Spiral Knights - New Players come here! A full guide to this game! (Recruit to Vanguard)

New Players come here! A full guide to this game! (Recruit to Vanguard)

9 replies [Last post]

Mon, 12/23/2013 - 06:32

Ill-Fate-Ill

Hello fellow knights,

I am Spectre-Nova, and I will be writing a guide for new beginners because I'm on school holidays and I'm bored. Just FYI, I am a Vanguard.
Anyway, this guide will discuss the gear I recommend for each stage and give tips and tricks along the way.

First of all,

After you start the game, the first few levels are pretty easy and you should be able to solo them.
A few tips:
-When you see an enemy, keep your distance and use your gun to shoot them down to about half health
-Shoot 2 times, take a step, and repeat, this way you avoid reloading (Proto gun)
-Charge up your sword and release to the SIDE of the enemy
-If you can't manage to keep your distance, don't charge your gun

Once you reach Haven try ask for help on the missions following afterwards.

That's all for now, I will post more tomorrow.
Spectre-Nova salutes

Fri, 12/27/2013 - 09:26

Geotoast

Hail,knight!

Hello, but i have a question:
what if you dont know how to switch your weapon?, Besides
we might like swords or guns better plus they might have to afk
net to a enemy but the might have a high rank knight in the game
but thats just me talking, Thats all bye! :D

-Geotoast

Fri, 12/27/2013 - 12:32

Bopp

almost all guides fail

Almost all guides fail. The author gets bored with the idea after one or two posts.

Fri, 12/27/2013 - 23:09

Midnight-Dj

>:/

Stupid noob... quit too early
Midnight is here to pick up the slack!
Welcome, newbies, to the wonderful and dangerous world of SK, before I go into the weapons, we need to look at what enemies we are fighting, a wise chinese man once said :"If you know your enemies like you know your self, you can win a thousand battle." These words of wisedom transcend in the word of SK, so before you start gearing up, you need to know your enemies first.

There are six races of enemies in this game, don't bother comming up new races in the suggestion thread, it will just make Draycos laugh:
-Gremlin
If you managed to reach Haven then you should know by this point that these little bastards are not to be triffled with. Gremlins are the guardian of Cradle, with their sick and twisted mind they created an endless amount of traps and ambushes in the clockwork, they will spare no mercy to trespassers.
-Construct
Robots, sentinents and turrets, you name it, the Gremlins build it. Constructs are a group of enemy that will not fear or flee from you, they are programmed to kill all that looks like a knight (you). Kill these things before they kill you.
-Undead
Ghosts refuse to leave this world and decided to stay and make everybody's life miserable, these living dead wanted nothing more than munching on your brain matter or use your body as a new vessle, either way, kill them with fire.
-Fiend
The incarnation of evil, it is said that true evil never die, if that is true, then the fiends are the lving testiment to the glory of all the evil in the universe. Nasty and cunning, these monsterous entities will be the living nightmare of your knight career.
-Beast
Pesky and annoying, that sums up the beast, they may not have the damage output to put down a knight, but they more than make up for it with their mobility, these evasive abominations need a equally as evasive knight to beat.
-Slime
Slow but hard hitting, the laughing stock of the cradle monster family, despite they poses small threat to knights who engage in the distance, but they do become a niusence when they are grouped up, in another word, slime champions its quantity and foresake quality.

You can check these races' weakness on wiki, and if you think you are ready, here is a detailed monster race break down. All races, no matter the types, can be classified into few different braches, each branches are designed to put a knight's skill to the test, and yes, some of these branches will punish a certain play style. If you just arrived at Haven, then you are at T1, the easiest level of all, if you managed to die in T1, quit the game, because you have no talent in third peron adventure game.

