However, Antiguas and Blasters are rather similar in role, so either one will work.

Some differences:

• Antiguas have six shot clips and smaller, faster, and weaker bullets. Blasters have three shots.
• Due to the really weird hitbox, it can be very hard to hit things properly with Antiguas. Most notably, hitting a ghost block among other blocks can often be downright hard with Antiguas. Blasters have plain better non-combat utility because they don't screw up like that.
• Blaster have knockback while Antiguas don't. This means that Antiguas are more of a "shoot at the enemy while positioning yourself for some other attack" weapon while Blasters can be used for micromanaging enemy positions. With good technique, you can use a Blaster to keep a slow enemy stationary because the knockback is enough to keep them from getting closer.
• Thanks to the bullet size of blasters (actually one of the biggest in the game), it's comparatively easy to hit two enemies with the same bullets (shoot in between two enemies that are close and you can hit both) and do twice the damage. With a special damage Blaster, e.g. Arcana, this can actually be a good amount of damage while being very safe at the same time. Antiguas can multihit too, but it's somewhat harder.

Most of the guns are balanced about evenly, so just use whatever you feel comfortable with and that appears to be blasters. In the case of blasters and antiguas, the utility of 6 shots, knockback, and damage vs undead/otherwise is what levels the playing field... so just pick whichever one you'd like for now.

Eventually you should probably get a blitz needle and go all pro, farming the ol' Firestorm Citadel night and day but for now just use your blaster and take it easy. I would also recommend that you craft TONS of gear and practice with it, because that's far more interesting and beneficial than advancing in the story line and eventually, will be all that's left when there is no more story line for you to progress through.

Further, you should not expect to go the entire game with just a brandish and blaster combo. You can go far with this combo, but at some point you'll run into a level like march of the tortodrones, danger mission, king of ashes or save winterfest or some sort of absurdist danger room, and your brandish+gun combo will start to feel weak. The developers are making new levels as we sit here typing to each other, and it's more than possible that those will push the limits of what you'll need.

Personally I find the Elemetal Blaster the most useful in general. Both Undead and Constructs are generally easy to hit with Guns, and group up enough so you can hit multiples at a time.

Of course then you have the sword issue that bopp mentioned. It may be best to expand your sword collection a bit.

A fire and freeze combo is not nice, but making the drivers would be a swell decision on your part, provided you don't get stuck with a single damage type.

As I said earlier, just go craft a bunch of stuff and try to forget about how badly you want to murder the hall of heroes while being content with where you get stuck halfway through the game. Getting stuck sounds terrible but it isn't because the game hardly changes as you progress and in order to really appreciate (i.e. play and not outright fail) anything happening past wherever you are, you'll need to get in a good bit of practice and have a decent arsenal to back you up anyway.

That combination should work pretty well. At some point you will get bored with Valiance. But by then you will have tried more weapons, and you'll have a better idea of what to focus on next. Have fun.

Much of the fun in this game is trying various kinds of weapons. So you should try every style, including the Troika. (Actually I address this specifically at the very end of my sword guide.)

But Sudaruska/Triglav is not a strong sword at all. Its damage per swing is okay but not great (compared to Divine Avenger and Gran Faust). Its swinging speed is terrible (slower than DA/GF). Suda/Trig's charge attack is pretty good, but not better than DA's.

"High normal damage" should not be an attraction. First, are you getting this from the visual "statistics bars" that show damage and speed? Those things are notoriously inaccurate. Instead, look at actual damage numbers in the tables on the wiki. Second, in most situations you can do more damage using non-normal damage.

Vortex Bombs are always nice, but they're really hard to use unless you got bomber gear to reduce your charge time. Vortex Bombs slow you down a LOT when charging, and it's blast radius is relatively small. So you have to slowly waddle up to a clump of enemies to drop it at close range, which is difficult to do with poor CTR.

That combo in general relies on really good CTR, and is harder to pull off than it sounds.

I would suggest investing into the Magnus and Tundrus lines since both have fairly easy to use charges that are very powerful. The 3 star Tundrus works especially well on the Jelly king when you get good at kiting the minis and landing charge shots on the boss.

To learn where you can find any recipe, simply look that item up on the wiki. If you visit Dark Chaingun, then you see that Basil is the only place to find the recipe.

But which depth? Click on the Basil link to find out how Basil works. It tells you that 3-star recipes, such as Dark Chaingun, can be found only at depth 13.

But which gate? All gates are the same, as far as Basil is concerned. Whenever you visit him, he offers you a random assortment of recipes, selected from the recipes appropriate for that depth. So you might have to visit him several times, to get the recipe that you want.

That's why other players are happy to sell you these recipes, which they have purchased from Basil. The bad news is that they are selling at higher prices, to make a profit. The good news is that you can play the same game. It's one of the best ways to make money in Spiral Knights.

The new Ruby Clover Gate is a great Tier 2 recipe run, and can even transition to a Roarmulus Twin run.

And you don't need a full party, just as many people as you'd like to take with you.

As a general rule of thumb for recipe reselling, 3* and 5* will sell better than 4*. It's usually not worth it to try to resell 4* recipes.

Some good recipes to sell, off the top of my head:

3*
- Twisted Snarble Barb
- Twisted Targe
- Kilowatt Pulsar
- Flaming Pulsar
- Dark Chaingun
- Elemental Blaster
- Tundrus

5*
- Barbarous Thorn Blade
- Barbarous Thorn Shield
- Polaris
- Wildfire
- Grim Repeater
- Arcana
- Winter Grave
- Argent Peacemaker
- Sentenza