so far my only complaint is that i can't play it yet since i'm still working 😋

Super stoked to try it out myself though! Watching everyone gush over it on the discord is wonderful. If for nothing else, I wanna congratulate the team for gettin' this out since the screenshots I've seen look incredible!

As usual, any update produced by the Three Rings/Grey Havens team is of serious quality. There are evil razors, new enemies, a sick vault door model and much much more than is even listed in the announcement if we're being honest. You've done well with what you've done and for that I applaud you.

My critique is simply this:

Implementing small changes frequently using existing mechanics to their full potential builds a community.
Hiding from the community and letting it dwindle before injecting a large and beautiful update is sadly a recipe for failure.

If you'd like I can go on. But I don't know that I should. The team has never been one to take advice. Especially not from me.
Either way, I don't mean to hate. Very nice update.

Love the update it is really good to have new content for this game, especially when the new
treasure trove looks so good and creative, thanks grey havens keep up the great work :)

I agree with Promos-Are-Content and their critique, and this really is some good stuff.

There seem to be a lot more boxes (also minerals) in the original Treasure Vault, I honestly would have expected some more from this type of Treasure Vault which is converse to the relaxing one. My main concern is the original Treasure Vaults staying too, I would very much like for all further generated gates to include both types somehow.

Other than that, the new content is very creative and shakes up the gameplay which is very welcome. I enjoyed the new challenge and art. In true SK fashion, it inspires imagination about the world and lore regarding the monsters and areas, I hope we see further expansion on this.

I really don't want to be one of the people blasting the long awaited content update, so I'll start with the good stuff.

I'm in love with the bit where enemies enter the floor via functional elevators. It sounds like such an obvious thing to do in hindsight, but well done, you've surprised me. I wish they descended from above because now it's easy to miss, and I've only noticed it on the second run through due to a graphical glitch that made some effects on an ascending thwacker show through the floor. Maybe some camera angle or timing tweaks would help (make them ambush the player when enter the room proper?) but this is a brilliant touch overall.

I'm really happy the clockworks tunnels are being refreshed with new tiles, I like the ones I've seen so far. I've heard new danger rooms have been added, and one contains IMF rocket launchers? I'm in!

The visual design of the new boss and the little mimics successfully hits the SK aesthetic and fits in. Echo blocks don't quite make it obvious what they do (color code them with some red bits?) but I like their look a lot, too. I'm not exactly a fan of the slightly tacky floor tiles/patterns, but they fit the golden slime casino theme, so I guess the team is going for that. The new skybox looks nice but it's rather pixelly even on high settings, is that an engine limitation?

I'm not quite happy about the new floor hazards and game mechanics. The razors are pretty much smaller, uglier golden shankles (seriously, these metal things don't fit SK lore and aesthetic, do they?), and the hazard rooms are impossible to navigate on the spot, they're pretty much puzzles where you need to figure out and memorize a safe route. Players die there and get upset because the difficulty is unexpectedly high.

Echo blocks are a clever mechanic, and it's great they make the players use their shields (that's how mafia works, swiftstrike buckler gang), but wait. What about bombers? I haven't bombed there myself yet, but I've been told the damage reflection mechanic cripples bombers a lot or even makes some rooms tricky to pass with 5* equipment. I've heard the boss has an attack that destroys bombs before they go off. Grey Havens pls, most bombs are in a bad need of buffs, not nerfs.

Since I'm talking about the boss, I'd like it to telegraph its attacks more clearly and distinctly, especially the giant hitbox that damages the whole room. So far the level encourages a tanky shield to power through and trivialize all the hard-to-impossible-to-avoid attacks, and that's tactics and setup, not fun interaction with game mechanics.

Moving on to what I feel are real blunders, I've talked with a bunch of knights both on discord and in game and there's one comparison that everyone seems to be making: compounds. The new levels share two traits that make the dreaded compounds so universally disliked: poor payout for the time spent and annoying enemies. I mean, seriously, the game didn't need more glop drops and another level that ends with a bossroom with infinitely respawning minis and doesn't even reward the player for completing it.

A level filled with minis ending with a boss with a battlepod drop table and a few boxes really, really isn't going to do it, most crowns come from killing enemies (not minis) and players already optimize levels for treasure box count per minutes spent because certain kinds of both orbs of alchemy and fire crystals are scarce (pleeease fix the depth distribution of rarity drops).

