Spiral Knights - Special boss weapons based on their boss level mechanics #EndgameEffortSinks

Special boss weapons based on their boss level mechanics #EndgameEffortSinks

5 replies [Last post]

Wed, 11/18/2015 - 09:43

Fehzor

These would replace all item drops in boss stratums, and have very high costs associated with them. They would also be purchasable for one thousand of whatever token they require. Each upgrade would require a large number of crowns. The items aren't intended to be overly powerful, just interesting status symbols that players can strive to achieve and admire.

Snarbolax: A sword that mimics the beast bells
Description: A golden brandish-like sword made from parts of the beast bells in Gloaming wild woods.

Special costs:
2* = 1000 snarbolax tokens
3* = 100 of each beast related material
4* = 1 nightmare mane, 100 rock salt
5* = 5 nightmare mane, celestial ore

Damage type: Piercing + normal

Four hit combo- (If this is too complicated, just make it a piercing FoV with stun and beast charge)

Swipe one: Same as fang of vog's first swipe; acheron's final swipe damage
Swipe two: Same as brandish's swipe two; flourish's middle combo hit damage
Swipe three: Winmillion's swipe two but with no projectile; same damage as hit two
Fourth hit: Piercing cold iron vanquisher charge, deals stun

Charge: Brandish charge swipe (with first hit's damage), zero explosions. Rings a beast bell wherever your knight is.

Charge time: Lessens with star level
2* = Haze bomb
3* = Brandish
4* = Brandish
5* = Neutralizer

Other abilities: Damage vs Beasts: Med, for flavor

Jelly King: A bomb that spawns blast-jelly

Description: A hand-held blast jelly, ready to detonate on your foes.

Damage type: Elemental

Initial blast: Same as blast cube (not blast jelly), only effects enemies (this means you, Lumbers). Spawns jellies on explosion.

Special abilities: Isn't a shard bomb. Possibly fire?

Charge time: Nitronome

Special costs:
2* = 1000 jelly gems
3* = 100 of each slime related material
4* = 1 celestial ore, 10 dark ember
5* = 5 celestial ore, maiden's tear

As it upgrades: The amount of jelly spawned increases, as does the damage caused

Ironclaw Munitions Factory: Rocket Launcher

Description: A gun that fires a rocket in one of the cardinal directions. The rocket behaves exactly like those fired all over the place during the roarmulus levels.

Damage type: Normal

Normal shot: 1 slow moving rocket that does the same damage as sudaruska, and explodes into a small AoE

Charge shot: Same as the airstrike pickup, launches knight backwards onto their butt, old callahan animation.

Charge time: Gran faust

Special abilities: Can only fire in the cardinal directions; so up,down, left, right. Basically just snaps knight in place at all times when held.

Special costs:
2* = 1000 bark modules
3* = 100 of each construct related material
4* = 1 gremlonium ore, 10 dark ember
5* = 5 gremlonium ore, maiden's tear

Firestorm Citadel: Vanaduke's mace.. as a bomb?

Description: A bomb that makes stuff fall from the ceiling and spawns special shadow fires

Appearance: Vanaduke's mace, but smaller.

Damage: Elemental/Normal/Shadow/Fire

Special abilities: When placed, the knight drops it rather than places it, making the ground rumble a bit (and not slowing them down at all)

Bomb behavior for charging, time, etc.: Big angry bomb

When it hits the ground: A bit of the ceiling falls down, striking enemies for heavy normal + elemental damage. Spawns friendly shadow-fire that behaves similarly to the tortofist projectiles, dealing fire + shadow.

Damage: Same as tortofist but normal/elemental and shadow + fire.

Special costs:
2* = 1000 crests of almire
3* = 100 of each fire related material
4* = 1 maiden's tear ore, 10 snarbostuffing, 10 jelly glue, 10 schemer scrap
5* = 5 maiden's tear, celestial ore, nightmare mane, gremlonium

Wed, 11/18/2015 - 13:48

Fangel

Hmm.

