I like having large packs or quicksilvers or oilers. Makes the game more of a challenge for me. If you don't like fighting them avoid them.

I've been practicing with the Graviton Bomb just to hold and redirect the Quicksilvers and Oilers. With some strategy and baiting they aren't as difficult as the seem. (Unless you're in an arena, in which case have fun!)

How strong was the Graviton's knockback again? Is there a risk of the explosion launching them into a status trap?

It's not so much strong as it tends to piggy back on other dash movements resulting in the monsters flying some place that isn't you. This is especially notably with Alpha Wolver dodges sending them a screen length away.

Yes it will fling them into a status trap, but I'm usually using it in response to the suckers already using special status attacks.

Do you have any tips for fighting Quicksilvers in danger rooms after the update?

I haven't played yet today, but a strategy that I've been using (and successfully even cleared a t3 quicksilver room without using energy!) in teams is war-of-attrition:

1) Each time one person dies, immediately give them health.
Repeat the above until the last person dies.

2) When everyone is dead, wait it out until quicksilvers clear the room until there are a manageable amount.
3) Closest person to the last dead person (or closest person to a heart) will get up and give that person health. At this point, this person should basically just try to stay alive and/or kill quicksilvers to try to get the next wave to start.
Repeat step 2 and 3.

Pills make this much easier to pull off, too.

If status traps set them off, even better - wouldn't that mean quicksilvers are going to be more likely to go berserk, making step 2 more effective in cleaning them out?

- If choosing to start at tier 2 or 3, you should no longer be matched with a party that has just completed the previous tier.

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

- Status slimes can now have their alt-forms triggered by status traps.

Noooooooooooooooooooooo!

Unfortunately I have seen people buy them from the NPC, I just shake my head and continue on. And agree, the extra 8-12 can be rather useful. Hadn't actually thought of waiting for the people to drop them. Hehe, wish I had now though.

~Gwen

Problem: Oilers and Quicksilvers are wildly OP.

Solution: buff Oilers and Quicksilvers.

Thanks, OOO. Meanwhile:

- Jelly Palace is up 100% of the time, it's still the easiest thing in T2, and the crown payout is 150-200% of what you'll get from any other stratum. Enjoying the game and progressing in the game are almost mutually exclusive.

- The friends list is still about gaming the system rather than keeping track of your friends.

- Shock is still broken.

- Phantoms still scale exponentially with additional players.

- Every gate continues to be polluted with Wolver spam. Careful gear choices are effectively broken by newly-buffed Wolvers appearing everywhere you go.

- Menders still hide in spikes.

- Danger rooms and arenas are still completely dominated by Gun Puppies and Demos regardless of theme.

- Energy gates are still broken. Payouts are never worth it. Never.

- Crown rewards for the first half of a run versus the second are still broken. You cannot justify drastically reduced rewards for the first half of a run as long as you refuse to balance stratum themes. Every time you patch the game without fixing shock status, Phantoms, Devilites, etc. you are saying to yourself, "I am perfectly aware that these are serious issues and I consciously choose not to address them. I choose instead to fix achievements. I'm okay with this."

- Level/arena completion music is still way too loud, a problem I could fix myself in 30 seconds.

- Devilites and Rocket Puppies are still OP. Devilites effectively drain your health as long as they're on-screen and rocket hitboxes are too small.

- Melee ranges for Oilers and Zombies are still broken.

- Some items still lack 5* or even 4* upgrades. These should have been in the game at release, even if it meant using placeholder artwork, which you obviously don't have a problem with.

- The auction house still hasn't been replaced with a materials market interface, similar to the one we have for CE. Whichever designer decided the game needed a traditional AH needs to grow up and let it go.

I could obviously go on and on. Look at the suggestion forum. Do SOMETHING. Each patch, just pick one serious, legitimate problem and fix it. Just get ONE FIX in, and you can spend the rest of your time playing with achievements or adding spikes to snipes.

Do status traps even appear anywhere that isn't a danger room?

I agree with pretty much everything OnmyojiOmn said. Though the matchmaking fix is nice.