Speaking of orbs, the old treasure vaults (now troves) contributed a fair bit to the amount of orbs dropped, and now they've been (mostly) replaced with levels that not only are fairly challenging but also seem to contain even less boxes. This is going to hurt newbies, the new player grind (mostly elite orbs and shining fire crystals) is already making players flake out before they reach 5* equipment, I see it both in my guild and haven conversations a lot.

I second Fehzor's (aka Promos-Are-Content) suggestion: I'd love to see you guys experiment with little changes that use and build on existing content instead of dropping a large update that's probably going to stay in the game forever (along with all the good and all the blunders contained).

I've probably forgotten to mention something, so I'll just conclude by saying that I'm really happy to see the Grey Havens team reach out for feedback, that might be more huge than the update.

Visually, just about everything looks amazing, and more variety to the gates is definitely welcome. Also, the choice of music is nice; Unforgiving Onslaught should be used more. That aside, actual feedback for improvement:

• The swarms of Glop Drops as they spawn in the level's introduction (or at least one variant of it) tend to force you out into the path prior to that room. There's little room to fight back against them and they all spawn almost simultaneously. I'd increase the size of the room they appear in, and possibly split the two waves into 2-3 mini-waves each with a shorter delay between each. Then, once it's more practical to fight them within the room they spawn, possibly put a gate on there so that you have to.

• The razors. Why. Just why. For all the intricate patterns of razors to weave through, most are just about impossible to actually avoid; you just can't move fast enough to get past the few openings without a notable speed boost active, and waiting for those openings gets tedious quickly. Dashing over them seems like the only viable strategy (I assume it's intended that dashing makes you invulnerable to them?), but also feels like cheating and somewhat defeats the purpose of them. I'd like to see the patterns made a bit less dense and/or make them a bit slower so that you don't have to be as reliant on dashing.

• It's not immediately clear how the new pressure pads work without reading the patchnotes. Right now it doesn't matter, they only appear once in a very simple configuration, but they could easily show up again in the future in a spot where it's harder to figure out the correct solution (particularly if you use 3 or more), so possibly add a spot for them in one of the tutorial missions in the future?

• I'd suggest giving Echo Blocks a long, but limited range, so that they only damage you if you're still in their range by the time the block gets hit. Keep the range long enough that reckless gunning will get you hit, but short enough that planting a bomb and then running across the room will still keep you safe.

• When auto-targeting the Treasure Mimic or its tentacles, you get no box indicating its health or resistances in the top right as with other enemies.

• The Mimic fight is overly reliant on having some means of penetration (that means Iron Slug or Winter Grave), and favors guns in general too much. Any other weapon requires getting close to it, which is prevented by many different things. First off, the tentacles. They have a ton of health, completely encircle it, and are regenerated rapidly. Reduce the number that appear slightly and greatly decrease their respawn rate. Then, since that rather reduces the boss's defensive abilities, possibly increase its health by a decent amount to compensate.

• If the tentacles are nerfed, you can also safely make them resistant to penetration like Royal Minis, so that the boss can't be cheated so easily.

• In a status-based level, the boss is surrounded by status traps that stop you from really moving around, which means the only safe path to move is quickly blocked off by Glop Drops if you try to get close to it. Remove them or place them farther away so you'll have room to fight them and the boss at the same time. Non-status levels seem to have no traps at all; put in some spikes in those.

• The Mimic's main attack is a limited-range hit to anything around it, further favoring gunners, which can dodge it effortlessly. It has no means of fighting at a distance. Suggestion: Make tentacles spawn around players, Big Iron style, but only targeting players that are far away from the boss.

• The Mimic drops a bunch of slime coins on death, but I'd like to see the payout in slime coins specifically increased further. Maybe make Mini Mimics drop them consistently?

• The Mimic's death is a bit abrupt; it just vanishes at the end of its death animation, which is odd for something of its size.

Visually new "vault theme" is excellent. However, gameplay leaves a lot to be desired.

First of all, echo blocks. Given how SK meta seems to be favouring offense over defense, they effectively make player kill themselves.
I recently fought in a room with echo block placement so tight that it was impossible to use any charge attack at all, and most regular shots ended up hitting a block. Since they have no range limit, this means waste of sparks. And you need charge attacks to deal with swarms of minis. Bomber builds are non-viable in these rooms, period.
Additionally, if echo blocks are destroyed by ghost blocks, they still go off, which makes no sense whatsoever.
Overall suggestion: put a definite range limit (say, 3 blocks away), and use them a lot more sparingly, say, no more than 4 per room.

