Spiral Knights

[NegimaSonic]

lol, glad you guys had fun. I guess I'll actually start on mine today haha.

[NegimaSonic]

Not the biggest update but probably worth a little attention if you played this game and wanted to earn some money or something.

elevators will have no energy cost from now to Saturday, May 19 at 2pm PST.

I haven't played in awhile so now I have an excuse to do the low level missions tomorrow haha.

[Top Gun]

I'm definitely taking advantage of this one. Either tonight or tomorrow, I'm planning on taking a run at the Dauntless Delver achievement, since it'll essentially be free.

[Thylacine]

Huh, didn't think about that. I could do that, too. (Probably should go the Snarbolax route... I'll have to plan carefully.)

Thank you for reviving this to bring attention to it, NegimaSonic. I said I wasn't going to resurrect the thread but this was a pretty major announcement.

For those who are wondering why they're being so generous, it's because they just got their 3 millionth registration. Considering how many non-American people I encounter on the average run, this doesn't surprise me; a global market could easily attract those kinds of numbers.

Edited May 17, 2012 by Thylacine
Made it sound more P.C.

[Top Gun]

Well...I pulled it off. No idea how, and I was down to all of one health bar at least once, but I made it. Damn that takes a long time, though. I'm taking off for the rest of the week.

[NegimaSonic]

haha, I feel too lazy to go for that (always have) but considering the time off, I'd say my skills would be way worse. Anyway my focus tomorrow in the morning and some of the afternoon will be all of the normal missions since I basically ignored them.

[Thylacine]

Dang, this could be my very first Steam 100% achievements game. Got Gold Survivor, Cradle and All, AND Dauntless Delver, and I did it thanks to a very powered-up friend who practically carried me during the last parts. (Onyx Sun FTW - fantastic gate for this.)

I have only two achievements left: 10,000 minerals and all 5-star equipment. So, uh, do I have to hold on to those minerals and feed them in all at once, or can I just keep depositing them until I get it?

I imagine I have to hold them until I get them all, because it's the hardest-to-get achievement according to Steam stats (and I got #2-#4 and #6 all in the same night).

Edited May 19, 2012 by Thylacine
Got the name of the gate wrong.

[Top Gun]

That's the same gate I used, too; good ol' Snarby takes the heat off later. I made a really stupid move in the one Aurora Isles level: I opened an energy door that I forgot leads to staring down nine turrets, and I didn't have the proper gun to deal with them. Still not sure how I survived that one with that single health bar. I really thought I was done when I drew a Candlestick Keep level in T3 at the random selection, since those are usually a nightmare to solo, but I managed to pull it off by playing like a total wimp. But hey, at least there were no Devilites...*shudder*.

I still need those two achievements myself, along with Free Spirit; I've done a couple of FSC runs with random parties, but I don't feel like I'm equipped to take on the boss-man yet, unless someone drags my corpse through it. As far as I know, the mineral one is a cumulative count, so you don't have to dump that all at once; I got the previous achievements by just tossing in small amounts over time.

[Thylacine]

I got really lucky with the random floors: graveyard on T1, then the other two were treasure vaults. I thought we were going to Candlestick for sure (and that probably would have ruined my run), but it turned out okay. Those Kleptos on the T3 vaults are resilient, though.

[NegimaSonic]

I have only two achievements left: 10,000 minerals and all 5-star equipment. So, uh, do I have to hold on to those minerals and feed them in all at once, or can I just keep depositing them until I get it?

I imagine I have to hold them until I get them all, because it's the hardest-to-get achievement according to Steam stats (and I got #2-#4 and #6 all in the same night).

Lol, well I'm not one of the steamers but it should work the same way as over here. Just deposit and you'll get them over time. The reason why I'd imagine it's the hardest to get for a lot of them is because you would've actually had to play dedicatedly for awhile to get this and depositing doesn't always have a real value for anyone anyway so a lot of people skip it.

