Spiral Knights - Hello, returning player :)

Hello, returning player :)

5 replies [Last post]

Fri, 04/17/2015 - 16:13

Palkovi

Hi, I played this game starting with its Steam promotion, and eventually lost interest, although I believe I may play it just on my off-time. I'm also playing other MMOs currently, but would like to throw another into the mix from time to time.

1. Back when I played on my old toon, I was mostly a gunner. I know there was supposedly a "gunner update", is the feedback following it positive?

2. Is there still a community? I don't necessarily mean the random player you run into. I mean, are there guilds that are active? Is there any social aspect at random, or is it only if it is sought out? If I was to press "start mission as group" or something like that, would I still be solo / alone due to lack of activity?

3. How does the energy system work now? This one seems pretty complicated. The heat system? Is there a simple way to explain it? Is it more free-player friendly? If I get into the game, I'll definitely drop money for what it's worth (possibly on a cool looking item promo, etc).

4. I'm not too concerned with tons and tons of additional content, I'm assuming there aren't much outside of those "Danger Missions" I last remember, or vanaduke runs even yet not do I expect there to be an opened core, as much as just an incentive to do the missions. I remember after the addition of missions, there was no point in doing random Clockworks (I think that's what they were called) levels / strata. Was there any incentive added, or is it still just missions missions and more missions?

5. How is the developer / community management team sitting? Have there been any changes regarding this? I notice Nick hasn't been posting those announcements and it is instead others. Is he no longer developing the game?

6. Are there any bugs that have popped up which are blatant and irritating? Are bug fixes flowing in at a good enough rate to deem the game still playable? Are the servers (or "worlds", whichever they were called) healthy enough to stay living for what I would expect is a good amount of time in the future, despite lower dev activity?

All help is appreciated :)

Sat, 04/18/2015 - 07:35

Blaze-Neos

Welcome Back!

1. Yes, there was a gunner update, in which a ton of new guns and armor/helms were added. The feedback regarding the update was generally positive, but a lot of the hype died for it since it was supposed to be released around October last year(or year before; I don't remember).

2. Yes, there is still a community. If there wasn't one, then it would unlikely for something like "General Discussions" to get a new topic. And yes, there are numerous active guilds as well as numerous dedicated players.

3. The energy system utilizes the market. Players can post their ce+how much they are selling it for(in the Market tab), and another player, if interested, can buy it from the "Trade" tab. At the same time, a player can go to the same Market tab and place an offer to buy ce, and it will appear in the Trade tab. As for the heat system, it's like experience for your weapons. Enemies that you or another player slay drop heat. Picking up this heat will fill-up that black-sphere thing under your health bar with a fire-like essence. The brighter it is, the more heat you have. After you go on an elevator, your heat will be synthesized into energy for your equipped gear, giving it "experience", or in this case, heat. After obtaining enough heat, you can level-up a weapon using appropriate Fire Crystals. Leveling up a weapon can give it more power, as well as new abilities on certain levels.

4. There are occasional events in which new missions are added, and by participating in them, you can get tokens that allow you to obtain limited time items. For example, recently, there was a "Caketastrophe" event, in which we had to fight against an army of hostile mutant cakes. Beating the mission(s) allowed you to get tokens, which could be traded in for prizes like a cake hat.

5. Nick left OOO a couple months ago, but from the looks of it, it looks like OOO has finally gotten back on their feet.

6. There aren't any "serious" bugs that I know of. As for the servers, they are generally pretty good, but lag is inevitable on all games(unless your PC is just that good).

Fri, 04/17/2015 - 17:31

Fangel

Woopwoop

Glad to have old players comin' back!

Now I figure I can help answer questions n' all, so here we go!

1) Yes, the gunner update happened! It added a bunch of confusing gunner armors, just about in every shape and size (There's resistance to every damage type/status, and bonuses against every family, each of which is it's own separate line of recipes only acquired through Basil), and we got more flavors for various popular guns. Pulsars, autoguns, blasters, and antigua are some of the common ones affected, but we finally got an Iron Slug buff along with the other magnuses which makes them horribly overpowered. Give 'em a whirl!