Next, razors. First, why make shankles that do not look like shankles? Second, the sequence tends to be excessively long and necessitates the use of Sera bubble. It's either frustrating, or boring. Or both.

Boss fight equally demands you use penetration weapons like magnum line, because tentacles respawn almost as soon as your attack animation finishes. Plus it has the same cheaty "hit all stun all kill all" shockwave attack Tortodrones have. Having a magnum makes it a cakewalk, tho.

Payout in boxes is reduced by about 40% compared to old vaults, which is definitely not okay. Instead of fixing Compounds, that suffer from this very problem (lots of effort with little reward), you nerfed the Vaults. As the result, right now going through the Clockwork Tunnels is preferrable.

All in all, I'd say that while a content update is always welcome, you need to playtest your new levels more. Perhaps make them available as a prestige mission, "Exploring the Unknown"? Right now Vaults punish the players for not using very specific loadouts, which does not seem to be a good idea.

I remember what I forgot about.

I know the old treasure vaults are still in the game, but they're much more rare and harder to encounter now. They've been renamed too, the iconic "Treasure Vault: Fortune Smiles on the Greedy" loading screen is no longer in the game. It sounds like a minor detail to complain about, but it means a lot to me.

Please take care to preserve content we love, it's not a single player game that lets us download and play an old version.

So let me get this straight:

-The reward is not worth the challenge, this is like a trend with new levels or something... but 'muh dream and nightmare' right? I watched the video on the vault and the the chance of your rewards disappear due to a misclick (and some damage to add insult to injury) is quite frankly insulting to my eyes.

-The dungeon is too hazardous for 1 bar latency players like me to play without unnecessary damage. And guaranteed damage with the possibility of spending at least one spark is making this vault less and less inviting.

-Punishing the player with even more unrewarding enemies, because what players asked for more is more minis. Really, Spiral knights is not a PUZZLE game, it is a looting centric game. Every second spent killing enemies that won't drop you loot is a second wasted.

-Perhaps the worst thing this vault has done is making treasure trove even more rare (that is what they are now), a level that I actually look forward to in a arcade run is the icing on the cake of this unnecessary update. I mean, seriously, who ASKED for treasure vault to be more challenging?!

After going through the levels a few times, design is gorgeous, but as stated above the loot is lackluster. Perhaps there is some hidden puzzle or mechanic that has not been discovered yet in these levels, that leads to a secret room with post prestige-mission treasure hidden or something, but I have not found it.

As it currently stands the level is cool, but some hidden twist or secret would be even cooler...like, you have to find a hidden combination, and then interact with those decorative vault doors to unlock a secret treasure, idk...or if that giant mimic battle dropped special tokens, instead of regular loot drop, that could be used to unlock other stuff

Hoping there is more to the treasure vault than what has been found :/

The difficulty is justified since you can literally skip the level lol. As for one bar, that's on you. They provide servers and you provide internet and not living in the Philippines. And seriously I know both of you want challenges and thought this kind of update would be awesome prior to receiving it lmao.

Also keep in mind that these things take serious effort to design and create and they did a good job with the vault part, they just left out the treasure. They even removed some razors.

It's 2019 and players still haven't figured out how to fight minis. I should make like a video guide or something.

I should say that my experiences are primarily the depth 20 vault on elite. I don't see the point in me testing T1/T2 since I'm very clearly not in those tiers at this point.

Danger rooms and clockwork tunnels upgrade

The danger rooms are jolly good fun and I'm super stoked to be doing them, nothing to change there.

The clockwork tunnels segments.. there's a TON of them! And it's awesome! I'm super stoked to be playing clockwork tunnels XD. The other levels could use a bit of love too but one thing at a time.

But they do have a lot of traps, which is fine when it's in an arena and I have to actively dodge the traps and fine when it's zelda-esque like the razors and rockets in roarmulus but less fine when it's a big ol line of spikes that I have to wait through, like in top right room on jelly king and so many other places. As a veteran player, it feels like that's wasting my time that could be used fighting and getting loot and having fun. I'm not saying it's the worst thing ever or anything because it's a classic part of the design, just perhaps we could see less segments with that going forward...?

What players appear to want

I've had this on my mind for a while. Players like Vanaduke and Jelly King because they can just go nuts and get loot and it feels good to do that. Players don't like compounds because they actually have to think about things.