This was a pretty nice event, I got some friends I worked with for a bit who also skipped doing the missions while we were busy. I didn't finish them all because I'm still lazy but going from 3-2 to 7-3 in a day for no cost was good to me heh..though getting disconnected in a shock arena and then kicked back to haven kind of ended it for me right now lol. I went back to finish it but I don't think I'll sit through the final 30 minutes. I was glad to take this chance though.

They're promising some somewhat interesting changes soon, I might check in on them again.

[Thylacine]

I'm kinda glad you brought that up, Negima.

The following was posted at the Spiral Knights forums under the announcements category, and I think it's what you are referencing:

Expanded Guild Features!

Over the last year of live production, we've received encouragement (in the form of comments on Facebook and Twitter, forum posts, responses to our surveys, and promises of delicious cake) from players asking us to add more functionality to guilds.

We take the need for active and relevant guilds seriously and are now turning our attention to this feature. This project will start with guilds having the ability to expand their halls, increase member limits, and furnish their guild halls. You'll even be able to purchase special features that benefit everyone in the guild! We also expect to expand guilds further in the future to bring a strategic aspect to guild play.

I know it's too soon to discuss specifics, but in regards to "furnishing" the guilds, how are we going to make decisions on that?

I've thought about this before, and I was hoping that we could stick with OCR-esque things, like anything pertaining to music, a color scheme befitting the guild (think OCR-tan's orange and silver/white), and benefits that don't have a, shall we say, "time window" that would hurt people who choose to play at one time rather than another. I may have brought it up in this thread before, but I don't recall. I'd just like it to be a fun place for us to go outside of Haven.

Does anyone have any ideas on what they want? If they go with floor themes (jelly, shock, graveyard, etc.) or item colors (fancy, military, volcanic, etc.), which do you think would be the best for OCR?

[NegimaSonic]

I'm still running as an outsider but..Those all sound like good ideas, I just can't think of what to say until they actually come up with a release for it. A slight warning though be prepared that any customization could cost more CE or crowns (probably with something like this it might go in for a crownsink like Punch). They could prove me wrong but I have very little faith that all options would just appear for free.

[Thylacine]

Oh, I don't doubt for a second that the things they've got planned will be a crownsink; that's why I wanted to start a discussion on it now before they give us a whole bunch of shiny stuff and we all start dumping money into the most expensive items or get things that we disagree on. If they let us put stuff in that's in the different stages, we'll see those electric towers in front of Danger Rooms on shock floors at a ridiculously inflated price and EVERYONE is going to want them.

They'd fit our decor, but if they had something like, say, an access panel to the auction house (or even a private auction area), I'd rather any potential guild money go to that than, say, a smattering of gravestones that really don't have anything to do with OCR.

Don't get me wrong, though - aesthetic is important to me. If there were a nice "lounge" area where we could embroider a giant pretzel into a rug or place stones or tiles into such a pattern, I would be all for that. The OCR logo would be a nice addition, as well. Any place that we could /sit and relax for a while would be nice, as long as it fit with a theme.

I have ideas, and I could go on all day and easily spend a budget of 100,000 crowns (which probably won't even give us a poison gas pad in the corner). I don't want that, though, because then it'd be my guild hall rather than OCR's guild hall. This should be something that a majority agrees on. That way, if and when we get people from here starting to take interest in the game, they can have a place to call home.

My main desires are:

1. Representative of the site, since that is our uniting thread.

2. Form following function. If we can benefit from going there, we will go there and it won't just be a place that "looks pretty."

3. Not wasting crowns.

4. General, if not complete, consensus on what does go into the hall. If everyone agrees to the above three, then this last one shouldn't be too big of an issue.

---

That's why I was mentioning the "floor themes" thing in my other post: if they let us use floor themes as a template, which theme fits OCR best? I would think shock because of our electronica and video game background, but that has a darker color scheme than the site. The brightest is beast/Aurora Isles. Would that work?

