So how deep have people gotten? This was my deepest so far:
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/File:Level.jpg
Circled in red was a big impediment to getting further :P
Note that I also had 4 health vials and 4 mega health vials.
Alas.
Was still great fun :)
(I uploaded to the wiki to avoid nda breaking things, sorry to pollute things if that is messy.)
Yeah I think it was 23. That was hilarious - we killed the first two mobs and were all 'woohoo that was ok! Lets go find some moooaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" *melt* There were flames everywhere and I couldn't even see what was causing them - awesome! XD
That's about as far as I've been- the first level of the citadel. I couldn't figure out how to kill the skeletons for good, and of course my terrible connection wasn't helping. Did you all figure out how to get rid of them? I assume the obelisk things have something to do with it.
It took me a while to figure this out: the obelisk head things resurrect dead skeletons.
So in that first citadel level it spawns heads around the stage, and you need to pick the heads up and put them in a corner or something. Kill the skeletons as far away from the heads as possible. At some point a head spawns in the center, which'll be in range of almost everything :P Make sure to stow that away with the rest.
As a note:I love this mechanic, and figuring it out was fun, but it really isn't easy to tell that is what is happening. I had a thought on a way to make this more apparent.
Currently as soon as each skeleton has been killed once, whether they came back or not, it triggers the next wave spawning. This in a large part made the screen too cluttered with oodles skellies to realize what the heads were doing as the enemies multiplied rapidly. All the groups I was with assumed the heads were spawning more skeletons, not reviving them. If you hold off spawning the next waves until all of the current skellies are dead for good, then when the first few waves are fought with low numbers it will be easier to observe the heads reviving skellies. You can go ahead and increase the numbers of later spawns if that makes it too easy. (My groups AHA! moment was when there was one skelly left stuck on a head, after killing it 3 times and seeing it revive three times we finally clicked what was happening). Lower initial numbers will let users figure out how to manage the skellies before you bombard them with 30 at once because they didn't manage the first wave properly :P
Alternately a different animation that implies a direct relationship could work. The head shooting a beam at the skellie head before the skellie popping up. (The flashing eyes just look incidental and I didn't make the correlation at first. Or the wrong corellation:Whenever the eyes flash more skellies spawn! OMG!).
Spoilers.
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/images/9/9b/Van-intro.png
A gate just before bugged us, so Cherub had to warp us through it, but he didn't participate in any fights.
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/images/2/2f/Bugged-citadel-gate.png
Seems like a second wave of enemies should have spawned, but didn't.
If you can make it past the first Citadel level, you should be able to get through the next two pretty easily.
And after that we were too busy trying not to catch fire to pay attention to much else. Suffice to say that awesomeness ensued, then we all died! :D
I really liked those levels, although I think the difficulty may need to be swapped around a little, as the bridge level has a very steep learning curve compared to the others (although it really did not take us that many attempts). There was a lot of cautious creeping about with our shields on while we tried to figure out what was going to kill us next, and the best way to handle it.
I think most people seem to enjoy the levels with more puzzle elements, such as moving things to keep buttons open, enemies appearing in tricky places, and I particularly like the castle level where you throw the flame jars at the kittyghosts, and afterwards have to make it through that nasty little spike puzzle to get to the exit. I hope we'll see more tricks like that in future.
I also hope the drops are still to be worked on, as I don't think anyone got anything special, despite vast amounts of killing stuff in those lower levels. I didn't get a single level 4 material, and I'm not sure if anyone else did either :/ But I guess there is still an awful lot of tweaking to do :)
The enthusiasm is awesome and I'm really glad to get to witness you guys take on Van, however, please keep your screens on the wiki for the time being. Photobucket isn't secure enough for us to feel comfortable, and we'd like to keep our cards close to the chest until we've polished the game to a glorious shine.
Tried a solo core run today. I got to smouldering steps, the level before the throne room :D :D :D
By this stage I had 5 blue pills, 5 health pills and 15 mega health pills. It's nice being able to hog everything :)
Got to the bit where there's two health spawns and skellies spawn with idols. (Before the bit where we bugged out last time.) I couldn't move the idol quickly enough, so most of the first wave respawned and then the second wave came and I was completely overrun. Used up 6 mega healths before I got it under control.
Pills are really hard to use, by the way. Maybe it's due to my ping, but it seems you have to stand still for about two seconds in order for it to work, and it doesnt seem to work while you're blocking. Blue pills aren't that useful, since you only need to remove a status ailment when you're in a battle you can't run away from for a few seconds. Same with health, for the most part. I should just be able to tap 5 and see my health instantly jump up a few spots.
Anyway what actually killed me was being forced into a corner by two horses and a couple of skellies. My shield wasn't pushing them back, and I couldn't move. I think I may actually have been pushed inside a wall or gate slightly, by the horse charge attack. I killed off the skellies but for the horses there was nothing I could do but spam healing pills and hope they would take a single whirling step back >:(
Ohh. I had worked out that the skellies were coming back from the skulls, but not that the glowy-heads had anything to do with it. I thought that perhaps if I smashed the skulls hard and fast enough, they would really stay dead. (This does not work. They will jump up and kill you. Just so you know.) I thought the glowy-heads were egging on the living skellies, much the same way that the super wolver goads the sooty wolvers into attacking harder.
Spoilers.
Lord Van defeated by just 2 players.
Sadly couldn't take screenies while going through the big boss himself - slightly risky.
Little something from the Core:
After reading your post Kui, I checked out Vanaduke's stats and indeed some stuff was way off, so thanks for 'finding' that! He should be a bit more challenging in the near future.
Glad to hear it! Hopefully there'll be some reward commensurate with his increased difficulty. : )
How are you people accessing these dungeons? I've never seen them from Firefly Gate.
Check out the Arcade. Some of the gates there will allow you to delve much farther.
The Soupiest - use the arcade.
The firefly gate is just a short adventure area to test stuff out.
The arcade has the rotating gates that go deeper into the clockwork and let you access the two other towns and even the core.
I just finished my solo run through all the way to the core. My highest level gear was a Brandish that I found, and the Emberbreak armor. Should have taken a screen shot, but oh well.
I got all the way and beat them jellys on depth 5 or 6
EDIT: Please people i didn't know i wasn't allowed to do it but i'll stop now ok? But cmon u have gotta admit it was pretty funny seeing the instant reacions :p
Please get banned quickly.
or look at post dates.
both are easy.
no, I don't admit it was funny. Also, I'm sorry you didn't realize that being extremely annoying was against the rules. Basic common sense says you shouldn't be doing this.
You remind me of that guy who trapped people in gates just to see how polite they would be. Labeling stupid actions as a social experiment does not justify them.
Guys lets stick to the topic, so Jamoo what was the deapest depth you've reached before?
Cherub/Ian's armor is his own creation for his use alone. Bit of a perk when you're the lead artist for the game.
Level 22 or 23
In 3 star gear
AS a T2 player.
D26 in 2/3* gear
Also, nice necrobump. It takes serious skill to bump something like this.
Would be saying "Don't_necro.png" but this gives some historical info.
For example, in that picture look at the tool belt. You could hold 5 items in one slot, and with 5 slots. I think those two pills and two shock vials are just from different tiers, but the vials looked the same in every tier.
Ok, now, do you want to hear of the time I went on a necro spree and got a warning for it? As in, a warning that comes before a ban?
there was a depth 30 once upon a time? in here there is a screenshot of the old core level, and it's on depth 30.
My team tonight made it to the bridge of Firestorm Citadel.
We were all "Woo, this is gonna be awesome!" and then we caught fire and died. It was still awesome.
I think that's depth 23?