Spiral Knights - PLEASE add a Punishment Pact System for Arcade in the future!

PLEASE add a Punishment Pact System for Arcade in the future!

5 replies [Last post]

Wed, 06/24/2026 - 20:49

Urbanbobber

Spiral knights NEEDS more variety in gameplay loop to make the game more engaging long term!

As it stands now a full arcade run takes 2-3+ hours for the average player and it's just not rewarding enough for the time poured into it, I believe this system being implemented will provide a more fun and engaging experience for all players. I will be using a system I believe is 'perfect' in my eyes for the arcade experience, although everyone is more than welcome to chip in ideas or bits of tweaks to make this better. :D

Hades 1 & 2 - Heat and Fear system | x/x/x is a way of selecting what bonuses you can enhance as well as make the game that much more challenging and rewarding.

(I will be basing the multiplier bonuses as what 'could' be balanced for spiral knights so take the multiplier with a grain of salt)

- All foes deal +20%/+60%/+100% damage | Crown Multiplier 0.05x/0.1x/0.25x

- All foes have +10%/+20%/+30% health | Crown Multiplier 0.05x/0.1x/0.15x

- All foes are +20%/+40% faster | Crown Multiplier 0.15x/0.3x

- Most encounters have +20%/+40%/+60% more foes | Crown Multiplier 0.05x/0.075x/0.1x

- Most foes have a 10%/25% to be from the next Tier (if there is one) | Crown Multiplier 0.025x/0.05x

- Most slain foes have a 25%/50% chance to become a revenant (an orb that spawns after death that must be destroyed in 5 sec or they revive) | Crown Multiplier 0.025x/0.05x

- Any healing effects are 75%/50%/0% effective | Crown Multiplier 0.05x/0.1x/0.2x

- 50%/100% foes have armor | Crown Multiplier 0.025x/0.05x

- Most foes with armor have 1/2 random Perk(s) | Crown Multiplier 0.05x/0.1x (Perk examples can be found by looking up Vow of Fangs in Hades 2 wiki page)

- You have access to 60%/40%/20%/0% (excluding first weapon slot + shield slot) of your gear | Crown Multiplier 0.1x/0.2x/0.3x/0.5x

- Gears have 1/0 Variant(s) | Crown Multiplier 0.1x/0.3x

- You have 3/2/1/0 Revive(s) | Crown Multiplier 0.1x/0.2x/0.3x/0.4x

- All bosses will be stronger in various ways | Crown Multiplier 0.5x

Max Total | 2.9x Bonus

This doesn't cover everything but 'most' of what can be slightly altered to make the arcade experience that much more experimental and fun for all players willing to go the extra mile for more crowns.

Special thanks to Ariave's channel for bringing this up I just wanted to give this system a body of reference for everyone in the SK forum community to look at. <3

Wed, 06/24/2026 - 21:45

Gustim

Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Hades 1 and 2 are two of my favorite games, partly for this reason. This would really be something I'd like to see implemented.
Maybe you could even get cool costumes and armor sets if you complete the arcade run under specific requirements (no deaths, hitess, etc). To the naysayers, no, I don't think this change would turn the game into a rogue-like. But we can surely borrow some ideas from rogue-likes to revitalize the game and give it some well-deserved replayability. The arcade is massively slept on atm which is a shame considering it was the backbone of this game when it came out.

Another thing I just thought of, it would be really cool to see more NPC's from haven that we could meet in the clockworks and complete quests for - for example, a lost snipe that rewards 10 snipe feathers if we are able to return it to the elevator, or maybe we find Basil in the graveyard and she needs us to collect 10 souls and return them to her and gives us a choice of three recipes for our time. This is probably the only MMO I can think of without quests that you find and complete while exploring, which is a lost opportunity. I would love to see more qwests implemented!

Thu, 06/25/2026 - 02:00

Everest-Wintersky

Not sure about all the options. but agree with the premise

Enemies with armor doesn't sound quite right to me, neither does restricting gear (Although I am an advocate for more curse enemies so take that with a lot of salt).
Would limited revives be for the whole run, per stratum or per subtown and does that count for Spark of life or the free revives?
For enemies being from the next region, I assume that would mean next stratum rather than floor given all floors of a stratum normally have the same enemy types.
Now for some ideas I had not including multipliers:
5%/10%/15% of enemies are of the next tier (t3 enemies would become their swarm/Dreams and Nightmares equivalents)
enemy abilities (mecha knight shield, dodges, that weird bubble menders have) can trigger 1.25x/1.5x/2x faster
Negative statuses last 1.5x/2x/infinite times longer.
And some random challenges I thought of but am unsure about:
All shields and slime cubes block piercing projectiles (magnus charge, antigua charge final shot etc.)
Enemies never stagger/flinch.
Every enemy can be revived by every revival method (menders, totems, deadnoughts)
Trojan have a shorter attack cooldown/turn faster. 1.25x/1.5x/1.75x speed

Also, to add to the idea of quests: Why not have quest givers at the terminals who can change the floors until next subtown to one of the minibosses (big iron, maulos, seerus?, Arkus, Collector) mission floors? (Not listed all bosses, some would probably need a buff)

Thu, 06/25/2026 - 04:57

Vyre-Acidlashed

Pretty neat.

