From the ADVENTURE BOARD, choosing to start at a different Tier is simple! Here's the normal view. If you want to start at Tier 2 instead of Tier 1... Simply click the "Tier 2" in the middle of the ADVENTURE BOARD. The tax, if applicable, will be shown below the energy cost.

While, generally speaking, you are limited to ten floors of a dungeon per day, each dungeon is split into 3 separate Tiers. Each of these tiers starts at a different depth - 0, 8, and 18, So if you have Tier 2 Clearance, you can start at floor 8, and go all the way to floor 20 (no energy costs to access floors 13 and 18). Likewise, if you start at floor 18 (tier 3 clearance), you can make it all the way to the core, Level 29, and still have 10 energy left over. The one downside of this is that starting at Tier 2 or 3 costs Crowns (the in-game currency) -- 200 or 500 respectively. However, if you work your way through one gate sequentially - getting to floor 8 the first day, getting to floor 18 on the next, etc. you will avoid having to pay the cost in crowns. Since gates have an 8-day cycle, this means you will be able to delve all the way to the Core 6 out of 8 days, avoiding the 'tax' for jumping directly into the deeper tiers. Alternatively, just jump directly into Tier 2 and Tier 3 without clearance; the Crown tax isn't that bad, and you will generally recoup your entry fee within the first floor or two.

Well, the overarching goal of the game is to get down as close to the core as possible. To do this, you need to upgrade your gear, which you do by going through levels, getting crowns and such, which you can use to buy recipes and CE for crafting (You'll also need certain materials, but those are a minor problem by comparison.) As far as the plot goes... well, I'm afraid that's not a major point of the game. There's certain boss levels you can go through (The Snarbolax in tier 1, the Jelly King and Roarmulous twins in tier 2, and the Firestorm Citadel in tier 3), which have recon modules at the end which give you a bit of info regarding the setting and Alpha Squadron, the recon team that went to the core and disappeared. The other bit of plot is down at the core (the end of tier 3), there's a team of NPC knights there doing research, and that's about it. Hopefully we'll get an update soon with some info about what the core actually contains, but who knows? As far as the mineral gates thing... the type of minerals you dump into the gate will affect what kind of levels the gate contains when it comes out a day or so later. It's nothing that really affects the plot in any huge way, and it takes a ridiculous amount of minerals to even change the theme of one group of levels. However, keep going, the gameplay becomes a lot more interesting once you get down into tier 2 and the enemies start posing an actual threat, as then you need to start using some actual tactics instead of just repeatedly pressing your mouse button.

The OS X version of the game has some issues with permission handling. The solution is to add the permission via the terminal: Open "Terminal.app" Type: cd /Users//Library/Application\ Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/spiral knights Hit Enter Type: chmod +x run.sh Hit Enter Then the game should run normally from steam. Source

Spiral Knights will not go out of its way to notify you when someone accepts your offer to buy or sell Crystal Energy. When a buyer is found, if you are online you will receive a console message, the relevant currency will flash once or twice, and then will update accordingly. There is no in-game mail or to alert you that the transaction completed if you are offline when that happens - it sounds like it might be possible that the sale went through, and you were simply unaware that it completed successfully.

All newly crafted items start at level 1. So yeah, the level and heat on any weapons needed in the crafting is lost. You can keep your unique variants though, or try for new ones.

It's a bit confusing, but several levels into the clockworks (regardless of which gate you pick), there's a "Clockworks terminal" level. That level is basically a midpoint of the tier, where you can heal up for free, and purchase recipes from a vendor. That's what you need to reach for the achievement (and hat). Hope this helps.

Just like when they are purchased in-game for energy, the Weapon Upgrade, Token Upgrade, and Heat Amplifiers included in the Starter Pack are actual items that must be activated, consuming them, to take effect.

The Spiral Knights Wiki has the skinny on crafting: Alchemy Machines are located in Haven, Moorcroft Manor, and Emberlight. Haven has several Alchemy Machines which can be found in Guildhalls, the Bazaar, Arcade, and the Town Square. The cost of crafting an item depends on its star level, and generally doubles with each additional star. Alchemy Cost: ★☆☆☆☆: 200 crowns/ 10 energy ★★☆☆☆: 400 crowns/ 50 energy ★★★☆☆: 1,000 crowns/ 200 energy ★★★★☆: 2,500 crowns/ 400 energy ★★★★★: 5,000 crowns/ 800 energy Usually, crafting is much cheaper than buying the item pre-made from a vendor, and also gives the added possibility of creating a unique variant (see below). Pre-made items increase in price as their star level increases. Thus, items with a high star level are generally cheaper to craft than to buy pre-made.

That's the number of the item that the vendor has in stock and available to you. Most vendors are randomized per/player. There is no restocking, the limited quantities only affect you, though it is possible for the randomized offerings to be similar, or even identical on a day-to-day basis. Stocks from the vendors in town reset and randomize every day at midnight server time. The exception to this is the traveling merchant, Basil, available on the "Clockwork Terminal". These offerings are the same per party, but again, quantities exist separately for each player. There's no need to "rush" over to get the best recipes - if Basil offers it to one player, he offers it to all players. The further exception is that if a player joins the party on a clockwork terminal level or the level before, the quantity of all available recipes is set to 0. This is to prevent someone getting a potentially valuable recipe without investing any energy (since it costs 0 energy to join on a clockwork terminal level or take the elevator down to the terminal) into a dungeon.

