Spiral Knights - Designing a new sleep themed danger mission

Designing a new sleep themed danger mission

7 replies [Last post]

Fri, 03/16/2018 - 12:40

Fehzors-Forum-Alt

GOALS:

-To make sleep themed armors a worthwhile investment
-To provide a challenge for players that comes with great rewards (prestige + some rads)
-To expand upon the sleep status
-To provide a danger mission that favors normal damage

To begin with, I want to look at what armors and items we have for dealing with sleep-

--Royal jelly set--
This grants good resistance vs piercing, normal, and stun/sleep

--Starlit demo set--
Somewhat like jelly set but with bomb boosts (ctr) and less resistance...
Important: Negative stun resistance!

--Starlit hunting set--
Somewhat like jelly set but with sword boosts (damage) and less resistance...
Important: Negative stun resistance!

An ever-present source of stun, to make armor decision meaningful

I want to create a new enemy for this mission- the shaman, which function similarly to phantoms. I envision shamans as follows-

-Shamans behave like phantoms
-Shamans are a beast enemy
-Shamans can be killed for good, and have drops
-Shamans come in two varieties- stun and sleep
-Shamans have a haze surrounding them that does minor stun or sleep, which can be overcame via max+max+low status resistance
-Shamans' charge attack is that of the almirian crusader's lance, not the phantom's bullet attack
-Shamans are elite enemies, like grievers and mecha knights
-Shamans are immune to sleep, freeze and stun
-Shamans are weak to fire

Having a stun cloud floating around would cripple those that bring in more offensive armors, making them play around that status. Meanwhile, those who choose royal jelly must suffer from not having any offensive bonuses.

Other Enemies (how do we favor normal damage?)

Slooms would be a necessary enemy to place here, and would make up most of the fights. Since slooms are weak to shadow and beasts (shamans) are weak to piercing, it would make sense to provide undead here in addition. That way, there is no one weapon type that can "solve" this danger mission, and normal becomes an asset. Undead I'm interested in seeing include phantoms as an ever present threat (same as in graveyards), and dust zombies, since those deal stun.

Fri, 03/16/2018 - 13:06

Yoriichi

Shamans

Hmmm I like the idea of shamans but what if they weren't limited to a singular status problem? Immunity to status problems plus the ability to cast any status problem, possibly when charging for the attack a color to indicate the status is given would be fun. Of course if this is the case, their damage would be low as that would be pretty OP

Fri, 03/16/2018 - 13:12

Yoriichi

Although i understand this is

Although i understand this is an idea for a "sleep" mission, just a thought to expand the monster list

Sat, 03/17/2018 - 18:48

Fangel

Interesting

I really like this idea. One thing I do want to point towards is that all danger missions do have a "hard counter" to them, and all danger mission enemies are weak to the same specialized damage type.

I would say to have this danger mission be gremlin and slime themed (like C42), but introduce new gremlin variants who have been "consumed" by their dreams. Give them sleeping caps, and potentially move like zombies (sleepwalking). These gremlins can inflict stun, and can be potentially "woken up"' after taking too much damage, which they will switch behavior to their normal counterpart before potentially dozing off and switching back. These monsters should have higher health pools, and be invulnerable for a brief moment after being woken up.

For the shaman type enemy, the gremlins could have a new stalker unit called a "sleeper agent" or "startle agent", which act similar if not identical to the shaman enemy described above. To change things up, allow these enemies to have a "damage shield" similar to the mender shield (but without making them immobile) that will resist the damage type that the shield is the color of. This is to prevent very powerful shadow weapons from obliterating the shaman enemies before they can do their thing.

These shields also will help favor the "normal damage" type, as shaman will be unable to shield against normal damage (only shadow, but this behavior may also be applied to several other enemies and damage types in the level as a unique gameplay and puzzle mechanic).

From there, just have a few other "neutral to shadow" type enemies if you need to. Lumbers are a great source for stun (and show up in the shrine of slumber, probably for the slumber part and to make the stun negatives have meaning), and since there are no "brute" tier enemies for either slimes or gremlins, are a great choice for these levels.

Sat, 03/17/2018 - 20:35

Fehzors-Forum-Alt

all danger mission enemies are weak to the same specialized damage type

I thought about this and to be honest I think it needs to change a bit. We have 4 that are like that, and adding a 5th that's weak to shadow would be sort of boring imo. That's why I suggested making it armor focused instead of damage type focused. Black kat and chaos sets wouldn't fly here, whereas they excel at multiple other danger missions, especially with UVs taken into account. I also wanted to avoid creating starlight cradle 2.0, so I did away with the lumbers and other construct. Stun zombies were chosen due to their stun breath attacks and resistance types.

