I wanted to take a moment to respond to the recent threads about our first production update to Spiral Knights and tell you about the actions we plan to take.

First, I think it's important to talk a little about the design for Spiral Knights.

Items and crafting are a core part of the game. Achievement in the game is tied to finding and exploring the unique items it is possible to make. For that achievement to be meaningful, some of those items, the most interesting and satisfying to own, need to retain some level of rarity.

After launch, it became increasingly clear that several items that we thought pretty exciting to play with and which we expected to be rare in the game were becoming common. As a result, their value to players was diminished. It was hard for us not to think that this diminished the game.

This was the result of an oversight in our design, one we sought to correct in our most recent update. The change was intended to ensure a balance between rare and common items that allowed for a satisfying experience for players in the game.

Reading the forums, it is clear that some players were disappointed by the effects of this change.

We do plan to respond to the impact this change has created.

In considering this problem, we've had to balance two conflicting goals:

a) how can we retain the excitement of owning a relatively unique item that was a challenge to make and craft while;

b) allowing players to explore the option to make and trade items?

Ultimately, it's important for us that players that choose to craft their own items do not feel their experience can be easily matched by a player that decides instead to get their item from the Auction House or in trade. The progression of finding and crafting items is the core experience we built the game to provide for our players and we will not see it devalued.

So: the question comes down to how we can ensure that traded items remain premium rather than being devalued as was occurring before the update.

Over the next month, we plan to implement a new store that will allow players to "unbind" items. There will be a fee for doing so, roughly equal to the cumulative cost of crafting that item.

This action will change the nature of the market for crafted items into one for premium goods. A market, we hope, that will still be interesting to players focused on crafting and trading. It is better to be a trader in valuable goods than common commodities.

More importantly, however, by making traded high end items a premium good, we are respecting the experience of players that choose to craft and use their own items.