[NegimaSonic]

nah, it should be fiend because of the judges, they throw CDs that say RESUB RESUB RESUB! (jk lol)

I like the ideas you have. Shock does seem to work though. I wonder about what colors they'd use, yellow would be horrible to me (I think beast is related to yellow sometimes)

[Top Gun]

*blows massive layer of dust away*

I think at least one other member of our all-but-mummified guild has played recently, but if you haven't, there have been a few notable additions over the past few months. The biggest has to be the introduction of Danger Missions: they're basically alternatives to the usual daily Prestige Mission cycle, except far more difficult, and with a big treasure room at the end and an increased Prestige award. There are three of them right now, with a fourth reportedly in the works, but my pick for the clear hardest so far is Compound 42. Picture lichens with a super-fast dash attack, which leave trails like Oilers, except they poison you in addition to being flammable, and they can be spawned from Polyp turrets...oh, and there's fire everywhere. It's pretty painful.

More importantly for us, though, Nick finally posted some details on the long-awaited Guild Hall update. To summarize, each Hall will now have a control panel in it which enables a host of options. The biggest is the ability to purchase whole expansions to the Hall, which are basically additional rooms and hallways, including special featured rooms which contain useful utilities or a cool little hang-out area. There will be an in-game interface for customizing the Hall by moving furniture and accessories around. There's a central Guild Treasury where everyone can deposit crowns; they'll be automatically withdrawn on a regular basis as "upkeep" for whatever Hall expansions you have. There's also a storage area where Guild members can deposit and withdraw items freely. And to top it all off, the Guild Hall and Hall of Heroes will both be accessible from a brand-new area of Haven.

The best part from my perspective is that this introduces a desperately-needed crown sink into the economy. Anyone who's played recently knows how obscenely high CE trade prices have grown, to the point where I've just given up trading for it. Hopefully this will be what we need to even things out.

[Thylacine]

Aside from an economy regulator, though, it does mean we'll have to think carefully about what we're putting into the guild hall because it will demand tributes on a regular basis. As fun as a snipe garden would be, would we want to buy (and pay upkeep for) that for our hall?

...I've been playing Guild Wars 2 and just recently saw the SK guild update was happening, okay? I know I was one of the most gung-ho about that update, and this game got put on the backburner when my life started to happen again.

I'm still very interested in this. I'd like music to be our central focus in that hall, if we have hall updates that reflect that. Perhaps an NPC of some type so at least one "living" thing is in there at all time?

[Top Gun]

I think it all depends on how much the upkeep actually costs per month. If it's just a few thousand crowns here or there, it shouldn't be a problem, but if it's substantially more...well, there are only like 3 or 4 of us here, so it might not work. We need some new blood.

And OOO posted an update on Facebook about the next Danger Mission. Its name? Ghost in the Machine.

[Top Gun]

Wake up, the Guild Hall update is here! Right now ours is a lovely empty rectangular room, so we definitely have some work to do. Unfortunately whatever my guild rank is doesn't really have access to the main expansion stuff, so we'll have to get a few people on and figure things out. In addition to the Guild Hall stuff, every player also gets free Calibur/Defender-line reskins based on their mission rank just for logging in.

Oh, and at the moment, don't try to enter the Guild Hall from the new Garrison area in Haven: it'll insta-crash the game, and you'll wind up trying to enter the same area when you reload, which will get things stuck in a loop. Apparently Three Rings has an incoming patch to fix it.

Edited November 15, 2012 by Top Gun

[Thylacine]

I entered via the Garrison, so it's fixed.

It looks like we can have chairs, tables, and plants in the main room. Other people have added expansions to theirs already, and those are quite... elaborate. Like Top Gun, that list might be higher for a high-ranked individual.

For what it's worth:

-We can sit in chairs and sleep in beds. So, if we made a half-effort lobby, it could function in the way I had imagined... Only no music.

