I just realized that Orbs/Sparks/Crystals have the potential to make Treasure Vaults a lot more lucrative than they used to be.

Huh, my post was removed. Interesting.

Sorry if I was too brutal about it I guess. Still, consider delaying the update so the community can discuss about it before applying such a major-core mechanic change.

Totally blew me away with this news, suddenly all the stuff on the test server that everyone has been complaining about now makes sense.

Although you didn't have to hide it behind our backs the entire time. Still, i am definitely looking forward to the endless amount of playtime i can do with no elevator costs.

But like everyone else, what will elevator passes, mist energy, etc be turned into to placate the players who have them already? I'm curious.

Other than that, i can definitely see some more players coming back to this game now.

Once more unto the breach my fellow Spiral Knights!

Wow, that really caught me by surprise. I still vividly recall the excitement and frustration of wating for my mist to refill each day (hour, minute) in my first several weeks of playing Spiral Knights.

I trust that the people who created this game know far more than me about how to improve it and make it profitable, but I have a few concerns.

First, a strong desire to play more was one of the two huge factors that caused me to buy CE with real world money so that I could have second account to play on. (The other main factor was for crafting higher * gear - I couldn't wait.) So SK is forgoing a major incentive for new players to purchase CE.

Second, not wanting my mist to go to waste was a big incentive to play the game every day. I don't know whether or not that translates into people spending more money on the game, but intuitively, I'd guess it would.

I also have a few praises.

First, we no longer have to consider whether playing a mission or level is "worth it" in terms of earning enough crowns etc. to outweigh the 10 me/ce it cost to play, and that's a very good thing. It always makes me feel a little sad for people who refer to playing the game a "grind" or "work."

Second, I'm happy to hear that you will reward all of us who have mist wells, elevator passes and other various mist-dependent items that will be rendered useless. I hope the compensation is something cool even if it's not of exactly equal value,

Finally, a few questions.

Since elevators are free, I assume tabbing a other players is out, yes? What else is out?

Reviving other players while yourself are dead? No reason to since each rev is 50 ce, but will it even be possible?

Could you give the less far-sighted amongst us like myself a fair amount of warning about what other things will have their value diminished or enhanced by the changes ahead?

Thank for the most cute and fun game on the web!

Edit: Please post in English, as this is the English language forum. Thank you.

@Cometblazer: yes, it was stated in the patch notes that the health share revive will be taken out of the system:

Currently in the game, you use either health or energy directly to revive yourself or your teammates. (...) [T]his system will be replaced.

On the economy side of the game, I want to say, before anyone quits, that we really don't have any idea on how the market is going to change. True, the crown will be worth less than it did (unless more crown sinks are put in place) and will impact anything that is bought with it (materials, recipes in AH, and especially CE.)

However, the worth of the materials and recipes should be relatively the same if the devs implement it correctly since the demand of these resources should go down with the very introduction of free elevator runs. Probably.

Now, onto CE market.
The question of the day: how easy/hard will it be to get AO's (alchemy orbs) and how much CE will you have to pay for it?
This is a major determining factor of the future economy of CE since (in my experience) CE was used primarily to craft gear.

My major questions are
(#1)
Will we still be able to help our fellow knights up? I love the idea of giving half health to a teamate to make sure they pull through. The new revive system seems cool, but I want the team revives to stay! It won't make anymore sense to have teammates then. All it would do is make you have to split up the materials and stuff. Lets keep the TEAMWORK!

(#2)
Why are you getting rid of the group effort of grabbing stuff. I understand with crafting supplies, but why not make it like tokens or hearts?? What I totally do not understand is why do this with crowns/heat, just why? I loved the fact that this game was basically impossible with out a team you can rely on. That you knew your group could grab the stuff for everyone even when you would be downed. Now this update is sort of going to ruin it.

Plus I think it would be nice to keep the mist tanks for simple revives, cause I know we will all miss our mist tanks.