There are two sides to this, depending on whether you plan your path or not: Because the Clockworks is constantly moving, even when you're progressing through a level, you have the option of deliberately waiting to step onto the elevator in order to reach desired levels. Each of the levels has a (usually) pretty obviously descriptive name reflecting the types of monsters you will encounter, and since gear with fewer resistances is stronger against each source, you can "stack" your resistance to a select few and plan out your path for maximum resistance. They hide the option to show the gate map under the upper-left menu with no way to hotkey it, but it will show you where the elevator is currently pointing. For the more casual player who expects to face damage from a variety of sources, pieces with multiple resistances will help negate more damage on average than a specific piece. Because they have more individual resistances, there is a greater probability of entering a level they can resist some of the damage from, rather than limiting all of your potential resistance to a single source and missing it. The bottom line is that very few sections of the game actually depend on your gear's type enough that it makes a significant difference. As long as you have enough stars on your gear and a fair amount of experience with the enemies' tactics, you can just pay attention to your "threat meter" to the lower-right of the minimap.

Yes, every tier of depth has more potential crowns and heat than the last. Mostly because of the more difficult monsters. The even-numbered strata always give more crowns and heat than the odd-numbered strata - basically, once you reach the clockwork terminal (4, 13, or 20), the loot kicks into high gear (and goes back down when you return to an odd-numbered strata.

You may now change your knight's personal color by shopping from Vatel in the Haven Bazaar. They cost 50,000 crowns each. (Can you say crownsink! \o/ )

You can get mini mist-tanks (restore 15 ME) by by referring steam friends to spiral knights (and a costume hat after 5 referrals). As of the release of King Krogmo's Colliseum, it is now possible to also get mini-mist tanks as a Krogmo bribe reward, a process which takes place before each PvP match. The odds are rather low, however. You get a single mist tank when you first arrive in Haven (and cross the "Final Mission" from the starting area) and (effectively) earn Tier 1 Clearance. Likewise, you will also get a mist tank for achieving Level 2 Clearance, and for achieving Level 3 Clearance as well. All three of those instances are one-time endeavors. Finally, if you buy the Starter Pack for 20$, you will gain 5 mist tanks. You may only buy one Starter Pack per account. This means the maximum number of mist tanks obtainable is 8 per account.

The wiki article indicates that it does indeed recharge at a higher rate (100 in 22 hours). That's one unit every 13.2 minutes, so in 24 hours you'd gain 109.09 units.

They are from people crafting them for the sole purpose of selling them. One of the good things about buying a recipe is that it is not only cheaper than buying the item itself, but you can then use the recipe to put together those raw materials again to make an item to sell, hopefully for more than you would've gotten for just the raw materials. Note that crafted items will sometimes get special attributes that you can't get on dropped/store-bought items, making them even more valuable.

At Heat Lvl 5 and 10 your weapons get a small but meaningful bonus, and yes if you took the time to look at a Lvl 1 item you see the blue bar and some dark blueish bar after that. Each level fills that up a bit. For crafting the higher tier items eg.Tempered Calibur it need the standard stuff plus a Calibur. An Acended Calibur requires a lvl 5+ Tempered Calibur. A rule of thumb is if you're not at the highest tier of gear and your stuff is lvl 10 get new stuff.

(disclaimer, this answer is based on 4 days (400 mist energy) of game play) You can theoretically experience the entire game without paying any real world money. However, with 100 mist energy per day, you are stuck running only one full dungeon per day (~8 levels). This will not leave you with enough energy to craft anything of note; crafting takes 50 energy for 2star items for example. This means that one day you run dungeons, the next day you craft a couple of items. Additionally, each death and respawn in a dungeon costs energy at an exponentially increasing rate; 2 for the first respawn, 4 for the next, then 8 and so on. With the 100 energy maximum, you're going to be in a tight spot when reaching higher tiers of dungeon which can be rather challenging from what I have heard. However, you can buy energy using in-game currency. It currently goes for about 3700 credits for 100 energy. After running 300 energy worth of dungeons, I racked up about 11,000 credits and haven't even begun to use the auction house to sell my approximately 30 assorted crafting materials (which are worth 15,000+ in total). Now I've had to use most of my cash to buy crafting recipes, but in theory I could be playing the auction house to get the credits needed to get another 400 or so mist energy, run more dungeons, and so forth. Short answer, yes you can experience the entire game with the free energy, but it will be slow.

What I've been able to determine so far There are no explicit classes in the game, it is solely based on your gear. There are three types of weapons in the game: sword, gun, and bomb. Characters have all 3 types, but may focus on upgrading one type over the others. There doesn't appear to be any healing or support type items, everything is either about doing damage to enemies, or preventing damage to yourself.

Potency refers to how long your enemy targets will stay poisoned. Upgrading Venom will allow your Maserkaith's quills to poison the targets for a longer duration.