This (and the derpbillion other threads about the same thing) remind me of a feature in a game I used to play but never bothered because it was so obnoxious and the rewards were so stupid. Boss trials in Mabinogi. The idea was you had to get a "Boss Trial" pass from the enemies in a dungeon, which were many and various; each dungeon had its own special kinds of enemies, like the lowest level dungeon having spiders {Alby} and the second having rat-human-things/furries and bigger pointier spiders that could spin {Ciar}, and the one I am obliged to mention which has skeletons and skeleton dog-wolf-things everywhere {Rabbie} whose boss was always a succubus or multiple succubi in the highest difficulties. I went straight into a brick wall with this and completely lost my train of thought.

Anyway, bosses and their trials. You had to get a pass/key/little-paper-thing to access them. You know what? Before getting into that I should explain how dungeons work in that game, or at least the kind of dungeons I am blathering on about since there are multiple kinds of "dungeons". The old school type of dungeons each have their own lobby area where players can sit around and spam how they want to join whatever difficulty. This game is open world, by the way; unlike how the dungeon/Clockworks lobby for Spinach Nostrils has to be loaded with the specific party. You can also run around with your weapons if you like but can only attack w- I need to stop getting distracted, I almost went on a huge tangent about the completely different combat system that would have taken at least five pages to discuss the basics. Anyway, what was I talking about? Dungeon lobbies. So after you and whoever you want to be in your party, which can be 1-8 players, you have to make an "offering" on the altar. The altar is the entry point of the dungeon. Depending on what you "offer" changes what difficulty and map layout you get. You can either drop a random item or a pass.

I was going to explain all the dungeon stuff here but it got crazy after two paragraphs to explain the simplest basics, so instead I am going to skip to the good part: how boss trials work. Basically, there are multiple difficulties and some dungeons do not have certain difficulties but if it has all possible ones it would look like this: beginner-normal-basic-intermediate-advanced-hard-boss trial. Normal does not need a pass but all the others do. Passes drop from enemies in the same dungeon the pass applies to. Remember, the pass is a key but in rectangular paper form. Also, all passes are untradable in any way; if you drop it the item will not be grabbable by other players, if it drops as loot from your kill no one else can pick it up, but if the pass lets more than one player in you can open the door for someone else to run it and you can leave. Or stay and do it. Whatever. Anyway, boss trials. Each difficulty has its own boss. Not just a damage scale, as in its own boss. They may not always be completely different, like in Alby almost all the difficulties involve some weird giant spider that wants to headbutt you, but usually with different abilities and what not. Sometimes resistances to stuff. To keep this as simple as possible, the bosses are different and have genuine difficulty on top of having more health, defense, and attack. Have you ever imagined a bright yellow spider as big as your house spinning? It looks sillier than it sounds. Except when it kills you in one hit. That sucks. Anyway again, boss trials; they lock you in the boss room to start then the lowest difficulty boss appears. You kill it. Good job. Then the next difficulty spawns. Kill that. Good job again. Then it continues upward until the most difficult boss the dungeon has to offer. Why is this difficult? First of all, bosses and all enemies have what everyone called "aggro range". The same idea applies here with enemies noticing us knights when we get too close. Now imagine being locked in a room about the same size as the Vanduke boss room. Alright. Nothing too horrible yet. Now imagine the boss can run at 300% of our speed, use the Sudaruska charge attack in two seconds, and weapons like Brandish and Polaris do not exist. Oh, and that thing can notice you in less than ten seconds unless it spawns on the complete opposite side of the room. There are also no invincibility shields. Good luck. Did I mention you were locked in the room? I should mention that even though that sounds like the most terrifying boss to ever exist the combat system is so different that as long as you can identify patterns and solve problems under the pressure of a painful and unnaturally fast death it should be easy. What was that? You can do none of those? Well, stay at home.

My liquids that was a long rant. Moving on again before I get distracted by something else nostalgic. The whole boss trial system works because the dungeon is more than a single run, it has many different possible maps and multiple bosses it can throw at you. What do we have? Four big bosses. We also got things like Maulos, but compare that to the 300%-movement-speed-Sudaruska-up-the-butt-in-two-seconds boss. That boss is one of the advanced level ones in the second dungeon, by the way. There are many many more difficult enemies than that. Snort snort.

Where am I going with all this that you probably skipped and expect some kind of summary here? In that other game being locked in with a bunch of bosses has difficulty and the combat system forces you to make split second decisions or die almost instantly. Not to say the same is impossible to do in Spiral Knights, but our bosses are either so easy to fight with almost any kind of weapon compared to a skeleton bard with his skeleton doggy who becomes metal when you kill the doggy because he gets mad. I loved that boss. Also because back in the day there was nothing even close to our weapon charge attacks and the combat was entirely based on your skills and their ranks, since with some skills you had to have a certain rank to be useful for more damage, range, decreased use of stamina, or whatever. Windmill.

What the solids this post got crazy long. I could have made a response to this and simply said no to this.