""Fire Crystals for Equipment Leveling

Following this release, players will use “Fire Crystals” retrieved from the Clockworks to level up their gear after acquiring the requisite amount of heat. Your choice of the number of fire crystals to use with each upgrade will have an influence on the >>success of the upgrade<< and the likelihood that the gear gains special bonuses, such as double level up. The heat you earn in the Clockworks remains yours, regardless of the success of the upgrade.""

The Success of the Upgrade part kinda make me interested... Does that means Equipment Upgrade will have chances of Breaking?
Breaking as in Equipment that Breaks will be gone?
Or Maybe If you Failed to Upgrade equipment from Level9 to level10, You will drop back to Level 1 and equipment would still be there?
XD

Waoo... This is gonna be Fun IF it Does...
let's Discuss :P

"Kiddos worried about profits"

I take it you are a strict Player Versus Player person?

if what I said is true shouldn't you be the one worried about profit? I mean this game is most likely just "tournaments" for cr or CE.

They haven't released the prices yet, since they're currently still deciding them.

I'm with those concerned about the storyline. Amniminous said it best:
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/84729?page=2#comment-752584

I'm someone who has spent a while trying to make it easier for new players to get around mist limitations. Its obvious that introducing the mist well was an attempt on your part to do the same thing.

Having an open mist well caused a lot of drama and reduced the size of my guild. There were a lot of comments made to me about how an open well was 'crazy.' So obviously I am relieved at the removal of mist.

Though as a collector, I don't appreciate you going in and removing items like mist tanks out of my stash.

BIG EDIT QUESTION

I got a free elevator pass mailed to me a few months ago. Will this pass be treated the same as one I bought, or will it just disappear when this update happens? I am asking because if it is going to disappear with no compensation I would like to know so I can use it for a few days. Thank you.

I like how Zeddy totally called that they'd make elevators free some while ago when they gave random players EPs.

If you have access to the testing server you can look for yourself--orbs, sparks, fire crystals, etc. are all up on the depot there now.

[EDIT: let me clarify, they are up AND have real prices, not just 1 ce as they were before.]

it's not prices of orbs, it's prices of gear in orbs.
and I'm F2P.

while I love how most of this update sounds I have a few problems with it.

Some users have said that things like Heat and Crowns will not be shared across players. If this is true and the fact that health revives might not even happen then this destroys teamwork completely. Why should I stay back and help out others when I cant help them if they die and they take all the crowns? There is no reason to do that now. By helping others I will barely get crowns compared to the guy who rushes ahead and kills everything.

Another problem that ties into the teamwork issue is gear choice. The player with the highest damage gear can run ahead, kill everything, and loot stuff others can not get to. I play a support role right now, I always run with a DVS to increase other DPS and as a secondary I use either a polaris or Triglav(more effective than most think). I will be punished by playing with a DVS and Triglav as I cant get the kills and thus can not get to the crowns or heat as fast.

All in all I love having no elevator costs and higher difficulty. The only thing I really want to stay is reliance on team members, as thats where SK shines. Playing with friends is something everyone wants to do, but if someone loses out on doing so then that is terrible.

Edit: Disregard this post, I got new info from Glitchedpixel that solves most of my issues listed here.

If mission rewards change with the new release to include the new items (sparks, orbs, fire crystals), how will this be handled for players who have completed all of the missions?

well going by how the test server does it, i believe that we are given the items that are associated with the missions.

I had already completed most of the missions in the test server and when i logged on today with all the new stuff added it just gave them all to me saying "You have Swag" as the mail header.

"You have Swag" lol

OOO, you do realize you will need to answer some of these questions.

Lets count the current uses on energy:
Supply Depo, Silver keys, shadow keys, Orbs and sparks (If the drops are bound), Trinket/weapon slots, Lockdown revs (???), People rolling, people buying costumes, people buying UV'd gear, some others im probably forgetting.

WAIT, I think I have a solution for OOO not getting money, change the AH from crowns to Energy? If they keep releasing Featured auctions plus the normal ones, people will seem obligated to buy CE to get them, and therefore "Energy will be used to trade for goods and services within the game as usual."

people roll using CE?

@feller
"1 Contri small action figure."
WHOA

@Krakob
I agree that danger rooms costing ce doesn't feel right anymore. Obvious fix being branching paths, where the party has to choose between two party buttons to progress.
As for the other gated rooms, in most all cases there shouldn't have been an energy cost in the first place. The one exception being...Jelly Farm 2, I think, which should be made into a danger room.
I suppose danger rooms could be removed entirely as they will be somewhat redundant with the upcoming difficult modes, but I'd rather they stay. Best part about the CWs imo.

