Though Apocrea got 60+ of my sparks (down to 241 after that. 293 now). We're not even 2 hours into the event and you're already making negative threads? I happen to LIKE these reskins (be it my obsidian gun because poison) as souvenirs and proof that I've done it. I'm getting that snowman-head-shivermist thing for FSC and I will SELL my currently existing 5* lvl 10 Shivermist Buster and you're not going to stop me! >:C

1) No, I haven't done it yet. I'm still in homework.

2) This is why I got the heater shield for freeze attacks (I couldn't get my nameless set before this. Uh oh.)

3) I happen to have PERSONAL EXPERIENCE with menders, shielded turrets, and other things from OCH. I recently played it 3 times on elite and came out unscathed.

4) Get a competent team. I'll be going with my guildmates and friends when I get off tonight.

5) If one of your team mates is being a jerk (i.e sitting at the elevator while you do all the work), kick him. He deserves it!

6) Much like Vyktor-Kun said, I'll ONLY be getting the snowman head because it's the only one whose former recipes I learned a long time ago (That and my Obsidian gun). After that, I'm just going to get prize boxes. A lot of prize boxes.

7) Monsters and the bosses have elf hats! WOO!

8) Stop being such a pessimist on the most jolliest time of the year!

OOO should make a good profit out of the event from people having to buy sparks after the drop rates of them was lowered.

These weapons are true reskins, exact copies of the normal weapons except in appearance, unlike the Apocrea weapons which at least had poison to make them different. I've found my poison brandish from that quite handy for areas with menders. But the weapons from this event? I'm not going to grind a horribly hard mission (I died in the first level of the mssion on normal) for a weapon I can get more easily the regular way.

...LY FUN AND AWESOME!

Cool, a challenge for Vanguards. Cool, Gremlins. Those buggers are actually interesting to fight. Cool, everyone's dying? This sounds like an awesome challenge to me. Then again, not everyone plays those survival bullet hell games, so I've an advantage here.

This is the first time your team had played the mission. You can't expect them to come out of there without dieing a couple of times. The reason why people are able to do FSC, danger missions, and shadow lairs without any deaths is because they played that level many times, know what works, and what doesn't. Just keep at it. You and your team will learn how to beat this mission with fewer deaths. I'll have to take your word on that this is on hell of a mission. And with that in mind, I plan to do it on normal. Nothing wrong with that.

I just realized something... Similar to my Apocrea guide I'll have to make a grinchlin guide. Just give me an hour or two, and another 60+ sparks ._.

after saw the boss and it behaviour and i think test the next strategy and weapons:

once entering on the last room destroy the 2 turrets at the bottom of the room. then;

-Have someone with: Shivermist (the last room at least for me on elite spawned me: 2 Gremlins Stalker, 1 mender, 1 gremlin thwacker, 1 greaver so those can be easily frozen), if not bring Dark briar barrage or Big Angry bomb (or Nitronome), Venom Veiler Works. so this bomber could be continuously spamming the bomb.

-Have 2 people to take of the rocket puppies.

-Have someone using Blitz or Dread Venom Striker agaisnt the boss.

i think that should work but im going to try to use that strategy until my friends get online

It's difficult, yes, but that's how I wanted it! Since the items are reskins, there is no need to rush to try to get them - they're always available in a different color. This is just so that we can try out something fun and challenging. Plus, this is a danger mission. We should have to expect something dangerous.

As for things about the actual mission, the fights aren't really all that difficult - it's the lack of heart drops that makes it hard. As far as I can tell, the heart attack only affects elite monsters that don't respawn, and even then it's unreliable. In the last room of the danger mission, the rocket puppies should probably be either replaced with normal gun puppies, or have a longer respawn time. They were the only thing that kept catching me off guard in that mission, and trying to juggle their attacks on top of everything else just became too much. Regular gun puppies I could deal with (or even slush puppies, those would still be a challenge but more do-able), a slower-to-respawn rocket puppy I could deal with, but this thing respawns just quick enough to murder me. sigh.

The event is still great though, and I'm having a good time. I just won't be farming the danger mission as much as I should. It's fun, challenging, and new - something we've all wanted. On elite, it gets a little too challenging, but a quick change would turn that challenge from an angry outrage to a more passive "Darnit!".

Have a great winterfest, everyone!

'Ruined' is going a little far, but the difficulty of the new mission combined with the absurd number of mats needed for the reskins (seriously, OOO? Over two hundred materials for just one weapon?) is...well. Let's just say I'm having a lot less fun than I did last year.

It's pretty much every single enemy from families Gremlins (including mortafires and stalkers), construct (bar scuttlebots), Jellies, trojans, and greavers from the fiend family all thrown in your face with constant movement speed decrease in an arena style battle royal.

Edit: With a nice little freeze theme to top it off

*breathes*

Just relive Winterfest like it was last year and ignore the new mission to show OOO how absurd and poorly planned it was.

