Spiral Knights Catch-All: F2P MMO action-rpg from Three Rings

Powderkeg wrote:

I bought the starter pack. It's a pretty good deal and I have fun playing the game, so whats $20? At least thats my justification, I've paid more for games I ended up hating.

I feel like I've missed the boat a little bit. Well at least for using the free weapons it gives you. Still the energy and tanks would come in handy for sure.

Looking at the party pack, you can split it 4 ways and it's only $15 a pop. Like you said, I've paid more for bad games, and this one is pretty fun. A little bit tempting, as I could jump right into all my 4* stuff. Anybody else maybe interested in a paypal 4-pack?

you can do Jelly runs with 3* gear. Though if your whole party is 3*, teamwork and precision will be very important. Heh of course thats important even with 4* equips :).

Stele wrote:

Anybody else maybe interested in a paypal 4-pack?

I'll need another play session or two to decide if I'm going to stick with this, so if you aren't doing it NOW I'd definitely consider blowing 15 of my Steam Sale dollars on Fun.

Edit: Ran out of power and I wasn't done playing yet. Debating burning my freebie mist-tank. I think that means I'm having fun. Count me in on that four pack.

Well that's 2 then.

I'm still having a blast slowly grinding stuff out, but energy prices are creeping back up and I'm worried it's going to take a very long time to get from 4* to 5*.

Ok, tips and tricks time:
As in, I'm going to ask a few questions and I hope someone has some tips and/or tricks for me:
Recipes: Wait until you have the necessary ingredients or buy them as you get spare cash? Only buy the ones you need, or buy everything because recipes are like pokemon?

Tokens: Trade in for the bits and bobs you occasionally need for crafting or hoard for the goodies at the bottom of the list or irrelevant because once you hit the next tier tokens become a trash drop?

Level 10 equipment: Keep using it until you upgrade to the next star level if it works or immediately swap out with something else, don't waste that sweet sweet heat!

EDIT: Awww... I was wondering what the razor-blade looking pickup was. Wiki says I had a Mecha Knight. That would have been awesome! A little pointless, but awesome!

I just buy the recipe's that I want to use. But if you want to get into crafting then it wouldn't hurt to collect them like pokemon. Up to personal preference.

Tokens: The items that you can get from tokens are great and worth saving for. Upgrading these items take mats that you can also buy with tokens. I would save your tokens for that purpose before blowing them on items to sell.

Level 10 equipment: 1-2 star I just upgraded as soon as I could afford it. 3 star you have to get to level 5 to upgrade so again if i can afford it thats as high as I let the equipment get. To upgrade items to 5 star you need to have a level 10 4 star piece so at that point you don't have much choice. Now if there is a new item i want to try I'll just craft it straight to 3 star and then level the heat up from there.

For crafting, I tend to focus on the next piece I want to upgrade, rather than trying to look at my inventory of craft items and the list of things I want to get. So I figure out what I need for mats and/or try to find that one recipe, whatever is around. I've used the AH for one or two last materials that I've needed rather than hunting for them once in a while. I think it's more of a patience and organizational thing, personally. Keeping a spreadsheet may help.

The wiki is also a big help for this.

Tokens are a great help as you get up to sometimes 3, but definitely the 4/5 star gear. There are very rare ingredients that sometimes sell for 5-10k on the AH, that are only 10-20 tokens for you to trade in to get. Save those tokens until you need one of those rare ingredients for a recipe and you're saving yourself a lot of hassle when trying to craft.

As for recipes, you probably need to pick something that you want to stick with from 2 to 5-star. The good thing is 2* stuff is cheap, and the weapons at least behave very similar to their high-star versions, in some cases the exact same attacks. So you can try out the standard calibur 3-swing sword, or the faster 5-swing cutter sword, or the slower 2-swing sealed swords... and get a good idea of what you like or don't like. And then you can focus on one and just buy the recipes for it.

Same with the guns. There are 2-shot, 3-shot, and 6-shot guns. There are also a couple gun lines (Magnus and Autoblaster I think) that make you stand still when you shoot. Some people thing the other properties of those guns are worth that. I don't. Mobility is the main reason I pull out my gun.

Or you might decide you like bombs as your 2nd weapon instead of guns. Never know until you try. I would recommend trying them out before spending the 250 energy to get that third weapon slot. I personally didn't find 2* bombs that great, but I have seen some friends with 5* bombs and the explosion radius is awesome and I totally want some someday.

As for armor and helmet, I am trying to cover all the damage types and most of the status effects. Other people will focus and try to get the highest of a certain type defense they can. I'm not really sure what the best idea is. I'm only at mostly 4* gear. The only other thing is that sets currently offer no bonuses for equipping them together. And usually they offer the exact same protection. Only way I would recommend a set is if you chose the opposite variants for the final 5-star pieces. Like the Wolver line ends up with a Skolver (normal, piercing and ice) and a Vog Cub line (normal, elemental, and fire). Other sets are similar where the opposite 5-star pieces can complement each other.

But I think since it looks like I'll be in 4* gear for weeks at this point, that I'd probably rather have some varied protection a little earlier.

Stele wrote:

But I think since it looks like I'll be in 4* gear for weeks at this point, that I'd probably rather have some varied protection a little earlier.

I'd rather have the varied protection earlier, too. I assume one wouldn't need a full set of specific protection gear until the last Clockwork levels where you might want to have a fire set, and a freeze set, and a stun set, etc.

