Spiral Knights - Well played map devs.

Well played map devs.

22 replies [Last post]

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 18:10

Whitechocolatechip

Alright, first things first: this is my tale about how some devious and under-handed map design screwed me on 2 (ultimately worthless) achieves. But I like achieves, they come with shiny pictures, which is really nifty to my primal brain.

The goal: Run depths 1-30 without dying. Do danger rooms and extra arena portions along the way, break even or greater (Oh yea, I made greater, including that T1/T2 garbage)

Achieves related: Finish t3 expedition without dying, finish D1-30 in one go, finish D1-30 in one go without dying.

So, I do the raid, taking about 4 min or less per floor. I am crushing the rooms, never even having come close to dying, up till D26. I am franking loaded in pills, carrying T1, T2, & T3 health capsules with 3 remedies. I am currently cruising a haunted floating manor thing, the ones with tapestries and higher presence of slimes and traps (no giant kats kind to be clear)

I'm doing good, I approach the final fight, a room with 4 spike traps and a solid amount of enemy density/tiny room feel going on. It's challenging yet fun because I brought a volt driver, umbra driver, and avenger... in short? Major crowd control VS undead, I'm even wearing my anti-darkness armor because of the ridiculous ratio of kats to slime/spikes.

I finish the 1st or 2nd wave, the final wave spawns; it's filled with Slimes and Kats.

Using some nice double-clipping and ricochet direction, I mow down 80% of the crowd in seconds, it's hilarious how bad they are getting stomped.
Then it happens.

A T3 gun puppy missile curves around the bottom right in a 90 degree arc and slaps me across the room, wearing aforementioned anti-darkness armor. I had no way to see this coming, because despite the small room size, I was just a bit too far away to see the missile puppy planted in the bottom end of the room because you know, you have no backwards depth perception. Shet.

I'm sure plenty of vets reading this know this situation:
-You're mowed down to a fraction of HP, and are on fire.
-You know the first tick of fire will do you in (holy crap that turret rocket hit hard)
-Given the choice between remedy and health, you know either remedy to extinguish, or get pill interrupted and burn to death trying to heal.
-Back off from enemies while popping remedy, okay. Time to get even.

Second missile flies in, I shield. My POS anti-darkness just can't tank ROFL-Roid missiles, shield's F'ing gone first shot, exactly 1 bar of health damage seeps through, I am dead in the most frustrating sucker punch of my entire SK career. Then I energy revved, curb stomped turret, finished expedition unopposed. I later found a royal core in the remnants of that room's enemies, accompanying my sun silver, plasma cell, and spark of life I already acquired my run. EDIT: Also, some silverweave.

That's why I say hey man, nice shot.

(I'm still kinda mad game devs.)

Related note: share most frustrating moments of SK career, if you want.

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 18:27

Sir-Zalost

I've got two. One is when the

I've got two. One is when the snarbolax kicked my arse, and i kicked his right after that battle, in another battle.
Second is right after. I arrived in Moorcroft Manor, and the server crashed. An hour wasted!

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 19:00

Little-Juances

Lack of experience?
It's normal to die if you don't know the level. Not bad design.

Now that you know it, it won't happen again (hopefully)

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 19:42

Neodasus

Sounds like you were in an

Sounds like you were in an arena. Right?

The game wasn't designed to be solo'd btw.

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 19:53

Shidara

@Neodasus

From the sounds of it he was in the Scarlet Fortress, or more specifically the Grim Gallery level where the final room is shaped like a cross with four patches of spikes taking up the corners of the middle-point, where Spookats, Pepperkats, Rock Jellies and Rocket Puppies spawn in waves.

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 20:32

Duskfinder

Well I was trying the same

Well I was trying the same achievement you were and it was going fine till I d/c'ed in the t3 terminal -.-
Second time I tried my friend insisted on doing a danger room and I died there :l

Fri, 05/24/2013 - 21:38

Not-Impressed

This space is for rent.

I don't really have a frustrating moment (to me all of it is kinda frustrating [atleast a lil bit] simply due to my bar of doom and lag that seems to mutilply every update) but I do know the pain of dying while trying to get that 1-30 no death achievement. First time I was with a friend during a free elevator weekend thing. I made it to somewhere in T3 before I died (can't remember how). We decide to just continue on and get the 1-30 achievement. Luckily the second time I attempted it I was with 2 friends and a random who understood I was trying to get the achiement so he/she and my friends would carry pills and drop them when I needed them. x)

Sat, 05/25/2013 - 00:02

Whitechocolatechip

Yea, was scarlet fortress.

I laugh at the notion that the game wasn't meant to be solo'd. The entire game short of danger missions and maybe vanaduke is easily solo-capable, and even then I've done 2/5 of those with gear that's not even full 5 star. Parties tend to hamper performance in my experience. Health scales relative to player count, dodging and blocking are practical, and guns especially can allow you to fight enemies with little-to-no harm being necessary. You kill the same amount of enemies with more total effort, and get the same amount of supply drops (AKA soloist's best friend) Additionally I never said "bad" map design, but rather underhanded. I think the devs knew at some point that spawning a missile puppy in that location was both extremely nonapparant and deadly, but kept it to be evil. It's also worth saying knowing fights is not necessary, though is helpful. You can't run depths 1 through 30 in one go and expect to know every single archetype. Sorry formatting is terrible, doing this via mobile.

