I'm at kind of a "now what" moment.

30 replies [Last post]
machallboyd
Legacy Username

I think I've seen every level in the game many times over, so it doesn't feel like I'm exploring anymore, just grinding. I hop in and think "Ugh, mechanized mile again. Here's that room with the s-curves where you have to shoot the switches... Here's the L-shaped room with four exits where the switch is under the crystal blocks at the tip..."

I've bought every recipe there is to buy and I've crafted a bunch of good stuff. I haven't made everything, but some equipment doesn't seem all that great, so I haven't bothered. (Do I need armor that resists curse? Does anything even inflict that?)

There's a few rare drops I could use, but it's all below Emberlight, and I can't muster up much enthusiasm for it. Soloing is boring to me and I feel like a drain on more skilled players. Plus, my connection is a often slow on weeknights, so I take more hits than other people in the group.

Now, if Vanaduke were up, I'd be hitting that with whatever group I could find, freeloader or no.

Boswick's picture
Boswick
Developer
Honesty is appreciated

Hello! Some questions, if you would be so kind as to answer.

  • Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?
  • Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?
  • Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?
  • Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?

Thanks in advance!

Shoebox's picture
Shoebox
Cory

To answer your questions:

  1. The floors below Emberlight seem almost identical to the floors above, just the monsters have more hitpoints.
    Plazamonium was interesting, but not challenging.
  2. I have a bit of 4-star equipment, I'm not really after equipment though. I have stacks of rare materials and nothing to use them on because equipment is useless.
    And the stuff I want is currently unattainable/extremely bothersome to acquire, and even then I only want it for aesthetics.
  3. I prefer guns. Alchemers take the point out of using anything else. Especially with two Handgun Focus Modules.
    3x Ultra Charge Speed Modifiers.
    That said, the only difference between 0-star equipment and 5-star equipment is just how quickly stuff dies.
  4. I put all the minerals I get into various gates. It takes too long to deposit individual types of mineral into a gate and so I end up just dumping 200 or so minerals in one gate.

I was honest.
Don't hate me because I'm famous.

Sadiekate's picture
Sadiekate
I've also hit the "what now?"

I've also hit the "what now?" wall. I soloed my way to the core using with a Spur, a Prismatech Alchemer, none of my defenses higher than 70, and a shield that I never used. For the questions:

1. The challenge has become "how long can I wait to draw out a single baddie and whack it with a sword until it doesn't get up again" or "how patient can I be to charge my gun and shoot something standing still."

2. No. I got a Troika up to level 5 to use in an upgrade recipe, but I'm missing one other ingredient in the recipe. It doesn't seem worthwhile to run to the core more times so I can try to find the last item, so I can level up the sword so I can... run to the core again? Especially when the 2 star spur (level 10) has proved up to the task. I'm also not looking forward to doing less damage right off the back when I switch to lower level but higher star gear.

3. I went for speed over power because I like to click a lot. I leveled up the proto gear on one character, the Spur, a brandish. I tried the cautery blade because slimes are everywhere, but the damage to slime bonus doesn't seem to do much, if anything when compared side-by-side with a sword with the same damage and speed stats. I picked the prismatech at random and it worked really well in most cases so I didn't look around much for guns. I tried the proto bombs, and decided I really wanted a sword and a gun for my two weapon slots and left it at that. I played around with armor and helms to protect myself from fire and ice, and then I changed them up to give me better purple defense so the zombies would stop killing me. I got a shield for the attack speed bonus.

4. I dumped a bunch of the same color minerals into a few gates. They came out with the same levels repeated. Beyond that, there is too much of a delay between adding minerals and seeing the results to determine the pattern without taking notes. I've certainly never chopped down a specific color crystal so I could make a certain level happen somehow.

This post prolly sounds a bit bitter. I did have fun, but I feel like I beat the game.

machallboyd
Legacy Username
Right. I'm not out to trash

Right. I'm not out to trash the game, I figure this is the feedback you need from players.

