I realize this is rather different from the typical stages you would see in SK, but that's because most of these stages lose the exploration aspect of the game and focus more on the challenge. You may see a theme with these levels, and obviously it's IRONMAN mode! I grew up with alot of twitch-centric games like Contra and Megaman, and if anything Spiral Knights reminded me more of Gauntlet rather than Zelda. Who knows, maybe we'll see this stuff in d28+? One thing that really bothers me though is that these stages focus more on the individual but in a way OOO can still utilize the party roles they're trying to promote (Defense UP for the Danmaku stage, Debuff for LMS, etc etc)

Danmaku stage:

You're on a wide elevator lift (party button in center), gun puppies(or Howlitzers depending on strata) everywhere as you descend slowly to the next depth. However, the catch is that the puppies are inaccessible by sword users! Of course, guns can damage them--but here's the catch: it's an endless spawn! The deeper you progress through the level, the number of gun puppies increases and so does the frequency of the spawn! It's absolute bullet hell for maybe four to five minutes straight. I think you may want to add enemies on the lift to increase difficulty--but I think it may be too much for most of the players. They need some method of refilling their health bars though...probably add a health square at beginning of the level so they can start it with full health--or have small enemies drop down and drop large hearts. I can see myself playing the arcade just for the replayability of this stage. Of course, to make up for the lack of an actual spawn there should be prize boxes at the end of the stage! Such a difficult stage should definitely pay out 1k+ with red boxes.

"Elite Arena" [I haven't thought up a title for any of these since I suck at puns]

This one is probably one of the hardest to solo--but basically it's a souped up arena with a vanilla landscape in each of the three rooms (no obstacles). At the beginning of the level, there is a timed bomb. The point of the timed bomb is this: to increase payout by rewarding a speedrun. Basically by hitting this timed bomb at the beginning of the stage, it goes through a chain reaction of other timed bombs until finally if the players fail to reach the end of the stage they do not gain access to the boxes at the end--as the ghost block turns into an unbreakable block.

--IMPORTANT-- [There are two levels of payout for this mission. If one chooses not to hit the block at the beginning, they will receive the average payout seen in many of the clockworks' arenas(the several boxes at the end). However, to enter this room you need to hit the ghost block to remove the unbreakable blocks. Behind this room is another room with ANOTHER line of unbreakable blocks. I hope you see where I'm getting at right? Either you take the risk and double or nothing--OR take the safe way out. These situations always bring out the best in the player and in the team so please think about doing this!

Ok moving on--an example of this can be seen late into the mission "Heart of Ice", with each failed wipe within a given interval of time increases the number of monsters you have to deal with for that moment. To compensate for the lack of obstacles in this arena, the number of elite monsters per wave will be increased dramatically. Also please consider adding four respawnable howlitzers in each of the four corners--so that one player can be assigned to "turret duty" to give players a sense of purpose and cooperation. A friend of mine, back when I was in Knightmare, suggested that one of the stages be 16 Trojans vs 4 players and I just laughed.....maybe it's not so farfetched?

Anyways I got class in a few, I'll add some more maybe with a few sketches in the future. I'll just revise the OP.