2) Community is everywhere, however I wouldn't expect players to be joining your mission lobbies unless you're playing on the new "Elite" difficulty and doing boss levels/commonly farmed levels. If you do find players doing your missions however, you can expect them to be finding their way into your parties pretty much until they log off!

3) Energy is now completely it's own currency and nothing more. The old mist is gone and we have free elevators, so energy is now only for buying things from the game's premium store (aka, supply depot), or trading with other players. You can still use it to open energy gates and power up mecha knights in the clockworks however, so it's not only in the game so you can buy those 4* orbs.

4) We had an addition to the game called "Rarities" which pretty much give you progress. The "alchemy orb" rarities allow you to craft things, "fire crystal" rarities allow you to level up your heated gear (after you get enough heat, you must manually level up your gear in Haven or at an arsenal station in the clockworks, which are at the start of any non-boss depth), "spark of life" rarities allow you to revive yourself and others, and finally the "evo catalyst" rarities allow you to make your battle sprite (combat buddy + free trinket) rank up.
Boss strata are still the most farmed, however rarities spawn more frequently (or so it seems) in the Arcade, plus the arcade is the only place you can get boss recipes and the new gunner update recipes.

5) Nick left Three Rings a while back to go be free and make another gaming company. In his place, Eurydice has been posting most of the announcements in the announcement forum with Thalia posting all the discussion threads in GD. For the most part they're still quiet, but whenever they do talk it's typically for a joke (or angsty players are all ruddish to them. :( ). Luckily the game's quality hasn't dropped, but the rate of content isn't exactly fast either... But I don't exactly attribute that to Nick's departure.

6) No really big "bugs" in the game. Occasionally players have texture bugs but that's usually hardware not software. As such bugfixes aren't usually common here (however we did have a huge security loophole fixed a while back related to Steam logins, so if you're using Steam and didn't know just about anyone could steal your account then, well, no need to worry about that now!) but when they do show up they're typically fixed rather quickly or considered features for half a year(second bit of this is referring to the drop tables of certain rarities which were... questionable).

Bottom line is the game's still fun if you're looking for a social and a quick action game!

Fri, 04/17/2015 - 17:58

Bopp

response

I haven't read the previous responses in detail, but they seem to tell you the important points. Check out Release/all if you actually want to know what has changed. Pay special attention to 2013-07-30 (battle sprites, energy, etc.) and 2014-12-03 (gunner update).

Try searching Google for "gun site:forums.spiralknights.com" and restrict your attention to pages since the gunner update, to get an idea of opinion. Some guns were improved and others were weakened. But play styles are similar to what they were before the update.

The most precious commodity is 5-star fire crystals AKA Radiants, which you need to heat 5-star items. Basically you can find everything else along the way to finding 5-star fire crystals.

The forum and wiki community is less active than it once was. But there are still plenty of players to entertain me. And I see new knights in Haven all the time.

Fri, 04/17/2015 - 18:23

Palkovi

Well that's cool :) as far as

Well that's cool :) as far as raiding downtime for Warcraft goes I'm sort of looking for a somewhat quiet place to mess around on for change of pace.

So then, I'm guessing there's a development team other than Nick still ensuring bugfixes etc go through? Iirc Eurydice is community management I believe, but I'm assuming OOO is still a healthy company to ensure that Spiral Knights stays playable, correct? I'm just double checking basically before I drop in any money.

Thanks for the replies

Fri, 04/17/2015 - 23:36

Fangel

Yes, the game still works

Eury is community management, and although we've been short on developers for a long time now we're still getting updates every so often. If you're someone who can enjoy what the game has right now for what it is, I'm sure you'll have fun while playing. Heck, getting your Battle Sprite to level 100 is pretty time consuming, plus rewarding! Try going for that if you need a goal and radiants seem like a grind.

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Hello, returning player :)