Sat, 05/25/2013 - 01:20

Hexzyle

Yes, that level is probably the cruelest of all the Scarlet Fortress presets. Time Enough at Last wipes so many mid-levelled players. You have no idea how many people I've helped through that mission, and that's just Tier 2.

Sat, 05/25/2013 - 08:23

Grimranger

Oh, yeah. Rocket puppies are awesome (because they are hard).
If you like to sword vana like me (i.e no gun), so you dash past the rocket puppy room in FSC, all's going well.
Wait, don't SHOOT HIM WITH A BLITZ NEEDLE! WAAAIIIT!
RIP me.

Mon, 05/27/2013 - 17:05

#10

Lukehandkooler

Hey

What a good shot man.

Also a shout out to the time Pix-It and I were on the lift loading into the core for "Dauntless Delver" when the server reset!

~Luke

Mon, 05/27/2013 - 19:45

#11

Whitechocolatechip

Ha.

Glad to see someone picked up on the reference.

Funny someone happened to post on this as I got a new and fantastic story and this won't be necro posting or anything.

>Re attempting D1-30 again.
>Deciding I can handle these danger rooms in gremlin works
>Forget they almost always don't match previous floor theme
>Doesn't matter for first 5 anyways
>Running beast-themed floor when suddenly, one of them is loaded with 4 waves of pre-patch level greaver spam.
>Think "I got a DTB and a Callahan, I can do this"
>Realize weapons are still nerfed to T2 level and these are T3 greavers, additionally all your defensive gear is against piercing. Crap.
>Attempt to fight it out, do some boss fencing action and are doing good.
>2 Second lag spike. You are dead from full health
>Vow to throw PC off of empire state building one day for this
>Post on forums about it happening again

Though this is what I get for being cocky and attempting all the bonus danger room things.
Mistake analyzed, vowing to get this right next time. Oh, next time.

Mon, 05/27/2013 - 23:06

#12

Shamanalah

my 2 cents

Let's analyze some quick fact here:

- Why doing a door with undead T3?
- Why not doing FSC door?
- Why soloing this achievement when it can easily be done in co-op
- Gun Puppies two shot you with status effect if you don't have proper gear

It's challenging yet fun because I brought a volt driver, umbra driver, and avenger

You should've used that Volt Driver so the shock could cancel the attack. That WAS your best shot at it...

Side Note: Dying to T3 Gun Puppy with 4* weapons... I don't see any problem, move along...

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 00:48

#13

Whitechocolatechip

Do your homework

The points on this are pretty clear: do depths 1-30 in some of the best survival odds possible.

-The gate that held this set was mostly beast, jelly, and some machine. Scarlet fortesses can often appear in a mismatched area, leaving it as the oddball for enemy type. I Chose not to do FSC because it has worse survival rate as well as its previous floors housing less favorable enemy types, and soloing vanaduke is a terrible goal to do after 29 other floors while avoiding death.
-Coop by no means raises survival rate. Enemies will scale health to match, but will still drop the same amount of health pills and etc, so death isn't lessened unless your teammates arie supremely better than you and are carrying you through the raid.
-As previously mentioned, the floor was darkness themed so I brought anti-darkness armor and shield. Out of about 5 archetypes for this, only 1 spawned missile puppies, and even then only 2. Otherwise I'd have very little issue using my Grey Owlite and miracle/chaos combo set.
-Shock does not stop turrets from shooting, silly. That only works on melee mobs, but shock on turrets only stops them from rotating and the missiles will self-guide past that. A well timed power attack from any alchemer can interupt a turret however.
-Out of my total inventory of 17 items, 7 of those are 5*, and 4 star is easily enough to get by normal situations and then some. Had I a storm driver, the only thing I'd gain is an invisible amount of proj speed, 20 extra damage, higher chance of 2nd ricochet, and a power attack about 2x better; none of that would've made a difference.

To reiterate my main point: out of place elite enemies, backwards blind spot, no time to correct situation, improperly matched gear. Out of that the deciding factor was inevitably some devious turret placement.

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 04:28

#14

Espeonage

meatbag

I'm now remembering a really old time when some guildmates decided to go for those 1-End achievements. Around 27/28, it ended up in a situation where everyone was particularly low on health, and I decided to fling myself in the way of the maelstrom.

splat

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 06:38

#15

Shamanalah

my 2 cents

-Shock does not stop turrets from shooting, silly. That only works on melee mobs

I use Polaris way too much in CW to know it does flinch turrets... silly ;)

Out of that the deciding factor was inevitably some devious turret placement.

You speak as if Turret Puppy was undodge-able. I have done too many fire/ice/poison arena where it was a fiend/beast/mecha theme and you end up with jellies, turrets and whatnot. Those are DANGER Arena, they are made to be hard.

On the Gun Puppy two shotting you.... Get better, dodging on-coming T3 Turret puppy is easy and I can do it in the little space you have in D25 of FSC.