A concerned knight
Heroia.

1. This "Spark of Life" is already a 5* material used to create high-end shock-themed gear. Will the material be renam...
CONTEST TIME!

2. Many have asked this already:
We use 3 Energy to open each Danger Room, but also any energy gate (with prize boxes and sometimes monsters beyond).
But also we sometimes use 5 Energy to activate a friendly mecha knight or a stationary mecha turret.
Will these four particulars within the clockworks have any change in their costs to open or use them?

3. When a new "Spark of Life" or an "Orb of Alchemy" is picked up, does every player in the party earn one (like Tokens), or does it go to a random person in the party (like Materials), or does it only go to the person that picked it up (like a shoving match)?

4. The flat rate of 50 energy to revive without Sparks seems extreme, depending on the Spark's individual cost at a Supply Depot. And Supply Depots can be accessed at anytime via the Mission Interface (after completing an early mission). (I think.) So is there a reason for this high flat rate and a reason to even use it at least once?

5. The new difficulty settings should be very interesting, but I'm looking for what degree will these settings yield. Assuming the current, ordinary clockworks and mission runs have a "normal" difficulty, there will likely be harder settings, but will there be easier settings compared to the normal?
As Arcades are mentioned, will Shadow Lairs be affected by these new difficulty settings? (A Shadow FSC run on the hardest setting: the run to end all runs.)

Thanks! Overall, this new overhaul should be intriguing.

I always thought limited playtime was a good thing, forcing the player to stop playing and do something useful, like mowing the lawn or finishing homework. Removing the limit creates more addicts. This also reduces the demand for the new "energy" because it is not needed to play the game. It also functions as a reason for parents to allow this game to be played because of the limit. The orbs of alchemy dropping randomly will finally allow me to get to 5 stars.

Since no more energy is required for elevator, a knight will never be worrying wasting energy running arcade getting some "not so popular" recipe from Basil.
Some recipe like Divine Avenger, Argent peacemaker and BTB
Getting a cheap DA recipe will never be so easy...

idk, will there be recipe anyway? ==||

What Canozo said with his friends and all of them leaving happened to me also. I invited a ridiculous number of people, and they all left because of the energy system. I don't know why I stayed to be honest. Oh yeah, because I liked the cute icons rofl. Well, and the other art. But mostly the icons were just so perfect.

I don't know what to say about this update, to be honest, except that I thought the sparks were supposed to be implemented in the update.

it feels like i just wrote an entire code section
well i hope this post isnt redacted for links, length, references or w.e possible reason considering all the time i spent reading and writing /sigh*

and forgive me quoting/linking mistakes i checked and corrected everything that looked weird(except for the entire post of course)

#17 Goldeneman

"OOO YOU MUST MAKE SURE THAT MISSIONS ARE NOT REPEATABLE!"

#18 Chainguy

"OOO, please for the love of trojan make missions not repeatable. I would like to go back to the Arcade."

#107 Firepegasus:

"Missions,make them non repeatable."

what is it with ppl and repeatable missions o.O'

#19 Notgreatpig:

"It's like going on a ship, hanging on, with some people dropping out of it, and more getting on, into a new world, for everyone."

picturing that is hillarious xD

#25 Autofire:

"There is one issue, though: With the new heat system, it's no longer required that you bind something to you in order to fully level it, as well as craft it up! I'm asking...will it bind when you put heat on it still or will we be able to make fresh unbound 5*s out of the box?"

#97 Goofio:

"Is weapon unbinding going to stay the same (require energy, same price, and so on)?"

thats interesting
while i would love to have freely tradable items(YES pls Q.Q), i cant help but wonder how energy is going to be put to use, once even unbinding necessity is taken lol(altho it could be limited to boss items)
maybe energy will be used only for shadow lairs o.O? so curious about the prices n how everything will turn out

$$$

#27 Dukeplatypus:

"So, uh... how do you guys make any money from all this? Since Energy and DLC look like the only purchasables, and you can avoid Energy entirely now?"

