Spiral Knights is celebrating its second anniversary with a special event! Join in on the fun now through April 16, 2013!
It's a Caketastrophe!
Visit the Haven Town Square to meet the Skylark's Head Chef, Biscotti. She will inform you of a 'situation' at hand that involves hordes of monstrous cakes known as 'Creep Cakes.' Helping her solve this 'situation' will reward you with cake helms and prize boxes! Features include:
- A Prestige Mission, 'Total Caketastrophe' is available during the event
- Biscotti, Maskwell and Bulky can be found in the Haven Town Square
- Creep Cake nests can be found randomly within the Clockworks
- Participating in these events will reward you with Cake Slice tokens
- Maskwell now trades Cake Helms and Anniversary Prize Boxes in exchange for Cake 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!
Anniversary Prize Boxes
Anniversary Prize Boxes can be purchased from Maskwell in exchanged for Cake Slice tokens. Anniversary Prize Box contents include:
- Handfuls of confetti (always included)
One accessory (always included):
4% Chance:
- Cool Birthday Candle
- Regal Birthday Candle
- Military Birthday Candle
- Heavy Birthday Candle
- Fancy Birthday Candle
- Dusky Birthday Candle
- Toasty Birthday Candle
- Cool Party Hat
- Regal Party Hat
- Military Party Hat
- Heavy Party Hat
- Fancy Party Hat
- Dusky Party Hat
- Toasty Party Hat
- Cool Party Blowout
- Regal Party Blowout
- Military Party Blowout
- Heavy Party Blowout
- Fancy Party Blowout
- Dusky Party Blowout
- Toasty Party Blowout
2% Chance:
- Volcanic Party Hat
- Divine Party Hat
- Prismatic Party Hat
- Volcanic Party Blowout
- Divine Party Blowout
- Prismatic Party Blowout
- Volcanic Birthday Candle
- Divine Birthday Candle
- Prismatic Birthday Candle
1% Chance:
- Shadow Party Blowout
- Shadow Party Hat
- Shadow Birthday Candle
- Sprinkle Aura
As a special bonus, each Anniversary Prize Box has a chance of containing DOUBLE PRIZES!
UI Overhaul
As part of our second anniversary celebration, we're rolling out a new UI for Spiral Knights! The new UI contains a number of improvements and an easier to understand layout. These changes include:
- 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. Handy!
- 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 shininess across all the other interfaces
Other Changes
- 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.
- Devilite difficulty has been balanced, including reducing their attack range and dodge frequency.
Bugfixes
- Dusky Long Feather added to the Iron Lockbox drop table

April 3rd, 2013 Ugly Baby Update -- BROWSINGDIRTY

Howdy! PAX and GDC were fantastic and we loved the opportunity to meet with many of our beautiful fans. While the past two weeks were busy, we managed to whip up something for everyone. Dropping the deets:

* PERFORMANCE: We had a few users that needed to kick their resolution down, otherwise the game would stop generating the level at some point in the song. There have been a few important changes that should let you kick the game up a notch. If this previously affected you, please let us know how the game is playing now -- we now consistently hit 60FPS on Dave's AMD Turion II X2 M500/ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570.

* FILE BROWSER: Michael got this amazing idea: let players browse their folders on their drives to get to their music, rather than force you to copy into a folder we specify. So, that’s in.

* VISUALS: We made some visualizer updates and tweaks for PAX, you now have those in the cities.

* ANALYSIS: Andy was able to make another improvement to BeatBox, our song analysis tech. This means songs that we’ve previously cached the analysis, the game will need to re-run it. This update helps us *much* more accurately detect beats for slower/less stressful music.

* FRIENDS: We've been including music from indie studios Fire Hose Games, 82 Apps, Part 12, Hybrid Mind, and more. What do you like, and who else do you want to hear?

As always, tell us what you love, what you hate, and your favorite way to eat potatoes.

Stardock Entertainment is happy to announce the latest BETA update for Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. The 0.75 build includes a new Warrior trait tree, an improved weapon upgrade system, bug fixes, balance adjustments, massive AI improvements and more.

