I was going to see if there was any interest here for playing Spiral Knights.

Though, since I assume most of you don't know much about it, let me give you guys a brief round down:

It's a free to play "MMO" using a combination of 2D zelda and dungeon crawling for gameplay. Now, I said free to play, but hang on your hats and read on, for the game actually uses a business model unique to this game. (I have not seen a similar one before)

Though if you don't want the round down, just skip down past to the next set of dashes.
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The game is based on two currencies, energy and crowns. Crowns is the coinage loot, you get this from killing monsters or in treasure chests; Standard dungeon crawling style. With coins you can buy low level gear from NPCs or any high level gear sold on the auction house by other players. You also use it to buy crafting recipes as well as a very small amount when actually doing the crafting.

Then we have Crystal Energy. (CE) Crystal energy is sold by three rings (the developer (Refereed to as: OOO, at times)) for money. Crystal energy can be traded to other players or sold on an in-game market for crowns. There is also an NPC that sell gear for CE but let's be honest, no player uses that ever since the prices' are over the freaking top.

Players will need CE for high level crafting, this means that if no one pays the developers then no one is going to be able to get past a certain point. But on the other end of the spectrum, no one is going to run servers for and update an game that does not rack in profit.

But as there are always players out there who want to skip playing and get further faster there is always going to be CE for sale on the market, the question is just the price, which of course varies by demand. So yes, this game has a real functional player based market. And no, OOO does not take actively part in the market. They do however put up special deals, rarely, for buying CE with real life cash, but what do you expect? Obviously they will want to profit.

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So yeah, you will need to understand the market sooner or later, but it's not a huge deal until later in the game.

So, how does the game function?
Well, like mentioned, it's a dungeon crawl that is 30 floors deep with randomly generated floors on random generated stratums, except not. All players actively takes parts in building the themes for stratums for each gate. The 30 floor dungeon has four gates active into it at all time, each with their own stratums and levels. A gate is active for 12 days before it's replaced by another one. (One gate cycles out and another one in every third day)

The gameplay when actually playing works like a mix of Zelda and real time RPGs. (just look at the video for an explanation.) With a hint of bomberman in it if you decide to use bombs. Every knight (assuming you don't upgrade) can carry two weapons at a time. There are three type of weapons: Swords, guns, and bombs. Now, every sword does not work the same, obviously, so there is still more to it then that. But if you play you will be given a fair share of sword types in the tutorial that you can try out.

Now let's deal with the "MMO" part here, since I am sure you wonder how a dungeon crawl can be an MMO. Well, to put it simply, it's not an MMO. The only place where you meet a whole bunch of players on the same time is the town or your guild hall (assuming you are in a guild) and/or possibly PVP if you care for that. (It's not a huge part of the game) When going into the dungeon you are set up with several options, you can go in solo, or you can join/start a random group party. You can at any time dump your party and go into a solo session when you are in the dungeon, if you so wish.

A dungeon party is a group of 1-4 players. Enemies HP scale with the number of players, but nothing else does. Don't worry about ninja looting or any shit like that, crowns and heat (EXP, we will get to that) are added to a pot, and every player get the full pot. What this means is that you always get the same amount of crowns regardless of if you're in a party or solo or who picks it up in the dungeon. Crafting materials are divided randomly when picked up by any player and minerals (used for gate building) are given to everyone.

Heat/exp: (the tutorial goes over this FYI) works like this: you don't have a player level, you have gear level. Your gear starts at level 0 when crafted and is maxed at level 10. This means no grinding for EXP, your gear will get slightly (and I do mean slightly) better after you have used it for a while.

Now let's go over mist energy here. Going down a single dungeon floor in the dungeon costs 10 energy. Crafting also costs energy (amounts depending on type and rank) Every player has a mist tank of 100. This energy can't be traded, but you can use it for anything you would use energy for. The mist tank slowly refills. (It takes 22 hours for it to go from 0-100) This means that you can play 10 dungeon floors a day, pretty much.

So to sum it up: Spiral knights is not a game you play for hours on end, it's a game you play for a few hours a day. (Though, PVP does not cost energy.)

But without further ado here is the trailer:



Though, it is a bit outdated as they add new shit quite often...

You can find the game DRM free on their site: [Link]
Or you can use your Steam account: [Link] (The steam client take both account types)

Here are a few screenshots: [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link]

If you want to add me in game you can add either: Lunamon or Sapphire-Drip (or both)


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And for those of you who who are old Spiral Knights players but have stopped playing for X reason. Well...

The game has been more streamlined, they have added more story elements as well as a mission based system in which you get to experience it. (Which you can skip if it's not your cup of tea...) This makes it easier to get going in the game as the missions rewards you with equipment early on, and recipes later on.

Furthermore, boss lairs can now be reached when you have unlocked the missions for them, making it easier to set up a party for a boss run as well as reducing the energy costs of such a run. While mission rewards can only be given to you once, you can still replay most of them as much as you want.

All of these changes serve to make the game both easier to get into, as well as reducing some of the grindy elements of the game by introducing new missions for you. Also, remember that bug where your allied Attack bots would reflect your own gun shots? Yeah, they finally fixed that!

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Though, since I assume most of you don't know much about it, let me give you guys a brief round down:

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Er... yeah. I guess I kinda am nerding this game.



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The fun has been doubled!