#116 Grimranger:

"Well, I assume it will die faster. How will they make money? It's not like anyone is going to buy CE, unless they buy it to use on the Supply Depot."

im a bit worried about that too, but i think there are a ton of options and a ton of p2p players
in that regard the purchase limit is really disturbing, especially having in mind, that it might have a moral reason and who would want to say something against that

#90 Glacies entire post

all valid points, but ive read somewhere in the past, that theyve made alot of money off sk
if thats true in any way whatsoever, then they have probably accumulated everything necessary to take an experimental step
not that i have any idea about sk's business model or any financial data or necessities to keep a game running, blablaetc., but im rather optimistic in this regard
$$$

#30 Agentz:

"Cons: Update will take six bajillion years to update (jk)."

#109 Anar-Bor:

"How long exactly will this update take like time wise. 1hour? 100billion hours?"

hah if something goes wrong with patching, therell be sooooooo many players available to fill the rage pot xD xD

#35 Lordofnecromancers:

"HEYYYYYY, but that means I can finally go for a Dauntless Delver :D"

about time, huh o.O?

#36 Doctorspacebar:

"What I'm wondering is why Three Rings didn't tell us about this on the Test Server! It would have been nice to know before we all saw "no more health sharing," applied it to the present system, and freaked the [REDACTED] out."

#102 Shotjeer:

"Although this was never mentioned in the Testing Feedback forum."

i feel trolled xD, but now im getting what they meant with bigger change ._.

#37 Xtweeterx:

"Plus, the thing that bugs me the most is that everyone won't be getting everyone's crowns now (as in it used to be 1 person finds 10 crowns and everyone gets 10 crowns). It really, REALLY kills playing in parties and endorses soloing."

#94 Thunder-The-Bright - 1st part regarding partys

i think that will not be as big of a deal now that there are no elevator fees anymore
in games ppl typically farm solo, because its logical to get more that way
sk had a unique system of shared loot, but i think the downside of elevator fees was alot bigger
and, in the interest of the update in making the players gather many items, people can focus more on tank builds and combine them with their skills instead of just relying on skills alone

#41 Orangeo:

"I'm honestly too confused by all the change to be critical of this update. OOO might have done that on purpose. Good move I say, good move."

lmao

#49

"Regarding how we are handling mist tanks, wells, etc., we haven't posted the details because we haven't fully finalized them. We thought it was definitely worth noting in the announcement that we were thinking about and addressing that issue, though, even if we couldn't spell out exactly how yet."

which means..ur open to suggestions regarding that compensation o_o?
or is the almost "fully finalized" meant literally?
if its still in the 1st stages, then some players could contribute greatly, because they will know best, what degree of compensation they would want for their loss
just mentioning an option

#54 Shadownox:

"Of course, like Kilpik, said, I'm glad people won't be pressured into farming FSC."

despite that id still love some sort of noise reduction in that place lol

#63 Guardian-Ceal:

"I really like this. Doing Dauntless Delver on the hardest difficulty, anybody?"

omg no @.@ unless there is any extra achievement for that <.<

"This is one part I don't like looking at it. The chance of failing is what REALLY gets me though. That's just...silly."

but it also means, that were encouraged to use more fire crystals and get special bonuses :D

#79 Dirigible:

"Worst Case Scenario . . .
Energy Market goes through the roof to the point where no one can do anything anymore, and Orbs of Alchemy are as rare as equipment drops."

@.@

#81 Dmatter:

"There would be an easy fix for that: just make it so, no matter what, you can't join during bosses. Even if friends.
ouch. i have good memories of awesome friends helping me out as newb :s
and sometimes ppl inv me. i was actually looking forward to being able to join anywhere for free, which is the major benefit of elevator passes and of this update

"Oh, and the orbs of alch probably will be rare enough that it's reasonable to just use money to buy energy for them, so no need to worry about OOO. (People were worrying about that right? I'm pretty sure they were...)"

but in the details they say:
"As you play, you will find over time that you have more orbs than you need for the upgrade of your initial choice of weapons, and that you have the resources to build a broader arsenal of gear."