Features:

New Warrior trait tree

Removed Axeman 3
Removed Bruiser 3
Removed Lethal 4
Removed Lethal 5
Removed Swordsman 3
Pack Tactics can now be learned as a warrior ability
Added the Parry warrior skill (grants an additional counterattack with any weapon)
Added the Reckless warrior skill (increases attack, lowers defense)
Added the Blade Rush warrior ability (charge through a line of up to 3 enemies, damaging them all)
Added the Decimate warrior ability (attack that does additional damage for every member of the enemy group)
Uncontrolled Rage can now be learned as a warrior ability
Added the Expert Spearman warrior ability (+25% Attack when Impaling)
Added the Master Spearman warrior ability (+50% Attack when Impaling)

MaxTotalTileYield can now be set in ElementalDefs.xml (for modders)

New system for weapon upgrades where we can define types (so axemen always upgrade with axes, swordsmen with blades, etc). http://screencast.com/t/hFi0HwYz

Axes are now 2 handed (to remain consistent and support axe upgrades at all tiers)
Short Sword moved to Blacksmithing
Pike moved to War Colleges
Removed the Greatswords
Added the Great Axe (so there is a late game axe, all the trained blades are now 1 handed and upgrade to the longsword and Boreal Blade)
All Mauls are now 1 handed and have their damage reduced (the Gilden Sledge damage is reduced only slightly

Added the Pendulum Axe (late game axe that does bonus cleave damage)



Fixes

Fixed a hang when you open up the army screen on units that aren't yours

Fixed an issue displaying the unit path if you have a subunit selected

Fixed an issue that could cause champions not to get placed if there isnt an empty tile around your sovereign

40% less Ogre Crotch (we are getting close to 0 Ogre Crotch)

Fixed an issue keeping Raza the Wild from animating when he was using a magic staff

Fixed an issue where Apiary's weren't giving their unrest bonus

Fixed an issue where Ancient temples weren't giving their research bonus

Fixed a bug that could cause units to point the wrong way at the start of a tactical battle

Fixed the Curse spell

Fixed an issue making Trainer 4 upgrade from Trainer 2

Fixed the Heart of the Glacier's Blizzard ability

Fixed a hang in tactical combat with high move units on small maps

Fixed crashes



Balance

Removed the cast time from the Demonic Ally spell

Maul reduces accuracy by 15% per attack, instead of by 15 points

All tactical summons that effect surrounding enemies can now be cast anywhere (instead of just beside enemies)

Holhiarn Pike does bonus Impale damage instead of giving an accuracy bonus

Decreased starting point min distance from 12 to 10

Decreased min distance between improvements from 4 to 2

Now when you get a shield from a goodie hut it won't allow you to equip it form the item popup if you have a 2 handed weapon equipped (since it would leave you without a weapon)

Switched the Braided Belt from Blacksmithing to Armor

Attacks on prone units always hit

Prone units show their counterattack hit chance as 0%

Yithril's Great Axes faction ability (renamed to Axe Mastery) gives them dual wield versions of all the axes. They cost more to produce and buy but they have higher attack and init.



AI

Overhaul of AI for use with Legendary Heroes

AI more flexible with its tax rate

AI does a better job of choosing its technologies based on world conditions

AI's focus on defending cities varies based on which player it is playing as

Fixed stupid bug that negated all the intelligence behind city upgrading (the order of the items in the vector is was choosing from got randomized by the function that gathered them resulting in random choices). This alone makes a huge improvement.

AI much better about choosing units to train (you should see a lot more mounted units)

AI now bases its economic / miltiary trade offs more based on what player it is playing as

AI bases whether to train pioneers versus letting a city upgrade to the next level on what player it is playing as

AI places more value on the perks a unit design has when deciding what unit to train

AI much better at differentiating the stats of a unit when picking what design to use based on what type a unit it is (i.e. archers / vs. melee, etc.)

AI unit design algorithm updated based on the tactical battle setups in LH

AI unit design algorithm now takes into consideration the personality of its sovereign

AI uses strategic spells more often (still not often enough, working on this)

Fixed AI bug where an AI player could bribe another AI player to declare war on a third player without taking non-aggression pacts into account

Fixed AI bug that made it hard for AI players to ever go to peace with one another

AI monsters more intelligent in tactical battles (no more webbing ranged units)



UI

Consolidated places where armor pieces are shown in the UI to just show one piece that represents the whole set (you can still design with specific pieces in the unit design window)

Switched the order of the appearance tabs in the create sovereign window to the order most players go through

New water, reflective, partially transparent, instant water! (just add water)

The city HUD now shows how many turns are left in constructing/training

The tile info window now shows the owner of owned terrain

Resident Evil 6 has just been updated.

Release Notes:
----------------------------------------------------------
NEW FEATURES
- Play as the Left 4 Dead 2 characters in The Mercenaries: No Mercy mode!

BUG FIXES
- Fixed the "Out of memory" error that occurred with some video cards.

　A number of other issues have also been fixed.
----------------------------------------------------------