Shove a recolor of it with absolutely no work on it, put a recipe in-game and bam. You have the new weapon for people to use without having people to buy the boxes. Example: Literally recolor the Vortex Bomb red. Make recipe. Shove in Basil. Congrats you're done.
Then retain the awesome looking weapon within the prize box. Example: The bomb looks nice but still functions exactly the same. Makes your friends Jelly [king]. Congrats you're done.
Alternatively, if you want to go full-on "let's add another event to the rotation", make some sort of traveling circus come to Haven that offers these weapons in a reskinned format. Same method of reskinning as Glacies says above.
The circus would have the following weapons in different skins and names: celestial sabre, celestial shield, celestial vortex, mixmaster, power mitt, sweet dreams, teddy bear buckler.
Celestial Sabre and Sweet Dreams reskins are both crafted up from ascended caliburs.
Celestial Vortex reskins are crafted up from graviton bombs.
Celestial Shield reskins are crafted up from wyvern scale shields.
Overcharged Mixmaster reskins are crafted up from volt drivers.
Power Mitt reskins are crafted up from mighty defenders.
Teddy Bear Buckler reskins are crafted up from mighty defenders (or dread skelly shields).
This essentially would be an event that parallels Grinchlin Assault in that you get new materials from these missions, and use them at the mysterious alchemy machine to make these item reskins. No need to make entire lines for these weapons, instead just provide the final step which can be more expensive or balanced.
Cool thing about this event would be it could be Grinchlin Assault level of difficult but show up periodically throughout the year. This also keeps the demand for the current items high since the items themselves are behind an event.
Also, players who luck out may be able to make these reskin items out of the cobalt gear they were given for free.
But yeah, bottom line is free way to get the same items with different names is what we need with these promo items.
I personally do not mind waiting for an update for it and waiting for a crummy reskin as long as the weapon itself becomes available eventually. I'd love to have stun with its charge, or the Mixmaster/Vortex, just as long as the weapon can be available eventually, even if it requires tokens from an event.
Way ahead of you.
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/104316
To sum up my year old suggestion, they should release the box as a premium and beta version- you get the cool skin, and 6 months later the "free" variant comes out. This then allows them to catch bugs before the bigger more attainable release; the mixmaster would have been a disaster if they'd given it out readily when it was bugged.
"Sweet Dreams reskins are ... crafted up from ascended caliburs."
Why not Cold Iron Carver? Does Sweet Dreams just randomly get Undead Med out of nowhere?
"Celestial Vortex reskins are crafted up from graviton bombs."
Why not Electron Bomb? Electron is Elemental so it only makes sense that the Elemental reskin would be... from the Elemental bomb. Right? Or is it because Electron is a Krogmo thing.
"Teddy Bear Buckler reskins are crafted up from mighty defenders (or dread skelly shields)."
Sinister Skelly Shields? TBB seems to be a reskin of Gorgomega (just without the MSD and the totally awesome shield bash thank you Three Rings for doing something with it all that time ago), whch was crafted from a Skelly Shield, so this makes sense.
Although they have a closer weapon, I feel the main line would act better. Electron Vortex requires a PvP recipe, graviton does not, and although sweet dreams reflects the CIV more having both weapons be easier to acquire (because you're given cobalt recipes for free) would work really well for players who started looking into the game more after getting stuck at the 4* hall of heroes and realizing their cobalt stuff isn't worth it.
We've had weapons completely change at 5* anyways so it's not too big of a deal.
And my bad, should have been sinister skelly - had interruptions while typing my post so my train of thought (and thus, apparently, my "let's remember the names of the 4*" thoughts) was cut off.
Teddy Bear Buckler shares more in common with the Gorgomega, however the skelly line isn't an event item. Forcing us through two events for one item seems like a bit much.
I had TBB on mighty defenders due to, again, a desire to make cobalt stuff have a bunch of more useful crafting lines, but also because it shares defensive values with heater shield... However freeze + shadow resist makes it more in-line with skelly line, so either or really in this case. Power mitt has more in common with the owlite line in terms of what it gives but it's a heater shield with swapped status resist, so it can branch off the defender.
I guess what I want to get at mainly is that these items would be easy to acquire for all sorts of players once they get the materials for it, but it's the collecting that's the hard part.
"Literally recolor the Vortex Bomb red."
The Vortex Bomb is already red.
tfw if I had a Mixmaster and a Celestial Saber I would honestly never use any other weapons. +1?