I challenge OOO staff to try grinding for tokens after your office our. Gather four of you, ran solo to find kats, and invite each other over to grab tokens. Grind 200 tokens for 1 helm. Count how many hours that took you four, and look at yourself in the mirror, look at your eyes and say aloud that every minute of the grind has been fun.

It's even worse if you want the Black Kat Cowl and don't have a shred of luck in you...

Literally 16 hours almost non-stop (yes I have that much time on my hands) through Candlestick Keep and Cravat Hall III/Grim Gallery, and not one book.

/sees a Knight named Materialist

Oh god, oh man, oh god, oh man, oh god, oh man...........

I'm doomed. There no hope. There is not even a smile. The avatar is dead. The gods have been angered by you. Everyone is dead.

Sincerely

-A drunken zombie

I'm offended by Materialist.

But this is an obvious joke.

But 1+ for the topic.

Entirely agree. I realized within an hour that it was stupid. The amount of time needed to invest to get a stupid hat is not worth it.

This is entirely unfun content.

At least you added the 3D models and the climate settings in the GH, I guess. Still. You are starting to suck at making fun content. I have waited so long for something real to be released, then... This. This horrible thing. Slightly modify a Kat hat that is already in the files, buff a kat with the skin of a grimalkin, and call it special. Not only that, but make the grind so long that it is simply not worth it. That is great, so much fun!

Your additions to the game lately have been lacking. Your "danger missions" are only dangerous because you spam so many monsters that you either get overwhelmed or the lag hits you so hard you have to shut down your computer. And that is with a new computer with every update installed, along with a fan... Everything. It is server lag, plain and simple.

Oh, on a side note, the lag is so bad now I can barely play with more than 6 enemies on the screen.

Your Rebalancing:

Instead of focusing on what items really need to be nerfed (Polaris, FF, Skolver Clones, etc.) you focused on a very cool addition to the game. It was, as you all know so well, the RSS. There really was no actual reason as to why the item was screwed up. Nick said something along the lines of the bomb not being bomblike enough. Well, it was a mix of gunner and bomber, which was why it was so popular. The shards were extremely fun to use.

Then you take it and rip it apart. You take a great bomb and you degrade it to a pathetic bomb. Seriously, the 5 star bombs are proto bombs in comparison to the others. It was something in the bombers arsenal, something new, something for hitting switches when the bomber wants to stay a bomber. Without even putting it on the testing server you suddenly release it. These bombs are unbalanced and so buggy they did not deserve to be in the game. To shut everyone up, people were issued tickets. That SHOWED that the team knew it was a ****up. Everyone makes mistakes with these kind of things, so I waited patiently for any apology for what had happened.

Sadly, even when HUNDREDS, literally HUNDREDS of veterans appealed for the bomb to be changed back into it's original form. Nothing was done. Thank you.

Now with the Chaos Cloak... Yet another injustice to the bombers, and yet another item that was perfectly fine "balanced". Please do not even try to balance, because it is obvious that you don't have a clue with what "balanced" is.

/end rant

Am I the only one having a blast with this? Trying to run through candlestick as fast as possible killing as little as possible is an entirely new way to play this game for me. A lot of candlestick has sections with timed spikes and elaborate puzzles that seem like they were specifically designed for this event.

Sure, I've been at it for way too long, but I don't really mind grinding as long as it's fun.

Of course the comment is irrelevant.

Ethier way, 200 tokens for a hat is not good.

So good luck.

Sorry materialist but your post is irrelevant too. Please don't be a hypocrite.

Luck based things are not good.

"I checked YouTube, saw the secret boss, and that's it for me. OOO doesn't want you, the average gamer with a life/job/other interests to ever meet it."

If you give me your Password, I'll work for you, 50CE Per Token I find.

Because I have none of those things you've listed.

Off topic: Are you kidding me?

In topic: Now the grindfest becomes more Grindy.

Just because I've got nothing better to do with my time until my work shift starts, I've took it upon myself to collect all 10 masks. Yes, including the 3*, the 4*, and the 5*. That's 1050 tokens to collect in total. Out of these past three days, I've had horrid luck, but I managed to snag around 250 tokens. So, that'll mean it'll take roughly another 9 days to get all 1050 tokens. It's possible to get 200 tokens, heck, 600 tokens, within this time if you happen to have an active guild with elevator passes and nothing better to do.