Thanks everyone for the tips and tricks posted!
Since there hasn't been any more posted interest for the 4pack I will most likely indulge solo at some point in the next few days.
I've ventured into the markets and trading posts and I have to be honest... I'm not sure what I'm looking at. I know that earlier today I committed to buying 100 energy for 5200. The going rate was 5350, and I had to go to work so I have no idea if I'll have that energy when I log back in or if there is some other action that I was expected to take.
Are there any tips or best practices to use when interacting with the trading systems?

Just make sure you do use the market posting thing and don't click the instant buy/sell buttons. You'll always get a slightly better price with the manual posting.

I got tier 3 clearance today with my 4* gun being the last piece. I need my 4* sword crafted though before I will feel comfortable in those levels.

And so begins the long heat grind to 10 before I can even think of crafting 5* stuff.

Ticket for Steam Summer Prizes today:

Spiral Knights
Star-Spangled Bomber - Get Cracking! Add the Firecracker bomb to your arsenal

Added to arsenal. Ticket hasn't dropped yet. Biding my time.

Apparently bugged and maybe removed from the page. Ugh.

Anyway if anybody stumbles in here, welcome, join us, we have a guild, the game is fun, etc.

Stele wrote:

Anyway if anybody stumbles in here, welcome, join us, we have a guild, the game is addicting, etc. :D

FTFY.

Let me know if anyone want to play. I just started.

Thanks! =D

Got a firecracker drop from a crate last night. Now I really hope they bring it back.

Anyway, I keep inviting people to the guild when I get the notification for a new Steam friend. Don't know if they know about this thread or not. Wish we could put a message of the day up for the guild or something.

But really just look at your friends list and see someone playing, feel free to hop in. Most of us rerun the early tier 1 levels every so often to waive a gate fee, so we'll happily play with newer people.

What's voice-chat protocol for our guildies? Or has it even come up? I don't think I've actually seen anyone from our guild in-game yet.
I have no idea if my ingame voice chat works. I can hear people, but they are usually Japanese or eating something.

We typically use Ventrillo.

The in-game stuff sounds ok, but it has no push-to-talk option.

If you don't like Vent or something... Steam chat is also an option, which I do with my non-GWJ friends. We just message each other, and invite the whole team to the Steam chat, click "start voice" and that works pretty well. Push-to-talk, volume adjustments, and everything.

The game also seems to recognize when you're in a Steam chat, and lowers the volume accordingly, just as it would if you used the in-game voice. Pretty cool. If the in-game voice would just add push-to-talk it'd be fine. Until then, one of the other two options is better.

jinniee wrote:

Let me know if anyone want to play. I just started.

Thanks! =D

We'll have to play.

We should make a SK night. I know most MMOs play on Monday so do we want to do Tuesday nights? I also made a steam group so if any one wants invites let me know.

Yeah a group wouldn't hurt. At least to pop up announcements/events. "Jelly King run starting" or whatever.

I'll probably be on for a little while tonight if you guys want to do a JK run or whatever I'd be happy to join. I've gotten to the point that I can solo JK so I've just been doing that. When I group up its usually just to get the extra heat from other people dying all the time. lol 4 & 5 star gear takes quite a bit to level up.

One thing though, I destroy every single bush and plant because there are lots of crowns hidden in there. Before I started soloing I would get randoms that just rush through the level sometimes even missing monsters. They'd wait on the party button and then start complaining and I'd just end up kicking them from the party. I really don't mind so much if I have to do all the work myself but it goes a lot faster with help.

Currently I've got a pretty good setup going that allows me to specialize for most of the different environments.

Swords:
Leviathan Blade
Divine Avenger
Acheron
Barbarous Thorn Blade
Dread Venom Striker
Winmillion

Bombs:
Freezing Atomizer (very close to shivermist)

Guns(which I rarely use):
Master Blaster
Antigua

Armor:
Vog Cub Coat
Vog Cub Cap
Azure Guardian Helm
Azure Guardian Armor
Miracle Hood
Miracle Cloak

Shields:
Barbarous Thorn Shield
Heater Shield
Mighty Defender (Building this one into an Aegis)
Wise Owlite Shield
Sinister Skelly Shield

I like killing all the grass too.

And yeah, always need more heat. Got two of my 4* pieces maxed out finally, so I need to start running early tier 3 and find some recipes.

Well I tried to get on last night but the game was acting up. I'd go into a run and just get a blank screen only able to hit escape and bring up the menu. So I went and played Global Agenda.

So I'm loaded with 3 star items and working on figuring out which ones I want to take to 4 star, but I'm running into an issue that I'm not sure how to address:
Money.
I'm not getting a lot of it, so I'm wondering what I should be doing that I'm not.
Should I be obsessively hoarding my loots or throwing them on the market? Should I be obsessively hoarding the energy that I purchased or trade it for instant gratif... cash?
Or do I just need to do more runs into the clockwork?

I think what several of us have done is make an alt account and do recipe runs with our main. You can log the alt into Haven when your main is on floor 13, and see what's selling good at the AH. Then buy and sell those high margin items.

Seems to work our pretty well.

spiralknights.com wrote:

Get energized Spiral Knights, this weekend will be a Power Surge Weekend! Beginning Friday, July 15 at 2pm server time and ending Sunday, July 17 at 9pm server time all elevator costs will be half off!

Stele wrote:

I think what several of us have done is make an alt account and do recipe runs with our main. You can log the alt into Haven when your main is on floor 13, and see what's selling good at the AH. Then buy and sell those high margin items.

Seems to work out pretty well.

The fact that you can have multiple instances of the game running on Steam at the same time definitely helps

I'm still trying to learn how to identify the different level symbols. Colour and picture are both important right? But how do I read what kind of damage or creature I should expect?