Blackened Crest is not obtainable. I'm betting 5000 CE that you will not have it this patch.
I am convinced that the item Blackened Crest ( http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Blackened_Crest ) is broken and will never reach the hands of a player until the developers check the code and fix it. Now you may be wondering how do I know the item is supposed to be obtainable currently? The recipe for Crest of Almire (http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Crest_of_Almire) is purchasable, and it requires the Blackened Crest. Leading to 3 different conclusions...
1. The item is obtainable, but no one has figured out how to obtain it.
2. The item is purposely unobtainable, and the Crest of Almire recipe currently serves as a crown sink.
3. The item is unobtainable by accident.
Personally I don't think option 2 is the case, it would be a really cruddy way to tease players like that. This leaves options 1 and 3. I'm going to try and figure out which one it is. I'm putting up 5000 crystal energy for the first person who shows me this item in a trade. You don't need to trade it, you just need to show it exists, and the CE is yours. I'm going to goad my friends and guildmates to add to this pool, most of them are convinced that the item is unobtainable.
FWIW this character has more then 7 days played, and it's collected 100+ Almirian Seals. There are others with more seals and playtime. Blackened Crest does not drop from Firestorm Citadel or Vanaduke. If a patch comes, I'll close this deal for a few weeks, because I'll assume this was finally fixed. Get to hunting!!! 5K+ CE and eternal glory is yours to find Blackened Crest before the next patch. This is not a joke, it's bothering me that no one has seen this item.
EDIT: Vishnalo was the only person to claim they had it, and I've been unable to confirm he does. The 5K CE will be his, or no one else's as I've revoked the offer due to no longer caring. Good luck finding this item. I still don't think it exists.
i think its ubtainable but it requires knowing how to get it. for example maybe you have to find some kind of secret button that opens a secret door to a really hard arena battle in each firestorm citadel floor and if you find them all you get the shield somehow. the fact that nobody has it either proves its some big secret in firestorm citadel, or theres a really small (like 0.00001%) chance that vanaduke will drop it. if you have 100 tokens you've defeated vanaduke about 100-25 times. with a 0.00001% chance you would have to beat him like 10000 times. and nobody has dome that. it could also be a reward for defeating him 10000 times. then it wouldnt even involve chance it could just be "congratulations you defeated vanaduke 10000 times. heres a shield"
I'm all with u man I've gotten anwsers from gms saying its in the game and available for all players buy I'm finding that very hard to believe one person if it drops it should drop from either 3 sources....
Vanaduke, Slag Guards or the red boxes at the end considering a lot of us players, have killed vanaduke so much and haven't gotten sounds like some pretty broken game mechanics. I also heard of a french player getting the darkfang shield in the game but sadly we can't communicate/contact him explaining how he actually obtained it...
seriously?! can you show it to me im in haven 5 arcade by the alchemy machine
You are lying or trolling, Semeskooma. Screenshot the Blackened Crest if you want your word to matter.
I have to agree, As my guildmates can testify, We have killed that guy more times that I would like to admit in hopes of getting the shield,this includes farming slag guards or just straight up killing him ; we've also tried exploring around the Citadel floors going as far as breaking every single crate(not treasure boxes).That being said Item drops from boxes themselves are rare is hard to tell if it comes out of the Boxes at the end Vanaduke either,
Even if the drop is "rare" its definitely strange that NOBODY has gotten it, its not like we're complaining because we dont have it personally.
We also submitted a ticket and we got a vague roleplaying answer which seem to imply that the item was indeed available, but im inclined to go with theory #3
The problem here is that you can't prove a negative at least from where we stand, i'd be nice if we had some proof that it is obtainable by players.
i'll give 4 CE if he really has it (i wasted my CE crafting haze bombs)

