July 14th, 2012

Hello all and welcome to SK-RAMMA, your host of pop culture in the Spiral Knights community. Yesterday was the release of not 1, but 2 promotional events, so you can be sure that there's tons of things happening around Haven.

In the economic department, the price of our highly adored Crystal Energy is dropping fast due to the increased supply because of the promotional opportunities. Also, many formerly expensive and outstandingly sought after items are now dropping in price as well due to the increased supply. From things such as former promotional items like Dragon Wings and Valkyrie Wings to things mostly found as Featured Auctions in our beloved Auction House such as Auras and Halos are now drastically dropping in price and are becoming more available to the common people of the Spiral Knights community, rather than the major salespeople within the community. Experts say that things like these will continue to drop in price. They claim that the Crystal Energy market will be back to normal in due time, but the items featured in the new Nemesis Prize Boxes will still end up with an overall lower price than before this promotional event.

In the fashion department, our community is as active as ever. For example, "Now Trending", a fashion contest being hosted by some of the famous fashion bloggers of Spiral Knights, such as Redfevrier and Tersakoff, will be taking place this Sunday, the 15th of July, at 2:00 PST. There has been talk that this even has been in the making for a long period of time, and many people are anticipating the date of the contest in hopes of winning. Also new to fashion, a new accessory has been released recently and is extremely rare. Only a few people have ever gazed at the item as of now. This glorious new accessory is known as an Arcane Halo. One of the few people I remember having an Arcane Halo is none other than Snarkey. Many of you may know Snarkey, so if you're curious, the next time you see Snarkey, ask him to show you his wonderful outfit including the glamorous Arcane Halo.

The fashion contest mentioned above is not the only contest that has been created recently, there are also a few contests more related to proving your strength rather than your style. One contest that I've been informed of is the "Clockworks Dash Competition" hosted by my good friend Zaderules. The point of this competition is simply a race. Many teams of 2 have signed up for this competition, but unfortunately Zaderules needs help with hosting it to make it simpler. He is open to anyone who wishes to help him host it, and he even offers a prize for those who help him host his competition.

Now more towards the people of Spiral Knights, a breaking story of a person impersonation a well known knight who goes by the nickname "Rhip". The impostor, who goes by the name July-Zerg, stated a short time ago that she was Rhip. She managed to get many people fooled, but fortunately, one good soul got to the bottom of July-Zerg's false statement. He had many long conversations with July-Zerg, and through persistence, got her to admit that she was not who she was claiming to be. Being smart, the brave knight who took on the literary wall of lies July-Zerg had created, he took screenshots of many of the lines of text that proved that July-Zerg was nothing but an impostor.

Now for more of the developmental side of Spiral Knights. Recent updates have been released to the Test Server for many important things to the future of Spiral Knights. The newest Danger Mission is currently being tested by helpful knights who want to be more influential to the upcoming releases. This danger mission is filled with enemies of 2 serious status conditions, poison and fire. As you probably already know, poison reduces the amount of damage you deal, and increases the amount of damage you take, while ceasing the ability to heal yourself. Fire is another status condition to watch out for. When you are on fire, you will regularly take damage from the fire, and even though it might seem like a small amount of damage, it begins to add up quickly and you find yourself rapidly loosing health. Unfortunately this danger mission has not been released yet, but it would be a good idea to prepare yourself for it beforehand.

On a lighter side of things, the changes being made to the Crystal Bomb series weapons are going well. The point for these changes to the bombs was that they weren't very bomb-like and they didn't fit in well with any other bombs. Many people who choose bombing as their fighting style in Lockdown are disappointing with these changes because the well known Radiant Sun Shards dealt both Piercing and Elemental damage, and also had an extremely large attack range. I have tried out the new experimental Radiant Sun Shards in the test server, and I'm happy to say that it is still a unique bomb, and using it legitimately made me consider bombing in Spiral Knights. Another great thing to come from this update is that the Crystal Bomb series will finally have 5 star variations rather than ending at 4 star.

I think I should end today's news from SK-RAMMA on a happy note, so what better than information of upcoming content to finish it off. I hope you all enjoyed reading this and I hope you will come back next week for more news of Spiral Knights pop culture. If anyone has information about an exquisite story for next week, contact me in-game at Lightyourfire.

In case anyone was interested in hearing more about the things I talked about above, below are links for more information on these topics.
Nemesis Prize Boxes: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59405
Guardians Armor Pack: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59402
"Now Trending" Fashion Contest: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59073
Clockworks Dash Competition Hosting: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59320
Clockworks Dash Competition Info (No more signing up, sorry): http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/55633
July-Zerg's false claim: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59025
July-Zerg proved an impostor: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59239
Danger Mission(a lot here, I just chose this thread): http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59336
Shard Bombs(again, a lot here, I chose this): http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/59556