Well, I'm not really sure this thread is aimed to be a full-fledged suggestion, but rather a somewhat uncoordinated, random ramble about OCD and virtual, colored crystals.
I know maybe I shouldn't try too hard to bring in logic to some things but anyways...
First of all: I'm "new" to SK. I've been playing this game for about a year and a half, with mayor pauses because of university, etc...
I never experienced the old gate-construction-mechanics, so my insights on that are fairly limited, but I gathered that there were different receipts or combinations for different themed strata, resulting in the arcade's ice-age after the introduction of Battle Sprites.
Those different mineral combinations relied on the association of a color with a specific status or damage type. Now we only have leftovers from that system - and this is were my OCD starts to kick in.
I'll start talking about things I'm sure you all know but it helps me to sort things out in my head.
We currently associate:
- Dark Matter with Maskeraith and shadow-dmg - Pretty straight forward.
- Luminite with Seraphynx and what I assume to be piercing-dmg - Fiends are weak to piercing, there is the Dazzling Light Ray and the whole divine vs evil situation; you catch my cold.
- Crimsonite with Drakon and ... fire-status? Wait, wait, wait. No! The other two have mayor damage types!
I know Crimsonite used to power fire-themed strata and the Drakon causes fire, but hear me out:
"A fabled mineral of a fiery, red color said to contain the passion, anger and strength of the life surrounding it."
- Crimson is the color of normal-dmg as opposed to the orange and maroon fire-symbol
- the Deadly Shard Bomb - exploding Crimsonite chunks - deals pure normal-dmg
- the Drakon is advertised as the dps-pet and usually pure normal-dmg weapons are stronger as their variants in terms of raw power, if we let out mob-weaknesses.
Maybe fire was the best way to make the Drakon the dps-pet it is supposed to be and we shouldn't necessarily link a damage-type to a status condition, although there seem to be a certain affinty patterns like shadow and poison or curse, but there's also the Plague Needle, Dread Venom Striker, Venom Veiler, etc. With that said, we hopefully can establish a separation between dmg-type and status condition.
(I'd really like to see some fire-shadow weapons... hell make Fang of Vog do split Shadow-Normal-dmg, with slight chance of causing strong fire, give it a cutter combo and I'll throw monies at you GH!)
Back on track: we now are missing a mineral for elemental-dmg and are left with Moonstone and Valestone which are either considered to be linked with freeze and poison or freeze and shock respectively.
Valestone:
A fabled mineral of a vibrant green color said to contain the essence of all natural life.
The hues of green are similar enough for it to represent elemental-dmg and the tool-tip description seems fitting.
Moonstone seems now out of place if we consider the other minerals represent dmg-types and not status conditions, so I don't really know where to place it.
While this assumes we get a 4th BS I don't really want to stay in the "make more pets to give MS and VS some use" suggestion but I'd rather like to see gate-powering re-implemented, perhaps with a new combination system based on minerals solely linked to dmg-types and status-themed strata be determined by some other factors, or some other twist.
Similarly feeding battle sprites different combinations of minerals could affect evolution paths or maybe Moonstone could to some extent replace energy and be used to alter the velocity of the clockworks' real time cycles.
I've currently lost my train of thought and would like to hear your opinions and ideas before continuing. Sorry if this is a huge brainfart but I had to get this out of my system. P.S: I'm very tired and I'll revise the post should there be anything unclear.
TL;DR: Minerals should represent only the four damage types and not a combination of them and seemingly arbitrary chosen status conditions. Moonstone is a wildcard for any suggestion that could come up later in this thread or should be scrapped entirely.
1. "I'd rather like to see gate-powering re-implemented, perhaps with a new combination system based on minerals solely linked to dmg-types and status-themed strata be determined by some other factors, or some other twist."
>Personally, I'm alright with the system being entirely random. I'd much rather just have some system to just dump the crystals and get an x amount of crowns like they did with the old mineral depository. No real need to bring back the old system and have constructs/gremlins (likely freeze) EVERYWHERE.
2. "Similarly feeding battle sprites different combinations of minerals could affect evolution paths"
>Sounds interesting enough to me, however, they would definitely need to make pets much easier to acquire (as in a significant price lower) for all players to utilize this fully.
3. "Moonstone could to some extent replace energy and be used to alter the velocity of the clockworks' real time cycles."
>If it's say replace the costs to get into danger/treasure box rooms and/or power up turrets/mecha knights (only), I'm all for it. As for the second one, no real comment on that one for the time being.