Crystal and shard bombs (such as the Crystal, Shard, Dark Matter, Splinter, Sun Shards and salt lines)

When the instant bomb's core explodes, it releases extra crystals that land around it and detonate. The count adds up by star level:

• 0★, 1★ and 2★: no extra crystals.
• 3★: +1 (1 crystal).
• 4★: +2 more (3 in total).
• 5★: +3 more (6 in total).

The crystals don't split into more crystals. The full charge keeps today's ring of shards. The instant bomb's fuse is compressed, because today's ~5 s wait doesn't work for place-and-retreat play:

• Core: ~0.6 s.
• Crystals: ~1 s after the core.

With the 90% applied, a 5★ instant bomb against neutral enemies does:

• Core: ~66.
• Each crystal: ~88.
• Core plus one crystal: ~154; plus two: ~242, around the blast instant bomb (~200).

This family is misleading on paper. If you add up every possible hit from a current Deadly Crystal Bomb charge against neutral enemies (75 from the core plus 8 shards at 99), you get ~870 damage, and the weapon would look like the strongest in the game. In practice the crystals fly out in different directions and a crystal on one side never touches an enemy on the other, so a normal-sized enemy takes one or two and the rest are lost in the air. Taking all of them only happens with giant, stationary targets, like lichen colonies or some bosses. That's why the family's real damage per second is so low, and why the instant bomb doesn't need a cap: the spread of the crystals is already the limit.

A warning: according to the wiki, shard damage is low at base but grows much more with damage bonuses than other weapons do. With bomb damage gear, crystal instant bombs would scale faster than blast ones, and that's worth watching when setting final values.

New mix-type variants are also proposed, carrying two damage types at once. Today a specialized shard bomb is nearly useless outside its target: the Deadly Crystal Bomb does 24–27 with the core and 29–33 per shard against beasts and gremlins in stratum 6. The game already treats dual damage as two simultaneous attacks, so a mix-type variant would cover more families, in exchange for a lower peak against the weak one. Section 6 extends this idea to the other families.

Two new crystal bombs are proposed, at 0★ and 1★ (see section 9).

Vortex bombs (Graviton, Electron, Obsidian Crusher, Celestial Vortex)

• Instant bomb: pulls enemies together for ~1 s and doesn't throw them out when it ends.
• Instant radius: 1–2 tiles, so it only catches one or two nearby enemies.
• Charge: pull strength, duration and final knockback proportional to the charge at release.

Grouping a whole room is still the charge's job, and the burst can't be used as a mass trap. With that duration, the two vortexes in each burst also leave the target free for most of the cycle.

Their damage follows the 90% line from section 4, same as haze bombs: it applies to the bomb's own damage and not to any status it inflicts. That damage is almost symbolic today (the Obsidian Crusher's initial explosion, for example, has the strength of a 0★ weapon), so the rule only keeps the families consistent.

Dark Reprisal, Dark Reprisal Mk II and Dark Retribution

These are three stand-alone bombs that don't upgrade into each other, and each has its own number of orbs. Orbs scale with the charge up to each bomb's maximum, so no charge ends up worse than today:

• Dark Reprisal (2★, ~1.5 tile radius, two orbs today): one orb on the instant bomb, two on the full charge.
• Dark Reprisal Mk II (3★, ~2 tile radius, three orbs today): one, two and three.
• Dark Retribution (5★, four orbs today): one on the instant bomb, two at half charge, four on the full charge.

Since the Reprisal and the Mk II already have small radii, their instant bomb uses ~1 tile. Variants in other damage types are in section 6.

(Continues in part 3, in the next reply.)

Filament Bomb

While its fuse lasts, each instant Filament Bomb links to the previous one with an energy filament, and an enemy crossing a filament takes damage once per filament. Placing them while retreating draws a broken line or a shape that enemies have to cross to reach the bomber: "place and retreat" becomes "draw". The Tortofist handgun line already raises a wall of crystals that enemies can't cross; the Filament Bomb doesn't block them, it makes them pay to cross.

• Bombs per burst: 4.
• Link range: ~4 tiles between bombs.
• Instant fuse: ~1.5 s, longer than the others so the filaments last.
• Instant damage: explosion ~70% of a blast instant bomb, each filament contact ~30%. An enemy that crosses one filament and eats one explosion takes the same as from a blast instant bomb.

The charge draws a circle instead of lines. On detonation, the charged bomb raises a filament ring at the edge of its radius, and any enemy that crosses it, going in or out, takes damage once.