#83 Amaki:

"Most developers would call this a sequel."

that sounds quite funny, but thinking about the impact on the market, im starting to feel like this could really be some sort of "sequel" o.o

#86 Jackaline:

"But I wonder, given that OOO is willing to go this far, could that also mean OOO might reconsider its stance with the DLC, like its asiatic counterpart/subsidiary?"

personally, i hate dlcs in all games, but sk's dlcs look pretty f2p friendly, theyre tradable on steam and farming money for them is being made easier with this update(not in terms of value, but we can farm as much and whenever we want now)

#93 Amnimonus:

"Personally I though that tier 1 should be free of cost, tier 2 and tier 3 should cost 5 energy and mission should cost 10 to be replayed. With this boss type gear would cost more tokens to balance it out the fact that bosses could be fought more often."

i like that idea, but it would only work with balanced drops and sk utterly sucks at balancing drops(lol)

#94 Thunder-The-Bright:

giant post..the edits display fact and truth but as a reader id prefer more..uhh..readability xD..sort of
feel free to write as u please, but giant text takes long time to write and thus it should be kept readible and easy to refer to..or add a tldr summary xD
the nodes could be named after their titles for easy reference for example

#101 Spiralheavy - in regards to the entire post

we will get over the changes xD

#103 Blade-Of-Grass:

"So uh how's this going to affect those of us who don't die in player versus environment? Are you saying we could play FOREVER?"

therll be difficulty modes! and other hard places i guess?.../e stealthily sends ingame friend request.

#104 Amnimonus

lol@sparks of life in ld

to everybody mentioning danger rooms/energy gates: maybe they will become some sort of abandoned area like those separated places in some jelly lvls, that just didnt get enough attention xD

#106 Taeloh:

"Spiral Knights needs steam cards. That would attract a lot of new people and cause people who have tried SK once and given up to give the game a second chance."

+1 i endorse every idea to make former players give the game a 2nd chance after were through with the update and done refining it
and just in case - i dont know what a steam card is, am just promoting for the sake of increasing playerbase

lol@
#10"But, but, the economy- and, but-"
#13"EVERYONE HAIL DA THREE RINGS"
#14"HAIL OOO !!!"
#55 xD
#78"If you leave the party, we remember everything: death, current health and emergency revive status.**Also the name of your firstborn."
#92"I totally agree with "#90.
#112"glacies just did that for me (+1 bro)"
#117"Waiting to try this crap to see if its A, good or B, well, crap."
Tantarian"Wise words of patch review Whoa."

wth did i just write, no im not going to include the new entries!

well, ive read through, and geesh, that took a while
/e drops dead.
no wait i got a better one
/e leaves thread for life.
wait, wait, ok last 1
/e tosses a watermelon at thread.

*if u think this post is lengthy and inappropriate, dont even get me started on ur update <.<'''''

