Hello Tech Support,
The problem with my spiral knights is that I cannot create a new lobby for clockworks. When I do, I get stuck on the loading screen at 96%. Then spiral knights become unresponsive and Java freezes and I have to go to task manager to end Java. This has never happened before until after the most recent update.
Well I eventually found the problem. I was using a steam linked spiral knights account on the regular spiral knights client so when it tried to do the popup where it invites people on steam which is not possible, it just gets stuck on the loading screen at 96%. That is the cause. Just take off the invites on steam notification and you are good to go so problem solved.
In general running a Steam account on a non-Steam client will cause various performance issues as the game attempts to use Steam specific options that aren't present. Please avoid running Steam accounts outside of Steam.
Apparently, this only affects my spiral knights client and not the spiral knights from steam. Not sure what is wrong with my regular spiral knights.