• Ring duration: ~2 s.
• Radius and damage scale with the charge like the other families.
• Total per enemy (center explosion plus one ring contact) doesn't go above the full charge damage from section 4.

The Filament Bomb has no knockback and no status, and its filaments are thin and low-key, so it doesn't throw off the party or cover the screen. Its base damage would be elemental, with the section 6 variants later on.

Bounce Bomb

The Bounce Bomb doesn't explode just once: once placed, it bounces in place and releases a damage pulse over its whole radius every time it hits the ground. It's like the Dark Retribution in that it hits several times over time, but instead of orbs spinning around the edge, each pulse covers the whole circle from the same spot. It's an area denial bomb: enemies that walk in late still get hit.

Instant bomb:

• Bombs per burst: 3.
• Bounces: 2, with a ~1–1.5 tile radius.
• Pulses: the first at ~0.6 s, the second ~0.4 s later.
• Damage: ~50% of a blast instant bomb per pulse, so both pulses together match a blast instant bomb.

Charge:

• Bounces: three at half charge, four on full charge.
• Full charge radius: ~3 tiles, under the Nitronome's 4 because this bomb's value is in its duration.
• Time between pulses: ~0.5 s.
• Damage: ~1/4 of the full charge damage per pulse (~90 in stratum 6), ~370 in total per enemy.

Pulses have no knockback, so enemies stay inside the radius. It pairs naturally with a vortex, and unlike blast bombs it doesn't throw off the party. Each pulse is a short, sharp thump on the ground with no cloud, so it fits section 8. Its base damage would be normal, with the section 6 variants later on.

(Continues in part 4b, in the next reply.)

9. NEW PLAYERS

Today new players get a free Blast Bomb and every recipe up to the Nitronome just by progressing through the rank missions, and the shard line starts at 2★. The only bomb a new player knows is the blast bomb. Two crystal bombs at 0★ and 1★, given as early rewards, would show them from the start that bombs have more than one style, and would give the burst system an easy entry point.

For a new player, slow charging weighs even more: with no charge time reduction on their gear, no UVs and no bomber suit, every bomb takes even longer, and their first impression is of a slow weapon that barely does damage. The burst gives them something useful from the very start, with the most basic gear.

There's also a criticism here that goes beyond bombs. Today the game does little to attract and keep people who arrive: there are no incentives designed for new players and no initiatives dedicated to their experience, and some parts of the arsenal depend on a community that is already small. The Bombing Guide itself admits that getting an Electron Vortex, which requires Lockdown tokens, is almost impossible before tier 3 because of the size of today's community.

Other long-running online games have taken this problem seriously. Warframe spent several updates, over years, on the new player experience: quests that teach systems nobody used to explain, a revised difficulty curve, and gear sorted by role. Not all of it worked; an alternative start it added in 2023 was later moved further into the progression after seeing how players used it. It's mentioned not as a model to copy, but as proof that a veteran game can dedicate a whole period to the people who arrive. Spiral Knights, with its modernization underway, is at a good moment for something like that, and 0★ and 1★ crystal bombs would be one small piece of a bigger effort.

One more idea in that direction, outside bombs: a free, limited-palette color system for armor, shields and weapons, applied per part (for example four sections per piece). Today a knight's personal color only tints the prismatic parts of an outfit, and reapplying it from the Style Kit costs a crown fee every time; the rest of an item's colors are fixed, and the game's usual answer is releasing recolored versions of the same costume in prize boxes. The proposal is for each piece to carry its own small set of color slots, around four per piece (base, trim, details and accents), that the player can paint from a free basic palette, separately from the personal color.

• Free basic palette for everyone, so a new player can make their starting gear look like their own from the first hour.
• Extra colors, metallics and glow effects sold as usables, the same way recolors are sold today, so the system still brings in revenue.
• Paint saved in the Style Kit, like personal colors are today, and reapplied with no fee.
• The palette applies to every piece of armor, helm, shield and weapon, old and new, not to a special line of paintable items. Painting is not single-use either: a piece can be repainted as many times as the player wants, and the palette itself is never consumed.

One open question: should accessories use the same color slots? They're the most visible part of a knight's look and the most recolored items in the game, so including them would make the system much more attractive, but it would also overlap most with what's being sold today. Worth deciding rather than leaving implicit.

It may sound minor next to a weapon rework, but letting people look the way they want is one of the things that most keeps players in a long-running game, and it costs no game balance at all.