Everything in the update seems fine to me , im really looking forward to it . the battle sprites have a total of 100 lvl's and it will take a while getting there so there will definitely be way more exploring and work to do in SK , as for the mist removal and others ... it is true that its compensated for the free floor levels , at this rate newbies who are trying SK for the first time wont just quit and stop playing once they dont have MIST to do runs . they will be more interested in playing and finding out about what the whole game really is . but in my opinion i only find the fire crystals... that are used to lvl up your gear to the next level... a pain.. especially when u have to get a certain amount just to make ur gear level up . it would be unfair to the other players . etc. players who just joined and want to craft new weapons... current players even those who are vanguards... with high prestige or whatsoever ... it will be way harder for them to get gear from now on ... because usually we only need 2 full vana runs to make gear reach lvl10 , but now it seems like u not only need 2 full runs u might even need 10... or even more which of course dosent sound very nice...when FSC(firestorm citadel) gives the most heat and profit . why not make new bosses ?? new T3 bosses that are like vanaduke which are repeatable , so at least players dont get bored of it... no one would want to keep doing vanaduke for the rest of their lives.. like seriously ... one day u will eventually get bored. so in my opinion , everything is balanced . just that i think the way players heat gear is fine already . theres not a need to add such things inside like fire crystals and whatsoever ... especially when theres a chance of it failing too ... u need a total of 104 fire crystals(5*) if im not wrong. just to make ur 5* weapon go from lvl 9 - lvl 10 and 50 crystals already cost like 700ce . so 104 is like 1400ce and with that amount of CE i can craft like a 3* or 4* item with it . so im really hoping the fire crystals will be changed into something esle ... not really gonna be very excited about that .

i hope three rings OOO takes this into consideration

Every time I take the time to write something on these big changes it makes me feel
like I'm shouting at a wall demanding answers.

Here's my 3 cents (3; cuz big spender).

This will make the game more accessible. Which also will mean NOOBS, HOARDS OF NOOBS.
This will mess the economy up so badly Wall street uses it as a training video.
This is yet another case of OOO-communication..

Come on guys, I love you but not again. Didn't you learn from last time?
If you implement a big change give us ALL the information. Fire crystals? Vog knows what they'll do atm..
Don't like the 'we'll make it work in the months coming' approach either. Do you remember the rage after you tried that with the UI?

GIBE INFORMATIONS PWEASE.

I think this update is a bummer...

I understand the tough part about energy on noobs, and ppl just grinding the best priced dive for their ce buck... But what will be the balancing factor for ce now? Prices will be on the endless rise. I'm concerned I won't be able to craft things anymore. I ran 3 accounts to craft using mist and ce together to push out 3* items that newer players liked to buy. Instantly the advantage of having multiple accounts is cut off. Might as well mail everything back to my main. Prolly won't ever craft again for noobs b/c no noob can farm the 100k+ it's going to cost for me to craft a 200 ce item for them :\

I highly doubt we'll see ppl playing in more diverse areas. It's still going to be an equation of how fast you can accumulate cr. If you spend 1 hr and make 14k cr in fsc, why would you spend 1 hour in a traditional arcade dive to make only 6k? Especially considering you're going to want to craft and ce prices are likely to exceed 50k/100ce. The problem is that the rewards in fsc are simply too high! Add some extra prize boxes in the standard levels to where they aren't so poor and we'll see ppl play there too.

Ce will be used for Weapon/Trinket slots - sparks of Life - Orbs of Alchemy, it'll be more of a convinence buy now, over the some what neccessary buy from be, again, this is how i under stand it

Fire Crystals, as I pointed out previously this is how I understood it, the bonus they mention is double level, but what other bonuses could their really be other than UVs? if you can think of some, great, list them, I honestly can't.

Free Elevator ?!! = Very Bad Idea (Cries)
I hope this Update is good enough which can prevent me from Quitting .

Seems like a very sensitive update, with potential for fantastic improvements or ye olde downrocketing with its implications. While I can't exactly judge most of the update without the details released, the removal of elevator costs sounds very pleasing as a standalone change without taking the economy into account. SK felt more of a chore with its elevator costs, encouraging players to repeatedly prioritise profitable stages with set daily time frames the majority of the time, which seemed less fitting for a game of its genre and unique qualities. I'm definitely looking forward to this update provided that it doesn't turn crafting into more of a chore. In summary, OMGGGG YEEEEEESSS FREEDOM WITH CLOCKWORKSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!11111one11

@Theoncomingfire
"And people who have bought Elevator passes quite recently, do they get Refunds xD"

Edit: From the announcement post "To that end, we will be implementing ways to give people an appropriate value for items such as mist wells, mist tanks, and elevator passes, which are being replaced under this new system."

