Heeeeere's KEEPSCAITE!

^ What Bopp said.

until you heat a 5* weapon to lvl 7-8, it is worse than a fully heated 4* item.

I fixed it.

The radiant have been fixed.

You obviously weren't playing during the radiant drought... The moment I did a FSC and got 0... ZERO radiant I stopped playing.

Now radiant drops at a constant and decent rate. The orbs are artificial replacement to energy we used to craft, orb cost the same as crafting gear before (so crafting is, in fact, cheaper) but orbs can be found in treasure boxes.

The fire crystal were OKAY at first (I can't stress this enough, too many people were enjoying themselves in Arcade for the first time to be counter-whinning the toxic forum that is SK). Radiant dropped mostly in FSC and shinning were on S5 or S4... Arcade treasure vault runs was all I did when the update came in. The SoL drops were too high and the fire drops were a bit high too.

The balance they did over time is decent enough with all the complaints the community raise. It's SK community fault that the fire system is in that shape. It was golden when it came out if you ask me, they even introduced fire crystal recipe to make lower tier crystal out of higher tiered one (logic when you are end-game and only farming end-game stuff) but all that has never been used again since the radiant drought

AND NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME THE RADIANT AIN'T FIXED?

I heated 5 weapons fully 10 and I'm not playing a lot, I still have 1k radiant to go... 20-ish vana for one item, 1 vana or two a day it's not long to gather everything, and still faster than getting a zod rune on D2

Edit: Sk was broken before the new forge system, do you remember heating your gear with 2 vana and dying over n over again at depth 26-27? I do, I remember one time my friend told me he was gonna do a SL FSC, I CRAFTED a solid cobalt, did a FSC with heat share, took 1 hour and half my 4* set was heated 10 and I was heading to craft almirian, because why not?

Doing "one or two vanas" per day would take you like 3 weeks to heat up a single piece of 5* gear with 100% chances, I don't see how that is fixed or "OK"

I'm a bit late this time around, but I think that this is a matter of appearances as well.. first and foremost, is what Skepticraven said way back in this thread that the bulk of you are choosing to ignore- if you were to go all out on grinding for radiants and buy them with energy, it would take you about as long as it always did, even before the introduction of radiant fire crystals.

And yet, there seems to be a problem when it comes to players using energy and other currencies in place of radiant fire crystals. When it comes to why players are doing this, the answer is really quite simple- they've been led to believe that their crowns and energy are more important than this, and that "paying to win" just isn't how it is done... all of the gear progression up to that point has been heavily box oriented with no buying from the depot in order. You'd be crazy, as a newer player, to attempt to purchase the earliest findable fire crystals, because the game gives them to you for free. So when it comes time to cash in, putting all of your energy and crowns into heating a single item to the end just feels wrong.

Of course we don't necessarily want to breed these fire crystal spending habits into players. The game at one point did a VERY good job of enforcing that everyone was comfortable with purchasing things with energy, but being forced around in such a way made a great deal of people uncomfortable and was eventually removed.

A much better idea would be to change the way that heating works in general, and make all fire crystals rare. It would take a good 20 times the heat to get a weapon to level up, but there would be no cap on the level requiring any fire crystals. Instead, fire crystals could be added to the weapon at any point to give that weapon extra heat, or a speed up to the heat received, depending on how many crystals were added. In this way, the time requirements could be left alone or tweaked in the same way that they currently are, and the amount of grinding wouldn't change at all (unless that was desired), but players wouldn't feel the pressure of getting around a level cap or having the game tell them FORGING FAILED all the time.

This leads us to the question of what would happen if grinding was just largely reduced across the board- yes, it can compensate for whatever it wants, but why bother? What terrible thing would happen if players were allowed to craft gear? There is the possibility that they would leave, but I really don't think so. When I got to 5*, I wanted more weapons and more armor and more of everything, and that's what I did. Rather than having them "get bored faster" I think that it would allow them the freedom to get more entertainment out of the game, keeping them in longer and making them more invested. While I don't have anything more than anecdote to support this theory, I do think that it is one worth looking into... especially when unique variants already add so much time to the end game- it goes from "I want to craft all the weapons there is" to "I want to craft all the weapons there is with decent unique variants on them". I'd like to see the developers at least consider looking into unique variants as the endgame leveling, with gear being handed out far more frequently to keep people entertained.

Skepticraven, can you post a link to your argument that costs (of upgrading a complete 4-star item to a complete 5-star item) have not gone up?

According to my calculations, it would take about 500,000 crowns to buy all of the Radiants needed to fully heat a 5* item to level 10 at the supply depot when only using the 100% chance.