10. GEAR

Today there's almost no way to get ASI for bombs: outside the Crown/Armor of the Fallen and the Swiftstrike Buckler, ASI UVs, trinkets and sprite perks don't apply to bombs. Since ASI governs the burst in this proposal, bomb ASI UVs are proposed, along with a line of bomber suits that combines resistances with bomb-specific bonuses (ASI, CTR and damage). There's a precedent: the gunner update in December 2014 added a full line of gunner armor and let knights move at full speed while charging any handgun.

(Continues in part 5b, in the next reply.)

Two parts of my write-up belong in their own thread and I'll move them: retain new players and paint.

You said new players struggle with bombs early on, and the progression makes it worse: Proto Bomb at 1-4, Cold Snap and Firecracker at 3-1, then the Blast Bomb at 3-2, after which the blast family is the only kind most ever handle. What they learn isn't "bombs", it's "place a blast bomb and back off". Your CTR Med bomb shield would do more about that than my two crystal bombs.

On paint, the workload argument is fair. Personal color already tints part of the armor and helm, and costumes ship in variants (roast, cool, fancy, and so on), so the wall is art time, not tech (I think). More Bechamel colours of existing gear is the cheap fix, but I don't think that retains anyone.

Nothing gets removed. Knockback, utility and every bomb's niche stay exactly as they are. And there's a second goal I never made explicit: bombs should stop depending on CTR alone. Today a bomb without CTR isn't viable, whatever you're using it for. Swords and handguns work with no UVs and no armour bonuses in any situation; bombs only halfway. After the change the utility is still there and the weapon also hits, which is what the other two classes have been doing all along.

Placing a bomb instantly already exists in the game: in Blast Network bombs don't require charging at all. Bringing it across has been asked for before: Put the blast network/bomberman bombs into PvE. Your alternative, swinging the bomb like a heavy sword, is a new attack that has to be animated, balanced and fitted to every line. My proposal is less work.

With swords and handguns, releasing the button before the charge is ready cancels the charge and performs the normal attack instead. A failed charge still gives you an attack. With a bomb the same mistake gives you nothing, and that charge was all you had.

On the alternative you prefer, never losing the charge meter while prepping: breaking stone and minerals is all that gets fixed there, and the rest of the class stays where it is. No weapon keeps its charge through damage, and that's the price of being hit mid-charge; exempting bombs makes them the one weapon that doesn't pay it. If bombs don't get interrupted, swords and handguns shouldn't either. It's still charge-only, still CTR-only, still the same fuse.

Your three uses are real and they work. But they're exceptional: they describe specific moments, not the minute to minute of a run. And in those same moments the shield gets there first, since raising it pushes enemies away with no charge and no fuse. The BAB analysis in Bomb balance issues reaches the same conclusion: in the defensive scenario, cornered and surrounded, six seconds pass between charge and fuse, and by then it's over.

The usual case is the opposite. The Bombing Guide lists among the Nitronome's drawbacks that poorly placed bombs push enemies into teammates and that over-kiting pushes enemies towards you. With the BAB it's structural: between the knockback and the long fuse, enemies that get flung don't make it back into the blast in time, so you only hit with every other bomb, and you can't correct with the shield because that pushes them out of the radius (Bomb balance issues, Nitronome Vs Big Angry Bomb Vs Irontech Destroyer). And on shards, Improving Shard Bombs says the opposite of your case: they barely provide knockback, so outside the status ones they barely provide utility.

Past the Nitronome, the bombs people reach for are the Dark Briar Barrage, Dark Retribution, hazes and vortexes, and among the vortexes the Electron line specifically, because the shock keeps enemies grouped after the blast instead of letting them scatter. None of them push the way the blast line does. If knockback were the utility you describe, that list would look the other way round.

Your new bombs are valid: landmines, claymores, napalm, rolling bombs. And that's exactly why the mechanic is needed. Built on what exists today, they're born with the same problem the rest carry and end up in the same place. Your own argument against my damage variants, that more options push everyone onto the best ones, applies just as well to more bombs on the current mechanic.

On the self-imposed hard mode: you say being good at bombs is almost that, and a badge of honour when you make it work. That describes a class most players don't pick, and most never get far enough to pick it in the first place. That's the problem I'm trying to solve, and what would make bombs play like the other two: reacting to the fight as it happens, instead of predicting where everything will be two seconds from now.