So, when did it become impossible to "starve" the Royal Jelly?

I remember out damaging the Royal Jelly with a 3* Nightblade in Dusker armor. I'll test it again tomorrow. Thinking back at when I was a 3* knight, I think I only did the starvation method once, and my allies could have probably handled it without starving him. Even before the Brandish charge rework I remember taking down the Royal Jelly with my 2* and 3* friends.

It's worth noting that the Royal Jelly actually has 3 phases. There is an audible crack and you'll see a crack on the Royal Jelly's crown to signify the second phase. The polyps respawn at the start of this second phase. I'm skeptical that the polyps respawn as fast as you seem to think (however, I will double check myself).

EDIT** Forgot bout this post! Anyways, I'm back from testing the Royal Jelly. What I found was this.

In short, yes you can still starve the Royal Jelly. However, upon triggering the second phase, the polyps respawn. They also will slowly respawn on their own, but this only seemed to happen in phase 2. I didn't try starving the final phase tho. In retrospect I probably should have.

Traevelliath made me curious and it kept bothering me after I did see his screenshot with no polyps on it.

I just returned from a jelly run and here are the results:

Difficulty: Elite
Number of Players: 2
Encounter: Via Mission 5-2

Wave 1:
Polyps:
They spawn at the beginning of the wave but seem to not respawn unless it is such a hillarious respawn time of 10 minutes or something, but I doubt that.

Boss:
Is able to let 4 of the bigger cubes spawn after x seconds. Whilest this, there will no living cube get replaced and the big cubes can't heal the boss. Respawn time not meassured.

Wave 2:
Polyps:
Polyps keep respawning each 90 seconds. So if a new player circles the room and shoots with his newly obtained blaster, then he has a tough time to have a small opening in which enough of the polyps are dead to deal enough damage. For exact datae I need to redo it and count the number of polyps - so we have the time that is maximum allowed to kill a polyp.

Boss:
Is blobbing around and has fun with his 4 puns like always.

Wave 3:
Polyps:
What took 90 seconds in wave 2 is now taking 60 seconds. Yes, each 60 seconds a fallen polyp comes back to life and starts to heal the boss again via minnies or will just throw some needles into the face of the player. Given that at this point a new player has only the 2* cobalt weapons as his best gear and absolutelly no damage bonus, I would say that it is only doable with a sword to deliver enough damage. After all a polyp needs to die in less than 10 seconds to have a moment in which are no polyps there at all. And including dodging and also attacking the boss, it is far below 10 seconds that are required here per polyp kill.

Boss:
As we already know, the boss is whirling with invincibility through his palace. What might be new is the fact that the boss is still spawning his 4 puns in his non-whirling spare time.

Comprehension:
The jelly king is an unfair dps game that a player who is supposed to be here can't win.
As such I see it as given that a player who encounters the jelly has:
-helm and amor 2*, probably cobalt stuff, maybe wolver
-weapons with 2*, highly certainly blaster and calibur
-2 weapon slots
-no sprite buff that grants damage bonus
-no idea when an enemy like the Jelly King is going to attack -> therefore he either uses his ranged blaster or dies very soon
-also let us consider some delay and/or lag since it is a very comon thing I am hearing people complain about -> so even if our average new player learned some dodging basics, he is still not able to block in time most hits
-also let us anticipate an over- or under-use of his shield which lets him keep the shield permanently up until it breaks and he is very often ending up stucked between all these minnies everywhere or he is using shield so rarely that he gets damage from all sources and is morely running around in the room in panic mode and eventually die without having done any noticable process rather than focusing on the important things.

Your hypothetical loadout is too pessimistic. A knight can get to Sovereign Slime only after getting 3-star certification. Based on mission rewards alone, the knight would have this loadout:

• Tempered Calibur (3-star; free after Rise or Fall)
• Super Blaster (3-star; free after Rise or Fall)
• 3-star Cobalt and Defender (free after Time Enough at Last)

And a savvy player, who has done a little bit of research, could easily have 3-star Wolver and BTS, giving him (or her) sword damage+3. Or he could have some gunner armor. He could even have a 3-star shadow weapon.

As we have already discussed in this parallel thread, a 3-star knight can certainly kill the Royal Jelly by keeping him under status. A novice player might not know to do this. However, as Fangel has pointed out, the monstrous codex tells you to use poison. And it's okay for the player to puzzle it out, ask a friend for advice, watch a video on YouTube, etc.

You can do any of the 5-2 missions you want in any order unless the structure of missions got changed. Therefore my assumption as 'what has a Knight epquipped when encountering the jelly king for his first time' is not 'too' pessimistic. Actually the Jelly King is a good way to farm 3 star gear to get past the 3* HoH - not vice versa.

About damage boni:
Yea, if I would create a new char, then this one would get a BTS, but new Players will typically either stick with the Defender or they will use another shield with defene purpose - typically against an enemy that Troubles them most.

You are right that new Players 'could' do lots of Research of this and that and everything, but be honest: a new Player i usually wanting to Play the game and not sink down into the Forums and guides. Usually, new Players will stay away from Forums for a longer time and would rather ask ingame once they found a guild or a more expierienced Player.

Bopp, you Need to see the whole Thing through the eyes of a newbie instead of a vateran who already knows the tricks and traps of each gear. It is a new Player who has no firm opinion about weapons and gear and will most likely end up with a loadout that differes from one that a vateran who starts over would choose.

(as usual, auto-correcture is Messing words around, just ignore those mistakes)

I for once disagree with the idea that the New players should just play through SK without any guide, I once considered Jelly set to be useful while not knowing that sleep is an obsolete status effect that is completely not present in the game when I played it post Beta. While other games where gears are balanced regularly or balanced to an extend, newbies can at least struggle to get used to inferior gear while they grind better ones.

In SK, the realization of that Colbalt set is overall inferior will eventually set in and I think it serves more to destroy the Player's Morale than restoring it as making gears in SK takes a lot of monotonous grind. Without a clear direction and what gears do what, the players will struggle more in SK than in other games. I am sure many newbies quit when they realized that their gears didn't work the way they expected it to work (as is my first experience with an autogun), the weapon stats need to be rework.

You're right that you can do the 5-2 missions in any order. And I agree that players might want to farm RJP. But you have focused on my "savvy" newbie scenario, which was supposed to be better than the typical newbie scenario.

It's reasonable for a typical newbie to do Time Enough at Last or Rise or Fall before Sovereign Slime. The user interface encourages them to. Or maybe they skip to Sovereign Slime, fail once, and decide to try the other ones first.

And maybe they don't find many 3-star orbs. But they still end up with a couple of 3-star items from those missions.

And maybe they haven't mastered the RJ strategy. But it's reasonable to expect them to read the monstrous codex and bring some poison on their second trip to RJ.

In the end, I think it's reasonable for a newbie player to beat RJ using a few 3-star items and some poison on his second or third trip to RJP.

When Spiral Knights was at the height of its popularity, RJ was even harder. So apparently RJ's difficulty wasn't a big roadblock for players.

Or even if RJ is slightly too hard, compared to the rest of the game, nerfing RJ is a low-priority update to Spiral Knights. I'd like to see many other adjustments first, such as armor balance. That's my opinion. Cheers.