''or that someone's sitting in a room somewhere giggling and making what you consider to be bad decisions on purpose.''

The change to Slime interaction with Danger Room traps say otherwise on this one.

Ian's drink is about to get a hell of a lot saltier....

I obviously got a little carried away, and I'm sorry for that. That said:

"When something isn't in a release, all it means is that it's not in that release."

Shock status and everything associated with it, including shock strata, shock resist gear, and every enemy with a shock attack, have been broken for almost three months. Which release should I expect this fix to be in?

Wait.. so literally my entire screen will no longer fill with fire?

But that was funny as hell. Especially on T1.

yeah, us with the negative fire resist also found it funny. In a Dwarf Fortress-y way.

No word on the auction house bug and the negative crown bug?

:(

@ OnmyojiOmn I agree with all the problems you said

@ Replicant Because once your shocked you are screwed, it lasts for what 10 secs? you spasm roughly every 3 seconds, where you are unable to shield for 1 second, this is a major problem in arenas

I really hate the new update, with a passion, the only thing i like about it is the fire spam fix.

Because once your shocked you are screwed, it lasts for what 10 secs?

What? I hope you're joking. It last for 5 seconds at MOST. It's not hard to deal with at ALL.

you spasm roughly every 3 seconds, where you are unable to shield for 1 second, this is a major problem in arenas

Not really. It seems to be less of "this mechanic is broken" and more of "I can't properly deal with this mechanic" to me. Then again, maybe I'm just super-awesome as I almost never die to shock related incidents.

We're ignoring that if you shield while shocked, it blocks the shock and the spasm most of the time - or maybe that only works on the Grey Owlite Shield. Hm.

Is that so? Hm, I faintly remember the shock bouncing off my shield and preventing a spasm on many occasions... GUESS I'VE GOT BRAIN PROBLEMS.

For me, qucksilvers aren't very hard since I can 1hitKO them with my Troika(actually now a Kamarin). I haven't fought any oilers yet though.

OnmyojiOmn: "Phantoms still scale exponentially with additional players"

No, they don't.

You might want to look up what the word "exponential" means. The word you are looking for is probably "quadratically". (And even then it seems to be false because monster HP doesn't seem to scale linearly with the number of players, rather it seems to scale with somethingpha like the square root of the number of players, making phantoms scale approximately as a power law with power 3/2.)

Basically, the more phantoms there are, and the more health they have, the more time you need to spend fighting them. Since their downtime does not change, some phantoms will be recharging while you fight off the others. As a result, a greater percentage of your time must be spent fighting phantoms with more players present; as that percentage approaches 100%, it becomes more viable to simply flee for the elevator.

This is all completely irrelevant if someone has a Shivermist Buster. Freeze and Stun are the only two status effects that can affect Phantoms. If one player stays behind with a Shivermist to continually re-freeze the Phantoms, the rest of the team can clear the path ahead. Mercifully, the only party button in a graveyard is the one in the very first room.

In mathematics, "exponential" relates to a specific form of relationship between quantities. Outside mathematics, it has a vaguer informal meaning of "becoming more and more rapid", or simply "rapidly increasing". I'm all for promoting correct use of technical language, but one should recognize that the terms are often used differently by laypeople.

This just in!

They nerfed Oilers and Quicksilvers! They also nerfed Shock status!

Those darned things will be less brutal now!

I viewed the difficulty presented by the monsters as a challenge, so nerfing the whole lot kind of makes me kind of sad...

I loved the challenge presented by phantoms, devilites and wolvers, now seeing them weakened bothers me.

Although I fully understand the fix on oilers and zombies (especially since I was up against those earlier today).

As a general rule, I usually stay quiet when it comes to game mechanic difficulties, so during the multitude of threads posted about how this is broken and something is too hard, etc., etc., I just read and moved on because I never let those problems get to me. However, now I find myself posting my feelings about about an update. I don't know, maybe it is all for the better. In another year from now, no one will know how different the game except for the veteran players who stuck through it all, because they truly love the game. Either way, I'm glad you guys are always working hard to make this game the best it can be

I will miss how these monsters struck fear into the hearts of players, but things must be done.