Attention, Knights! We have an update today for Spiral Knights – including a new monster type, a promotion for a previous monster, and some updates to how control schemes are selected and used in-game!

Job Opening: Devilite Workforce Minion

Are you looking for an entry-level position in the exciting field of minion-ry? Does the idea of low pay, long hours, and high risk of being hacked to ribbons by industrious Knights sound like a great career path? If you’re willing to have your body transformed into a grotesque blob while staring hungrily from behind your one bulbous eye, and enjoy screaming in what we assume is either terror or rage at all who approach you then we apologize but the position has been filled.

We are, however, still looking for qualified Knights to come and do battle with the aforementioned miseries.

Introducing the Gorgos – the underworld workforce of the Clockworks has filled its need for cheap low-level labor by demoting their worst & dumbest upper management Devilites. You can find Gorgos alongside their Devilite bosses in any fiendish encounter within the Clockworks, and they come in the following flavors, which is just a metaphor, please do not actually attempt to lick or ingest Gorgos:

Gorgo (aka, the plain / vanilla variety)
Firegut
Guster
Storm Belly
Waster



Fiends and Schemes

Great Griefing Greavers

Reports from the Clockworks indicate the pesky fluttering fliers, Grievers, have leveled up! In a game without character levels this should not be possible, but that’s why they’re the bad guys: they don’t play by the rules.

To wit: Greavers are now classified as Elite monsters, much like Mecha Knights or Gremlin Twhackers.

Control Schemes

We've added a new way to set your controls in the options menu!
For new players, the option to choose a control scheme will appear after creating your character! For existing players installing the game on a new machine or for those who have never changed their controls, the option to choose controls will appear just after logging in.

If you'd like to change your controls at any time, you'll find the new options under "Controls" in the options menu! Please note: choosing a new default control scheme will override any customized controls.

You can still customize your controls with the Custom Scheme option, as well – please note if you have any initial trouble with your configuration, you can just set it how you need this way, as well.

Bug Fix

• Steam mic icon no longer overlaps Party leader icon. A victory for elbow room for icons!

Attention, Knights!

We’d like to get a snapshot of what the wider Spiral Knights community thinks about how armor and weapons are balanced in the game right now. If you've got opinions on Spiral Knights gear, would you kindly do us the favor of filling out this survey?

Here's the link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/28P9CVK

It should take at least a few minutes to finish, and more if you decide to go into detail.

The goal of this is to get up-to-date, crunchable data from a wide variety of current Spiral Knights players, as a means to zoom in on feedback we've gathered over time here in the Suggestions Forum and on social media. This survey will be live for one week.

There are places in the survey where you may write longer responses to questions if you wish, so please respond there with your feedback rather than in a reply to this post. This survey doesn't mean we're only focused on gear right now; depending on the utility of the data we get from this one, we may do detailed surveys like this on other topics in the future.

Thanks for your time!

New this week for Spiral Knights: A new set of levels to explore and a new class of monsters to fight!

You Shall Call Them Mini-Monsters

Knights like swarms of things, right?

Much like mini-cupcakes are relatively harmless on their own but incredibly damaging in large numbers, Mini-Monsters – “Minis” for short – now roam the Clockworks! Most Knights will be able to deal with these wee beasts easily enough one at a time … but beware of swarms!

Mini monsters include:

• Dust Bunnies: These beast-family minis are a hopping mad mess of fangs and fur. They are always hungry.
• Glop Drops: The newest member of the slime family will slowly ooze their way toward their prey as a nasty blanket of spikes.
• Grave scarabs: These undead insects are always on the lookout for fresh corpses. Their limited flight signals their attacks.

Minis will appear in select levels of the Clockworks and will eventually find their way into many more levels in future updates…

New Level Series: The Compounds

Deep in the Clockworks, Knights have forged into a new and dangerous area: The Compounds are the remains of some unknown and mysterious facility. Home to more intelligent monsters who have been harvesting the area’s resources, perhaps even working to power up the derelict machinery … while just outside the Compounds, hordes of mini-monsters await to swarm unwary Knights!

-Compounds are unique levels in that they will combine two monster families, and will only appear on Tier 2 and 3 of the Clockworks.
-Currently, Compounds levels will only appear in the Arcade but will be added to some missions in future updates.
-Please note, in order for the new Compound levels to populate the Arcade gates, it was necessary to shuffle current gates. We apologize for the inconvenience!



Bugfixes

- Rockets will no longer sneak behind barriers in the Firestorm Citadel
- Fixed going 'Back to Haven' in Guild Halls

Please see http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/78315 for full patch notes and details.

Hail, Knights!

Preamble: In which news is delivered to our Knights, of improvements and a celebration!

Part I: In Which A Caketastrophe is Baked

Happy Birthday to Spiral Knights: it was two years ago that Knights first crash-landed on the planet Cradle! First and foremost, thank you to all our players for joining us in this adventure. We will be celebrating with a special birthday event that runs through April 16th.

Second, we have made cakes! But, oh dear. Something is wrong.

What’s that? Oh. Nothing is wrong! Everything is fine. We’re fine, how are you? There are no monstrous “Creep Cakes” of any kind. Please do proceed to the Haven town square at your earliest convenience, though, and meet Skylark’s Head Chef, Biscotti.

It’s not an emergency or anything but seriously, do head there post-haste?