In a sense, it might be worth looking into this? Other games I play tend to give big time sinks fairly often. They have a few tricks, but are ultimately like FSC crossed with Jelly King- areas where you can just go ham. I think we could use some more of those for casual play.

-----------@Phewey-------------------

The echo blocks deal whatever hit you hit them with, status effect and all, to your knight just like if the knight got hit by it. If you shield as the block is hit, it will effect your shield with it and not you, as usual. If you throw a curse vial, your knight will be cursed. If you drop dark retribution in the middle of it, your knight will get hit like 20 times by the orbitals and probably die.

And yes, the first thing I did was become angered by the presence of a new block and blitz charge the echo block. Looking back, this was kind of hilarious.

Also keep in mind that these things take serious effort to design and create and they did a good job with the vault part, they just left out the treasure.

Again, allow me to restate the last thing I said in my post: WHO ASKED FOR TREASURE VAULT TO BE CHALLENGING?!

Here are some of your own words:

Implementing small changes frequently using existing mechanics to their full potential builds a community.
Hiding from the community and letting it dwindle before injecting a large and beautiful update is sadly a recipe for failure.

So if you know just how tone-deaf this update has been, then why are you defending reskin inc.??? (<-- BTW, nice nickname Phewey) I swear you are just trolling with that post. GH really need to do a reality check, their little brand new spanking dungeon is pointless if no one is left in SK to play it.

Players don't like compounds because they actually have to think about things.

No Fehzor, Bad, BAD Fehzor! Do not put words in other players' mouth. People hate compounds because the reward doesn't justify the struggle, or put it simply, the juice is not worth the squeeze. Compound makes an already grindy game even more needlessly tedious, I have no problem with challenge, but if I get nothing for it then why not just go with something easier?

It is the same idea as in World of Tanks, you can play a garbage bad tank well (install the game and try to ace AMX 40, I dare you), you can make the tank work for all its worth, think about positioning, aim for enemy's weak spots, use premium ammo+ consumable. But at the end of the day, if some noob can one shot you in a tried and true noob friendly tank, it is not worth putting yourself through the struggle. Oh and your win rate goes down.

So I'll start by saying...

OMG I can't believe this! <3 <3 <3 It is very wonderful. If we could get something like this once a year it would be all many of us need. Especially if these are permanent fixtures. Imagine what "next year's" additional stage introduction could be?? and on top of that we would still have this one forever. Really exciting possibility here.

I also really enjoy the addition of new and updated puzzles and obstacles out in clockworks in general. They have not gone unnoticed and are much appreciated and refreshing.

--- NOW onto the core topic. ---

It seems like many complaints I hear in game are regarding difficulty but to be more specific I agree with the perspective that the "juice is not worth the squeeze." The difficulty is challenging. I just hear many players wanting some sort of exclusive drop.

Possible Fix: If these Treasure Vaults really are somehow related to the Slime Casino.. Maybe they can have a chance to drop some Slime Casino Related items. Perhaps 6% Chance to drop a Slime Lockbox and a 3% Chance to drop a Slime Key.

I'm no numbers specialist so perhaps those numbers are too generous or not generous enough. Something to be played around with. Maybe 10% chance for Slime Lockbox and 5% Chance for Slime Key is better? Still I wouldn't want to devalue their original means of acquisition which is why I opted for something more modest like 6.66% for Slime Lockbox and 3.33% for Slime Key.

These are just my thoughts based on some things I've heard in game. If anyone else thinks this sort of idea is neat, go ahead and mention it so they know. Also if you have your own idea for how to improve the content, go ahead and share yours! :)

Much Love,
~ Mint

P.S. Thank You Sooooooo Much for this content. It means everything to my heart after so long. The additional Danger Rooms and Standard Rooms too!

I'm ecstatic that there is proper new content in an update!! I'm so glad playable content is still being made and I so happy it's here! I've only experienced the Vault once, but right off the bat I have feedback. (And them being on random levels I can't exactly rush through a bunch of them)

That Said...
The Treasure Vault is incredibly hit-and-miss for me. Most of what I want to say has already been stated multiple times above, but I figure the more input the better so here we go!

+New Playable Content! That's fantastic!

+The new levels look fantastic! The new tile sets and the vault doors set a good atmosphere and look great. The vault door especially really sells the grandeur of it all.

-Can we lay off of the tiny enemies please? They're a nice idea, but I don't enjoy how much they're used in vaults. They're frustrating to deal with when combined with Echo blocks and tight spaces and they drop less loot than normal enemies which sucks.

