I don't know what the oil spill is supposed to be. I can't remember ever seeing it. It appears to have been first added to the page in the edit of 08:23, 5 April 2012‎ by Yoccm. I don't know this user, but s/he has made a lot of decent wiki edits, so I doubt that s/he is a troll.

Nitronicx might be onto something. Perhaps Yoccm was confused by a demo dropping bombs, or an oiler dropping slicks. Perhaps they just seemed to come out of a nearby scorcher.

Unless someone chimes in with verification and explanation, I would support deleting the oil spill text from the page.

Well... I haven't encountered any rare monsters while I was working on my document, but I believe it will be useful.

https://uloz.to/!zv3YXL8aoXId/spiral-knights-xlsx
(Stáhnout pomalu -> Stáhnout, or simply change the language in the upper right corner if it won't be in English.)

= Spreadsheet explanation =

Normal number represents regular HP of that monster at that depth.

If there is a number with brackets after it, it means that it is HP of monster that was "pulled from lower depth." In the brackets is location where that monster was found. If the monster looked like Tier 2 monster, there's also T2 written in the brackets (but it seems that not always). Other numbers in the bracket are how much damage 3* Striker at level 10 does to them (because I was gathering HP data with it).

Location can be shortcut of regular Clockworks levels (Scarlet Fortress) or mission names (Toy Soldiers). DR means Danger Room, Tut are monsters encountered before reaching Rescue Camp.

Question marks next to some value mean that I'm not sure if the value is correct. This can be either because I think I made a mistake while counting hits or the value appears to be wrong (it doesn't fit with other data). Shufflebot's HP is 30, I was just uncertain if it should be written in Depth 1 row (you don't know the depth).

It actually happened to me a few times that I could explain the wrong data as me placing the right data at wrong place. So, there's a small risk working with this spreadsheet.

(OCH) next to the depth number means that OCH mission starts at that depth.

The "def" value says after how much damage enemy switches to defensive mode. You can find it mostly in Gremlin Thwacker column.

Similarly, values in bracket after Collector's HP say how much damage needs to be done in order to spawn 1st/2nd wave of enemies. The 12 values afterwards are, again, Striker damage numbers. First 4 are for low defense. Second 4 should be for high defense and last 4 for a brief moment when his defense is not fully up yet. I'm not sure if it's not the other way around, but it shouldn't be.

Bosses that reset HP after each phase (Seerus, Groat) have written HP as HP/phase in the table. Each phase begins with set amount of health and after you deplete the specified amount of HP, the phase ends.

Events connected to depleting HP below certain threshold (Collector's waves, Gremlins' defensive behaviour) can be understand as triggers set to certain fraction of HP (Gremlins -> 25% of full HP, Collector -> 70%, 40%).

There's a summary table at the end of HP tables for all 3 difficulties. It contains collected values for most common HP magnifications.

In summary table for Advanced difficulty, there's value 1620 in Depth 30 row. This value comes from Alpha Wolvers killed at Depth 28. Alpha Wolvers in Wolver Den arenas are pulled from much lower depths than they are found in and Alpha Wolver in 3rd wave is stronger that the one in the 2nd. Because both Alpha Wolvers had same HP and defense and the HP seemed to be for depth 30, I assumed that the Depth 30 is the final depth in the game and entered the value there. Otherwise the summary table doesn't contain values from "depth pulled"-enemies.

However, the big HP Summary table does. It contains all collected HP values (both normal and from depth pulled-enemies) that I think are correct. There could be mistakes, but it should be unlikely. In other words, you should trust this data.

= HP Formula =

In HP Calculated table are all values calculated via a formula that fits for all collected HP values (values in HP Summary sheet).

I'll try to explain the formula I've used, but before that: how I'll write the ROUND function:
ROUND[ number; number of decimal places to round to ]
ROUND[ 76,66666; 3 ] = 76,667

So first, the base depth HP value:

Depth HP = ROUND[ MinStratumHP + ( (CurrentDepth - MinStratumDepth) * (MaxStratumHP - MinStratumHP) / (MaxStratumDepth - MinStratumDepth) ); 3 ]

A bit scary formula, but all it is supposed to do is linearly increase HP between given depths. For example, Tier 1 starts at Depth 1 with base HP of 40 and ends at Depth 7 with base HP of 150. If you supply these min/max values to the formula, it will increase base HP by 18,333... per depth. (40; 58,333; 76,666; 95; 113,333; 131,666; 150).