1) Sometimes I can solo it through one sub-Emberlight floor, sometimes I can't. Either way, I get bored with the pace of soloing. I'm not advocating any change in the solo gameplay, it's just not my thing.

With a group, my main challenge is not to die. Sometimes this is the fault of my connection, sometimes me just sucking. Either way, my goal is to avoid losing health, which depletes the group health pool and makes me a drain on the better players who are killing more guys.

2) I have a Khorovod that's slowly leveling up, and a five-star trinket that dropped from a love puppy. Oh, and my Miracle Hood is four-star. Everything else I know of requires rare drops that I don't feel like grinding sub-Emberlight for.

3) I've experimented a fair amount, less since the rate of heat accumulation was cranked down. The successful Core groups I've run with seem to use all mk2 alchemers all the time, so I wanted to see if anything else was viable.

I've used troika-lookalikes and brandish-lookalikes for swords. I didn't like the feel of the Cutter. The Khorovod's pretty good. I like the dynamic of having to knock enemies away so they can't counterattack you while you're winding down. However, at the level I have it heated to, it doesn't seem to do the crushing damage I'd expect, so I'd have to keep grinding it up to see how it improves. I got a Cautery Sword to level 9, its max, but it didn't get a bonus against jellies, so I shelved it.

I use a maxed Magnus for a gun, but it's difficult to use well. If you shoot twice, it reloads, and that locks down your block and movement, the two things that keep you alive in Spiral Knights. (The same goes for its charged shot, which locks out your block while its charging, movement and block while it's doing the warmup-fire animation, and then it knocks you out of position when it fires, keeps your movement and block locked while your character stands back up, and does maybe 1.2x of the damage you could have done just shooting it normally. Despite all that, because the charge gives it a greater range, it's one of the few charge attacks that I actually use.)

I've tried bombs. Elemental vaporizers aren't worth using, which I've talked about in another thread. I actually do use my maxed Blast Bomb during the tons-o-gremlins events below Emberlight. It won't kill the mages, which is the important thing, but it's a lot safer than the reload-prone Magnus or a sword, and my goal is to not deplete the group health pool.

I've used a bunch of armor, but the differences have felt mostly cosmetic. Whatever the differences in damages are, I don't really notice them too much as I play. It's hard to compare, since different monsters do different amounts of damage on different floors. Since I don't know what kind of damage different enemies are doing to me, I don't think "Aha! I'm glad I brought my anti-piercing armor!" In fact, since I'm guessing most enemies do normal damage, I don't see why I wouldn't want to just wear a set that's strong against normal all the time.

Anyway, at this point, I'm not really motivated to grind up another weapon just to see if it's a dud or not. Besides that, there aren't many more weapons or armor I can make that don't involve a rare drop from sub-Emberlight or an item that doesn't exist in the game yet.

4) Yeah, I've put crystals in, and then something happens. They get turned into levels, apparently, though I can't tell which levels or how many.

Getting money back was exciting at first (especially when it was bugged to give you 22k a day), but I don't need crowns anymore because I own every recipe and the vendor equipment isn't better than what I have. There's also no visual indication of how much heat you get, and I certainly don't memorize where my progress bars were the night before.

BehindCurtai
Legacy Username
1. The floors below Moorcroft

1. The floors below Moorcroft are a challenge :-). Two of us went through, made it halfway through 12. Last "revive all" was 25, and we finally died probably most of the way through. Monsters move very fast.

But we did find that for most levels, you have places you can stand, and shoot monsters. There's one nasty guy that is healing faster than we can dish out damage. (Oddity: He calls out "Magic Missile", but doesn't shoot anything that we noticed.)

The real odd thing: It seemed that after shooting at them long enough, most monsters go into "flee" mode; even with the gate open, they won't charge. Not all, but enough to help.

The dungeon was the one that is mostly or entirely clockwork passages from 9 to 12.

2. Nope. I think I've got a one-star. I've got two and three star recipes, but I can't find the drops.
3. Just two so far. With bombs, and without bombs.
4. Yea, I'm one of those that wants to analyze it and try to figure out what makes what. Without enough materials to do a good job :-).