Grunts: the backbone of any monster race, the grunts will be spawned at a great number and they will be the easiest to deal with. All grunts do melee damage only. With a few exceptions.
-Gremlin: knocker
-Construct: scuttle bot, retrode (T1 versions only)
-Undead: zombies (occsionally lunges)
-Fiend: Gorgo
-Beast: wolver (dash at T2, burrow at T3)
-Slime: jelly cube (performs ranged attack at T2+), lichens (performs ranged attack at T2+)

Gunslinger: hidding behind the grunts comes the gunslingers, ranged enmies that will punish those who just bum rush into a group of enemies. All gunslinger will try to keep in distance with the player and shoot from afar, with the exception of turrets, which are stationary no matter what.
-Gremlin: mortar, demos, scorchers
-Construct: all turret puppies, retrodes (T2+)
-Undead: howlitzers
-Fiend: devilites
-Beast: chromalisks
-Slime: polyps

Elite: Elite monsters are an upgrade from the grunts, tougher, faster and deadlier, never take the monsters mentioned below lightly. (Note: the 'officer' ability indicates that the monster have ability to increase its allies's attack.)
-Gremlin: thwakers (healing, ranged attack, evasion, shielding (T3), heavy attacks(T3))
-Construct: mecha knight (shielding(T2+), heavy attacks, shock disruption), rocket puppy (heavy damage, homing ability T2+)
-Undead: none
-Fiend: Enraged devilites (ranged attack, evasion), Pitboss (Officer)
-Beast: Alpha wolvers (evasion, officer)
-Slime: Large/med lichen colony (ranged attack)

Striker: strikers are monsters that are capable of closing distance between it and the player, they will punish those who are too afriad to man up and fight anything up close. So man up when you see them.
-Gremlin: none
-Construct: none
-Undead: Kats (dashings, shoot bullets T2+)
-Fiend: greavers
-Beast: wovlers (T2+), Alpha wolver
-Slime: Large lichen colony

Heavy: heavies are monsters that can almost kill you in one hit, they are usually slow but some of these guys can dash, so be on the look out.
-Gremlin: none
-Construct: Lumbers
-Undead: Deadnoughts (charge, shielding)
-Fiend: trolljans (dash, shielding)
-Beast: none
-Slime: none

Healer: Healers recover health for its allies, always priorotise these guys if you don't want to prolong your engagement.
-Gremlin: menders
-Construct: love puppies (rare spwan and it heals you, so keep it alive)
-Undead: none
-Fiend: silkwings
-Beast: none
-Slime: none, some lichens do heals after been attacked by specific statuses.

Respond if you wanna read more, next time, I will break down the weapons for you all.

Sun, 12/29/2013 - 09:17

Launcel

^Pretty helpful

Thnx.. love how the monsters were categorized according to branches. Hopefully you'll also cover sprites as im still boggled as to what is the best one out of thw three (and which ultimates are the best for certain playstyles).

Tnx again

Sun, 12/29/2013 - 10:02

Bopp

try this

Try searching Google for something like "sprite ultimate site:forums.spiralknights.com".

Mon, 12/30/2013 - 01:41

Midnight-Dj

>:( More lessons!

So you think you got what is takes to take on the mosters of Cradle? Good, now let's check out our wonderful arsenal! SK was never designed to be beaten with just one weapon. (no, Acheron is not the best weapon in the game) And yes, OOO are jerks who can and will find ways to drain money out of your or your parent's wallet. Getting equipments aren't easy and for your first runthrough of your rank mission to vanguard, I can provide you the only four weapons you need to craft to beat the campain.

I am a hybrid weapon master thus I always bring more than one type of weapon to any engagement. Therer is a reason to that, the enemy mechanic will punish those who uses only one type of weapon. Pure sword will always have trouble fighting gunslingers and turrets, Pure gun will always find it hard to deal with strikers and elites, Pure bomb will have a hard time dealing with healers and heavies. In the case of hybrid, that is bringing two types of weapon on your two default slot, provide you with a great deal of survivalbility in clockwork. So for your first runthrough of the Sk campain, I recommend you to play hybrid, of course, you are more than welcome to try beat the game with just sword/gun/bomb, but think about all the fun you are missing out on, two thirds of the SK arsenal you alienated.

Weapon selection:
So for your first four weapons, which would be the most important weapons in your career(they will literrally shape your play style), you need to choose carefully. But first things first, Swords or guns, no matter the type can be also seperated into two branches.

Weapons with good charge attack and bad normal attack
--Good crowd control, weapon against individual enemy
Sword: Brandish vairants, Cutter vairants, Snarble barb and its upgrades, Fang of Vog <-you won't get this anytime soon and the calibur vairants.
Gun: alchemers, catalyzer variants, auto gun line.

Weapons with good normal attack and bad charge attack
--Good against individual enemy, bad crowd control
Sword: Sealed sword variants, flourish vairants and troika lines.
Gun: antigua variants, pulsar line, blaster line and magnus vairants.