Interesting. Seem like gimmick weapons but are still interesting. I would say making the boss token cost be drastically lower - like 150 tokens, 250 at tops. Just make us need to use the material we get for guild statues in every recipe to artificially make us grind the boss more/use more tokens.

For the rocket puppy rocket launcher, I would say give it a bit of a sword combo mechanic - that is, have each shot in the normal attack be different. What I would suggest would be the primary "attack" would be a puff of smoke that pushes any monster back about 3-4 tiles (or basically a 4*/5* shield bump as an attack, and then the second hit in the "combo" would be the rocket being fired.
If this unique behavior is a bit much, then just have the rocket launcher be a 2-shot combo gun. You don't explicitly state how many shots it can fire before reloading but I can only assume a single one, and single-fire anything kind of isn't great as our weapon charge system gets shafted.
Its charge attack should be the tortofist animation - making you fly backwards - but ends with you falling on your butt like the old callahan instead of striking a pose. That would be a fun thing to play with.

I do like the idea of shadow lair materials being required for 4* and 5* items, but instead of needing "x amount of certain materials", I would say simply make the recipe one tier higher and increase the materials by 5. At 5* this means you simply need one of each shadow lair material, making an artificial 6*. You still will need 5 of the other ones you used for the previous level so I hope you like shadow lairs... Or at least buying the material.

Wed, 11/18/2015 - 16:27

Fehzor

I'm mostly just thinking the magnitude of what they'd need to be and I think they should be like, sort of a big deal to have one. The costs aren't really absolute at all and could be anything. I could see them being a bit cheaper for their first cost, but still should require a good hundred runs or more of that boss.. possibly 300 tokens? I've easily gone through a good 2000, probably closer to 3000 jelly gems and this is aimed at... well, me. If this came out.. could you imagine all the knights going through to get to it? Another idea would be to make it invisible as a menu item unless the knight has the 1000 tokens necessary.

The rocket launcher (not rocket puppy, it's like the ironclaw munitions turrets! That's why you'd be locked into a cardinal direction) is intended to be super clunky to use to balance out incredible range and the ability to basically drop a decent DPS bomb at will. I could see it getting the reload animation as the second hit.. so you could either choose to slow yourself and reload quickly, or move freely but have to wait longer for the knight to "forget" the position in the combo which would take longer.

You also nailed what I wanted the charge to look like, by the way. Like, it'd place the explosion marker wherever you used it, and would force the knight backwards in whatever direction by a bit, onto the ground as they launch the shot(s). Then, it would take a couple of seconds for the strikes to start falling, and would use the same icon as the enemies use- the one where it's a big crossheir.. but ours would be white, like a bomb.

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What do you think of the beast bell sword? The idea was to have it start out slowly, letting fiends etc. hit you if you're not careful.. and then proceed to close in on enemies, dealing relatively high damage but leaving you vulnerable at the end. So it'd take a lot of planning to use well, but would be pretty huge. The beast bell stun on charge would be like, a fairly hard counter to that monster family-- imagine fighting the rabid snarbolii and pulling out your own beast bell. Since beasts are already somewhat trivial and the normal combos would be much more dangerous than flourishes, I don't see it outclassing the likes of rigadoon and final flourish completely.. rather, it would make the most sense for one or two people to bring it on Heart of Ice, so that they can keep the beasts at bay when necessary.

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And what do you think I should have for dinner, by the way? I was thinking of something easy, like a tuna sandwhich or some ramen.

Wed, 11/18/2015 - 18:46

Fangel

Definitely tuna

Take some tuna, put it in a bowl, mix with mayonnaise, a bit of flavor spices, dill pickles, and celery. Use it as a dip and eat with onion garlic rice chips. Mmmm.

But back to the actual suggestions here - making items cheaper initially is what I was getting at. Better to let us try out a weapon before we try to invest that much time into it. 150 tokens would be, what, 50 runs? As time goes on you need even more tokens for the boss-material, increasing its price heavily while not being upfront about it.
I don't want items to require us to farm only boss missions, which is one reason why I liked the shadow lair idea. Heck, maybe even have the items require some of the PvP materials - mod calibrators can be found on the prize wheel so it's not overly unfair.