I figure that putting stuff in JUST BEFORE it opens will let me look at stuff as it forms, at the top. So I'm saving up until I have 100+, and a shallow gate is about to open a few minutes before midnight.

Kharnor
Legacy Username
* Do the floors below

* Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?

Not at all. The only place that still provides a "challenge" is the third room of arenas, and that is only due to certain broken game mechanics.

* Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?

Yep, everything is 4 star, but I use a 2 star firebreak shield for the aforementioned arenas.

* Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?

Pretty much all of them. Mk II alchemers are superior to literally everything else. I also use a khorovod, mostly for trying to take out healers, and an irontech bomb for groups.
High-level armour doesn't seem to do much; I have over 150 elemental defence and I still don't feel like gun puppies are any less of a hassle.
Speed/charge-increasing items don't seem to have much of an effect.
Status effects never turn the tide of battle.

* Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?

Yes, but that's not exactly gameplay :P

Boswick's picture
Boswick
Developer
Thanks for the input,

Thanks for the input, everyone.

No need to worry about hard feelings. So long as things stay civil, this sort of stuff is very useful to us. After all, we're not finished creating Spiral Knights — not by a long shot. Do bear in mind as well that much of this stuff, if not currently being addressed, has been discussed amongst the team.

Mesona
Legacy Username
Hello! Some questions, if you

Hello! Some questions, if you would be so kind as to answer.

* Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?

Nope, except for what Kharnor mentioned. I have managed to solo entire arenas below Emberlight before without dying, but it's either I get super lucky and only have to fight one healer, or I'm instantly doomed because I'm grouped up against 4 healers and 6 flamers.

* Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?

Yeah, everything except my Firebreak shield and helm because they provide very good fire protection.

* Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?

I've tried swords, guns, and bombs. I don't think there's any reason to use bombs, and swords you would only use to speed through a level as they provide faster damage per second. Guns are by far the most superior, because even though they deal less damage, they have better status effects attributed to them and they are much, much safer. It's clear that many areas weren't really designed with guns in mind, and as such you can abuse that fact and you rarely need to put yourself in danger.

* Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?

I'm currently trying to figure it out, but without any actual data to go off of, it's pretty difficult.

Pupu
Legacy Username
Same

I'm pretty much in the same place. Answering the questions:

* Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?
Not really, except for soloing some particular areas. With a party, only the third room of arenas can be trouble. Or sometimes against devilites + green spookats since if you're sloppy you can get hit by tridents that takes 5 bars of hp.

* Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?
Everything is 4*. Got a 5* shield.

* Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?
Tried most weapons except for bombs. Got a vaporizer and was disappointed with the area it affects. But I think I have found the "best" combination of weapons. 2 gun charge time reduction trinkets and a voltech mk2 make 90% of the enemies a joke. A khorovod for enemies that are easily interrupt-able with a push, like jellies.

* Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?
Somewhat. But due to the lack of a better party joining/creation interface I get few crystals many times, and other times if gates are made monochromatic, we don't get enough minerals to get to the core. I still have a majority shareholder bonus on about 3 or 4 gates.

machallboyd
Legacy Username
Hah! Man, gremlins have like

Hah! Man, gremlins have like every Demonic Spider ability listed.

Ok, not all.


# Prevent you from acting as they kill you.

Check. Stuns and shield tics.


# Frequently employ debilitating Standard Status Effects (i.e. Sleep, Paralyze, or Charm).

Check. Stuns and fire.


# Deliver lethal or near-lethal attacks that are virtually impossible to dodge.
* Or attacks that ignore accuracy/evasion/defense outright.

Check. Stuns and fire through shield block.


Can duplicate itself or summon reinforcements with no apparent limit on how many or how often

Check for rezzers. They still do that, right? How about summoning mechaknights?


Require a special type of resources to defeat without extreme skill and concentration and some luck,

Not this one.


Can take more punishment than an M1 Abrams tank.

Check. With multiple healers present, oh my god check.