for example maybe you have to find some kind of secret button that opens a secret door to a really hard arena battle in each firestorm citadel floor and if you find them all you get the shield somehow.
There are secret buttons in Firestorm Citadel.
A couple of them are hidden under the lava stuff on the ground.
A couple of them are hidden under the lava stuff on the ground.
X'D
theirs only one button hidden in firecitadel and thats the one inside the box surrounded by lava and that only affects the spawns later on in that stage
that button from experience causes small wolvers 2 spawn instead of big wolvers
Either doesn't drop, or drops from citadel boxes with a very low chance.
When have you guys ever seen an enemy drop gear to think an enemy will drop it?
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if the only way to get it so far is to farm Treasure Boxes that can drop 4* equipment, since we've seen that this is the only way to get Quicksilver gear and Mewkat hat.
I don't think ne one has gotten the mewkat hat in the live version of the game but they have gotten it in beta, TBH I don't see why u can't get the blackened crest via almirian seals
Blackened crest for $9.95 direct from OOO.
HMmmm money.
I hate this thread. It got me really curious and in an exploring mood. I just saved all the stupid little alien babies in Charred Court and put out every single fire there, even the ones you can't walk to or touch. I was hoping to trigger or find something. Ugh. Not doing that again.
Edit: My guess is that it's probably a super low drop from a box :(... how boring.
I asked a GM about that Sick and lemme fetch the response he gave me right quick
Coriolis - Apr 26 at 12:42am:
Greetings, to the best of my knowledge this button does nothing and may be a wayward part of the level design. Good eyes though! :)
Zeirnaton - Apr 26 at 12:40am:
so why is this button there if I can't reach it? http://img10.imageshack.us/f/unledsy.png/
I have to agree on pretty much everything posted here, its pretty unreasonable nothings been found yet and things have to have such a ~rare~ value. Its also frustrating things have to be left some kind of ridiculous mystery for us, its just a turn-off for players.
It'd also be pretty nice if you could get the shield from Almirian seals, that would give it some pretty kickass value. But I guess if you're going to have us scramble around for it, that probably equals up more value.
@ Sick: DAMN IT.
If I could be sure that the Blackened Crest was definitely available to be obtained right now, hunting it for it could be interesting. If there's a chance that it's accidentally turned off... that's where the irritation comes in (as opposed to -frustration- which happens anytime a game gets hard, but it goes away and is replaced with satisfaction when you finally make your goal ;) Irritation at something being wrong with the game design lingers on after the problem is fixed... until the next shiny comes along. Good thing for developers that players have short memories!)
I would love to see a developer assure us that they've checked the code and the flags that might disable it and that it really, really is turned on. Or they could just tell a GM exactly how to get it and the GM could take a (regular, unprivileged) knight down and see that they can get it.
Probably it doesn't drop from where people think it does and is really rare.
I think the rumor about it coming from the guards is based on the color text for it, which is not to be trusted, or else you'll be buying unnecessary sunsilver to make shiny guns and killing the wrong mob to get rare drops!
people think its dropped by slag knights because they visually carry it. just look at their shield the next time you fight a slag knight

The Devs never like to give an outright answer for whether something is dropping. They usually give something "Kill more monsters" as a response.
The Blackened Crest is on the wiki as an artifact of having the Crest of Almire recipe available. There's no icon uploaded to the wiki for the BC be there is currently no know instance of a normal player ever having it. The images are there because one too many GMs/Devs were spotted carrying it around near then end of the Preview Event. A picture just ended up getting uploaded around then.
This is not the first time there has been a recipe for a piece of gear with an absurdly rare/unobtainable earlier form. The Avenger and Faust recipes existed for quite some time before the first recorded player got a Sealed Sword.
I remember playing World of Warcraft classic back in the day specifically when Molten Core was just starting to be cleared. On the forums, people were complaining that Sabatons of Might have not dropped since the release of the game. They were part of the Might set, so everyone knew they should be dropping in MC. The response from developers were "You're just unlucky." A few weeks pass, thousands of players are clearing most or all of Molten Core, and nobody in the entire game had Sabatons of Might. Players still complained. Soon after, developers released a patch with a few hotfixes. That day, players were getting Sabatons of Might dropping in MC.
I know this isn't WoW, and I'm happy about that. But this goes to show that Blizzard with all of its manpower would makes mistakes and were sometimes too arrogant to check and make sure the item is obtainable. This may be the case for Blackened Crest.
I have a Blackened Crest. For proof, I give these two screenshots . It was found this evening in a tier-2 run. I do not remember which area it was, except that it has two tournaments in a row, past the halfway point. In the second of these tournaments, after the third battle, the Blackened Crest was found as a random drop from a green chest.. It is currently bound to me, as can be seen in the screenshots. Therefore, offers to buy it from me will be ignored, at least until I have it upgraded.
- I have a Blackened Crest. For proof, I give these two screenshots . It was found this evening in a tier-2 run. I do not remember which area it was, except that it has two tournaments in a row, past the halfway point. In the second of these tournaments, after the third battle, the Blackened Crest was found as a random drop from a green chest.. It is currently bound to me, as can be seen in the screenshots. Therefore, offers to buy it from me will be ignored, at least until I have it upgraded.
- You know, I wouldn't be surprised if the only way to get it so far is to farm Treasure Boxes that can drop 4* equipment, since we've seen that this is the only way to get Quicksilver gear and Mewkat hat.
lol...

@OP, is he gonna get 5k CE? (this is a real question not a troll)
And if now not, why? (i.e. could this be a fake<--personally i'm naive to this kind of thing and assume not).
Also, it will be interesting to see if they star popping up somewhat more commonly!
@Visnahlo, if it's legit, i really hope you get UV high elemental when u upgrade :D
aahahahaha gotta love how some devs/GMs hint on it being obtainable but give no information, leading several players to believe it was a drop in the FSC, possibly from Slag Guards, when in the end, it's just a Quicksilver Set V2, 2000% more rare! (To me, something being obtainable does not mean a 00,0000001% or whatever chance to drop from treasure boxes)
Congrats I guess, but I gotta say I am pretty annoyed!
The drop rate of that thing must be ridiculously low, since there were no reports of it ever being obtained before that.
(I'm wondering if this was actually a hidden patch in its drop rate. Even being insanely rare, it's weird that no one got one before you.)