Just run in circle. Derp

It's not really THAT hard to deal with gun puppy turret. You make it look way worst than it really is. If you got hit you should've use invinci-frame to kill it. Or at least do some dmg so you could've back up, dodge the 2nd turret and finish off with a storm driver CHARGE (it does 1 hit kill turrets if you know where to charge it) then pop a pill

Clearly a case of L2P rather than the dev making unproper depths. People find the game easy as it is, if we take out every single challenge then there is no point playing the game.

-Coop by no means raises survival rate. Enemies will scale health to match, but will still drop the same amount of health pills and etc, so death isn't lessened unless your teammates arie supremely better than you and are carrying you through the raid.

If you have good teamates, it raises the spawn-killing rate to insta-kill if you have decent friends to play with. As a guild, we do SL w/o rez regularly, we do Danger missions w/o rez daily and we do Speed-run FSC in under 15 minutes. (14 minutes to be precise)

Having teamates WILL help you. Granted they are not randoms and can use a Brandish and a Polaris... Which anyone can use.

and 4 star is easily enough to get by normal situations and then some.

If it was enough you wouldn't be dead right?

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 09:39

#16

Kickthebucket

uhuh... why the hell did you

uhuh... why the hell did you go try those achievements if you don't even know the maps and it's spawnwaves???

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 10:13

#17

Whitechocolatechip

TL;DR guys? Already said you

TL;DR guys? Already said you can't run d1-30 and expect to know any and every floor type and randomization, that'd be ridiculous.

Polaris invokes flinch on target not because of shock but because of doing enough DPS vs stationaries to cause flinch. Try using a volt driver vs turrets and you'll find out.

As explained in the OP, the turret was placed in a zone where I could not see it due to its backwards placement, as I am in a 3x3 square surrounded by spikes and busy plowing through a small crowd. First hit leaves me with 1 health, remedy, second hit dusts off shield and exactly 1 hit of damage gets through. I was distracted and hit me with a sucker punch that instantly assured my fate

Question is not gear quality it was the gear type and the mismatching turret with insane Elemental damage and fire proc.

Teamates are also variable. If they're absolutely overclocked, then that'll help, but that kinda falls under supremely better. I beg to differ there are upsides and downsides to partyies, short of everyone being OD'd on gear, but that's more of game defeating than anything else, anyways. Being imperfect leaves a challenge, and that's pretty nifty, though at least 5 starring stuff doesn't hurt.

(If people keep making posts that make me re-iterate things already said, I swear.)

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 10:46

#18

Hexzyle

Already said you can't run d1-30 and expect to know any and every floor type and randomization, that'd be ridiculous.

I do, but then again, I am pretty ridiculous o.O

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 13:52

#19

Whitechocolatechip

I have to admit I'm pretty

I have to admit I'm pretty close to knowing them all too, even though there's probably at least 50 upwards main archetypes, depending on what the environment is. Even see some nifty new ones that are really rare, like swords with star maps or mortar gremlins outside of C42.

Also: Achievements get. Finally got this done, coming home with 49 different ingredients, a lot of which so plentiful and valuable I have to pawn them off on the AH in shifts, otherwise it just won't sell.

Drivers were hitting for 256 (including chaos and low UV's) on final floor. (Drools over nerdy pleasure related to a power of two)
GG, OOO.

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 14:08

#20

Zeddy

"-Coop by no means raises survival rate. Enemies will scale health to match, but will still drop the same amount of health pills and etc, so death isn't lessened unless your teammates are supremely better than you and are carrying you through the raid."

This is complete, utter and total shullbit. Having 2 party members instead of one:

Raises total party health by 100%.
Raises total party firepower by 100%.
Raises total pill/remedy/vial capacity in the party by 100%, meaning less pills have to be left behind.
Opens up tactical advantages in drawing aggro and blindsiding the enemy.

Meanwhile, it has this advantage for the enemy side:

Raises enemy health by 33%. This is sometimes enough to survive one extra hit.

Your teammate needs to be less than 1/3 as efficient as you in order for a party member to reduce your party's efficiency and therefore survival rate.

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 15:34

#21

Canine-Vladmir

I tried doing the same thing!

With my pro friend, Megapopper. this guy is the guy you need in a team. No UVs or popular gear yet he can still kick arse. Talented.

Anyway, I joined him in d1 back when i was 4*. Decided to help him out. Flew through T1 and T2, 1st part of t3 and then we reached problems in d27? or maybe d26, it was a fiend arena with evil trojans. He got a lag spike and got killed, it was me versus Trojan, i run around Trojan and go straight to my buddy, (Hey! im smart, i aint fighting no Trojan with a 4* Calibur ) i go to rev my friend and Bam! lag spike for me! I cant rez him, im just attacking near him and WAM! Trojan shock melee. Im dead. Achievement is gone. But we can still go for the d1-d29 achievement, right? nope. Were getting some serious lag here and with OP Trojan, we get stomped. We call it quits.

Tue, 05/28/2013 - 19:10

#22

Redblades

I don't do PvE runs. end of story.

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Well played map devs.