How do I hit someone with a snowball for the "Son of a Nutcracker!" achievement?

Son of a Nutcracker! is one of the achievements that will earn you a contest entry, or perhaps a free game, in the Holiday Steam Sale.

For this, I have to go to "Lockdown" and "throw a snowball." I played Spiral Knights enough to get the promotional hat when that was offered, but I've not loaded it since.

How do I get this achievement?

Solution 1:

After signing up and creating a character, you load into the game for the tutorial. You don't even need to finish the tutorial to do this achievement. However, you do need to have 200 crowns (Spiral Knights currency) in order to pay the entry fee for Lockdown.

In the upper left, you'll see 5 symbols. Click on the symbol in the middle and you'll see that you can hit "Sign Up!" You can also click on the crossed swords symbol on the right hand side.

You can also click on the crossed swords symbol on the right hand side.

If you're a brand new character, you will need to do one of two things:

• Buy some Crowns using their ingame money store
• Run through the tutorial (You'll get 41~ crowns for doing so if you kill everything and open all the treasure boxes. Number is random because like Legend of Zelda, you can get money from grass, but that's way too inefficient to use to make 200 crowns) and head to the Rescue Camp

If you choose to do the latter, once you get to the Rescue Camp, you'll see your objectives in the upper right. Your first objective will tell you to "Explore the Rescue Camp."

Run north through the Rescue Camp. You'll come across your first elevator, which is called the "Adventure Board." It will let you go and learn more basics for dungeon crawling. When you hit the action button (RMB by default, though I changed it to left, just personal preference) on the elevator, it'll ask you to either Join A Party or Form A Party.

Do whichever strikes your fancy, then hit the downward facing arrow. You'll join a party in order to go through a dungeon. Hit "Descend." Note that most elevator trips cost Energy, which you'll have to either pay real money to refresh, purchase using ingame currency, or wait for it to regenerate.

Heat (XP) and crowns are automatically split when you pick them up, so you don't have to worry about trying to pick items up before your teammates. Once you finish this dungeon, you should have enough for the 200 crown fee! If not, after exiting the instance and retuning to the Rescue Camp, you can decide to go down again.

Once you're in Lockdown, you have to wait a minute before the match starts. The Lockdown maps are rotated randomly. If you see snow on the ground, you've got the right one. If it's not the right map, you'll either have to play through it, or you can leave and go back to the zone. However, your crowns are not refunded if you do this, so you'll have to earn more if you don't have enough.

Once the match starts, choose a class to play as for the match. Do this by walking up to one of the 3 stations.

Run out and you'll see piles of snowballs like this:

Click on them by using Action, which will make you hold them above your head like the Jars in dungeons.

When you see an enemy, throw the snowballs, and if you hit them, they should turn into a snowman, become slowed, and you'll get your achievement!

Solution 2:

To enter a lockdown game you press the button in the events pannel (the icon is the crossed swords in the top right).

When in game, hold down action next to a pile of snowball to pick them up. Then press action again to through them in the direction you are facing. Land a hit with this to get the achievement. It also slows them down too.