Honestly the drop rates on any equipment (even bad equipment) is staggeringly rare. I've never seen a game so stingy with 'treasure' before.
Seriously, has anyone ever played a game before where you could easily do 10 days play time and not get a single piece of 'treasure'--meaning equipment from a treasure box. I have 6 days playtime (lots of that spent in town, or logged in but afk, but still) and i have seen 1 piece of gear in a treasure box. And of course it is a 25% raffle. Crystal bomb, btw.
As rare as treasure is, it would be awesome if it was done like tokens!!!!! So the whole party could be happy at their luck, instead of 75% of a party being let down. How bad would that suck if you were in the party and the Blackened Crest dropped, and it went to the guy who joined 3 minutes ago :(
I was going through in a 2-person party with a friend, so there wasn't too much trauma. A sort of amusement as we realized how rare it actually is.
Well this is more of a crafting based game than a "Dropped Loot" sort of game. That said, I'm actually kind of happy to know that there's some equipment in this game that can actually be called "Rare."
Have you ever played/heard of Ragnarok Online?
00,01% chance per mobkill of getting the mob's "card" item. Those are crucial at endgame (+20% damage against races, +30% defense against races, 50% - 100% status effect resistance, etc) and there's no other way to obtain them. And even bosses have those card items.
On either case! Even with the insanely low drop rate, several Quicksilver items have dropped, and there's the Darkfang Shield. It's just really weird it took so long for a Blackened Crest to drop.
And considering how rare equipment drops are, it'd make sense for every player to get one copy. If the drop rate ever gets balanced and we actually get common equipment drops, though, that wouldn't work very well.
Oh man, now that you say that, I would love it if this game had some sort of slot-based gear customization system instead of this crap-awful proc-based system.
You all have lost the game.
Congratz Vishnalo. Post a pic of the Almire when you get the chance, I'll love you more.

Wow it exists, congrats Vishnalo - go get that Almire QUICK!
Now I just want to see someone with a Kat hat.
You just won the lottery son. Consider how many possible items that could of came out of that green box. 100+. Consider how many boxes have been broken as well by the thousands of players. That's probably over I'd guestimate, AT LEAST over, 10,000 boxes per 24 hour span. I've got to admit, I'm jealous. I run JK, Tier 2s all day when I get the chance, Vana whenever there's one available, do danger rooms in T2 and T3, and hit Treasure Vaults countless of times and I got nothing more than an autogun. Best I've seen were a needle shot and a nightblade given to, and of course, not me~ Congrats on your finding and I hope OP pays the 5k CE.
He got it in tier 2... just out of a box? That is so disappointing. Figured as much though :(
You could get like 100k ce for that after it's upgraded to Almire. If crappy common Divine Avenger UVs go for 90k, this should easily beat that based on rarity alone. Almire actually has really nice stats as well. It's just a matter of finding a buyer with that much CE/real money to waste.
I don't really get why people want the Crest of Almire so much, I was pretty sure everyone deemed it worse than Grey Owlite Shield because it has Shadow defense rather than Elemental.

1. Because it looks awesome
2. Status Resists BOTH useful
3. Rare
4. Phantoms are powerful...

Reminds me of how the Sealed Sword used to be~!
I'll miss the time when not just everyone and his mother had the DA/Gran Faust.
Congratz Vishnalo!
Waiting for Otrapas to post/pay up
10ce says the wont
Lawl @ Phantoms are powerful.
So our only possible end game "treasure hunting" is officially just a server wide lottery, while its good to see that the item exists(mysteriously only after this thread was made) it also pretty much kills any reason for people like myself to play this game apart from just "Hording" more CE since you can't really look for them specifically.
That being said grats on the find and a Easy 5k ce.
10 from me as well that he wont
edit: nvm he want it in trade window, but it's currently bound, so he wont get it
orrrrr he could just inspect the guy with it equipped, that being another way to verify its existence in-game.

The OP needs to pay-up. I'm disappointed he hasn't weighed in yet.
10 Ce from me too that he won't.
he might be taking a break from SK for the time being give him some time b4 automatically saying hes ignoring this thread, he might have just never checked it "yet"
I'm assuming that it may also be due to my lack of in-game presence much of the time. I only play for an hour or so each day, and so I'm guessing that our schedules simply haven't lined up yet.
Wow, I can't believe it!!!! Mail me IGN: Otrapas, and tell me when you usually play, so I can inspect ya. I really wanna see this thing! Yes, you'll get your 5K CE. I can't believe these noobs on the forums think I wouldn't pay.
I am surprised that it hasn't been found yet either. I've done a lot of FSC and Vanaduke as well. I've heard that it drops from the guards in the 3rd stage of Vanaduke, but I think that's all just rumours. We even kept Vanaduke alive for a while in phase 3 and farmed the guards repeatedly for a good amount of time to try and see if one would drop. Oh well. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Hope someone finds it :P