I'm pleasantly surprised at this update.
The text is super super crisp on my 2k monitor, no more artifacting and it's not blurry either.
The new bazaar changes are GREAT! Super cool addition and finally nice to see some new scenery.
Coliseum crucible feedback is being heard! And the guild changes are very welcome too.
There's also some unannounced goodies the community is excited about. Great work, love this.
Only part I don't like is introducing yet another new cosmetic recolor tied to a limited event and making the previous one unavailable for now. Like...these things suck. Please stop doing it.
I adore the bazaar updates. What a nice surprise! And the text rendering fixes are such a good change; I've been having so much trouble with that... I'd love to know what other unannounced features you're talking about, though! Something about BoDRs?
I have been enjoying rating pvp levels, I found a few i have never seen before that I really look forward to seeing in the rotation! I love that tropical island map, something completely new and fresh in spiral knights
A suggestion for the next black kat event: Now that black kat gear will be more obtainable, I think it makes sense to lower the bonuses the 3* and 4* armor provide, leaving 5* as the only set with damage bonus high + msi low. Additionally, for years now the black kat hood has been a bit of a booby-trap because you can't upgrade it all the way to the 5* cowl. It would be nice to finally have a recipe for this.
The only thing I hope for now is that they rework the Kat event a little so the optimal gameplay isn't "speedrun undead levels over and over, ignoring every enemy except black kats"
my hope would be that they make the Kataclysm prestige missions replayable and allow the black kats within to drop pages/the book
An update should forbid Mergu-Md from equipping anything but proto gear, so they must no longer endure the bonuses of all those armors they hate so much.
btw shadow max 4* BK mask is on par with BK cowl. some long time players have that. don't drive those away as well with your useless nerfs pls.
how could i forget about all the long time players running 4* black kat mask with shadow max?
i will promptly vendor my fire max bkr / bkc and start running proto gear now
if the update is trying to make BK more accessible then nerfing the low tier armors would be counterproductive... i don't know why you'd do that
as an aside, fighting margrel with pages directly is a rather odd implementation; i'd have expected you to instead buy a (probably bound) book from montague with ancient pages instead?
i still support the non-black kat armors losing their wicked whisker costs also since they're still pretty useless for the price
To be clear this change roughly doubles the number of margrel fights happening (1/250 drop + guaranteed fight at 250 kills). This should at least halve the cost of gear/slots. Not to mention this gives players a target number of pages to grind for so casual players are more likely to stick to said grind. Just look at the Mandolin as an example of this.
I can see margrel slots dropping to 50k cr or even being hosted for free for guildies / friends. This means some of the best stat bonuses in the game are made available with much less time and cr spent than before.
Lowering the 3*/4* bonuses does not, I repeat not, make BK less accessible. You're still wearing BK and the end destination is still far closer than before. I think it's a necessary balance change here considering the 3* outshines even 5* sets currently, and it is about to cost the price of less than 10 vana runs.
the approximate price of 5* BK is maybe 1.5 million crowns right now. doubling the margrel kills and halving all prices would make it about 750k crowns. which is still a whole lot of cash!
obviously, the reason 3* outshines 5* is because 5* is really hecking expensive to get - there are no objective benefits to wearing 3*. a full 3* set costs maybe 200k to buy off the AH right now before the change. if you're nerfing it so that a true BK set post-change costs nearly four times that if not more, then yes, you'd be making BK dramatically less accessible! and if you're wearing BK with damage low or damage medium, you are not wearing BK
> the approximate price of 5* BK is maybe 1.5 million crowns right now.
The standard price for clean BKRs on the market right now is 1.3m. When this change goes live you are guaranteed a free 5* cowl now for your page grind. If you just grind the tokens and buy the remaining 5 marg slots that puts your total cost for the 5* set around 250-500k (50-100k per slot) after this change, when it was around 1.4m before (6x 175k marg slots + 350k cowl).
> the reason 3* outshines 5* is because 5* is really hecking expensive to get
I don't understand what you mean here, why does 5* being expensive mean 3* needs to outshine every other piece of gear in the game? Shouldn't people be rewarded for sticking out the grind?
> there are no objective benefits to wearing 3*
Right now it's damage bonus max and msi medium. This is going to become much much cheaper next event. That is why I am proposing some balancing.
Like I mentioned the total cost for the full 5* set if you grind for a single margrel fight will be between 250-500k the next time this runs, depending on where slot prices land. I think that is the only metric that matters here because people have a concrete goal of pages next time instead of having to pray for good rng. Plus if they get lucky they get to skip the grind or even recoup the cost.
> "I don't understand what you mean here, why does 5* being expensive mean 3* needs to outshine every other piece of gear in the game? Shouldn't people be rewarded for sticking out the grind?"
okay so this was a minor misunderstanding on my part, i interpreted "3* outshines even 5* sets" as in "3* black kat outshines 5* black kat" (or, "people often wear 3* black kat instead of 5* black kat"). if you meant "3* outshines all other 5* armor" then that makes more sense. although that's still just a general complaint of "black kat outshines all other armor in general" (and the same is true of swiftstrike buckler being a 3* item that outshines all 5* shields). people preferring the damage-boosting item isn't, like, inherently an issue, it's just a truth of every armor and helmet and shield in the game, 2* wolver is still better than 5* cobalt
> "When this change goes live you are guaranteed a free 5* cowl now for your page grind. If you just grind the tokens and buy the remaining 5 marg slots that puts your total cost for the 5* set around 250-500k (50-100k per slot) after this change"
ok so the problem with this is that Step 1 is "kill 250 black kats and margrel". 250 black kats is still an obscene number of candlestick keeps cleared within a limited-time event (even with the anchor trick). on average 250 black kats will get you a book, but books sell for 1m crowns because that still takes a really long time and is extremely inaccessible for the majority of players to ever try. and this change doesn't actually make it any easier for the average player to just summon margrel, it only increases the amount of margrels that the heavy grinding gets you. considering that grind free and excluding it from the cost of a BK set is incredibly disingenuous and not really reflective of reality; remember that time could have been spent grinding FSCs and gaining material profit instead (or doing anything else with your life).
also, again, 500k is still much higher than 200k. if you want to make 3* BK worthless then you'd better quadruple the book rate to compensate
> considering that grind free and excluding it from the cost of a BK set is incredibly disingenuous and not really reflective of reality
Very much disagree here. A lot of the burnout from this event comes from endless stretches of bad rng. People just give up. Now every kill brings you closer to the whole point of this change. Just like Mandolins, I think a lot more people will be willing to stick it out when there's an actual finish line.
> make 3* BK worthless
I think we both know that is not what I suggested here.
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Ultimately this is up to the devs and I think it's more likely we see no changes than changes. There's nothing inherently wrong with having totally busted dirt cheap 3* gear. Unlike swiftstrike though, this gear has an actual line of progression to 5* so it seems better to me from a game design perspective to make the bonuses scale.
We built a party and were able to fight Margrel with 750 pages as well. Worked just like a book of dark rituals. I think this is a great change considering the chance of a book is 1/250 so you are "guaranteed" a book after 250 black kat kills now.