Winterfest Has Arrived!
As snow begins to fall on Haven once more the Strangers and snipes have begun to celebrate Winterfest! This year the holiday festivities include a new Coliseum map, a special Prestige Mission, exclusive prizes and more!
Mission: Save Winterfest!
Impostoclaus has come to town but unfortunately not every child will be receiving a present from him. In the gremlin outcast town of Emberlight, a faction of fiendish, green-furred gremlins called 'grinchlins' have begun an attack on Emberlight. These grinchlins seek to rob the orphans of Emberlight of their presents and even destroy Impostoclaus!
It's up to you to accept the new Prestige Mission, 'Save Winterfest!' and help Impostoclaus deliver presents through a monster infested back alley of Emberlight. Knights have only a limited time to run presents to safety, avoiding monsters who mean to steal the presents as well as defending Impostoclaus from grinchlin attacks!
'Save Winterfest!' is a unique Prestige Mission as it can be completed as often as you like while available. Delivering presents successfully rewards the party with Winter Wish tokens.
New Lockdown Map: Avenue
Battle over a snow-swept cityscape where the snow is not just for shoveling, but great for throwing at other knights!
Features:
- A 3 CP map where the combat is fast and frigid - watch out for those snowballs!
- Open up even faster routes to your CP via a back door button
- The Slush Puppy in the central square guards plenty of snowballs, but it won't be happy if you try to take them!
Winterfest Rewards
Participation in the 'Save Winterfest!' Prestige Mission and Coliseum events will earn you Winterfest rewards in the Haven Town Square. Visit Impostoclaus and his little helper, Randolph to cash in Krogmo Coins and Winter Wishes for the following:
- Frosty Prize Box featuring Frosty costume armors and accessories
- Various Santy Hats
- Snowballs you can throw anywhere
And more!
The Hunter's Lodge and Boss Trophies
Guild Halls with both 3F expansions can now install the Hunter's Lodge. The Hunter's Lodge is a monster hunting lodge curated by the great hunter, Armero. It contains a guild alchemy machine containing monster trophy recipes. Guild alchemy machines use resources from the Guild Treasury and deposit results into the Guild Treasury.
Boss trophies require special materials available from Brinks in the Haven Bazaar for boss tokens. Materials include:
- Snarbostuffing
- Jelly Glue
- Schemer Scrap
- Dark Ember
Boss trophies list:
- Frumious Fang
- Replica Natural Snarbolax
- Replica Shadowy Snarbolax
- Jelly Gem
- Royal Jelly Crown
- Replica Royal Jelly
- Roarmulus Blueprints
- Small Replica Roarmulus Twin
- Large Replica Roarmulus Twin
- Almirian Seal
- Lord Vanaduke's Mask
- Lord Vanaduke's Finery
Guild Hall Doors
Guild Hall rooms can now have doors that restrict access to guild members of specific ranks. Doors can be installed via the room console. Like rooms, they must be re-installed if they are ever removed.
Doors include:
- Member Door
- Veteran Door
- Officer Door
- Guild Master Door
UI Changes
- Hall of Heroes has new loading screen art.
- Loading screen and end of level report headers have had their art adjusted.
- Acquisition of Arsenal items now plays an interface effect.
- Guild Records can now be filtered by knight name.
Bugfixes
- When directed to a specific mission in the Mission Interface, players will no longer be directed to a closed mission if an open version of the same mission is available.
Charming free-to-play MMO Spiral Knights has added a new PvP mode, and it’s all a bit Bomberman, as you can see from the footage below. Three Rings explain: “Blast Network is now available, with more events on the way soon. Blast Network is a highly explosive event that pits Knights against each other and equips them with instant-charging bombs. The object of the game is to blow the competition to smithereens! Blast Network has no equipment requisites at all – simply join and get blasting whenever you like.”
And we all love Bomberman (yes, even you), so this sounds like profit to me.(more…)
Sega have just sent us word that they’ve now had over 1,000,000 players registered on their free-to-play Action RPG, Spiral Knights. I thought that was a bit rude, just emailing us to brag, but they also sent news of a new batch of free content. You like free content, right?
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Steam has been a terrific digital download service for players looking to buy both games at full price and games on the cheap. However, If you're the kind of game player for whom buying games "on the cheap" is still too expensive (or you live in a territory where retail sales aren't feasible in the market) than Steafm has been ill-equipped to deliver the kinds of games you want to play.
Never one to let any potential PC revenue stream slip them by, Valve has announced that, as of today, Steam will support the release and distribution of Free-to-Play games in additional to the paid games already available from the service. With this new update, players can not only download F2P games from Steam, but also purchase each game's microtransactions from the Steam Client itself.
Along with the initial announcement, Valve revealed the first five F2P games available on the service. The first run of games are Sega's Spiral Knights, Cryptic's Champions Online, Hi-Rez Studio's Global Agenda, Perfect World's Forsaken World, and NHN's Alliance of Valiant Arms.
It's interesting to see Valve expanding on the types of payment structures it's willing to integrate and support through the actual Steam client. Thanks to games like Team Fortress 2, players on the PC are more used to purchasing the kinds of vanity/functional items that have been the lifeblood of other F2P games. Hell, it's possible that adding this kind of support to Steam paves the way for Valve to release Team Fortress 2 as a free multiplayer shooter supported solely by microtransactions. We'll find out more of what Valve has planned soon, as additional information on Steam's F2P integration will be revealed in the coming days.
SEGA’s free browser RPG Spiral Knights drew gentle approval from the Quintin-creature last month, but at that point it was stranded in the twilight limbo-world of beta status. That has changed. Its shackles are gone. Anyone may now play it, and play it now. Hooray for playing things. I’ve just had a quick fiddle with it, and endorse the sentiment that it’s a pretty slick and charming affair, although the super-derformed hyper-cute style isn’t especially to my tastes in this context. Still – swords and guns.
The game works best when played as a co-op baby-MMO – thus I’d advise anyone interested in embarking upon this heads to our forum and sets up a buddy-search. I’ll stick the post to the front if there’s sufficient interest. So go, be sufficiently interested.
Ooh, Spiral Knights is pretty good. It’s the upcoming free-to-play hack’n'slash MMOG from Three Rings, developers of the now-ancient Puzzle Pirates (and also currently working on the Doctor Who online game). No release date on Spiral Knights yet, but the preview build just devoured a not-insignificant chunk of my afternoon without a care in the world. “How rude!” I cried, as I gunned another fox to death with a cool series of clicks. Trailer and thoughts after the jump. (more…)