Honestly - this is an mmo I would rather pay 60 for up front and play free forever (like guidwars) than have as a f2p micro transaction black hole in my wallet :\

So cute and fun ^_^

SEE. MICS. HE QUIT BECAUSE OF MIC SUPPORT.

"I had this great new sword. Now I can't try it out."

That's what the advanced training hall is for.

Nexon actually figured something out?!

I... I think my worldview has just been shattered. They're supposed to be the pinnacle of dumb pay2win games! Next thing I know, you'll tell me that they're not scrapping an old game and releasing another "new" one every few months!

Woah woah WOAH, hold on, Wolver's only better for new players if they're using swords and they're facing Slimes and Beasts in the upcoming Strata.

Speaking of which, since we're talking about Tier 2 right now, people should know that Tier 2 is when alternate damage types start showing up, all of the damage you've been eating in Tier 1 has been Normal (Red) damage, now in tier 2, there are three extra types to watch out for. If you dont know what damage an enemy does, look for a small aura just after they commit to an attack but before they launch it, the aura's colour shows its attack type.

Elemental (Green), This type is often dealt out by some Gremlins and most Constructs, alongside being partially added to any attack that can deal a status effect apart from Stun and Curse (i think?).

Piercing (Yellow), This type comes from Beasts of all kinds, Slimes with the exception of Small Lichens and Bomb Cubes and Spike Traps.

Shadow (Purple), This type comes from all Fiends and Undead, With the exception of Pit Bosses, Yesmen and Wings.

In Tier 3, the alternate damage types will be coming at you at full force, so unless you have some good armor set(s) that can defend against these types of damage, you will be knocked onto your arse if you cant dodge them.

Well.. thetre is one important factor most new players miss, and becouse of this, spending ALOT of more energy than needed..
You can acctually resurect your fellow knights without paying energy..
So when you die. Let your friends walk up to you and res you.. and no energy paid :D

The only cost for this is that the resurector gives the resurected half of his current HP.

I hope Three Rings has the good conscience to remove the fatigue system, or at least make it so energy isn't required for dungeoning.

I'd say you need a little more time before making that call.

Don't revive with energy unless your whole team is wiped out. You can revive by sharing health instead (walk up to the defeated player, turn towards them, and press the attack button when you're close enough that the little white heart icon appears over your head).

In the event of a total wipe, ONE person should energy-revive, then health-revive one or two other people to clear out the threat before bringing up the rest of the team.

(Also, experiment with your Shield, it will save your life a lot.)

New players don't have as tough a time getting to T2 these days as some people tend to believe. If you can farm tokens from Snarbolax without any problems, you only have to spend Crowns on armor and a helmet. The Snarbolax gear may not be ideal but it makes getting to T2 easier.

"CE is about 6k-7k per now."

Currently, it's 5k per and still dropping.

These young'uns still complainin' 'bout Crystal En-ner-gee... Boy, I'll tell you what, back in ma day, Crystal Energy was twenty thous-and crowns. And we bought it too with no complaints, mmm, I'll tell you what.

Replicant is correct.
Once the game went public, CE prices went from 22k down to 2k overnight. They've never been that high again, and they never will be. More players means lower prices for everybody. When PvP was released in the Closed Beta, prices went from 20k to 3k overnight.

Quit yer bellyachin' and enjoy the delicious, delicious progress the game is making!

"If you're going to propose that they remove the only way that the game makes money, then how do you propose that they make money off of the game?"

You do realize that there are other methods of charging for games other than pay-per-level, right?

get off my lawn

Not only are their other ways to make money besides imposing immersion-breaking (the worst thing you can do in any RPG) playtime limitations on new players, you're not limited to implementing only one of them. If Three Rings is making money with their current fatigue-based payment paradigm -- that's fine -- but I can also guarantee you that they're losing money by employing it exclusively.

I just downloaded this game from Steam today, and I was having a better time with it then I expected. I was crawling dungeons with a couple friends, getting a feel for the mechanics and the world, when all of the sudden the all-powerful rate limiter told me that my experience today was over lest I offer them an immediate, legally-tendered tribute. My friends continued onto the next clocktower; I guess they used their energy more efficiently than I did.

This immediately corrupted whatever goodwill this game's somewhat novel gameplay and attractively designed, unique-enough universe had built up over the past hour-and-a-half. Perhaps the carrot-on-a-stick works on teenagers, children, and animals, but I don't find it to be a pleasant or encouraging feeling. As a near-adult who has made his fair share of poor purchases based on the veneer of an interesting product, I'm not likely to fork over my money when I've barely gotten my foot in the door. And as I've already seen numerous times in this thread, people will probably offer me pearls of wisdom such as "that's how the game is, we've all had to deal with it," "back in my day it was worse," and "there are ways around it if carefully map your experience for the next week."

(Sidebar: none or few of you seem to be paying Three Rings any money, curious).

However, I don't want to do any of those things. I want to be free to enjoy the game at my leisure, make my own mistakes and discover content myself without the wiki at my side and the spectre of energy-drain hovering over my shoulder the entire journey. I work all day, and I'm neither going to work to play this game nor am I going to endure a price-gouging microtransaction based payment system. Which is not to suggest that I'm not willing to pay for the convenience of actually enjoying what should be a game. I'd happily pay them a flat fee to purchase the product, and I'd happily pay a monthly fee similar to products of comparable quality to enjoy it without interruption. All I ask is that you let me get a feel for a game, like other companies typically do, before trying to saddle me with a bad purchase.