I think I'm going to love this patch. Almost entirely for economy reasons.

The economy sucks as it is right now for newer players. I've been playing this game since around the time it first came out (gg cross-promotion with TF2 hat) and back then, like someone stated in this thread earlier, the energy-crown conversion rate in the market was about 100:3000. Then it steadily rose to 100:5000, around which time I lost interest in the game and stopped playing (not because of energy). I started playing again this month with a friend of mine who was completely new to it. As I explained the energy system to her, she replied to me something to the effect of "okay so I have to buy more energy so we can play more levels", not yet understanding how cumbersome the energy requirements for crafting were.

Crafting is expensive. Assuming you get a 2* item outright, without crafting (making overall costs less, to illustrate my point that even then, its expensive), it will cost 1400 energy and 8500 crowns to craft it to a 5*, plus the 39000 crowns for the 3*, 4*, and 5* recipes. Converted to crowns, that 1400 energy (at last weeks rate of ~7400 crowns per 100 energy) would cost 103600 crowns, for a total of 151100 crowns spent on upgrading single item from 2* to 5*. So for a helmet, armor, shield, sword, and gun/bomb, 5 equips, it would cost 755500 crowns.

There are threads here where people ask what missions yield the most crowns on average, and the most frequent response I've seen was doing the Firestorm Citadel. So what's a newbie with 1*-2* gear supposed to do, with only enough energy for 10 elevators every day? If you start from the arcade and do tier 1 straight through a clockwork terminal in tier 2, that's 10 non-free elevators, and if you do some with arenas and danger rooms, you'll get about 7500 crowns from that run (I normally get about 10,500 crowns for doing tier 1 and 2 completely). At that rate it would take 100 days to get the crowns you need for full 5* equipment. This in turn has created an extremely larger amount of "beggars" than I remember when the game first was released. Hmm, I wonder why...

This past week since I've returned to the game, I've almost exclusively seem other players that have a rank of defender elite or higher. To people established in the game already it's totally fine and dandy. In fact, they're the ones who caused energy prices to triple in the 2 years since the game started. This patch is so obviously aimed at them and realigning the market, so it's interesting to see so many people complain that it will change the economy. I was talking to my friend on steam and said it like this:

Celach: its great when people cant put two and two together
Celach: the game sucks for newcomers because of the economy
Celach: so three rings wants to change the economy
Celach: and the people who have been rigging/ruining the economy say "but the economy!"

I'm sure there are people who have friends or even themselves who are new to the game and still managed to get 5* gear more rapidly, without spending money on an elevator pass or energy, but that's just anecdotal. There is no "I did it so everyone can do it." Accessibility is a pivotal aspect of every game, particularly free-to-play ones. Its not about a handful of people being able to rise up and beat the odds. The odds shouldn't be that stacked against you in the first place.

tl;dr this is awesome hail three rings

There is still team reviving! When you travel on to the next level, the person gets revived. This is a plus of being a party, right? I doubt that alll the people will kick dead people who don't revive themselves.

When you travel on to the next level, the person gets revived.

This represents an interesting shift in how the game will be played. Now if most of the party dies, it would fall to the remaining players to high-tail it out of there, especially in areas like the Compounds. Also, I can see players jumping ship on death now, as they won't be receiving any crowns if they aren't fighting, if I understand the update correctly.

Kiddos worried about profits....

Hjajahahahaahha

I'm quite sure they OOO have a good bussines plan. Why buy CE... What if in 2 weeks we need some crap else and CE is not the main???

Simple !!!!!

Crap pack!!!

10 crap
1 snipe hat
1 Contri small action figure.

Some of you really need to " turn the brain "on"".

This is all very fascinating, but will danger rooms still cost energy?

I know it's just 3CE, but the thought of having to spend non-renewable energy on danger rooms feels wrong.