That by no means makes the handling for this event anywhere near acceptable.

To hype up such a lackluster update is disgusting, and it's only driving more players away. People had hope. And their hope was crushed when the patch notes were released. Could it really be - that hard - to design a new level? No, it can't be. It's been done in the past. The devs even took the time to install an entire BOSS BATTLE for this garbage. A boss that can only be seen with insane luck, for sure, but a fun boss battle that many want to experience.

This event is going to come back? So, it's going to be another rehash? We're sick of seeing rehashes. We expected a permanent content update, similar to how the Shadow Lair patch was a significant update. The last significant update. And we get this garbage?

What's even sicker is that people, myself included, are giving into this. OOO still gets the cash they want so they can appease the almighty game developing gods known as SEGA, as people are giving up and dishing out for elevator passes.

This could have been done so much more professionally.

But why isn't the kat spawning permament?

Moorcroft and Subtowns are more populated, ect.

After The anniversay, I stopped grinding period.

GCSEs, hw makes me stop playing during the weekdays.

@Softhead, I don't think anybody has said Black Kats will stop spawning. All that has been said is the event will end. Do you mean why will tokens stop dropping? That's because if you could get your tokens at any time, it wouldn't really be a "special event." There would be no pressure to buy elevator passes/ce to grind with if you could just take your time and burn a little mist each day.

Like I said, you can't expect to get everything the day after it comes out.

@Evilnut, What is an office our? Did OOO give out an office for the community that I didn't hear about?

I would like to point out that we asked for this.

-We asked for something other to do than grind FSC.
-We asked for new high-level gear.
-We asked for a new boss.
-We asked for new tokens and token items.
-We asked for armour rebalancing.
-We asked for more rare things like Darkfang.
-We asked for things that are harder to do.
-We asked for more events.

We've got all that with this event. Things could've been handled better, but we got all that.

I'll also point out I'm still having genuine fun with it. Find a group, speedrun candlestick while ignoring enemies, puzzles and treasure (apart from those that spawn kats). The playstyle required to find a kat every five minutes encourages teamwork and using defensive equipment. We asked for those things too, by the way.

How is this work? You speedrun the same level a couple of dozen times in Super Meat Boy and I don't see anyone calling that work. Is Super Mario Kart work? You run candlestick for your mist every day for a couple of weeks and chances are pretty good you'll end up with enough tokens in the end. If not, kat fetishes are all over auction house already anyway.

I can see turning it into work. If you absolutely have to have the black kat mask or all three other kat masks you can turn it into quite a chore. You don't need the kat mask any more than you need prismatic valkyrie wings. It simply gives +1 more universal damage than chaos cowl now and some freeze resist and MSI. Last time I checked people don't generally care about MSI and freeze resist. What happened to MSI barely being noticable and doing nothing for you in the heat of battle? What happened to an extra low bonus being useless? The black kat hat is rare so that people will have something special to strive for. It's not an iota more overpowered than Chaos is. As much as I love MSI, +2 universal charging still clearly wins out.

-We asked for something other to do than grind FSC.
Grind Candlestick. Totally better.

-We asked for new high-level gear.
Overpowered Boss hat (through I agree that Chaos Cowl is better) and somewhat useless (cmon, ASI/CTR:Low and DMG:Low? really?) craftable 3-5* that you have grind really hard. Because if you don't grind, you basically don't... duh, i forgot the word... well, _play_ in event. You either grind for hat or not

-We asked for a new boss.
Activated through rare drop of rare enemy. Derp

-We asked for armour rebalancing.
And we got one armor buffed and made other obsolete. And we need massive gear rebalancing, not just one set, noone really used before

-We asked for more rare things like Darkfang.
Darkfang not really useful if used as shield. Kathat (both to user and his/her opponents) is deadly on other hand

-We asked for things that are harder to do.
Curse spam! Seerusly, all black kats do is summon curse skeletons, spit really slow bullets (are kats bullets slower than usual?) and have higher health, and boss is killable Grimalkin with shield and bullets

"Grind Candlestick. Totally better."

It's different, as much better than FSC as apples are better than oranges. When grinding FSC, you methodically obliterate everything for maximum resource-milking. When grinding for Black Kats, you run through bullet hell, herd around Grimalkins, solve puzzles as fast as you can, strategically bait kats so you can move past them without fighting and frantically invite your friends when you find a blackie. It's a game-changer, like Winterfest.