The Min/Max stratum HP/Depth are a bit tricky to incorporate here. As hinted above, you could use Tiers and not Strata. This works for Tiers 1 and 2, however in Tier 3, the base HP increases by 56,25 per depth up to Depth 23. Then it increases by 57,857... per depth (at least these numbers make sense with my data). Thus, I decided to choose Strata for this, since HPs at the edges of them look nice too (95 for Depth 4, 267,5 for Depth 13, 675 for Depth 23). The only point of concern is that for Depth 13 it's 267,5 what's not as pretty as the other numbers.

To somewhat summarize this Max/Min HP/Depth thing, HP increases linearly between:
D1 -> D7 (HP 40 -> 150),
D9 -> D17 (HP 160 -> 375),
D19 -> D23 (HP 450 -> 675) and
D23 -> D30 (HP 675 -> 1080).

Depths 8 and 18 are special cases I wasn't able to incorporate here. They use same values as the depth below them. This was tested during Apocrea event, which features a bit too many levels to fit into a standard Stratum. You can find the data in the Advanced difficulty HP table (Harvester, Scarabs, Souls). Depth 8 is just assumed to work similarly. There is one data point to weakly support it, and that's Jelly Cube HP for Normal difficulty. Scarlet Fortress featured some enemies pulled from lower depths and I encountered both T1 and T2 Jelly Cubes with 128 HP (normal HP for that depth was 120). Alpha Wolver data from Wolver Dens could support it, too. On a side note, enemies in these 2 depths can probably spawn both as Tier 1 or Tier 2 (or T2 or T3) variants.

The ROUND function is here because of an inconsistency that will show up later in the process. I used rounding to 3 decimal places, but I doubt it's precisely how the mechanism in game works. Changing this number usually affects only a handful of numbers. You can try this in the HP Experiment table. Change the Round value and you can see which values change compared to the HP Calculated table in the TRUE/FALSE table next to it.

Now we can finally continue with next step!

Base Monster HP = ROUNDUP[ DepthHP * HPMagnification; 0 ]

Simple step, depth HP gets properly magnified and gets rounded up. Because most monsters have same HP as is depth HP (100% HP magnification), this step only rounds up the depth HP. Final HPs are whole numbers.

Here comes into play the rounding procedure from earlier. There is a minor incosistency in Depth 3 HPs. They are almost linear, but they aren't. If you calculate it without that rounding and you get a whole number (such as 76,666 * 300% = 230), the monster will have +1 HP (231 HP). I assumed this happens because the decimal part isn't 0 and thus added the rounding function to mimic this "error" (76,667 * 300% = 230,001 = 231).

Finally, we still need to make difference between various difficulties:

Final Monster HP = ROUNDDOWN[ BaseMonsterHP * DifficultyFactor; 0 ]

DifficultyFactor:
Normal = 4/5 = 0,8
Advanced = 1
Elite = 5/4 = 1,25

As you likely know, there used to be only one difficulty, and that difficulty is now Advanced. Since difficulties were added later, it makes sense they are appended as the last step of the calculation. BaseMonsterHP can be considered basically as Monster's HP on Advanced difficulty. For Advanced difficulty, this last step doesn't change the final HP at all.

This time I had to round down the numbers for some reason. It appers chaotic to me to round it down when I had to previously round it up, but it works. Maybe something about multiplying integers without converting them to decimal number first?

And that's the formula I've used. The true formula the game uses may be different, but this works pretty well, so I've used it.

Almost every HP value I've collected can be calculated as HP at certain depth with certain HP magnification. The game very rearely uses any other numbers. For example Snarbolax. They didn't gave him an arbitrary amount of HP, he has 500% of depth HP. Also the HP magnification is always a multiple of 25%.