+-Echo blocks are an interesting concept but should be used more sparingly. When you're trapped in a room with swarms of tiny enemies, it's already hard enough to maneuver through 2-3 space wide pathways. Now the walls want to start hitting back?! I like the idea of them and placing them around treasure boxes is cute, but filling a room with Echo boxes every 4-5 spaces is just too much.

-+New mini boss! The mimic is super cool to look at and the reveal makes a great first impression! The fight however... Not fantastic. The tentacles seem to spawn faster than I could kill them making my gun basically useless. The Shock Wave attack came out so frequently and covered so much ground that approaching with a shield up was not an option. I had to resort to just Face-Tanking and trading blows with the mimic to make any progress at all in the fight. Luckily I was running tier 2 levels with a friend while I'm in full 5 star gear. If not for that, I don't think there was any other way we could have killed it. And reading that others need a specific weapon to be effective seems to solidify my fears. If I may make a suggestion: Space the tentacles out and reduce their spawn rate significantly. Make the tentacles pop up near knights to changes where it's safe to stand. Increase the wind up for the shockwave and reduce how frequently it's used. Maybe save it as a "Get off of me" attack.

-+ The razors are interesting and the rooms I had to get through were a challenge, but they felt a little over crowded. Maybe tone them down just a little. Put like, 0.5-1 more unit of space between them. Maybe as they levels get deeper they can get more crowded, but What I saw in tier 2 was already kind of overwhelming.
SIDENOTE: Honestly it feels like you might as well replace Shankles and Wisps with these. Making them all seperate feels excessive and they all basically serve the same purpose. (Add elements to them to replace the wisps)

This was a novel idea that could be used for other levels, even if it cost money, like a danger room gate.

Quick question. Did the update mess with Danger Mission difficulty? Almirian shadow guards in LoA seem to tank double the amount of blitz needle charges before dying.

@Apus: Danger missions appear to be unaffected, i just did LoA and the Almirian Crusaders plus Almirian Shadow Guards were no different. I tend to do LoA solo and both still took 3 hits from my Voltedge or a full Warmaster Hammer combo to flinch.

The Tier 4 bug seems to only affect levels that were based in Depth 29 and lower. Dreams and Nightmares is set on D25-27, so it should be the same. The Unknown Passage however is due to it being set on such depths in the first place, the one in It Came From Below is just a direct port, thus it is a oversight carrying the bug with it. Shadow Lairs are also set on such depths when first made to give the monsters their increased stats.
This bug is also very likely to affect Apocrea once it comes back, as that mission can go all the way to Depth 30 for Champions/Vanguards.

However, call me crazy but i kinda wanna see this "bug" persist, just tweaked so it isn't ridiculous as it is now. Restrict it to Shadow Lairs only, but tweaked that monsters still retain their Tier 3 strength of resisting flinch while keeping Tier 4 everything else. This is unlikely to happen because it would require a complete overhaul in how flinching works, and of course GH being GH. Shadow Lairs imo are the really only balanced hard content, and not a big deal losing Sparks of Life in them. going in expecting to die is mostly the best mindset.

=======================================================================================

That out of the way, now to post my thoughts on this "update". I'm saying straight up and getting it out of the way that i am not a bit happy despite not really caring about content updates nowadays, playing the game i still adore despite it's state. I warmed up to some things added but still many flaws in this, readers probably wanna skip this comment because mass criticism.

1. Razors: These are seriously just Shankle wannables and more of a waste of assets, and don't look good. i'll give credit for maybe them having a gray appearance so they're easier to see, but Golden Shankles could of easily been in place of them and would fit the gold colored theme of the new Treasure Vaults better.
Razors are also far too common and barely any gaps between the paths they take combined with traps, making it too difficult to get through such areas with no damage or without having to bring Seraphynx.
Reduce the amount of Razors present on their preset paths in most tileset rooms, and add a way to to see said path because all of them being stacked constantly makes it hard to tell which way they are exactly going.

2. Echo Blocks: I like the concept of these, but as of right now they are poorly executed as well as placement in most rooms. They are far too anti-bomber friendly without using status bombs than punishing mindless spam. Most players with a half-brain will know to aim their attacks properly, but Bombers have no such such options due to the mass radius of end-game bombs, forcing them to use something else to help the team. Certain rooms have Echo Blocks so close together that being a Bomber is all but impossible.
The radius of them is also far too big, seemingly infinite. Easily results in cases of accidentally hitting one across the entire room and still getting damaged.
Heavily reduce their radius to like 5x5 blocks or lower, along with a wind-up time so people have time to move if one is accidentally triggered. Perhaps in return have them do massive knockback that affects enemies, allow possible use of them as a source of crowd control.