Happy with most of the suggested changes, although I really don't get the logic behind forcing players to pick up all loot. If OOO is trying to prevent parties from splitting up, wouldn't it be better accomplished with level design? Forcing it afterwards with this mechanic feels artificial and hacky. I know people have suggested this was introduced to address players dragging alts through levels, but that is very uncommon, much too small an issue to warrant such a big change. Only thing that makes sense is if OOO is planning on redesigning the few not-linear levels( /modules) of the game and have simply failed to mention it.

My own dissection on the announcement.

Battle Sprites - "Each player will initially be able to retain, via a new mission, one battle sprite for use in combat. Later on, you will have the option to add others."
I don't want to marry my pet, so I'm hoping that 'later on' does not mean next year. If it takes too long for this to happen then I think the lesson learned with energy crafting/experimentation will have been ignored.

Difficulty Modes - "Battle Sprites are being added to the game in part to introduce more variety, and they will also have an impact on the degree of difficulty in the game. To balance this..."
Neat, but the description assumes we are all going to become pet enthusiasts. As long as the game does not fall into a 'use your pet or else' trap then this sounds interesting.

Energy System Changes - "...much-maligned energy system..." O.o
Incredible, the administration finally acknowledged what everyone had said all along. This could be more important than the change itself!
"It turns out that providing energy to players in greater or lesser amounts does not encourage them to try out different weapons and gear, something we have always believed was a core part of the Spiral Knights experience."
It turns out? ORLY? A crafting system that can bankrupt your chance to play the game today conflicts with the freedom to craft and play with anything you wish, who'da thunk it.

Orbs of Alchemy for Crafting - "Orbs exist for each star level in the game (save for 0 star)"
Neat. Except that 5 different orbs seems excessive. Presumably the point of this rather than just 1 kind of orb its to keep higher star crafting expensive. I don't really want to be carrying around a stack of 1 star orbs either so I guess we'll just wait and see how this turns out in practice.

Sparks of Life for Reviving -
Neat, assuming we can stockpile them. I always believed the old exponential system was just a blatant money grab, sane people would just abort their mission and try again later once they passed the second revive mark.

The mix of orbs and sparks together could perhaps be used as a method of energy price control; if the system detects the price is too high or low then the drop rates could change dynamically. The Iron lockbox drop rate obviously relies on feedback so why not.

Fire Crystals for Equipment Leveling - "influence on the success", "likelihood that the gear gains special bonuses"
I don't understand this at all, it could have been explained a bit better. Wait and see I guess.

Thx for answering,seriously.

I was worried about the loot system because of the way i thought it would be!

Now,im calm.

Thank you.

:)

First, this is a very welcome change - the community has needed a reboot for a year now, but now I have a whole heap of questions:

Why wasn't there a Black Kat event during the Steam Summer sale? It seemed quite obvious that we needed a community event for that.

Are we getting Steam Cards at any point?

Are we getting new achievements with the new difficulty system?

Are veteran players going to receive limited edition gear to celebrate the change. (Think Beta suits or Lionheart sets, but more like a celebration token)

How is this going to affect energy promotions?

Yeah, forgot about that. But still, this update can affect the prices of Steam and TF2 items. (and DOTA2 as well but i haven't got around to play it yet)

It definitely will affect the prices. TF2 dictates the economy of all the other Steam related games.

Without idling, refined metal is harder to obtain and should be more valuable.

CR on the other hand, will be flowing through the streets like water.

No one really knows how CE will be utilized from now on, so there's no telling what the ratio of: $1.00 to ??? CE is going to be.

Keys, Earbuds and Bill's Hats are the most stable form of currency among the games.

Keys always hold their value. Earbuds and Bill's Hats have proven that they always go up in value or rebound in value.

Now that the value of CE and CR are so uncertain, i expect things to be shaken up. Hopefully, it doesn't make trading for games with SK currency impossible.

Its going to be around 10kcr per 100ce i doubt any one would pay more but their again trinket and weapon slots are
valuble to ld players they would pay anything to have a health damage ctr or speed advanatge

With the number of changes their making, there WILL be a change in the prices.

Regardless of how the developers intend. I think its an honourable thing that they're doing though, this risky business.

I'm sure i'm not the only one confused by this:

"Orbs of Alchemy can be found as loot drops as you play in the Clockworks, and will be used instead of energy for crafting."

"Will be used instead..." almost implies that it's a replacement for CE. The language isn't very clear.

I'm curious about what they mean by extended downtime. Do they mean 6 to 8 hours, a day, 2 days? What can we expect to see in the upcoming update as to how long we would have to wait until the servers are fully updated to the new system?