First glance of Spiral Knights and one might notice it's high quality graphics, the details in models and attention to the animation. However, due to its high definition, many people experience performance issues as the computer struggles to load the many components the game has. There are options to improve the game performance, such as lowering the graphics quality. However, the debilitating lag remains persistent to many players.

To further help this issue; perhaps an option to toggle the 'extra' special effects that are found frequent in blast bombs. Special effects such as the 'flashy', bomb explosions. For example, the Dark Briar Barrage's Snarbolax silhouette and spikes and the Nitronome's cyan blast. As an attacking bomber myself, I have ran into more than enough players who complain due to the explosions' tendencies to jitter the screen, blind viewers and cause unprecedented deaths by lag.

I have found that when I disconnect yet I am still 'in-game' (with sliding monsters and frozen players and whatnot) my bombs' explosions simplify to a dissipating ring of mist in place of the blast radius indicator.

Perhaps this could replace the original 'flashy' explosion as a result of the unchecked 'special-effects' box. This will allow the debilitating explosion to be removed yet still indicate the blast bomb's explosion radius and hit box. Although the blast may not seem as destructive or have enough 'boom', I am sure many players would prefer this over experiencing lag during play. That and the Nitronome's blast makes everyone's eyes hurt.

This may not apply to other bombs, such as shard or haze, as they function differently to regular blast bombs, although it will be much obliged if these can be simplified as well.

I apologise if this has been mentioned previously in another topic. I have tried my hand at the forum search engine and I just. oTL