Move in manners impossible for your character (often with greater speed than you'll ever have).

Check. Those dudes can swoosh all over the place.


Are capable of nullifying your primary methods of attack/defense (often reflecting or absorbing it).

Check. Golden domes of invincibility. A lot of them have the "Shields, how do they work?" ability that we don't, but I don't think that counts.


In action games, may have melee based attacks (or counter-attacks) that quickly hit you from a fair distance away and then cause them to retreat in an equally swift manner.

Not really.


In RPGs with a Class And Level System, have the ability to take your hard-earned levels away from you,

Nope.

Kharnor
Legacy Username
They can't summon

They can't summon mechaknights anymore, even at the deepest levels. I actually kinda liked that, it was cute.

That's kind of kicking the players while they're down, though. :P

edit: speaking of monster design, I'd just like to say again how great Spookats are. They are The Best Thing. High five to whoever designed them.

Shango
Legacy Username
@ Kharnor > High five to

@ Kharnor
> High five to whoever designed them.

Like you don't know. :P

You know, after reading those threads you linked to I'm not that much a fan of nerfing the Gremlins to be more like the Knights. Rather, I'd really, really like to see the Knights get things to be more like them. Maybe we could have ability slots, or trinkets that add abilities like dashing and some magic?

Shoebox's picture
Shoebox
They took it hard ;-;
cyclohexane
Legacy Username
Hello! Some questions, if you

Hello! Some questions, if you would be so kind as to answer. Sure!

Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?

When I solo them I normally do okay and can get to the core without excessive energy expenditure but I definitely wouldn't say its easy. I also like the fact that the difficulty of the level itself changes based on party size and weapon stars and since me and my trouble-making friends have decent equipment and roll in packs the added difficulty is quite fun and challenging.

Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?

I haven't actively tried searching for any. I tend to use whatever is practical based on a cost to usefulness ratio. I find that my level 10 spur is not only trend-setting (so many people ask me what my "curvy sword" is) but reallllllllllllllllllly good at killing things the way I like to kill them (quickly).

Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?

I use a mixture of sword, bomb, gun depending on what role I'm playing in my party. Me and the people I normally play with usually have people each fill a different role when killing things. I either slash things up as my sword is really fast or bomb things to pieces as I'm the only one with a bomb (besides Nazdar when he actually logs on, who might I add is an AMAZING bomber and to my knowledge only uses bombs). We also have some dude standing back shooting at stuff with some form of alchemer to help with damage as well as someone with an amazing shield we can hide behind and shoot through while they absorb damage. For each role I have a different set of gear I would bring with me. Bombs would be the demo armors and trinkets whereas if my job is hack and slash I'd bring my quick attack gear. Because its often beneficial to have different members of the party performing different tasks based on the way the levels are set up (ESPECIALLY the arenas) I do find reason to do so.

Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?

Its complexity intrigues me to the point where if i see people trying to make a gate a single color to see what it generates I will help out by adding solely that color. Once we figure out more solidly what each color/combination of colors generates I will engage a lot more as I know exactly which types of levels I want to generate ;)

-Cyanide

Prayful
Legacy Username
Just add tons of guild hall

Just add tons of guild hall choices you can purchase when creating a guild.. expand the guild halls and make like 8on8 guild vs guild battles fighting in different guild halls as the maps, similar to Guild Wars and I will play this game 10 hours a day kk thanks =]

Rose
Legacy Username
I'm Captain Basch fon

I'm Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg of Dalmasca!

Liviola
Legacy Username
:D

Some things that are keeping me kinda interested:

* Hope of running into rare special creatures (but drop rate of special stuff is discouragingly low)
* Uncommon farm-like/themed levels like graveyard, devilish drudgery, jelly farms, the arena. Maybe it's just the change of pace (i.e., freely ploughing through without dealing with keys and buttons). Also, I love jelly farming.. a lot.
* Collecting weapons/armour solely for cosmetic reasons! <3

Alee
Legacy Username
* Do the floors below

* Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?