It's too bad, because I do think this game seems fun and has potential to be really neat, but as it stands I'm not likely to find out. I'm sure there are others similarly-minded whose money is lost to Three Ring's inflexibility.

Hi. Paying customer here who's both a working adult and grad school student, so I'm probably closer to your situation with limited time and funds. I'll let you know what you do get with your money's worth.

I feel your use of the word "price-gouging" is a bit unfair, really - they give you a generous amount of energy for relatively little cost. 750 energy is the cheapest option at $2.45, and is probably enough to get you a headstart to never worry about energy drain again. There's the option to buy energy from other players with crowns, and at current rates, you're very likely to earn enough in crowns on your dungeon dives to come out with more than you spent on energy. You won't drain that 750 energy down to 0; it'll actually keep increasing if you're on the frugal side. It sounds like you just want a cushion so you don't have to worry about bottoming out at all.

And look, $2.45 is peanuts compared to ... other entertainment venues. How much is it to go to a matinee these days? For what, two hours?

This is why the system actually appeals to me; it's set up precisely so it *isn't* a money vacuum. The earliest levels are the toughest, but after some advancement, it becomes sustainable, and the spectre eventually disappears.

Contrast to other "you need to pay continually to advance, you need money-bought gear instead of ones found in-game, you can pay for a key to open chests for a chance at finding things that MIGHT be rare but odds are you'll just get vendor trash you could have gotten for free" schemes in F2P games. Those rely on Skinnerian mechanics, operant conditioning practices that fuel a desire but never fulfill it, where they want to drain more and more money out of you because what you pay for gives you a rush of endorphines which eventually dwindles away.

In summary, Spiral Knights has left a much more pleasant taste in my mouth than other F2P microtransaction models I've experienced. I paid once because I thought the guys did a great job, and I was done.

P.S. If you got out of the tutorial, you should have received a mail with an item attached called a "Mist Tank." That's a one-time-use item that instantly refills your Mist Energy, and either your friends managed their energy more efficiently than you did or they used that and you didn't notice it. That's given to new players precisely to give them more time to satiate their curiosity.

P.P.S. I've always felt 100 Mist a day was enough for me, anyway; I just play it a delve at a time and stay conservative with my energy use. Limited time with my studies and work and all that.

"This is why the system actually appeals to me; it's set up precisely so it *isn't* a money vacuum. The earliest levels are the toughest, but after some advancement, it becomes sustainable, and the spectre eventually disappears."

It's still a money vacuum doing it your way. You're just exchanging crowns in order to have somebody else fund your vacuum.

Probably. I can't remember myself if I had that issue (ah, the beta days), but it seems like it would be a common occurence given the "shallow" (read: pick-up-and-play) nature of the game.

"At the point when a new player reaches the end of his or her starter mist, is it typically the case that they don't even know about the exchange? Setting aside the issue of whether they have enough crowns to use it immediately."

On my first few days, I didn't know about it.

However, I do think it'd be a bigger priority to get new players to be aware of reviving by health-share rather than energy. It's on a loading-screen tip, but you'd be shocked how many players even in Tier 3 have no clue about this, and it reduces the impact of "I can't get much playtime out of 100 Mist!" on new players, by teaching them how to better conserve it.

Yes... 'I'm out of energy how can I get more?' is the most common newbie question (slightly more popular than 'where is the arcade?' and 'how do I get to the warden?') ... Telling them where the energy interface results nine times out of ten in 'Oh, I have to pay real money... ' ; they don't seem to explore the tabs, and the 'crowns' is buried in a list of cash payment options looking like it's some gaming version of paypal.

Of course if you're already familiar with the game, you -know- crowns are game currency and might figure it out, but by then you're already familiar with the game.

I understand why the credit card tab is first (and anyone who buys CE with crowns more often than they buy it with cash wants it to stay that way) but it does obscure the crown-CE market pretty well.

(Oh, yes, and I've been seeing this energy question since the launch, and from adults and college kids, not just from the ones who are on the edge of the playing age. I cannot, of course, speak to whether or not said persons enjoyed a glass of wine or any other inebriating substances before settling into gaming.)

Fun fact: For the first week I played the game, I went to the stranger in town square to use the energy market - I didn't know you could just click on the energy number to get the market!

As for a personal experience, it was never clear that I could exchange CE for crowns. I "discovered" that, no NPC or PC has told me about it. And helped a bunch of folks to discover that too.

"Ahhh, there's no way to get energy here?"
"Click on your energy numbers, go to trade tab and see if you have enough crowns to buy them."
"Wait, I cant get energy without real $$$?"
"Pretty much. I didn't know that either. ^^"

@majic13: Basically, B.F. Skinner was a psychologist that studied operant conditioning. Hamster has a lever in his cage, he pulls the lever to get the food, learns a "lever -> food" connection. In the context of games, Skinnerian mechanics are those that want to get you pumping that little lever as much as possible to get that food.

(i'm a bit tired at the moment so I can't be too verbose, but that's close enough and you can look into B.F. Skinner more if you'd like!)

EDIT: Oh, also, I think that is a *fantastic* suggestion, regarding the first time a player runs low on energy. Something along the lines of an e-mail or a pop-up notification when someone reaches an elevator with <10 energy for the first time. Right now, it seems like the skinny on energy is hidden away and only discovered by talking to a couple of NPCs or realizing that the energy trade window has multiple tabs.