"Changing the difficulty of Spiral Knights" by your gear and issues with it

Obviously the easiest way to change the difficulty of this game is to change our gear. But I have found issues with this.
1. Menders. Since they have ways to heal themselves, they might be at times impossible to take out with a 1 star gun for example. Luckily, there are no menders in FSC / Royal Jello Palace only wings. Wings cannot heal themselves.
2. Status effects. They scale by the stratum, so a 1 star fire bomb is going to be way too powerful against tier 3 monsters. You cannot have any, except maybe stun.
3. Monster mechanics. They're the same, we can't change them only our gear. If we are good enough at dodging it isn't necessarily difficult, only time consuming.
4. I don't understand how UVs work with 1 star gear. I get a shadow medium UV on a spiral scale helm, and it appears as if it grants absolutely 0 shadow defense. So I guess the best UVs would be status resistant? (poison / freeze / stun since they do not damage you directly). I did notice that the status defense bars look normal on 1 star UVd gear.
So how would we cope with this if we wanted to wear all 1 star gear in any tier 2 / 3 level? Bring a Gran Faust maybe and only use it for menders? Maybe Acheron only since it has a lower chance to affect gameplay and hit monsters surrounding the mender than the Gran Faust? And of course, never use a (damaging) status weapon.
Then we would have to look in on how to UV our 1 star gear since part of the fun in this game is optimizing gear.... poison / stun resistance? What would we want on our weapons? Probably ASI, but who knows.
Also, is there any plan for a more difficult SK? Hopefully more difficult monster mechanics that aren't constantly nerfed. Or maybe new tier 3 content which we cannot just stroll through our first time. Shadow lairs of course aren't accessible enough to have fun for most people, they're more for the costume.

edit: x-ed out first part, this post makes more sense now
the main issue is that all it will do is make it time consuming instead of difficult, like a boss fight that is easy but you just have to pay attention for 30 minutes and not accidentally get hit once -.-
It's too bad we can't change the mechanics
I personally say 1 star so you have a wider variety of weapons instead of just spamming the boring ol' proto bomb / sword / gun.

"Regardless of whatever you meant, the main issue is that all it will do is make it time consuming instead of difficult, like a boss fight that is easy but you just have to pay attention for 30 minutes and not accidentally get hit once"
Yeah. After editing the post above I've added a challenge that is slightly time consuming, but focuses more on the Timing/Dodging correctly aspect, instead of the Attention Span aspect.

bingo, great idea!
No shield changes the mechanics. Awesome, thank you. Of course, we can still use 1 star or proto stuff for fun.
Personally, I will be doing ALL 0 star items (not just proto) since only proto sounds boring... I'd rather use some of the more interesting weapons.
Again, nothing with statuses. I've tried it before with statuses and it ruined it for me because status scales with strat.
Also edited my second post so it makes more sense for anyone clicking on thread.

Thanks :)
Since we're on the matter, care to do that challenge with me now? I think I got time for a floor or 2.

After that test, we concluded:
1. Use offensive stuff. Get 5* weps / offensive trinkets, and maybe even throw on a cyclops cap if gunner or fencing jacket if swordsman to go with proto. It's not too different, only thing is that mashing your mouse button for 10 minutes is not fun.
2. No shield is what makes the mechanics different + much more difficult. No shield bumping, no shield cancelling, have to fire off a shot instead of instantly going into charging a weapon, can't choose to walk slowly (so it can be more difficult to line up between wheels in FSC for example).
3. Proto / Fencing Jacket or Cyclops Cap. You can get hit about 2 times, then the next hit will kill you. This is because of how the half health thing works.
4. Fire is death, so grab some stun / poison / freeze resistance UVs if you want to, since those can be escaped from and will not be the cause of your death themselves. Specifically for FSC, stun.
If you are going to use 0 star weps for example, great. You'll find it a lot more fun that you have to do things like kite monsters to explosive blocks / purposely get trojan to smash turrets and stuff. I personally think this is how the game should have been intended: you have to use trojan smashes / exploding jellies / exploding blocks to your advantage.

So umm.... anyone else?.... Just wondering if... you know, anyone else even cares about this thread....
*Floats around the forums*

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm AHA. Holiday weekend. That's gotta be it. Yeah, that's why. :)

^ Riiight. Its Memorial day weekend.
...
What?! Hey, I almost forgot my own birthday, so don't go blaming me for not realizing!

There is a very easy way to dramatically increase the difficulty of most parts of this game.
1. Open up options.
2. Increase quality to "High."
3. Close options.
You will quickly notice that now you have a much more difficult time staying alive. You're welcome. :)

My computer isn't terrible. I always have it on high @_@

So do I. I'm just poking fun at the mass numbers of people who complain about lag making them die every 30 seconds. :P
Edit:
I completely misread your post, sorry. Come in seeing it says something about the difficulty of the game and using weaker gear instantly got me thinking that its like a CE rage thread.
Sorry.
Anyway, I agree, after now reading your full post. I guess 1 star is viable, but still. Also if you want a harder challenge, people need to drop the Swiftstrike and go no shield altogether. Losing the mechanic of Sheild Cancelling makes dodging and timing a must, and failure to do so perfectly results in taking damage regardless.
Also you could technically go in and if you die you have to restart (i.e no CE revving.)
Yeah...
I'm still waiting for someone to attempt a no shield, no armor, no death Shadow weapon only run of FSC. I'd do it myself, and have for the first room for practice, but never had time for a full run. Its actually pretty fun, if you don't get bored of FSC like I did. (yep, no more grinding for me :/)