Similar to those above, only the third section of Arenas is a challenge. Oh, and Lord Vanaduke was a challenge for the one day he was available after being fixed.

* Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?

Yes, I have. Quite a bit of 4-star gear. 5-star gear is silly-rare at this point, only being available as a *very* lucky drop from a chest or from a very lucky drop from a rare monster.

* Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?

Feedback from your armor is kind of hidden. That said, I've experimented with normal, piercing and fire damage type armors. Normal armor with a fire shield is really the way to go at this point. There simply isn't sufficient elemental damage of a different sort to bother protecting yourself from.

* Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?

I actually do!

So far it *seems* like:

Red -> Arenas
Some Green -> Overgrown Paths
Some Purple -> Haunted Passages
Purple -> Sin City

Unfortunately this seems, by design, to lack -straightforward- feedback. I'd rather say "I contributed toward the gate getting 'Overgrown Path' as a level." than "I donated 160 dark matter. Purple bar go up." The current feedback allows for the latter.

Feedback when a player does something is good. One likes to know they did something. This falters when feedback is abstract and we ask ourselves "What did that just do?" This is compounded in the gate-creation system because minerals are very clearly a reward. Loot. Spending rewards to do something that I'm at a loss to explain makes me sad.

The disconnection here in gate-building feedback is unfun for me, despite slowly discovering the creation process.

Broseph
Legacy Username
I agree with Alee. I think

I agree with Alee. I think the logic behind gate creation should be much more clearly communicated somehow. It doesn't really feel rewarding to dump your minerals into a box with no way to tell how that contributed to the level-making. Additionally, it doesn't encourage people to THINK about how they spend minerals in order to create a well-thought-out gate design.

kojiden
Legacy Username
Keep in mind this is from a

Keep in mind this is from a player who still considers himself to be climbing the ladder and not "pro" at this game yet.

[*] Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?

Yes, but that's because me and my friends all have like 1-3 star equipment. From what it seems in order to be able to make items that will help out in the levels below emberlight you need materials from levels that are below emberlight. So right now my friends and I are just kind of stuck at Moorcraft Manor as we just pretty much try to get crowns so we can buy stuff.

[*] Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?

I just recently acquired my first 4 star item. I haven't had much time to use it yet, but I was disappointed how my weapon seemed that it got WORSE after the upgrade. I think when you upgrade a weapon the attack and speed should start out where you leveled the non-upgraded version and then get better from there as you level the new upgraded equipment.

[*] Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?

Not many. I've recently just been trying to get the crowns and materials I needed just to get a level 4 weapon. With the high cost of energy for alchemy I don't have the luxury of being able to experiment. Some days it's like "do I create an equipment and stop for the day... or do I go have fun with my friends?"

Also, equipment never drops for me when I play levels. I've gotten a total of 0 equipment. There have been a total of 2 times that equipment has fallen in the level I was in, but the equipment was given to a team mate. I've had to rely solely on crowns to try to get equipment.

[*] Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?

Since I don't really understand what the system is for (the loading screen once just said to experiment, but I don't care enough to experiment around I just want to know how it works) I just find a gate and dump all my minerals into it then leave.

WiseFox
Legacy Username
All IMHO disclaimers apply.

I hesitated to post around this (having played much less than the rest of the crowd here) so I'm glad somebody else brought it up first...:-p New OOO games have so far always managed to hook me in quickly/effectively and make me spend a lot of time on them. So I was surprised/disappointed when I hit a "what's the point?" moment in my first week of playing SK. Game progress seems to be solely measured by the quality of your items and there's a big random factor to it. There's no apparent incentive for me to slowly build up my character by fighting through the early levels. The most effective game strategy seems to be to rush to the deeper levels (or tag along a party already fighting there) and stick around for lucky drops. Once you have a decent set of items, you can pretty much handle any level out there and are basically done. What I'm really missing is something that translates game time into game progress in a more constant way ie predictable character progression. Something that gives you a sense of accomplishment like "I've spent the past 3 hours whacking jellies, went up from level 6 to level 7 and gained an additional 1% of fire resistance! Yohoo!!". Something that makes my choices around what to invest in have consequences like "If you never invested a single skill point into stun resistance, you probably won't survive for more than 2 minutes on this floor." Something that builds up towards a climax like "You cannot progress below Moorcroft Manor until you're level 10. ... Access to the Core is restricted to level 50."

tl;dr Spiral Knights currently feels to me like Diablo without character progress. And character progress is exactly the RPG thing that gives me the sense of accomplishment of time well spent and makes me want to come back for more. It's the difference between a game I'll play for a few hours and one I'll play for months/years.