I do kinda like this idea, yeah.

Couple things I would be interested to stress test about it, though - after all, one of the things you would have to overcome in your idea is the kind of player who would just pick the things that don't really affect their run to the point they could repeatedly run Vana just as fast, but for more crowns.

The big one that sticks out is "+X% more enemies per encounter." That kind of implies +X% more enemies *dropping crowns* per encounter; basically every player would crank that to max and nothing else, getting a free x1.76 Crowns, straight away.

An alternative approach that might be appealing is to allow a player to add as many as 5 levels of "threat," and let them be selected *randomly by the game*. This could (and should!) easily include any or all of your ideas, but also "Curses" OR "Blessings" of a sort, which can have a lot more variety than just applying %Scaling to enemies in the clockworks.

Suddenly you're open to curses like:
- Monster Mayhem (*ANYTHING* can show up on the floor)
- Randomized Enemy Damage Weakness/Types (Mixes up the "element triangle" the game has)
- Randomized Enemy Elements (Frost, fire, shock, sleep, poison)
- Violet Eclipse (The Grimalkin pursues you on any floor, though slower)
- Hot Stuff (FSC-Style fires around that need to be put out),
- Wretched Weather (the floor's elemental theme is so strong it causes damage if you spend too long outside of safe zones)
- Silent Pursuit (Ghostmane Stalkers are hidden across the floor in random places)
- Humid Air (Sprite ability cooldowns are increased)

Or blessings, like
- Secret Stashes (Breakable Blocks are randomly swapped with Treasure Blocks)
- Emberlight Brigade (Some gremlins spawn as allies and will follow you to help.)
- Fresh Breeze (Sprite ability cooldowns are reduced)
- Healthy Glow (Enemies drop slightly more hearts)
- Magnetism (pickups can be collected from further away)

Etc, etc. I like scaling, I think it can be fun! But some horizontal variety would be nice, too, I think.

I also like Gustim's idea of quests, actually. While it can be maybe said that "events and dailies are kind of already this," it'd be great to see more, smaller, "sidequest" style activities that can be pinned to the HUD and completed naturally as part of running the arcade.

I did have one idea that I've been rolling around in my head for a while - there is a second elevator in the clockwork terminal that's in a state of disrepair... I always liked the idea that (either due to Story Mission or game-wide change) it would (possibly only sometimes) allow access to a Perilous Path - a version of the strata that is longer, stronger, and packed with even more nasty tricks. Candlestick Keeps with green candles that are much weaker or shorter lived, arenas that *have* to be finished, so on. This sort of thing would probably be well-served by Player-made PvE Levels. I could make a hundred suggestions but I'll keep that brief.

What else... Oh, party buttons that make a party *split up* onto alternate paths rather than group together. That could be neat. Shouldn't require all four slots to be filled, just that each living player takes one switch. I have neat arena ideas for this one - something involving oneway gates and an arena split into 4, and you can only help your friends once you've cleared your area out....

...and if all this is a bit too much, honestly, it'd be nice to just get a bit more variety in boss strata layouts... I know, I know, shadow lairs, but... come on. ;)

Edit: Small side-note! You might wanna consider moving this thread to 'Suggestions' - not because it doesn't belong here, plenty of suggestions have ended up on General - but because it might see more contributors over there!

Fri, 06/26/2026 - 03:57

Urbanbobber

Great feedback c:

@Gustim
I LOVE the idea of adding quest to spiral knights such as an everchanging daily quest and weekly quest to help players make more crowns or better yet completing a set of quest to make 500-1000 energy for the week incentivizing players to come back for natural gain overtime. Your idea for unique quest by NPCs in the clockworks to give unique costumes or same-tier recipes is honestly amazing too, I'd actually like to see them do the same for their events as well on top of having the NPCs be in the clockworks.

@Everest-Wintersky
Armor acts like a second health state (mostly being lower of the normal health state and having a slightly higher defense) although I can completely understand why you wouldn't like it including me to some degree (as i think some enemies would be kinda op not being staggered while armored as well, id just leave that sort of balance to the GH team if they pick this up), that includes having restrictions on gear although.... I think there would be a lot of players on the fence 'for' and 'against' practically being stark naked on gear for a BIG bonus (personally i think it's a great spice mix to add for difficulty to reward and it yields one of the highest multipliers on my post for a reason). :)

"Would limited revives be for the whole run" - Yes! The entire run, it's a broad description so I did mean it that way, and the revive count will always eat into your first free revive for the level, then sparks as usual, although you would still be able to save your sparks going down a level and having your free revive use up the counter for revives until the pact is complete ending your run.

