I wanted to give everyone a heads up on some upcoming features we're adding to Spiral Knights. We greatly appreciate everyone's involvement in our Preview Event so far and hope that you continue to help us develop the game.

***Please note that this is NOT a release announcement. I am just letting you know what you can expect to see in the near future. We will make a proper announcement in this space when we release new content, as always.

New features include:

- Items and monsters have been rebalanced to now respect the 'tiers' of the Clockworks. There are three tiers:
Tier 1 is Haven to sub-town 1 (depth 1-7)
Tier 2 is sub-town 1 to sub-town 2 (depth 9-17)
Tier 3 is sub-town 2 to the core (depth 19+)

You can now expect a much greater challenge if you do not have the appropriate level of gear for a given depth. The recommended gear for each tier is:
0-1 star gear for Tier 1
2-3 star gear for Tier 2
4-5 star gear for Tier 3

- Armor, Helms and Shields no longer have every defense type. In most cases they will have a single, primary defense type and possibly a secondary. This is done so that it becomes more clear that 'normal defense' is the primary defense type in the game, with piercing, elemental and shadow defense being 'special defense' types. In many cases, gear that has special defense types will have higher values than normal in order to allow players to mix and match sets more freely.

(Please note that as we will add many more items, you will likely see duplicate models, textures, etc. as our artists catch up with all the new content.)

- We will be adding a prototype of our new competitive games feature called The Coliseum. Our first Coliseum game, Super Brawl will allow up to eight players to battle it out in a variety of arenas for crowns. Super Brawl does not cost energy to play. Please note that while still early, we want our players to get in on this as soon as possible, so we will be releasing it soon and continuing to build upon it with your feedback.

- A new level type will be added, the Deconstruction Zone. This level allows players to wander through a portion of the Clockworks as it's being dismantled by gremlins. Players will have to tread carefully in these free-form, open levels and not alert too many mecha knight bodyguards the gremlins keep by their side. However, players will be able to liberate and power up their own mecha knights should they find them to help even the odds.

- We are continuing to develop the Firestorm Citadel and hope to update it soon. We've also got a new boss monster that we're working on. Once released, you won't have to fight all the way down to the lowest levels to face a boss.

- Based on your feedback, we are developing a way to minimize pickups in places like treasure vaults and after bosses.

That's all I have to share for now. Please keep an eye out on the announcements section for when these new features will take effect, and please feel free to discuss this all in the forums!

Thanks for playing and helping us develop Spiral Knights!