There is ___ONE___ other thread with a title mentioning spikes, and it is in the Suggestions section. He could have looked at the title of every other thread in General Discussion (including ones beyond the first page) and not seen anything that would indicate that this question had been asked before. Exactly how much research do you expect a new member to do before asking an ordinary question in an innocuous way?

I'm surprised that this forum has been around for such a short time and is already developing an anti-outsider culture

Re: monsters and spikes/brambles; there has been some discussion about it and there are a lot of ways that it could be handled; the monsters could be damaged by spikes and actively try to avoid them, or be merely slowed down by them, or stick with their current behavior of ignoring them.

It seems like it's been the way it is for a while but since this is a beta nothing is set in stone.

edit: ok nevermind sorry i see where this guy spammed up the forums with inane nonsense overnight

Actually, there is. It's in the upper right corner.

This thread is full of new and exciting revelations! :O

Seriously, it was pretty jerky of me to make that remark no matter what the circumstances, but you can at least understand where my patience ran thin, right? :P

With the new update, two other points about spikes:

1. Why do spikes seem to do more damage at lower levels? Do they get pointier somehow? It's fine for monsters to get more dangerous, but adding to the spikes is just strange. Especially in light of the fact that shields have a fixed non-changing strength, which ties into issue #2:

2. This bears repeating: please don't drop hearts and items in the brambles. It's amazing how many new players have effectively committed suicide by trying to retrieve health at the edge of the brambles, only to find that their shields immediately shattered a scant few pixels from the health they were trying to reach.

Slashing an item should pick it up.

There's not many brambles thicker than the length of your blade.

Either that or let players chop them down with heavy swords or burn them back with fire stuff.

Actually, I *love* the idea of being able to slash/burn the brambles away. It would definitely add a layer of strategy to the gameplay, and is completely thematic. If I can destroy boulders with my sword, why can't I chop through some pointy sticks?

Again, this all gets back to the idea that monsters (or players) should never have a totally absolute and unbeatable advantage up their sleeves. Wolver teleporting, gremlin shields, and bramble hideouts should all have some flaw that can be targeted instead of relying on mindless AI repetition- it doesn't have to be much, but adding something would spice up the fight.

You guys are going to kill us all by lighting the toxic brambles on fire and smothering the clockworks with deadly fumes.

Instead of putting more power with the fire status ailment, perhaps you could freeze the toxic vines?

if you freeze a plant, completelly, with low extreme temperatures, it will surelly die...you don't need to be a farmer to know this >_<.

Now, seriously, i would agree in making then only destroyable by swords, and disconsidering the fire damage. Considering that these plants are growing in metal itself, one should assume that they are quite resistant to natural effects, like hig and low temperatures, diseases, thunders, are already imobile (no stun), and can't attack (no curse, and it doesn't attack you, YOU that goes to them)...But they aren't resistant to other actions, like the usual cleanup with the sword...