3. Pressure Pads: All well and good, no complaints about these despite being simple. Puzzles with them are far too rare though and i would like to see them spread about in the Clockworks, maybe in already existing levels to shake things up. As of now the only consistent time to see them is opening the huge vault before the Treasure Mimic.

4. Overall appearance, level design and loot: The concept of a big vault is a interesting idea in a place like the Clockworks, while i do like the overall theme and sleek appearance design, the gold color imo is a little far too tuned and hurts the eye. This applies to the background as well, and is at it's worst in Fire-themed new Treasure Vaults. My eyes were stained from finally getting out of the place first time through as i went for Burn Rate as it was the quickest to reach.
Suggest lowering the shininess and brightness to help with this problem and it should be fine.

The tileroom sets i have encountered so far have been far too difficult and made proper fighting not really possible, forcing abuse of the environment with the enemy AI, cheese tactics or backing out from the room and taking on things one at a time. The trap sections have little to no safe zones and combined with 1 bar ping problems, it's super easy to get rubberbanded into a trap and die. Every arena i've encountered also made it far too easily to get surrounded let alone even regaining personal space. This overall makes the levels far too slow to progress through along with eating tons of Sparks of Life, where such uses should really only happen in Shadow Lairs or other similar areas to em'.

The loot payout is completely pretty much Compounds V2.0 Even Worse Payout Edition, absolute garbage and there is currently no reason at all for us to go through the hassle. The amount of boxes need to be massively increased, and the minis that spawn from Garages despite being limited spawns should also drop loot to compensate.
Another option as already suggested is to have the Treasure Mimic a rare chance to drop the Slime Trinkets, which would help with the rarity of Daybreaker Bands and Somnambulist's Totems. However, this idea should be based their star level so the two keep some of their rarity while also encouraging diving to Stratum 6 on Arcade gates, an example of this:

Early Riser Ring - Stratum 3 and onward.
Dawn Bracelet - Stratum 5 and onward.
Daybreaker Band/Somnambulist's Totem - Stratum 6 only.

5. Mimics and the boss: Baby Mimics are fine and a nice little surprise now and then, however currently they only drop standard monster loot. This results in players getting cheaped out on crowns and potentially Crystal/Orb drops, resulting in overall even worse payout. This could be fixed by changing the Baby Mimics loot table to that the same of prize boxes, maybe even make them glow if they are holding Crystal/Orbs.

For Treasure Boss: My frickin' Seerus, what the heck were you guys thinking designing this?! The overall design is great i'll give it that and made it a bit scary the first time i've encountered it. However as for fighting it, it's complete bullgremlin. Tentacles have FAR too much health, and Treasure Mimic himself is on Vanaduke levels of tankyness, along with having no weakness as it appears.
When it respawns it's tentacles after being sufficiently damaged, it has IFRAMES for the entire animation of it, which is plain unfair and doesn't make any sense.
The copy-pasted ground pound attack from Tortodrones is also cheap, and needs to be reworked. It's so large it can hit gunners very far away not in range of it even if they are focusing on something else,
It's nigh impossible to fight it in melee along with it spawning sleep status mist if attempted, many have already opted to bring magus-line weapons and spam charging it to death.

It needs alot of changes to be fair, it completely curb-stomps newer players and forces them to bail on the run. Despite giving the option to leave early, newer players won't realize the dangers until it's too late, wasting tons of sparks for bad payout.
First and foremost, massively reduce the health of it and it's tentacles as it doesn't make sense for a mini-boss, even Arkus despite being mission only was better and alot more fun to fight.
Second, remove it's iframes from that one animation, and give a visual cue when it's spawning sleep mist, giving melee players a chance to back off, along with reducing the duration of said mist.
Third, nerf it's ground pound attack, perhaps at least one pulse so it's around itself, not almost the whole room.
Fourth and finally, give it a ranged attack to make up for nerfs. Have some it's tentacles retreat into the ground and target a player that is out of it's range, Big Iron style. This would encourage teamwork, as ranged can keep the Tentacles distracted while melee can focus on the boss.