50 Radiants = 700 CE

453 Radiants = Level 10 (100%)

453 / 50 = 9.06 Radiant purchases. We can round this to 9 seeing how you could easily get the 0.06 in the clockworks.

9 * 700 CE = 6300 CE or 63 CE purcahses

100 CE = (about) 8000 crowns or 1000 CE = (about) 80000 crowns

6.3 * 1000 CE = 6.3 * 80000 Crowns

504,000 Crowns to fully heat to level 10, when using 100% chance option and NOT skipping levels.

"""This number can by lower if you use lower chance options, skip levels, or get more Radiants in the clockworks. As a matter of fact, this number will probably always be lower."""

Still, according to this, heating an item is NOT the same price as it was before.

It's 750e for 50 Rads.
Or rather 15e(~1200cr) per Rad.

If you get a fair haul from yet another FSC run, lets say 30 Rads, you could spin that to say you received 450e/~36Kcr value in drops alone. It seems extremely unlikely that the system would routinely hand out that much 'value', which is a clear red flag that the Supply depot prices are on the wrong order of magnitude. It's possible this was the cause of the original Rad drought, flawed reasoning suggesting that the system was handing out too much 'value'.

You can easily pass the first forge tier with pick ups alone, that is to say Level 1,2 and 3.
Level 4,5 and 6 takes quite a bit longer with pickups, but depending on how many toys you are leveling at the moment it's still just within practicality.
To pass 7,8 and 9 you need at most 288 Rads (assuming the 2/3 option realy does fail 30% of the time, then you only save ~5% crystals) which is 4320e or ~345600cr.

Assuming a good 30 Rad payout from FSC and if you get about 12Kcr from FSC (9Kcr+3 tokens), then spending all of those raw crowns on Supply depot Rads only pushes your Rad income up from 30 to 40. A 33% increase in Rads in order to get to Level 10 25% faster in exchange for no crown income? But at least we cut the Supply Depot Rad requirement down to 72..

If you were running Pre-Orb FSC in order to raise the 800ce for the 5* craft, then you needed to run it 8 times to earn 96Kcr and pay 32Kcr of that in elevator tax. Assuming you find 5* orb drops faster than you can craft them, then today it should take you 9.6 runs to earn the Rad drops and walk away with 115200cr as a bonus, or 7.2 run to fast track it and have no crowns to show for it. So in a sense, paying for Rads does indeed resemble the legacy elevator tax costs, but simultaneously it also manages to be 'expensive' due to the futility of it.

Of course if you want to do something other than run FSC for now then the forging system breaks down - This is the central problem. You rarely get an income of 30 Rads doing what you choose to do. Not to mention 30 Rads from FSC is hardly guaranteed.

And removing Heat when unbinding gear is also an issue - Now the buyer has to take on significant costs in order to level up gear that may have already been 'paid' for.

There is definitely room for improvement for both the drop rate control and the Supply Depot cost. It seems like the absolute core issue is the two methods do not acknowledge the existence of each other and therefore no attempt has been made to co-ordinate the two into a single economy.

Your math might be bit off, seeing how a Rad actually costs 14e, not 15e, but your point still gets across.

@Skepticraven So is takes 8x the funds to get an item, but it takes 1.5x less time to get crowns? Wouldn't this still be a loss of money? Or am I wrong?

@Skeptic

So it takes 6 days to get an item now, when F2P?

^^^

I, too, have seen this data, but it was from a random thread post.

I trust Lancer Knightz data more than a random thread post. Also, both people have different experiences. When it comes down to it, 16.88 and 18, there isn't much difference.
Remember, box drops are in fact random. You can get up to 30 in a run, or as a little as zero.

I think confidence intervals would be awesome lol...

<-- found 0 radiant fire crystals
<-- found 1 Flawed Orb of Alchemy

as of July 31, 2013
<-- 37, 5*'s (17 needing heat)
<-- 7, 4*'s

as of January 5, 2015
<--37, 5*'s (17 needing heat)
<-- 7, 4*'s

Almost all heating and ALL crafting came to a grinding halt on July 31, 2013.
<-- Was forced to set aside 5*'s due to total and complete inability to heat them. Most of those recipes, mats, crafting fees and ce was purchased with real cash.

Gunner update!!! What update? I haven't seen the new stuff. Why would I buy more things to not be able to heat?

