Greetings! I've got another update from Spiral HQ with some of what we're working on right now. As always the following is by no means everything that's in development and there's no ETA on any of this just yet.
Mission System!
A major addition is on the way that adds a new mission system to Spiral Knights, complete with a main campaign that allows Knights to play through, rank up and receive rewards. Missions are selected from an all new interface and are available to every player. Missions within the main campaign that require you to journey into the Clockworks will have the same elevator costs as the arcade.
I can't share too much at this point, but one of the missions in development will have Knights confronting one of the Crimson Order in a fortified castle filled with all manners of gremlin weaponry.
We're very excited about this new feature and will be sharing more information when it's available.
Year of the Dragon
A promotion will soon take flight to celebrate the Year of the Dragon!
Item Balance
Some item balance changes are on the way. Specifically this will target items that require tweaks to have their stats stand apart from similar ones and some changes to handguns to make them more varied and viable in combat. Check the forums for notice of these changes before they happen.
That's all I can share for now, keep your eyes on the testing forum for times when the test server will be made available!
Mission System:
This, this is good. You actually got me excited. Damnit. I just hope that there's not gonna be a ton of shadow lair related missions, though I suspect there will be. Guess I better get to sucking up to people to go on shadow runs. :( This also explains what Ian was working on.
Oh, one suggestion though; please make them repeatable, if you haven't already. Don't make me create a new account to relive missions. D:
Year of the Dragon:
Dragon pet. Please be a dragon pet so I can see all the rage everyone will just explode with. Else a mask that's the head on one of those dragons used in dragon dances. It would be silly.
Item Balance:
I expect the balance to be the split-damage weapons, given the thread that's going on. Maybe we'll see some other tweaks too.
EDIT: Something just struck me. Will boss stratums and shadow key elevators be moved to the mission hub? After all, they seem to fit the pattern pretty well. You even get the mails throughout that talk about the story and the little artefacts at the end. The arcade would become more of a place you go to collect materials and do laid back runs. Sure, the boss levels payout would have to be retooled, since they wouldn't have that 1/3/5 stratum run-up (though it seems everyone skips them anyway). But that might be a bonus. People would grind the dynamic gates for money instead of static boss runs.
Also, it seems that very few use their minerals to actually craft gates. Only a few dedicated groups seem to really do anything with them while the rest autosells or hoards them. So why not give them a use in missions? What use, you ask? I dunno, maybe you use them to unlock missions. I'm not the developer. Just an interesting idea.