6. Monster Garages: I hate hate hate HATE HATE HATE these, another bad design. First of all, they give no visual cue to spawning minis, unlike normal monster spawners which will flash rapidly before the spawn. They are too many present in a single area in tilesets, they also spawn far too many at once, combined with Glops which love to aggro immediately you can get cheap hit.
Number one change is giving them a visual cue and slight windup before they about to spawn something, this would help SO much and makes it much easier to handle situations and how players can react.
Number two is changing how it spawns, either overall reduce the amount of minis per spawn to like 1-3 based on tier, or have it semi-rapidly spawn 1 at a time also based on tier. The upper limit of each Garage holding minis is also too large from my experience, it should adjust based on tier adding 3 each time, with a max of 9 per one in Tier 3.
Minis from these also should drop loot, as mentioned before with terrible payout.

7. New Clockwork Tunnel & Danger Rooms: A nice breath of fresh air, i encountered a few of the new rooms already and loving them which i've been screenshotting and uploading to Steam, some forcing me to play more careful than usual. They give much more variety and atmosphere to the tunnels compared to the same old ones we've been seeing for years, so a thumbs up from me on this. i yet to do any of the new Danger Rooms, but i heard a Battlepod one is flying about. Finally a unique enemy is getting love outside of missions only.

8. Misc/Final: Style change for the toggle switches is nice, i'll have to keep that in mind. No more trial and error trying to tell what ones are toggle or not.
I'm honestly gonna miss those Depth 25 "super" Slag Walkers in FSC, they stood out to me and made that left side room in Charred Court more interesting and approaching it differently especially for speedrunning. It felt intentional more than a actual bug, i would be surprised if this was reverted.
But that's really it, i probably missed something but i wanted to get these opinions off my chest despite my... recent history. I'm just sad i'll almost never touch these Treasure Vaults unless a reason pops up or is added. Tend to not post here either but felt like i had to give feedback.

... Are we really the only people who can't seem to beat this tentacle boss guy?? We did all sorts of stuff trying to kill him, but just ended up dead on the ground...

I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one who doesn't understand how to beat him and take his treasure. Please share your tips and tricks to win. I'm loving that there's new content, but hating that I can't seem to win.

I fought it only 2-3 times with Cobalt equipment (Leviathan Blade + Valliance) and from my experience I can tell you that:

• You can't fight with (non-Magnus) guns from distance because the boss will summon a tentacle to take the shot and disappear, effectively protecting it from damage. You should be able to damage it with guns in melee range but I'm not sure.
• Shockwaves appear frequently and randomly. Try to catch a longer break between them to get near the boss.
• The boss has very simple close range attack. With thoughtful movement you can bait him to only use that attack without getting hit (i.e. trigger attack, take few steps back before it hits, repeat). The hitbox is a bit larger than what you would think from the animation.
• Tentacles around the boss will try to attack you but their wind-up animation is quite long. You can: 1) try to hit both tentacles and the boss with your attacks and cause them to flinch (easy with Calibur-style charges), or 2) circle around the boss, escaping tentacles before they can finish their attack.
• You can also kill tentacles before approaching. You can use your gun for this, but the anti-gun tentacle will still show up from time to time. This is not recommended because they take relatively long to kill, respawn several times and aren't that dangerous to begin with. If you want to get close only to unleash a charge and then quickly retreat, you don't need to worry about them because their attack is too slow for this.
• After taking some damage, the boss becomes briefly invulnerable and then respawns its tentacles and releases sleep mist around itself. Expect this to repeat about 5 times during the fight. As a side note, it seems it has to finish its current attack before doing this.
• This alone should be enough for a win if there weren't glop drops everywhere. Sadly, I don't have any good suggestions for those. You can try to keep one part of the arena clean by killing them, they don't respawn that quickly. Alternatively, if time isn't that much of an issue, you can lure some glop drops out of the vault.

I've heard there are also some anti-bomb mechanics and perhaps another sleep mist attack I'm not aware of. Finally, patience may be needed, aside from everything else.

Ok so lets get the baseless assumptions out of the way-

"little gets developed for this game due to it’s lack of finances and small staff"
"game be virtually unplayable to 80-90% of the player base"

Could you perhaps site your sources here? I know you know better than to just make stuff up. I don't think that either of these are problems or true. I also don't think that they're incapable of hiring extra people, and I don't see an issue with 99% of the playerbase being incapable of tying their own shoes, but I'll get to that.

"Since you cannot avoid taking damage while playing solo, which should always be a viable option, it’s cheating."

