Spiral Knights - Finally I understand Radiants. I hope.

Finally I understand Radiants. I hope.

8 replies [Last post]

Mon, 10/10/2016 - 17:52

Jiker

So I ran Vana recently on advanced and got 0 radiant fire crystals. Then yesterday I did a T3 run and found a little over a dozen in the final few depths. What I concluded was, because the Arcade was once dead when missions came out and made FSC readily accessible, the devs adjusted the drop rates to have Radiants drop more frequently in the Arcade so people would be encouraged to explore the Clockworks.

My only problem with this is that an Elite T3 solo run took me about an hour and a half, which for me is 30 minutes too much.

And I wasted crowns in the slime casino.

And I used 2 sparks on a gremlin arena.

But I found some sparks on the following depths, so that was pretty good.

Also energy prices are CRAZY. 10k cr? I remember when they were 6k, and I thought that was expensive. Imagine trying to craft 2* gear farming the first handful of depths. That's what, 600cr/run? This is some hard-hitting capitalism going on here. We need the GMs to take the rich players' crowns and gear and redistribute them to the masses! Then the SK economy and society would be perfect! We also need ban squads to eliminate players who resist! YES! FOR A PERFECT SPIRAL ORDER!

Mon, 10/10/2016 - 18:09

Bopp

please continue

The amount of Radiants that arises in any given level or mission is random, but distributed near a mean. You have to make many more observations, to get good estimates of the mean and dispersion. So please continue to gather data.

Mon, 10/10/2016 - 18:13

Midnight-Dj

@Bopp

I don't think we are all as eager to gather data on a dying game as you. This guy jumps into conclusion way too quick.

Mon, 10/10/2016 - 18:23

Paintool

Before some other person

Before some other person jumps, I guess I would like to address your post with critique.

To me it sounds like you are just figuring out the 5* fire crystal dilemma for the first time, based on just a handful of runs. Yes there are times when an FSC run will be cruel and net you zero 5* rads. But I've been running this game since 2012, and the 2013 update that changed everything. I've had runs in FSC back when it was closer to 50 rads +/-. I remember when they said they "fixed" the radiant distribution to just depth 28 and you'd get 3-6 maybe. These days you can get somewhere around 30 if you're lucky, but that means you'd have to go many times. The bell curve in this distribution is very flat, meaning you'll have a ton of runs with variable amounts of radiants. That being said, when you're heating 5* items that literally require hundreds of thousands to heat a full set, yes this game is broken, and the same people who have been working for this company for years refuse to address the issue that was so easily and disastrously broken to bottleneck endgame players to keep grinding instead of playing for fun. You don't make money from people having fun; you make money by frustrating gambling addicts into spending money on short cuts AKA supply depot fire crystals and random distribution "prize boxes".

Concerning the energy issue, although they say the energy market is a player controlled market, OOO/Grey Havens actually control the market, albeit indirectly. It's actually in their best interest to refuse to be hands on and effect the market. That's why they stopped selling boxes with energy, and made boxes more prevalent at the exact same cash price as before: now people who don't have energy have to buy even MORE energy to get rare/exclusive items.

I'm not slamming on Cronus's turf because it's his job and stuff, but players of this game need to seriously look at the evidence presented to them. This game is a FREE 2 PLAY game, which are designed from the theoretical ground up to make you want to keep playing and spend money (since you pay nothing up front). The game has all the bright lights and just enough strategy and mix of art design elements, but to say it is an artistic/social marvel of game design that doesn't rely on skinner box reward variable systems...

This game literally has a casino in it.
I'm too red pilled to play this game for fun anymore... I just want my 5* rads and 5000 hours of my life back.
Spiral HQ isn't real; it's just a name on a piece of mail you get.
These are the same ghosts in the shell that brought you gatecrasher helms for 20K energy and Mixmasters/Celestial weapons at >1% odds.

It is what it is, and it is very a apparently and obviously a broken capitalist system that favors the sick and greedy 1%.

-drops mic and a purple spiral on the floor-

Mon, 10/10/2016 - 18:30

Fehzors-Forum-Alt

My data from Dreams and Nightmares suggests a rather high amount of variance on treasure box drops. What this means is that you're very likely to get 0 rads, 30+ rads, or the average. It's all very spotty.

Mon, 10/10/2016 - 18:45

Bopp

it's almost as if

It's almost as if we need to gather a bunch of data and use statistics on them.

Tue, 10/11/2016 - 23:48

Jiker

Hey guys

To be clear, I have run FSC multiple times in the past, though I always shied away from Vana himself because I have yet to be properly outfitted for such a fight without help. You are still right that I jumped to a conclusion. It just seemed absurd that I could run through the toughest non-shadow boss area without a single radiant. I am finding the Arcade to be a slow but steady source of radiants, and since I spend less time per level than FSC, it feels like I'm making more progress when in reality I'm making maybe a handful fewer crowns than I would in FSC.

I also realize that my communism joke wasn't nearly as funny as I thought. Oh well.

Wed, 10/12/2016 - 04:29

Neometal

It comes down to what maps you'll play on d26-28.
Arenas are the best, clockwork tunnels maps if you find dr-s are good, as weel as tv-s, compounds/dec zones are bad, etc.

Sat, 10/15/2016 - 18:48

Skepticraven

↑↑↓↓←→←→ba

Arcade Box Averages
Although the data is old (collection thread), the general gist is still about the same.
The most notable change is that compounds got an increase of boxes (likely pushing them to #13/15 instead of #14/15).

I also did this thread for a bit, if you wanted to look at when the arcade is "worthwhile".

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Finally I understand Radiants. I hope.