= The Lichens =

I've also wanted to talk a bit about Lichens! Lichens in Tier 1 are the smallest. They have 100% HP. When two such lichens join, they form one larger slime with 125% HP. This lichen also has 2 cores. When another lichen joins in, the lichen will have 150% HP and 3 cores. By counting the cores, you can determine how strong a lichen is. The number of cores is simply added together when lichens merge. 3 core and 2 core lichens form a 5 core lichen with 200% HP nad so on.

Now, when 1-core lichen merges with 9-core lichen, you get a 10-core Lichen Colony! This Lichen Colony may actually be easier to deal with, because unlike the 9-core lichen with 300% HP, the Colony only has 225% HP. There's a whole 100% drop! If that wasn't crazy enough, there's one more, even crazier version of Lichen Colony you can encounter. This Lichen Colony has only a single (1) core and very low 100% HP! This Lichen Colony cannot be made, it must be found, and it must be in Tier 1. It doesn't work in other Tiers, I think. Great example of this is mission Alien Ooze, where this Lichen Colony is guaranteed at the very end. However, if any lichen dares to merge with it, it will gain all its missing HP and become regular 11 or more core Lichen Colony (depends on the Lichen that merged with it). Luckily for you, there are no Lichens around it when it spawns, so don't worry! :)
(TL;DR: If game spawns you a Lichen Colony in Tier 1, it will be very weak until another Lichen joins it.)

The largest Lichen Colony known to exits is 15-core Lichen Colony with 350% HP. From that point on, we are talking about 16 or more core GIANT Lichen Colonies with 375% or more HP. At least it is believed to have 16 cores, at that point it's quite difficult to count them all. It can grow further up to 21-core Giant Lichen Colony with 500% HP. Due to fear of gaining too much weight, it refuses to grow any more than that and remains with 21-cores even when more Lichens attempt to join the party.

When one Lichen merges with the other, one of them is destroyed and the other gains bonuses from his brother's sacrifice. This can be abused to pass through arenas that require you to kill Lichens. You can manipulate them to merge the way you want in order to remove the one that blocks the gate from being opened. With this trick, you can pass the arenas as a true pacifist. Unfortunately, while I have noted which Lichen must join which, it's badly written and I can't decipher it.

Lichens in later Tiers grow faster because they are bigger. Dangerous environment in the darker depths of the Clockworks is too much for a 1-core Lichen to handle. Thus, they've learned to live in pairs, for example the 2-core Lichens in Tier 2. They are even bigger in Tier 3, Lichens have impressive 3 cores in that area (I think).

One last thing about Lichens that you probably know about is that they can be friendly and won't attack you at all if you happen to be the right distance from them. Smaller Lichens are more friendly than larger ones. It's almost as if they wanted to attack you. As if they thought they are close enough, but ultimately aren't and can't reach you.

= Other =

There is also bunch of interesting facts I've found during my HP quest:
- Catalyzer shots have trouble sticking to buffed Wolvers and buffed Pit Bosses
- Yesmen buff Pit Bosses' defense, but it's a single buff (more Yesmen doesn't mean more defense). When they go away, the buff will run out eventually.
- Yesmen can buff more than 1 Pit Boss I think (needs verification).
- Battlepod shield takes 4 hits to break. Damage doesn't matter.
- In Toy Soldiers final room, turrets can be either Puppies or Polyps.
- First NPC you see when you start 5th level of Operation Crimson Hammer is frozen. Other NPCs don't move much, too, but you can see their idle animation. That first NPC is simply just frozen.
- It is possible to interrupt Creep Cake's candle attack and prevent the candles from spawning.
- Striker's charge attack doesn't alternate between high (H) and low (L) hits. In reality it goes H, H, L, H, L, H, L, L and then finishes with H.
- I'm proud of my colorful HP tables.

= Conclusion =

I'm sorry for this wall of text, but there is just so much I can talk about. Also, forgive me how I wrote the Lichen section. :D I hope it's understandable and that my English isn't too bad to read.

Yes, I forgot to say that my primary focus was Tier 1, Advanced difficulty. My goal was to figure out the formula and I wanted data influenced by the least number of factors. That's why I chose this setting.