Benamas
Legacy Username
The biggest drag for me right

The biggest drag for me right now is the lack of variety in levels; I KNOW there's probably a dozen or more levels that I've seen in a gate but not been lucky enough to get to, because I keep getting shunted to boring clockwork tunnels with the same handful of segments over and over and over and over and over; even if the enemies are a little different it doesn't change the fact that i'm hitting the same switch with the same pot to open the same gate

every now and then I'll hit a really exciting level like a scarlet fortress one but those seem few and far between

the fact that there's only TWO gates that you can even go into from emberlight right now doesn't help the selection very much

Shoebox's picture
Shoebox
I really do think that there

I really do think that there needs to be a lot more pre-made gates for the public, possibly with constructible gates being guild only or coming in limted supply, so that people can actually take advantage of what the gate system has to offer instead of having to rely on the community.

As it is now, gates almost always contain the same levels or never get finished.

Limiting the level of content made available seems like a bad idea.
Especially when people have to pay to explore the gates.

Annilaton's picture
Annilaton
Bringing

I'm bumping one of the most ancient threads ever in Spiral Knights history back to the top because I believe it has relevant value that we can all apply to Spiral Knights right now.

Fehzor's picture
Fehzor

Haha. It's definitely something to discuss... What I wouldn't give, for them to come back and ask us these questions again.

Do the floors below Emberlight still present a challenge?

I have carried entire parties through the vast majority of the floors in question with nothing but winmillion.

Have you acquired any 4 or 5 star equipment, and if not, why?

I have all of the weapons and most of the armors. The only reason I don't collect or craft armor any more is because of how pointless most armor feels right now, when chaos/black kat become an ultimate of sorts... and on top of that, how costly it is to go through with heating the armor in question. If it wasn't for heat costs, I'd craft every single piece of gunner update armor, just because I can.

Roughly how many weapons or 'character builds' have you experimented with? Do you see much reason to do so?

I generally log on and do nothing but experiment with different weapons and character builds. Not doing so makes me incredibly angry, and generally gives me the urge to shave my landlord's cat.

The reason to do so is to find more efficient and stronger ways of playing, and to inevitably become the ubermench. The reason not to do so is because iron slug + vortex is all I need (I'm about 80% sure there isn't a stronger combination for running DaN) and there are still hundreds of hours left for me to grind out.

Did you engage much with the Arcade gate-building system?

No but I wanted to.

There are hundreds of players, so I saved my minerals up. I needed around 50K of each to build an entire fiend+shock gate on my own. I got about 1/10th of the way there, and then lost the ability to donate minerals. Really I think a better system was needed to build gates, because my efforts alone felt meaningless- kind of like voting for the next president in Texas. I can vote for whichever democrat I want, but the truth of the matter is that I'm so outnumbered that my vote is going to be counted against my ideology regardless of how I use it.

Petater's picture
Petater
@Annilaton

You're bumping a thread that contains the handles of former employees that no longer work at the company.

Fehzor's picture
Fehzor

^And you're trying to derail it.

Petater's picture
Petater
Because we don't need more necros

Make a new thread then, don't necro. It's not in good faith to necro a thread so old that there's people who have previously commented in it who are no longer going to comment in it.

Hexzyle's picture
Hexzyle

How is it still relevant? This is from a time when you could beat Tier 3 with a Spur.

The-Royal-Jelly's picture
The-Royal-Jelly
LMAO. Proto. You could do it

LMAO. Proto. You could do it in proto.