Next tier enemies is pretty much mirrored to this (im just using the wrong terminology so mb on my part ill edit it along with this post)
"- Most foes have a 10%/25% to be from the next Region (if there is one) | Crown Multiplier 0.025x/0.05x"

All your suggestions that include enemies being faster in some way is mirrored to this
"- All foes are +20%/+40% faster | Crown Multiplier 0.15x/0.3x" ( 'faster' in this context means EVERYTHING. Enemy movement, cooldowns, attack speed etc.)

Enemies not staggering/flinching would make certain enemies like bats almost impossible to deal with, with other debuffs so I think giving enemies armor as a temporary no stagger/flinch until the armor is broken is just as good covering this pact. :D

"Negative statuses last 1.5x/2x/infinite times longer." - Freeze, Stun, Sleep, Fire are all death sentences without a remedy capsule (and if u run out ur a sitting air-fried duck) so I think as much as I like this, there would be too many exceptions made to have a bigger debuff like this added AND balanced into the game.

I think having enemies revive by ANY method is kind of a weird challenge, programming-wise but I actually think it's a great idea otherwise (with the exception of small swarm enemies reviving they should honestly stay dead hahaha).

@Vyre-Acidlashed
"they could repeatedly run Vana just as fast, but for more crowns." I actually did think hard into having the punishment pact be applicable for missions as well, and honestly some of the debuffs like "more enemies" shouldn't be applicable for missions as it is for arcade, the punishment pact would have separated qualities between missions (being alot more limited AND having lower a crown multiplier for balance reasons) and the arcade (that deserves the most love and biggest bonus for crown to challenge ratio).

Now the blessings and curses, I actually like this system too ESPECIALLY the BLESSINGS, I think the blessings addition was absolutely genius of an addition on ur part (it's like an extra incentive for players to add more curses/pacts to their runs :D), although having it entirely RNG (for the curses side) might have some people on the fence, maybe... just maybe! Have the curses/pacts be selected, and if a certain amount of them are filled, then we could have the 1/2/3 blessings RANDOMLY chosen for the run for the amount of curses you have as an assistance or bonus for the run. (hope im not burning the kitchen with this one!)

Monster-Mayhem - I feel like with a game like spiral knights you would actually notice that enemies are placed in very specific spots, and as far as I can tell spiral knights doesn't really have a 'same level' randomizer kind of thing that could easily have this sort of pact implemented but personally it's a pretty good niche idea.

Randomized Enemy Weakness - I'm kinda on the fence against something like this, because it kind of ruins the game visually to 'understand'. All enemies should look the way that they are weak too, otherwise it's just too messy and chaotic of an idea, we should be able to keep integrity of the game while making it hell for players with each debuff. :)

Randomized Enemy Elements - NOW this I can get behind.

Violet Eclipse & Silent Pursuit - AMAZING. Stalkers exactly what we need for each level (although we wouldn't have protection in safe zones with no candle another GH balance kind of thing lol)

Hot stuff - Kind of a weird programmer challenge, but we got Vana who can summon them randomly, this gets a decent pass I think for me (i just feel bad for players picking this)

Wretched Weather - Let safe zones be safe zones. Like ain't no one looking to get up to use the bathroom and come back to "spark of life needed!" so this is a pass for me.

Humid air - I'm not sure if this is worth having but, im sure it would in the context of the curses/blessings rng system you had, it just wouldn't fit that well into the normal pact system mainly because it would be an 'easy' choice for extra crown multiplier.

As for the split-up party system, I'm sure alot of people would love this idea (that play in groups of 4) but it would be kind of a weird challenge for programmers to implement, so yeah I'm neither for or against it lol

"You might wanna consider moving this thread to 'Suggestions'" - I am NEW to actually making forums lol, so thanks for the heads up ill move it by the time you see this post.

Side note: I will most likely be going over my most liked additions next time to keep my responses short so MB for long read!

Fri, 06/26/2026 - 04:57

Vyre-Acidlashed

Truth told, I'm seeing a lot of interesting suggestions from the community about extending gameplay, and it seems from the majority of them that the overall feel is "We Would Like More To Do," which is pretty fair considering how tight the gameplay loop is.

I'm glad some of these were of interest! Most of them were just spur-of-the-moment, I'd have to take actual notes and give a design appraisal of my own ideas before I would feel confident trying to argue for them - for me the best thing seems to be keeping the discussion rolling and offering plenty of ideas so that the actual folks doing the heavy lifting can figure out what's best for the direction of the game, when they get a chance.

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PLEASE add a Punishment Pact System for Arcade in the future!