Also, I just realized I forgot to mention one last factor in the HP formula, and that's party size. Because I always collected data solo, I have no data on it.

Anyway, I'm happy that you find my work useful. I was glad to help!

Interesting how the monster HP chart (at elite difficulty scaling) matches the shield HP chart in scaling. I'm pretty sure that points to a global scaling number for everything.

Also, since it didn't seem to be mentioned in the "interesting notes"...
Monsters in a clockwork tunnels danger room energy gate will typically be from a future depth (having higher armor/hp). If you happen to do DRs on the last depth of a stratum, they're typically really difficult due to the big jump in the numbers.

How does the shield HP match elite difficulty monster HP in scaling? They both start at 50 HP in Tier 1 and 200 HP in Tier 2, but all the other numbers are different.

Interesting to hear about forcing a spawn from different stratum (or tier?). I'm curious whether it's just a big number (something like +10 depths) or it really forces something.

I can confirm as indeed there are spawns that give just a flat enemy stats increase instead of pulling from a deeper stratum, Danger Rooms use these also, most commonly the Gun Puppy mayhem room with all the Scuttlebots.
Since enemy HP by party size goes up by percentage, it's hard to notice the increase while in solos, but once 3-4 Knights are in the party the difference becomes quite noticeable.

Firestorm Citadel also had the 4 "Super" Slag Walkers in the Charred Court's room that has 2 Trojans and 3 Blast Cubes, for a time they were also slightly stronger. However, when Tier 4 coding stats got programmed in secretly, GH might've forgot to not make it override some of these spawns, and these 4 Slag Walkers were made even stronger as a result.

Silver-Hawke made a video showing off these new Tier 4 Slag Walkers in Firestorm Citadel, even with a max damage bonus Blitz Needle on solo it barely took about 25% of the Slag Walkers HP off. Fortunately they got fixed sometime later, you can see the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRyqzPj4ikM

Pre-Tier 4, Starlight Cradle: Meteor Mile III's Danger Room was also the same, the enemies were slightly stronger just like the Slag Walkers, but once Tier 4 stat coding came they got affected too and received said Tier 4 stats. Certain Glop spawns in Treasure Vaults also have this increase, though i can't recall if they had pre-Tier 4 stats or not.

For the Monster Cages, they're mostly found in Scarlet Fortress, Jigsaw Valley, Gloaming Wildwoods and i believe it's Shadow Lair version, plus a old Danger Room or two.
As for odd spawns, do you by any chance mean the Minis? They began to appear in Monster Cages after the Compound update if i remember. They spawn in groups of 3 once the box is broken, though they don't drop any loot.
If not, Monster Cages do not care about the levels theme, and can spawn all sorts of monsters of any type. There are limits though. they can't spawn event only monsters for obvious reasons, but i have no clue if rare monsters like Mewkats, Love Puppies and Soul Jellies also follow this rule.

The difference between the stats is very noticeable, "Stat Buff" is around from my experience in a full party an extra 2-4 hits required, depending on the enemy and weapon used. Tier 4 stats are effectively quadruple that, if not way more. "Stat Buff" enemies will usually still die via a full charge attack from weapons like Blitz Needle/Grim Repeater at point blank in a full party, Tier 4's are very capable of shrugging those off with barely like 10% of their HP gone.

Plus, with how flinching works in Spiral Knights, Tier 4 enemies are capable of being so strong that without extreme damage bonus and buffs they are effectively immune to it. From an Ice Queen Palace run i did using Sacred Grizzly Pathfinder set, Polar Polyps turrets could only be interrupted if the explosion of my Winter Grave charge attack connected, Silversaps/Lumbers were flat out immune.
Void Gels in the Unknown Passage were also immune to flinching due to their HP/Defense strength, though it may be because i was using Iron Slug on them. Acheron full combos were unable to flinch them however, which they are weak to.

For the case of Stratum 2 and 4, an deeper depth enemy will always be it's higher tiered variant, which is most commonly seen in Danger Rooms at Depth 7 and 17. Thus it's plain obvious you are up against an deeper depth enemy, but i can definitively see the confusion when it comes to identifying Tier 3's with Tier 4 stats.