Where is spur you ask? Spur is a disgrace to the SK arsenal so I will not mention that noob trap of a weapon, seriously, it is just a bad weapon, don't pick it by any means, not even when you collected all the weapons in the game.

So which one do you want? High AoE and high DPS? It is up to you.

But midnight, I am still not sure what you mean by the four weapons?
-Hold on there ladies, have you chosen the two types of weapons you want to use on your quest yet?
Sword&Gun
-You standard hybrid loadout, kills both ranged and melee foes, the most reliable setup.
Sword&Bomb
-High melee DPS and high AoE damage, you need to be very aggressive with this setup, not recommended but you are welcome to try.
Bomb&Gun
-A very passive support setup, you may find killing mobs a bit slow, but if you are a team support player, you may find this setup intresting.

So which one did you choose? No matter, here is how you would choose your four weapons. So let's say you decided to go for the recommended sword&gun setup, the one that I chosed, then congrates, you play it safe and you would be glad that you did.

How to choose your weapons:
1. At the beginning of the tutorial, the game should have already given you a demo of gun and sword, which one do you prefer? Do you always wanted to be a barbarian who cleaves through jellies or are you the stealthy demon hunter that lay destruction from a distance? (Note: the following weapons mentioned are weapons at their 5* final version, but thanks to the radiant drought, there is no need to craft any of them, just leave them at their 4*, yeah, OOO made it so that crafting 5* weapons are meaningless, GG,GG. Also, optional weapons are weapons that you should craft after you collected the ones I recommended, they should fill up any gap that the four weapons recommended haven't filled.)

-If you are the barbarian, choose three swords from the wiki that give you piercing, elemental and shadow damage and then choose a gun that deals normal damage. Search the wiki for a few hours and combine the info I given you about weapons at the beginning, you should have a rough idea on what you should get.
+Recommended loadout for end game:
Sword: divine avenger, acheron and snarble barb
Gun: Valiance
optional: sentenza, glacius/combuster and any two of the pulsars

-If you are the demon hunter, just do the opposite and choose three guns which one of them deals piercing, one deals elemental and one deals shadow damage, and choose one sword that deals just normal damage.
+Recommended loadout for end game
Sword: leviathan blade
Gun: Blitz needle, Umbra driver and Polaris
Optional: Acheron/Grand faust, final flourish and Valiance.

Midnight, I think I want to use bomb, what bomb should I get, I am confused D:
Relax kid, I don't use bombs often but I can tell you right now it is possible to beat the game with bomb& gun/sword combo, but some skill is needed, the general consensus about bomb is that they are designed to one of the two purposes. Dealing damage to a group of mobs or fix the mobs in one place. So far, there is not a single piercing bomb that can fix the mobs in one place, so don't waste time search on wiki to find one.

Bombs that deals damage to a group of mobs, you should pick a elemental, piercing and shadow if you really wanted to use bomb as a primary weapon.
Here is my idea of a bomb centric hybrid loadout.
Sword or gun: anything that deals normal damage would be fine.
Bomb: Deadly Dark matter bomb, Dark Biar Barrage and Ash of Agni

If you only use bombs as secondary, you should get:
-Shivermist Buster
-Graviton vortix
-Nitronome

Any one of them would be fine, the damage on these bombs are irrelevent since you are only using them for the purpose of crowd control. As for your primary, just look back at the recommended loadout of hybrid gun&sword play for some inspiration

Of course these are only my theories, you will have to ask people like Zeddy or Krakob for the full story.

That is all for now, next time, I will break down your equipment for you, not breaking them apart, but tell you more about your armor.

Mon, 12/30/2013 - 05:07

Scirio

I have a lesson. Rip out the

I have a lesson.

Rip out the power cord.

Go outside.

Enjoy life.

Mon, 12/30/2013 - 20:03

Dibsville

I have a lesson. Rip out the

I have a lesson.

Rip out the power cord.

Go outside.

Enjoy life.

I have a better lesson.

Make sure the power cord is not in a hazardous area where it might accidentally get pulled out.

Stay inside.

Enjoy digital life.

Mon, 12/30/2013 - 20:20

Midnight-Dj

@Scirio and Dib

How about both? Enjoy both digital and real life sounds much better to me.