I know this is going to sound unbelievable, but the 2-week overall time limit is there to make you have fun. If the kat thing was permanent forever, people would just treat Candlestick exactly as if it was FSC, but with the time limit you're forced to speedrun it and experience the game mechanics in an entirely different setting. It's pretty frantic. Finding a kat is exciting. Getting an invite to a kat builds a bond with your friends.

It emphasizes exploration over fighting. Since the fighting part (actually killing the blackie) is easy, and the finding part is hard, people are encouraged to dress defensively and speedy.

"And we got one armor buffed and made other obsolete."

I'm aware. I kind of made the rage topic on it. However, there was a different topic that made a good point, and that is the point that with such a huge blunder made, OOO are now forced to reconsider the balancing of a lot of gear. Mad Bomber at least, if not anything else.

"-We asked for a new boss.
Activated through rare drop of rare enemy. Derp"

And doesn't that make it a bit special? Fighting Vanaduke isn't remotely special anymore. Fighting Darkfire Vana is hardly even special. The new boss is special because you aren't guaranteed to ever meet it. You can't really call it an achievement to reach a boss if anyone is guaranteed to do it no matter what. Sure, it's a luck-based achievement but that is necessary. If it was skill-based, only the most hardcore, blinged-up, skillfullest, laglessest players would even bother. But since it's luck-based, you have the knowledge that you have a chance at fighting the boss as long as you and your friends give it your best.

"Curse spam!"

When said "harder things to do" I wasn't talking about fighting the Black Kats, but about finding them. I refer you to the newly revived topic about Candlestick being too hard.

Anyways, when I look back to one of the earliest trailer of SK, it specifically says "No grinding" (together with "...and it's all 100% completely Free to Play" but let's not get into that). Then I look at this BK patch and I thought to myself...

This game surely comes a long way isn't it?

Recognizing reality, I don't see the current SK is going to be the causal game to meet interesting people that I thought it was when I first joined in 2011. So the question is, if SK is going to become your typical MMO in which grinding is the norm, is it worth the time and money?

This game said "No More Grinding!" from it's official trailers. I don't know who are the worst morons, the staff of this game or it's community, who are now realizing that there is nothing more to do in this game but grind content. Yeah, I wonder what you idiots will do once you have all the stuff that you wanted from this game and notice that all player activity is condensed in specific content from this game.

Isn't that you're the ones who make a technically moronic dating post?

Back to the topic: Now the book is treated like an item so i must solo to get books.

"This game said "No More Grinding!" from its official trailers. I don't know who are worse, the staff of this game or its community, [comma splice] who are now realizing that there is nothing more to do in this game but to grind for content. Yeah, I wonder what you idiots will do once you have all the stuff that you wanted from this game and notice that all player activity is condensed in specific content from this game."

So much for calling others idiots. By the way, there is more to do than just to grind for stuff. You may have heard of it. It's called Lockdown. It's this thing where you can battle against other players.

Also, aren't you the one who made that "dating" thread? I don't think that exactly qualifies you to be judging others' intelligence.

The boredom is not only the event. Event is good - something other, that whole-time-hitting-dat-fire-zombies. But boredom concers the whole game.
Just look;

Spiral Knights table of Contents:

0* - Nice missions (Only two free missions, what i can name as 'fun'), tutorial, comprehension of new game
1* - Missions
2* - Farming
3* - Farming
4* - Rage farming
5* - Farming to.... farm better

That game is not designed to make fun. It's only money spending tool.
The only thing, what stopes me with Spiral Knights is the CE, and Steam trade.

"Am I the only one having a blast with this?"

No, only you and everyone else with elevator passes and way too much time. Running through candlestick without getting any crowns hurts the ol' wallet. Unless, of course, you can do it for free.

Stops* Hold on a second, why you're still on the forums?

You know you don't HAVE to grind everything in a few days. You can always just play for fun, collecting the pages and such as you go. The missions will come back eventually, and you have until mid-February to get what you'd like to get. What's the rush?

If the game is all about having the best gear for you, then you've got bigger problems than the new content.

Go have some fun :o

The problem with this logic are that krogmo stuff will be there forever, this event is temporary (sure it will come back some day, but we don't even know if this is close or not, and the rate of finding black kats it's still ridiculous).