Perhaps it's bad design, but none of the rooms (except perhaps the glop drop + echo chamber, which I agree is a bit much) just immediately smack you with damage. Your rocket puppy scenario could be dodged or tanked using maskeraith's invisibility or seraph's shield or even outran using backfire barrier on drakon. Failing that, you can dodge through rockets, dodge to avoid aggro, my point being that you've got options for the vast majority of situations and the ones where you don't you typically create.

"my gear is nearly as good as you can get without spending hundreds of thousands of energy on Unique Variant roulette"

You're playing the game wrong, and should be spending more on your armor. Full black kat with UVs is only 200 dollars or so away if you pay for all of it out of pocket. Someone in my guild is actually farming an orbitgun. These things are possible to get, even as a free player, if you have enough time and willpower or obviously cash.

You can argue that 200 dollars is a lot, and in a sense it is but in a sense it isn't-- games are moving in the way of microtransactions and the F2P exist simply to validate the whales and nothing more. I'm sorry for your loss, press F, move on. If you're too broke, need money to eat or whatever, well that's a shame. I too would like to change the world, but it isn't going to happen. Welcome to postmodernity, have a seat, buy some mass produced commodities, die early and consider yourself lucky that the rising temperatures haven't destroyed your home yet.

This lovely bit that I wrote leads us to-

"don’t be so stingy with the rewards"

I would like something to farm from this, since farming something would add to my enjoyment of the game. Overall I do agree with you here.

The flip side to this however is that I don't actually need rewards, and am fine receiving my rewards through the SuRpRiSe MeChAnIcS like the owlite wand and mixmaster. In fact, I prefer that they do this because it offends the F2P and newer players to know that there are weapons and gear they cannot reasonably get.

Clockwork tunnels additions: So far I've been enjoying the additional variety in the clockwork tunnel maps, some are a little bit more tedious than what I'm used to with the very long spike puzzles. I like it all so far, it'd be nice to see in levels besides just clockwork tunnels though.

Danger Rooms: The new danger rooms so far are interesting, definitely more challenging that the older variants but I think that fits the theme of danger rooms great they are suppose to be challenging after all. The few I've done have been tough but have no issues I can really see.

Tier 4? I've noticed the much increased resistance of enemies in Shadow Lairs which is interesting to say the least. Unless another weapon tier is being added I feel like its a bit overkill. It takes a very good team and usually multiple sparks to complete these due to the health and the fact that attack canceling a enemy is near impossible. It makes the shadow lairs take a bit to long in my opinion, but I like the challenge despite this till the 3rd hour of a Darkfire Vanaduke. The mission "It Came From Below" also has this "tier 4" difficulty in the final floor, I think that may prove really deadly to any innocent new knights working their way up the ranks. Also seems odd to have this mission be so difficult but no increase in difficulty for Dreams and Nightmares.

Monster Garages(again): I've given feedback on this already but I'd like to add on by saying that if the mini's from these dropped at least some loot it would improve that initial room in Treasure Vaults, otherwise it seems like a tedious time sink.

Echo Blocks(again): I still have the same vibe for this, they are a neat feature but need to be more sparsely implemented however additionally I'd like to add that I've recently encountered Party button room with around 8 echo blocks surrounding the button surrounded by monster garages in a small room, that room seems a bit much since its near impossible to share that room with 20 or more minis and kill them without hitting the echo blocks, that room needs nerfed for sure in my opinion.

Overall: Love the additional variety for Clockwork Tunnels and Danger Rooms. I like the challenge of the new difficulty areas to an extent though, I think it needs more balancing or a special place/category all its own if not an additional weapon tier.

Seeing lots of old players poke their heads up lately which is very nice to see and I'm loving the new things which i keep finding a little more of with each Arcade I delve into. Keep up the great work Grey Havens, I'm definitely eager and looking forward to anything else up your sleeves.

Hi, Promos. (Can I call you Promos? I feel like I should know your real player name, but I'm terrible about remembering names.)

Thank you for challenging me on my first post and responding thoughtfully to the second. That was really nice and cool of you.

Today I finally beat the Treasure Vault boss. There were reward boxes, I didn't see those in my previous attempts. Perhaps the prize boxes were added in a stealth update?

I like the fact this boss encourages using a specific gun to counter his defenses. Especially since I didn't have Magnus-line gun before, so I had to obtain it first. A prestige mission based on this new tileset would be an awesome addition.