Disclaimer: What I am posting here requires a fair bit of inferences, assumptions, and what some would consider stretches. My brain likes patterns and consistency across game mechanics. I like when things in column “A” each have a corresponding value in column “B”. SK has a few places where “A”’s value has no “B” value to match. After flipping through the SK wiki’s pages and looking for patterns to soothe my particular mind, I have reached a number of conclusions.

Everything here is in a sincere, if slightly obsessive, effort to balance the game and fill in some perceived and real gaps in mechanics. Also consider that I do not mind re-skins for promotional items. However I prefer new content that changes the game and forces adjustments to playing strategies. I understand that more than a few jimmies will be rustled, and that is OK. Here we go!
:End Disclaimer

Basic Color Patterns:
When creating a new knight in SK there are a total of 7 color patterns to choose from. Upon examination of the game’s resource files, they are referred to using 3-letter labels:
Toasty (red), Heavy (hvy), Regal (gld), Military (grn), Cool (blu), Dusky (prp), & Fancy (pnk). Considering things like the color wheel, primary and secondary colors, and the traditional 7-color rainbow, I had a thought. Heavy is essentially a burnt orange color scheme, and for all intents and purposes Regal is mainly yellow-based. Fancy presented an issue however. Pink is according to some sources an impossible color, and indigo is absent from the basic color wheel and from the basic SK color pattern options. At this point given these inferences, we have the basics: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet are accounted for. Pink/indigo is/are the outliers. I will ignore indigo because it is never explicitly named in the code or in the basic color patterns.

So now we have 6 main colors and 1 extra (Pink/Fancy).

Monster Families:
In SK there exist 6 main monster families: Beast, Slime, Gremlin, Construct, Fiend, Undead. Monster families are not directly associated with any specific color because of the ability for any monster family to be aligned with another color by status (ex: Quicksilvers, Oilers, etc.). However, now we have 6+1 main colors and only 6 monster families. Then I remembered shadow lairs. Swarm monsters have their own set of damage types and resistances. There is our 7th monster family. It also just so happens that swarm monsters are mainly black/dark colors with bright pink accents. Not that the color matters for my purposes; it is just an observation.

Now we have 6+1 basic colors and 6+1 monster families.

Status Effects:
As a knight crafts gear and explores deeper into the clockworks, they discover status effects. As luck would have it, there are 7 of these: Fire, Stun, Shock, Sleep, Freeze, Poison, and Curse. Looking at the current icons for these, they do not line up with my aforementioned 7 colors. To remedy this, I propose some icon alterations:
-Fire can be a bit more red. Being one of the more main statuses in-game, it gets a primary color.
-Stun can be made a bit more orange because of the next one listed here.
-Shock should be yellow, rather than the teal it currently is. Traditionally electricity is depicted as yellow. Also, Shock is another main status in-game, again getting a primary color.
-Sleep can frankly keep its current color, as it is already a shade of green.
-Freeze is good as-is. The third and final main status keeps its blue primary color.
-Poison is currently green; make it purple because it still makes sense, and because of the next status.
-Curse looks sort of purple, but actually already covers pink by my logic. Also, this status is pretty rare and somewhat unique in that it has no real-life equivalent (unless you subscribe to that stuff, which I don’t, so there).

Current counts: 7 colors, 7 monsters, 7 statuses.

Minerals:
Currently Cradle produces 5 different minerals knights can mine, and 5 respective materials:
Crimsonite (Red Shard), Luminite (Light Shard), Valestone (Green Shard), Moonstone (Blue Shard), and Dark Matter (Dark Shard).

The minerals as they are present a source of bother for many knights, myself included. First off, when minerals were used to make arcade levels each mineral had a purpose in determining the levels. When an update changed this and added Battle Sprites, Valestone and Moonstone were left in the dust by the other three minerals. Right now, Valestone and Moonstone have no stated purpose.

I propose that there be added a new orange mineral and associated material, neither of which are related to Fire Crystals. Perhaps call the new mineral Amber, and its material Amber Shard? Seeing as how so far the color pink has been the odd one out, I am not sure if it would make sense to add a new mineral or material for it. If so, make it an endgame-exclusive mineral to line-up with the aforementioned connection to the Swarm and such.

Now we have 7 colors, monsters, statuses, and minerals.

Damage Types:
We technically have 5 damage types and that is OK for my purposes. Let me explain. Piercing, Elemental, Shadow, and Void damage, plus Normal. Normal can by my logic fill 3 separate damage type slots with a small adjustment or two. Shadow damage is signified by the purple color, elemental damage by green, and piercing by yellow.

I propose piercing damage’s color be changed to orange; now all three special damage types are fittingly associated with secondary colors. For the remaining Normal damage type: rather than using red, blue, and yellow, condense it to simply white or light grey. Void damage of course already fits the bill for the color pink, though this is largely moot; knights cannot inflict void damage as of writing, nor is there gear to defend against it specifically.

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This concludes this post, wherein I have detailed my logic on the proposed 7 colors, monsters, statuses, minerals, and damage types. These are just some basic ways the game can appear more balanced, by filling in the gaps to bring an overarching thread of consistency to seemingly unrelated aspects.

Please stay tuned for more!
Let me know your thoughts on all of this!