set (i have only 3* but thats fine), swiftstrike, hammer and any gun for switches. That gives you msi vh with the msi perk, dmg max and asi high. Just run through the graveyard ignoring all zombies. When you find a scarab just hammer combo it to death, killing any zombies is just a waste of time.

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 15:06

Fangel

Sometimes you need to.

killing any zombies is just a waste of time
Except when there are seven all around the gourdling you need to grab. If they have low health from collateral damage, there's no reason why you can't smack them one more time for 20 crowns.

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 20:47

Ill-Fate-Ill

Solo.

Solo everything.

It's not that hard to kill 1 scarab within a horde of zombies. I hold a Voltedge charge until a scarab appears, release and Warmaster Rocket Hammer combo it. After the scarab dies, charge another Voltedge and combo with hammer again. This way, I got my Authentic Scarab Mask within an hour. It's more or less like farming Black Kats. I recommend the first floor of Occurrence at Owlite Keep.

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Scarab hunting, to solo or not to solo?