The totally everything’s fine situation / celebration includes:

• A Prestige Mission: ‘Total Caketastrophe’
• Creep Cake nests can be found randomly throughout the clockworks
• Earn Cake Slice Tokens
• Special NPCs Biscotti, Maskwell, and Bulky can be found in the Haven town square…
• Maskwell now trades Cake Helms and Anniversary Prize boxes for the cake corpses – er, slices
• Bulky now sells confetti and Cake Slice tokens

(Please note, the Frosted Helm and Foiled Frosted Helm will expire on April 30th 2013, however the Prismatic Frosted Helm lasts forever!)

For a full list of prizes and odds of winning them in the Anniversary Prize Box, please check here.

Part II: Spectacular Optics

With age comes wisdom, and in this case, the ripe old age of two brings about a whole new User Interface! As you will no doubt notice immediately upon logging in, Spiral Knights has a new and – we hope you will feel – improved UI, overhauling the interface we have been using since Beta.

Here's the major changes:

• A visible character portrait
• A new way of viewing health: health pips now change from red to silver and finally gold as more health is accrued. Additionally, a percentage health display is present.
• A shield power meter under health.
• A weapon selection 'wheel' that allows you to see the name and icon of your weapons.
• A much more detailed mini map, featuring enemy locations, NPCs and more.
• A new Targeting UI that displays information about whatever you are targeting. For monsters this includes health, attack types and weaknesses.
• An Activities Panel that contains all the various activities that you can perform in a given zone!
• A zoom button that allows you to zoom in when in Haven…
• A general layer of shine and je ne sais quoi across all the other interfaces.

Part III: Sundry Changes

A handful of other updates have been made to go along with the updated UI. And here they are:

- Monster and player damage flash effects have been revamped for better clarity in combat.
- Vials and Capsule pickups have had their icons updated.
- Art for unbreakable blocks in the Clockworks has been updated.
- A player's rank will now be shown with their name above their heads.
- Items will now show a message when they cannot be picked up.
- Player names are now white, green if a guildmate and blue if a friend. This color scheme is also used on the mini map.
- Vitapods can no longer be dropped, only replaced by superior versions.
- Bugfix: Dusky Long Feather added to the Iron Lockbox drop table.

For complete notes and prize box info, please check the official release notes at: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/77254

Of Knights And Kats

Thousands of Kats. Millions of Kats! A horde of cursed black kats swarming the clockworks. Haunting corners, spooking the unwary, knocking things off shelves, asking to go out and then wanting to come right back in … and what-not.

The Story: Some unknown nefarious something/something has released an absolutely insane number of Kats into the Clockworks.

Awesome! Now what? Actually this is kind of a problem. A – wait for it -- katastrophe. Now that we have that out of the way: seriously though it’s kind of bad down there. The Kat spooks are drawn to arcane energy, of the sort that Moorcroft Manor is just absolutely brimming with.

Like most Manors, Moorcroft keeps their arcane energy safely ensconced within magical grimoires. A grimoire is a type of book for people who wear robes. Just trust us that this is important.

Okay, Then: Advanced scouts have determined that a) Kats cannot read (that’s good!) and b) they are just eating the freaking things instead (that’s bad). Look, don’t ask us to explain how cats, let alone mystical undead ghost Kat versions, go about problem solving.



Event Overview

What: Kataclysmic Confrontation is a new event for Spiral Knights – it will run for a limited time, and, as with all invasions of phantom felines, will return in the future! Due to the excessive danger of the Black Kat invasion, these missions are only available for Knights who have achieved rank 4-1 and up.

Event Goals: The object of the event: to collect Ancient Page tokens from Black Kats. Ancient Page tokens will be awarded either as daily Prestige Mission rewards, or as drops from individual Black Kat monsters via missions from the Arcade.

Meow? The villain of this event – the Black Kat! This is a new monster type equipped with a power ability to snub any food you offer it … and curse your immortal soul! Seriously though, the Black Kats deliver curse damage, so watch out for that. They can be randomly found in place of any Spookat-type monster in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 level of the Clockworks.

Meow! Indeed! The Kataclysmic Confrontation event is scheduled to end on February 13th.

Moorcroft Manor: Home Meowkover Edition

We apologize for the above “pun”. Those responsible have been sacked.

Knights are now able to explore the Archives, a newly accessible area of Moorcroft Manor. Therein, you will find the Ancient Grimoires … and also the Black Kats who ate them. So there’s that.

Features:

• Pembrooke, the Spookat caretaker of the Moorcroft Archives
• Montague, the Historic Preservation Motivator. Montague is a token trader that exchanges rewards for Ancient Page tokens.
• Moorcroft Alchemy Station, where Kat Gear can be crafted!
• The mysterious Konjuring Kat. What koncerns this kitty? Perhaps if you had the right item …

New Gear and New Guild Hall Features

In addition to a veritable ocean of phantom Black Kats choking the gears of the Clockworks and devouring ancient books, there is also: New Stuff! and… New Furniture!

Many new Kat-themed helms of high quality are available from Montague, within the Moorcroft Manor addition.

For guild-minded Knights, there are also a variety of new themes available with which to decorate your Guild Halls – whole decoration schemes, as well as Environment themes, allowing you to have actual weather conditions inside your Guild Hall! Which is crazy. Crazy awesome.

Please see the official patch notes for additional information, changes, and details on new STUFF!