Spiral Knights - Three Minor Issues and One Major Issue

Three Minor Issues and One Major Issue

5 replies [Last post]

Mon, 05/11/2026 - 08:24

Caliburey

Before I begin, I’d like to emphasize that I consider myself a casual player.

I don’t run Vanaduke because, frankly, I’m not skilled enough to casually solo clear it in under 30 minutes.

With that out of the way, I think Grey Havens has already addressed one of the most glaring issues through the 05/05/26 Forging Ahead Update.

It was genuinely a HUGE step in the right direction.

However, there are still three minor problems and one major problem that I personally believe to hurt not only the new player retention, but also the overall enjoyment of the game for longtime players.

Before I begin, here's the tl;dr:

1. Arcade:
- Prize Wheel Revamp
- Remove Status Effects from Compound + 20 Boxes Guaranteed
- Add Timers to Everything
- Remove Forge Tokens (from the game)

2. Crystals/Orbs:
- Bump Up Drops From Arcade
- Craft Into Higher/Lower Rarities

3. Events:
- Run More Often

4. Rebalancing of Armor Sets:
- Specialized Armor Sets Should Reduce Damage Intake by a Flat Amount + Reduced Knockback For Plates
- Remove Race Bonus Stats, Add Universal Offensive Stats (+2 at least)

Mon, 05/11/2026 - 08:28

Caliburey

Reasoning/Explaination: Arcade

1. Prize Wheel Revamp

- Arcade should have a slightly buffed new Prize Wheel, offering only Crowns (every floor should replenish you to full health anyway) and let the old Prize Wheel stay in Rank Missions.

- There needs to be a countermeasure because we all know that people WILL use alts to abuse this, so maybe have them only get the wheel if they start in the arsenal room?

- This Prize Wheel should at most give 1.5-2k Crowns (assuming from 18-28, lower depths will give less), as this feature is not meant for Arcade to overtake Vanaduke in farming Crowns, but more of a bonus for those who already play Arcade for a more casual and social option.

2. Remove ALL STATUS EFFECTS + Guaranteed 20 Boxes in Compound:

- The amount of people I've met in-game, on Discord, even on this forum saying they would rather just wait at the gate to not play Compound is astounding.

- I really want to say just remove Compound, but on a second thought, if they were replaced by Candlestick Keep I would probably hate it just as much. The goal here really is to just smooth out the Arcade experience, so that players won't say "wow I hate this gate, I'm not going in."

3. Timer for Everything:

- Simple as. People love timers.

- Show how long the run takes; show how long this floor takes; show how long until this gate swaps to the next one. Make the information transparent and accessible, people will LOVE it.

4. Remove Forge Tokens:

- This is more of a "remove from the game" kind of suggestion.

- I really do not know what purpose these tokens serve, especially in D18-28. Instead of getting 50+ Crowns or 3 Fire Crystals, a Treasure Box drops ONE Forge Token, and 100 of those convert to 10,000 Crowns. Who came up with this, Satan?

Mon, 05/11/2026 - 08:30

Caliburey

Reasoning/Explaination: Crystals/Orbs

1. Bump Up Drops From Arcade:

- People who are farming Vanaduke efficiently will have the money to just buy orbs from depot if they need them anyway, so this is basically another bonus for players who enjoy playing Arcade.

2. Craft Into Higher/Lower Rarities

- If we can craft down higher rarity crystals to lower rarity ones, why can't we do it vice versa? Why can't we do it with orbs?

Mon, 05/11/2026 - 08:32

Caliburey

Reasoning/Explaination: Events

1. Run More Often

Why are these gatekept so hard?

How can a game in the Big '26 be eventless for the majority of the year? There are only SEVEN events which all go for 2-weeks each, 14 weeks of events out of 52 total weeks in an entire year (25%)?

Bump these events up to be running at least 50% of the year please.

Not to mention one of the best armor sets in the game can only be gotten from ONE of these events, but that's a whole 'nother issue which will be explained in the next section.

Mon, 05/11/2026 - 08:38

Caliburey

Reasoning/Explaination: Rebalancing of Armor Sets

IMO, those three previous issues can be resolved relatively fast (within a couple of months).