Missions are terribly hard, payout is crap and I've yet to see any health or vita pods dropped. They made it too hard for your average player. I refuse to drop 10+ SoL to finish a mission, I can fun FSC on normal by myself but cannot finish the new mission on normal with 3 other players. I hate what the greedy OOO did with this game.

I've beaten it 7 times on elite, so quit whining whenever something gets hard.

<(:{D--|--<
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Haha Hades I wasn't attacking you. I was making a very immature joke about "beating it".

Or, you could get better.

What's that, you can't beat it now? You have a month. You have an infinitely replayable mission. You have friends (hopefully). Start practicing.

What's that, you don't want to grind the thing 50 times to get a stupid reskin weapon? Then don't get it... it's a reskin, after all. Not like it's more OP than everything else. Get the normal version instead.

I'm glad there is actually some difficult content in this game for once that isn't pay-gated. And they managed to do it without making a tiny room filled with hazards and things that set the entire floor on fire permanently or trap you in a 5x5 room with a deadnaught, a trojan, and five kats. Kudos, OOO.

(Now I just need to beat it without wasting all my sparks...)

I don't even know why I'm still playing this game. I lose more than I win, there must be something seriously wrong with me. I understand that if my job were to play this game, Spiral Knights, for 8 hours a week, I know that if that were to be my career, I'd sure as heck would get extremely bored and tired of it. Just imagine doing that for 3 years... The company's lost all interest with this game, this lazy attitude of theirs is inevitable. Let's face the facts, Nick hates us! We have become a detestable community, and it's why Spiral Knights has been abandoned from having righteous creativity and imagination. Unless the company can fall in love with the game again, then there is no hope for Spiral Knights, and we will all continue to play this game mindlessly for no specific goal, except to gather game money, and spend it all on cosmetics. I've yet to finish any of my costumes, too many costume ideas keep being released...

Of course, this is just my opinion. You can't blame me for saying this, though. What else am I suppose to assume? Re-skin after re-skin are as nice as milking frogs.

M-Milk Frog? Milking frogs? Wh-Who are you?

winterfest is a jolly and happy time

just throw snowballs at everyone

hehehehe.. yeah.

Anyhow, it's not bad at all. Like anything in this game, repetition is the key. Once you learn the patterns and strategy, you breeze through. I don't mind burning a couple sparks, and eventually I'll be doing it sans spark use.

It just needs fixes here and there in the danger mission. I love everything...until the last room slaps you hard in the face with <30 second respawning Thwackers, Menders, Stalkers, Slush Puppies, >Rocket Puppies< (Just why are these necessary with everything else out for your blood?), and Humbugs while being relentlessly assaulted with multiple large AoE artillery strikes from the battle pod, whose invincitink shields go down for too short time to attack safely with the rotating overshield on top of it. Did I also mention the pulses that shove you into spike blocks, and if you happen to die on top of said block without an ER, you won't be able to get back up without GM assistance? Not to mention menders heal the battle pod too, negating the damage you've been trying to pump into the darn thing for the past how many minutes. And all of this for what, reskins and 3k crowns...? The difficulty isn't worth the effort of the reward, I don't mind grinding as long as the reward is worth the trouble (BKC, Kat Helms, Obsidian weapons...), and here, it's definitely not.

Apocrea event was so much better than this, it offered nice shadow poison weapons (that were NOT reskins like these weapons) while giving you a sense with steady progression (It was admittingly easy too if you had an Acheron and Voltaic Tempest, spent at most 5 sparks getting 2 weapons). Here, the last room anyway, is just rush the battle pod with a Blitz while being harassed up the butt by an unmanageable and unavoidable assault of attacks, hoping you spend as little amount of sparks in the process. The last room isn't just beyond difficult, it's absolutely cheap in the way that you can't defend yourself from all the assault and gain a safe opening to attack. It's just--I don't--bloody...fake.

That being said, I'm going to give it another shot later today. Maybe it is possible to do without dying as long as you have some sense of crowd control with Shivermist and Nitronome bombing. I truly do love everything about the mission except the last room. Having no means of recovery except pills puts real value on your health management, much like Apocrea. Anyone who thinks the same about the room can end the mission without doing the last room if they feel strongly about it, but I'm going to continue to try just to laugh in it's face and say "I won!" 8B I couldn't care less about the weapons, but serious props to those who have the endurance to own one.

Never did Winterfest last year, but now that I've gotten the chance to play it, it's kind of a miserable grind for stuff that LD merchants will put up for sale at a decent price. I mean if you care for snowballs and expiration costumes, knock yourself out.

Polar gear is awesome looking, I'd love to get both Day and Night sets. And thank goodness the Winterfest Set was released so people don't have to pay 2m crowns a piece, definitely getting that too.

We can spark revive in Lockdown, which is worse than when it was CE. So much for the punishment of dying anymore.

...also, has anyone seen the ATT, DEF, and SPD boosters yet? They sound pretty neat, but they don't seem to drop in Grinchlin Assault like the other item drops.