Divedrakes are minor enemies in Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. They are small green flying dragons that usually serve as minor annoyances or a way to get across pits or reach higher areas (by using the Shovel Drop, Dash Slash, or Shoulder Bash to bounce off them). They appear in the Plains, Forest of Phasing, Plains Encounter, Tower of Fate, Mysterious Area, and Birder Bluffs.
Divedrakes have two hit points and drop a blue gem when defeated.
Tactics
Divedrakes are relatively harmless enemies, as the majority of them simply either fly up and down, back and forth, or all the way across the screen. However, some Divedrakes are more aggressive and will follow the player, occasionally diving at him.
Variants
Icedrake
Icedrakes are found only in the Stranded Ship and related thematic challenges. They follow a similar back and forth flying pattern in the first part of the stage, then swooping attack pattern in the second. They are invulnerable everywhere except on their red tail and bulging throat. They can be bounced on indefinitely with the Shovel Drop and Dash Slash to reach new heights.
Firedrake
Firedrakes are exclusive to King of Cards, appearing in the Lost City stages. Unlike the Divedrakes and Icedrakes, they only move upwards and downwards, occasionally spitting a fireball straight ahead.
Divedrake Card
One of the Joustus cards in King of Cards is a Divedrake card with Standard Arrows facing up and down.
Trivia
- The models for Divedrakes and Icedrakes are respectively named "Dragon Whelp" (or "Dragon Whelp Green" for its color palette) and "Dragon Whelp Ice" in the game's files.
- Originally, the developers designed two more different variants for the Drakes, each with a slightly different head design and color palette. The fire ("Dragon Whelp Red") and electric variants ("Dragon Whelp Yellow") were ultimately left unused in the original campaign[1], but the fire variant was later used for King of Cards. Their color palettes can still be found in the game's files.
- The initial model for the Icedrake had a different head design - it lacked the bulging red throat, and the tail was not colored red. It was also the only Drake variant of the four initial ones with a different tail design.[1]
- Originally, the Drakes had six frames to animate their idle flight (as seen in the animated GIFs above), but the developers halved the number to keep a similar feeling to how animated sprites looked like on the original NES console. However, they left it at six frames in the Japanese versions of the game.[2]
Gallery
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Shovel Knight: Official Design Works, p.69 and p.110
- ↑ Japan Localization on yachtclubgames.com