Hey all;

Just a short guide explaining a few things about Spiral Knights for those of you having a hard time getting comfortable with it.
They should help you understand the game a little bit better.

Weapons:

As always, weapons are the most important gear. However people seem to have misunderstood their roles.
So here's some handy things to know about the three current weapon types:

Swords:
Your biggest advantage here, is knockback. Not damage or charge speed, just knockback. A gun and sword user is going to have the easiest time dealing consistent damage, just because when monsters get too close, they can knock them away and get into a better position.
If you're in a party with people using guns and you spam sword attacks, you're probably going to piss people off, since their attacks are going to miss. So it's pretty important to know when to use your sword and when to ditch it in favour of another weapon type.

Guns:
Range is your main and only advantage with guns. Very much a single target weapon, your goal with a gun shouldn't be to kill things, but bring them down to the point where one well placed sword charge attack will bring them down.
Why move to your enemies when you can kill them as they come to you?
It's also a lot more useful against monsters with ranged attacks of their own, since you can fire back with your own immediately after blocking.
Guns are also good support weapons, letting you inflict statuses as well as damage that can help out your team.

Bombs:
These are not a main weapon. Don't run up to monsters to try and blow them up.
Place them where you think they will go, or where you make them go by shooting them/knocking them on top of it. They're not there to deal huge damage, they're there to deal supplementary damage. That is, to bring up the damage you're already dealing with another weapon so that things die faster.
Bombs are also a good source of status support, when coupled with guns they allow you a good chance of almost entirely disabling groups for your friends to come in and wipe out, or for you to rush in and beat down yourself.

Equipment:

Your armour, helmet and shield are just as important as your weapons.
Being able to increase the damage and decrease the charging times of your weapons and resist status effects are very useful things to have.

Balancing is fairly simple:
Fire resistance > Other resistance > Defensive capabilities > Offensive abilities

Fire is the most dangerous status, if you don't have any blue pills, you'll more than likely be killed by it. Being able to reduce the chance of being set on fire is the most important thing just for that reason. If you do have blue pills, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

Other resistances aren't AS important, seeing as they're so rare and indirect in the way they effect you, but if you can have the option of being resistant to something else, why not be?

Defensive capabilities consists of the four bars up the top, the four damage types that monsters can deal to you. It's better to have these higher so your health lasts you longer. Any abilities that increase health are nice, but should be taken in the form of trinkets instead of equipment, since there are better bonuses your equipment can be giving you.

Offensive abilities are the ones mentioned above, being able to deal more damage and reduce charging time. If you're comfortable with the level of protection you have against enemy attacks, try and work these in. They will increase your effectiveness in combat by quite a lot, which is important.
But not as important as surviving.
Charging speed is important for status abusers and damage is important for everyone else. You can balance the two, but it's not really necessary.

Status support:

If you're going to be using status effects to your advantage, it's important to know which ones are more useful than others. Flasks are good to have, but the chance of collecting the ones you need are fairly low, it's better to have constant support and supplement that with other statuses you may want or need later by collecting the right flasks.

Freeze and Stun: These are going to be the main statuses to use. They're the most useful and allow you to control both enemy movement and attack simultaneously. Having both might be a little unnecessary, but nobody will be complaining.

Shock: Interrupts enemy actions. It seems to be less reliable than other forms of status, but for areas with monsters that have several different attacks, it could become quite useful.

Poison: This has a very specific use, it blocks healing. It's not very important in the grand scheme of things, but on some stages it may become necessary to poison monsters to be able to kill them quickly without taking any damage. It also reduces attack damage.

Fire: The double edged sword of status effects, you will be dealing quite a lot of damage with it, but it can also come back to roast your bottom if you're not careful. If you're in a team with people and they're not wearing fire protection, you might just become one of those people that likes terrible music by setting your friends on fire.

Strategies:

There are a few key strategies you can employ to get the most out of your gear.

Hit and run: This is for sword users. Charge up, hit, then run away. Repeat. This is great for getting ranged attackers and for bringing down large groups of monsters. Bigger, badder monsters also get taken down quite easily by this.

Bait and barrage: Some monsters have an attack that will leave them open afterwards, these tend to be large monsters, like Trojans and Ents. Stand still, wait until they start their attack animation then move SIDEWAYS and start attacking away. This is the only surefire way to bring down large groups of bigger monsters quickly.

Bomb and lure: Drop a bomb, stand behind it shoot the monsters to lure them into it. This won't work on every monster, some are just too smart or stubborn to walk into your little trap. However when it does work, few things can survive charged gun attacks and a bomb. It's the safest way to take down groups of fast monsters since you can keep moving and dropping bombs as they get closer, letting you deal more damage.

Sniping: Pretty simple, guns that have a long range will be able to hit monsters that aren't even on the screen. A lot of the time the AI won't even be able to react to this and just take the beating. Be aware that some turrets are also easily capable of doing this.

And probably the most important thing of all...

Play with friends: /derp

Anyway, that's all I'm writing.
If you have anything to add, just post it here or make your own thread.