What will really take careful consideration and planning is this part: The Rebalancing of Armor Sets.

As we all know, if a new player talks with other players or reads up guides regarding Spiral Knights, people WILL tell them to start building Chaos Set first, then work towards Black Kat Set next.

This is a huge issue because it highlights that defense does NOT matter in this game; wearing specialized armor, AT MOST, negates maybe 1 or 2 hits in high difficulty. The most important part of an armor set lies all in its status resistance, but even then, losing all the offensive bonus that Chaos and Black Kat offer (+4 DMG/CTR and +6 DMG/+2 MSI) is just not worth it.

Nonetheless, this does not mean you should nerf these two sets. You should look to buff every other armor sets so they can actually be of use, however niche they may be.

Give the majority of these armors +2-3 universal offensive stats, and make them actually decrease the damage intake from particular mobs!

Let players fulfill their Tank/Paladin dreams of facetanking hits, with reduced knockbacks, higher frames of invincibility, don't punish players for not wanting to build glass cannon.

In conclusion, I believe in the return of MMORPGs in the upcoming future, and I sincerely hope that SK can have its slice of cake.

With just one small update and we're already back at 700 players!

I know we're just a couple of consistent updates away from maybe 1-2k unique daily players. Keep up the good work GH!

Mon, 05/11/2026 - 10:13

Witelite

Some stuff

In general, I really like these suggestions: however I have a few things

1. Dont remove statuses from compounds. Its part of what makes every level feel different, when status changes, not only does the monster color change, but also the level and lighting/background. I think what needs changing is:
a. Better loot. There are compounds that spawn with fewer than 8 boxes, which feels horrible, since clockwork tunnels can have something like 40+ on lucky levels.
b. remove infinite mini spawns. If minis were just kept to waves like normal, or maybe even removed from waves and JUST made to be infinitely spawning, this would alleviate many issues. Compounds arent bad if you have bombs, its just that the flood of minis overwhelms many new players

2. Arcade prize wheel. I like the idea of a unique prize wheel, but dont make it pay out more cr than an entire level can. That will encourage people to skip content. I would love to see the prize wheel give better mats, or maybe even fire crystals or orbs. Keep the only source of crowns from boxes/enemies in stages to encourage ppl to actually pl;ay the game

I would LOVE there to be a "mission end" prize wheel that has a chance to give some juicy loot, for example give a chunk of cr, or maybe better chance at a lockbox or orbs/crystals. This wheel would spin ONLY if you were present for the entire mission, or in the arcade, ran through the entire stratum. This would encourage longer arcade runs and give incentive to actually stay to the core. The current wheel has a chance of giving you usables right before the core which is entirely useless and feels bad

3. Armor rebalance
This is a tough topic, because theres a reason BK is so sought after. It absolutely is the best set in the game, but I argue every game needs a "rare best set" otherwise you have nothing to work towards. HOWEVER: I do think all other armor needs buffing. Make armors fill niche roles. Theres no reason an armor set that you MUST complete an SL for has dmg bonus vs beast low and dmg bonus vs slime low. How does that make sense?

There obviously have to be "bad" armors, but if armor perks were buffed, and more general buffs were given to armors, there would be a reason to use them.

3a. On the topic of armor balance, one of the main things keeping variety from being used is the absolute uselessness of specialized defense. Armor defense does next to nothing in endgame to mitigate damage taken, so there is no incentive to use specialized defense. If an elemental hit in bk doesn only a little more than a shadow hit, why would i switch to a less powerful elemental defense armor?

MAKE DEFENSES MATTER! Make it so if im mismatched on defense, i notice it when im hit. Currently the only thing that matters are status resistances. Status resistances are nice, but UV rolling mitigates that for the most part. If armor defense actually mattered, there would be reason to switch off black kat in pierce/elemental levels.

Obviously any chance of them fixing or implementing what weve talked about is likely far down the line, but I love coming up with ideas for how this beloved game could be even better. The forge update has me extremely hopeful, and I cant wait to see what GH does next :)

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Three Minor Issues and One Major Issue