-Auction house, Vatel (green Stranger merchant), alchemy booths, and what appears to be a storage locker are all possible furniture. They can be placed in blank rooms, which can be "named" whatever we wish.

-The only items we can buy at the moment for that main room are chairs, tables, and shrubs. Those cost around 12,500 crowns a pop, coming from our guild finances. I don't think we pay upkeep on furniture.

-Pretty much everything Top Gun said back in the earlier post.

Unfortunately, the upkeep is roughly 15,000 crowns per expansion weekly (the timer says six days from now, so Wednesday is when we pay rent). That exhausts our guild coffers in under a month. Since we're a starter guild, we don't pay anything. If the furniture rule holds, we could make a nice hang-out area for cheap.

I haven't touched anything in the way of decoration, but I added 1,000 crowns. I looked around for a way to change colors/themes, but that's looking like it's not possible.

As I said before, I wouldn't mind something simple. If we threw a couple of shrubs at the sides of the guild console door, set up a few seats in the middle, and put a table or two alongside them, I'd be thrilled. I don't think that'll cost us "upkeep." I see from the listing that snipes are available. Perhaps a lazy (table-set) or wandering white one? Maybe some light beacons in the lower corners?

Not demanding. Just tossing ideas out.

[Top Gun]

Yeah, as far as I can tell, there isn't any upkeep charged for furniture or decorations, just full-fledged expansions. I have a Vanguard Stand freebie that I could toss into the communal pot. A few chairs/tables and some shrubbery all sound good to me.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way that we'd be able to sustain a full-fledged expansion. There are only five people in the guild to begin with, and just three of us have so much as logged in over the past 6 months. I wish I could come up with a few more OCR people to join in.

[Otakatt]

Is anyone still playing this game? Me and a friend tried it a while back for a bit, and while I found it enjoyable I just couldn't stick with it. However I had bought some crystal energy and it makes no sense for it to just rot in my inventory. I found no one interested in trading me on Steam, so if someone here wants it I can give my Spiral Knight items to you. I don't have much of value. Energy, some kinda tank, and a key of some sort.

[Top Gun]

Crap, I forgot to respond to this. I don't even think anyone else around here is still playing, so if you're looking to give away some extra stuff, I'll gladly take it.

[Otakatt]

Steam name is the same as here: Otakatt, so if you see me on Steam we can trade. Since Steam can't just let people mail items to each other since that would be too convenient.

[Top Gun]

Mega-ultra-probably-futile bump for great justice. The game received a pretty massive update a few weeks ago, probably more significant than even the missions system, and I've been playing a lot more frequently as a result. First off is the addition of Battle Sprites, these Pokemon-esque little critters that have cool combat abilities and that you can level up. Even more importantly, Mist Energy is now gone, and elevators don't cost anything, so you can finally play as long as you like in a single session. Reviving someone with your own health is gone: everyone gets one free revive per level, then after that you use Sparks of Life, these special items that you can find randomly or buy with Energy. The crafting system no longer requires any Energy at all, instead using Orbs of Alchemy, which drop rarely and can also be purchased at about the same Energy rate as the old crafting system. The system for leveling up your weapons is now called the Forge, and involves spending Fire Crystals that you can collect/purchase. It winds up slowing the leveling system down, but considering how much easier it is to craft stuff now, I consider it a fair trade-off.

So yeah, if this is something you played once upon a time and haven't touched for ages, I think it's worth logging on and giving it a try again. And if you haven't tried it before, there's really nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

[cobaltstarfire]

As far as the forge goes, as long as you always save up for 100% forge it won't really go any slower than it did before, it's probably even easier now that they just updated it so you can craft crystals down to other types. (My 5*'s have been super easy to heat up, the 4*'s have been the trouble due to a considerably lower drop rate in odd numbered stratums).

Edit: also they just released an event with the black kats again, I didn't participate in it last time, so I don't really know what it's about or like but if you want to give the game another go for a couple of weeks now is as good a time as any.

Edited August 21, 2013 by cobaltstarfire