Tue, 03/20/2018 - 13:58

Fangel

some food for thought

It's just the formula that's introduced each time. Either you need to encourage defense specialization or weapon specialization. Honestly, half of the danger missions are designed around defense specialization already:
- Ghosts in the Machine has a hard defense counter (Divine Veil, Divine Mantle), and so all enemies are weak to elemental
- Compound 42 has a hard defense counter (Dragon Scale Helm, Dragon Scale Mail), and so all enemies are weak to shadow

Then we have the other two outliers:
- Heart of Ice does not currently have a hard counter for defenses, but it allows you to focus on mixing and matching freeze resistant gear to suit your needs better. By making piercing damage the only required damage type, it prevents players from getting too lost
- Legion of Almire is the only wildcard since it is practically just an undead level. Of all the danger missions, it is the most in need of a change (ie, introduce another monster family into the mix to make weapon choice matter) since all monsters deal shadow damage, and all monsters are weak to elemental damage

When a danger mission uses too many monster families, it ends up like Grinchlin Assault, which uses 5/6 monster families. Sure this can be pretty difficult, but you'll notice there isn't an emphasis on status at all (while there are freeze enemies, they are not abundant. While there are fire enemies, they do not directly inflict fire)

Having too many statuses that are abundant along with too many damage types to worry about causes a situation where players cannot specialize properly. A danger mission should be dangerous but encourage expanding your arsenal. If we want the levels to focus on sleep themed gear, we need to make the damage types match (piercing damage) or have damage resistances match (shadow weak monsters). Other enemy variants can be present in the level where applicable, such as the undead portions of the gloaming wildwoods, but should not be a centerpoint of the danger mission.

Tue, 03/20/2018 - 19:33

Fehzors-Forum-Alt

I actually really agree with what you wrote, which is why I want to minimize it to 2x status, the only 2x status that matter because of armor choices being obvious, and to 3 enemy families. I would have done fiends + slimes for this mission, but that makes the armor choice quite a bit wonkier, as fiends are a great threat that dominate armor choice fairly often. This is as concise as I could figure it out to be.

So here's kind of what I"m thinking:

2/5 of the threat = Shamans = Piercing
2/5 of the threat = Slooms = Piercing
1/5 of the threat = Dust Zombiers = Shadow

My thought is that dust zombies are kind of an easy enemy compared to shamans (a new and powerful threat) and slooms (the random spin attack is something many players struggle with). The dust zombies balance the status breakdown out-

1/2 = stun (stun breath, shamans)
1/2 = sleep (slooms haze, shamans)

The idea isn't to prevent specialized weapons, but to reward embracing normal heavily. Weapons like Iron Slug, Volcanic Pepperbox, and Valiance would be very useful to bring here, while bringing 2 of the same weapon line would be less efficient, but still doable. For instance, I would expect players to bring something like combuster and blitz needle. This leaves them weak to slooms, and having to utilize their blitz against the shamans. It would create a new feel for danger missions.

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What do you think the actual level design should be like? I'm unsure about that, which is why I didn't write about it. I also think a swamp theme could be cool.

Tue, 03/20/2018 - 21:45

Fangel

I see

I guess what I was pushing at is that the danger missions usually have a pretty straightforward requirement going in. C42 is dragon scale set + shadow weapons of choice. GitM is divine set + elemental weapons of choice. HoI is piercing weapons and freeze resistant defenses of choice. LoA is elemental weapons of choice and shadow resistant armor of choice.

With this level, following a similar formula, it would lean towards "royal jelly and shadow weapons of choice". It becomes a bit of a curveball since zombies are resistant to shadow damage, and as a tankier enemy (while not difficult) this can cause a bit more issues. What would be a great use for zombies would be as level hazards rather than level elements. Instead of having zombies spawn as enemies that need to be killed, have zombies spawn on a respawner (or in battles, if not a respawner, as not part of the wave). This allows players to kill the zombies if they wish, but it doesn't punish players with a very slow mandatory kill.

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Level design wise, I would believe an altar or temple with passageways through a crypt would be an excellent way to tie all of these themes together. A swamp area does seem like a natural habitat but I'm not sure what reason knights would have storming a swamp in the relevance of danger missions. Story-wise, perhaps some sort of nightmare plague has been hitting knights, and they all dream of the same location. Turns out, a sort of necromancer gremlin (mender of sorts) has started some experiments regarding slooms and the undead, and in doing so has awoken some powerful creatures who guard the crypt.

This would be a fun story to run with since it gives a reason for each enemy to be around. Beasts can be inhabiting the ancient ruins much like they do in the aurora isles with slooms having been brought in by the gremlin mender. The undead are simply byproducts of the mender's research, hence why they are less of the primary threat.

Perhaps a knight was kidnapped after dreaming of this place and trying to find it, and HQ wants us to retrieve them. We can either A) save them from a cruel ritual, or B) arrive too late to save the knight, but put a stop to the mender's experiments.

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Designing a new sleep themed danger mission