And your math is wrong. Try more like over 17 months. July 31, 2013 to July 31, 2014 is 12 months. July 31, 2013 to January 5, 2015 is 5 months and 5 days. And yes, I did stop playing for awhile and I guess the big question is, will I stay and finish my game or resolve myself to being pushed out and leave it incomplete as so many others have done. I just left my guild yesterday. None of them play anymore. The guild I was in prior to that one has one person left. Not in the guild, he regularly jumps guilds looking for one with active members. That's 200 plus right there that are gone. All my friends in game and those I know in rl who played here have all stopped playing. I am only back to try and finish those undone things and personal goals I once had in game before its too late. And there's a part of me hoping that coming back, being active, will help counter some of that bleed out of gamers. (Hoping one of those OOO's people will stand up and choke the crap out of a Sega person, then bring back the glory days of SK.)

FSC FSC FSC FSC FEC...
YOU know what. I never spammed FSC as many others like me. I refused to be forced to do that. Spiral Knights is more than FSC. We refereed to FSC as a MF'er. Same with Vava, MF'er. Many of us said never again. It was the FINAL boss. The boss you needed those heated 5*'s to complete. WAIT! Now I'm supposed to spam it to gain the mats to do it? There's a big flaw in game schematics, you think? Oh ya, many were running around yelling FSC...FSC. Many only did that. Many spend all day everyday trying and quit the game never completing it. Many spamming it were yelling how profitable it was. Back in the day they got real good at it with their completed 5*'s. They started selling team slots for 100crs, then 400...a thousand. They bragged about how profitable it was. Some demanded those on the team turn all mats, crns etc gained in the runs over to them as part of the fee. They got real good at it and drug their alts through it. They botted and used every other cheat known to man to not actually play it. They used **** to make that team of 4 be 8. They weren't the only ones doing that trick. In current days, post cheat fixes, I see people wanting 1000E from people asking for help with FSC.

But here's my question for you BOPP. When did Spiral Knights become FSC, like specifically, why is FSC the only thing I am supposed to do here?

Sorry, I didn't notice that it was 17 months. But that makes my argument even stronger, right?

You acknowledge that you left the game for a while. You can't expect to progress through the game while you're gone, right?

About your guild being empty: Yes, this is the regular flow of Spiral Knights, ever since launch. Players play for a few months, exhaust the game, and leave. Therefore guilds rise and fall every few months (except for very few exceptions). Some players come back when there is new content. I wish that SK were one of those games that could keep players playing. But sadly it never has been.

About FSC: You should re-read my post. I specifically addressed how boring FSC is. I offered one suggestion for things to grind other than FSC.

My post also opined that players should not have to grind for months. I understand why you are frustrated. But it is not my fault. You and I are on the same side here.

I'm not frustrated at all. I'm being forced to do FSC and only FSC when here. You didn't answer my question.

Yes stopped playing for a fraction of that time. And still 0% progress for all the rest.

The guilds being empty, it isn't regular for a player bleed out. Don't spout the crap of we are only allowed/supposed to play for "x" amount of time. When did it become we are only allowed to play for a limited time? Isn't that counter productive? Why can all those other games keep their customers for 2, 3...5 years but here we are supposed to leave after whatever the now time limit is? It used to be "2 years".

@Iamnoone

Check out this thread for which arcade depths give the most boxes. If there is a single D28 arena, it beats FSC. Currently, we've had some bad luck with the arcade rotations.

When did Spiral Knights become FSC, like specifically, why is FSC the only thing I am supposed to do here?

This question was addressed in my posts #132, post #135, and post #138. You are not supposed to do just FSC. At least 10 other missions (not to mention the Arcade) offer Radiants.

You have basically called me a liar right off the bat in post #132.

In another recent thread I overstated the advantage of non-normal damage, and Zeddy corrected me, and I admitted that I was wrong. Everyone exaggerates sometimes. It's not the same thing as being a liar. I did not call you a liar.

In agreement, maybe. I'm not sure. I really don't know about the drop rate but I'm certain they aren't properly located for proper game play and number of areas way out of balance to the rest.

Agreed. And if you'd like to learn more about the drop rate, check out the links that Skepticraven and I posted.

I'm sorry that you feel that I troll you. Trolling is not my goal at all.

I am not sorry for challenging you and others. Arguments should be supported with evidence. Arguments should be challenged when they present weak evidence or overlook contradictory evidence. I get challenged all the time.

We need an immediate overhaul of radiant fire crystals.

Fehzor said it perfectly, "I don't think radiant fire crystals should be a given, where everyone just gets them right off the bat, but I don't think they should be some kind of mystical force that no one can ever get their hands onto without grinding ultimate firestorm citadel either."

Orangeo, I agree that making fire crystals purchasable through crowns would decrease energy prices by some amount. I'm not sure what it would do the game, but it is clear that my post #136 was much too simplistic. Thanks for pointing out my omission.

Accidental double post.