And right, I read that about the rocket launcher but still called it a rocket puppy. I blame muscle memory.
Having a "poof then fire" allows the rocket to have a bit of friendly fire ability - hurts you only though. With this, the initial poof would push enemies back so you don't hurt yourself, and the rocket would then be fired into them. I don't want to have another weapon that acts like another class - and rockets would push that line regardless of how you place 'em.

The beast bell sword is interesting. I would say it should cause a stun aura around itself rather than be a flat out beast bell, as it literally being a beast bell would A) make it trivial and B) break all snarbolax encounters. Its actual attack patterns are nice, despite it being a piercing brandish/cutter/calibur baby. Why not have final hit be a sealed sword slice instead of a 360 attack? 360 degree attack should be given to caliburs and bombs - the second swing of a sealed sword does do a full spin but just hits in front. In this way, it's kind of like an all-in-one sword, but it masters none of the areas. Not a brandish because it lacks the charge, not a cutter because it lacks the speed, not a sealed sword because it lacks the stopping power - but all of those are fine when against piercing weak enemies, making it a decent weapon.

Only problem is acheron final hit damage on the first swing. Damage boosted that would destroy lockdown and all fiends sans gorgos. Would need to be acheron first swipe damage.

Thu, 11/19/2015 - 13:05

Fehzor

Garlic rice chips you say? I've never thought to do this but will certainly try it.

Rocket launcher with poof would be a serious consideration for this and I could definitely see it working out, if it's possible to have 2 separate attacks on a gun- none do currently. I thought about that, the line crossing. We've already kind of obliterated it, was my thought. It could be possible for the charge to shoot a gun puppy rocket that seeks enemies XD. I also didn't think of it hurting you, ever.

Also the reason I didn't make it tokenable early at 150 is because it would be primarily an item drop. Really the huge token numbers + hiding it would ensure that you could always get one if you really wanted it. I could see it being the way you're saying though. I initially had it that way when writing the post and then changed it.

Breaking the snarbolax fights is kind of a concern but the weapon is also based around fighting the snarbolax to begin with. By the time you have one finished, there's no reason to fight the snarbolax and you're probably kind of sick of doing that anyway. By the time you have one ready to be of use it's at least 4* so we at least know the knight can do that. The only real concern is older knights helping newer knights with their beast bell, and I'm all for that.

What would you think of making snarbolax a normal enemy in the future, and then having the beast bell weapon around? These snarbolaxes would be more vulnerable to stun than the normal one, meaning that weapons like stagger storm, rigadoon, celestial saber and most importantly shield bashes would be viable tacticts.

Thu, 11/19/2015 - 13:47

Fangel

Hmm

I'm more worried about the snarbolax shadow lair, where the snarbolax does appear in several arenas leading up to the actual battle, and stunning it makes it retreat. Thus, this would trivialize one of the most unique threats in that shadow lair unless fully accounted for.

Having "snarblepup" enemies would be a fun thing to fight. However they should only have a 50%-75% damage reduction normally, with stun making them take 15% more damage (from 25% damage to 115% damage). This makes them a tanky and more difficult enemy - something I can get behind. A full on snarbolax shouldn't be normalized - none of our bosses should be normalized, however tough smaller versions are fine. Only bosses we ever fight to be normalized are the Ironwood Sentinel and Razwog from the tutorial, coming back as void lumbers and darkfang incinerators.

Making weapon drops a primary thing isn't all that great. With weapon drops currently it would take forever to get one to drop - I haven't seen a weapon drop in months despite finding two within 24 hours last time I found one. 150 tokens seems like a lot, but it doesn't seem helpless. Item drops and 1000 tokens seems helpless. However, 150 tokens up front and then needing more tokens for materials? Not as hopeless, even if the end result is a lot of tokens.
As long as getting the 2* is reasonable but getting the 5* is a fun challenge that takes a lot of effort, it's all good.

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Special boss weapons based on their boss level mechanics #EndgameEffortSinks