Spiral Knights offers quite a variety of weapons, but many are either not as good as their descriptions will lead you to believe, or are too good to be balanced. Still others are amazing in the right circumstances, and completely useless elsewhere. This guide will help you cut through the crap and choose the best weapons for your desired play style.
Contents
Guide to Weapons
All credit goes to CarbonMonoxide!
Foreword
I highly recommend playing meta if you are new. It is much easier to learn the meta before breaking it than to try to play meta from the start. I see so many people make garbage weapons when they start and it makes it difficult to grind to get more meta weapons. I made the same mistake when I started, and I wish someone had set me straight sooner.
Armor
Even though this is a weapons guide, I recommend using the Chaos Set and Swiftstrike Buckler. These will give you offensive buffs that will make all of your weapons much more effective. Black Kat gear is better if you have the right Unique Variants (UVs) on your weapons, but it is expensive, and the weapon UVs needed to use it effectively are even more expensive.
Note on Celestial Orbitgun/Overcharged Mixmaster
Being beyond most people can afford, Orbitgun/Mixmaster are not included in this guide. Anyone with one likely does not need this guide and they are useful in almost every circumstance for every play style, so it would be redundant to include them anyway.
Pure Meta/Swords with Sidearms
These weapons are the basic weapons that can help in almost every circumstance.
For General Use
- Combuster/Voltedge
- Blitz Needle
- Acheron
These three can get you through Vanaduke/FSC and most Clockworks levels. These are, however, very basic, and having other weapons can help a lot.
For General Use (Extended)
- Electron Vortex
- Arcana
- Barbarous Thorn Blade/Final Flourish
- Iron Slug
EV and Arcana are great additions to any FSC loadout assuming you have all four weapon slots. BTB/FF are useful against Fiends and cover many circumstances that the first three weapons don’t. Iron Slug is great in many places and can be used almost anywhere.
Other
- Winter Grave
- Torpor Tantrum
- Riftlocker
- Phantamos
- Grim Repeater
- Venom Veiler
- Warmaster Rocket Hammer
- Plague Needle
These are useful in many places, but aren’t quite as universally good as the above weapons. Plague Needle is good in FSC, but only if there are 3-4 people in the party and only if the other people are using Blitz.
Gunner
This is the safest playstyle, and my personal favorite. A gunner will want to have a bomb with them in certain circumstances, though it isn’t required.
For General Use
- Nova Driver
- Umbra Driver
- Riftlocker
- Iron Slug
- Blitz Needle
- Grim Repeater
- Arcana
- Phantamos
These will get you through most places, but there are other weapons that can be good to have for one or two places, as well as bombs that can add support in a few circumstances.
Other Guns
- Winter Grave
- Callahan
- Permafroster
- Wildfire
- Polaris
- Storm Driver
- Magma Driver
These guns have fewer uses than the above, but they are amazing in the right circumstances. These are the guns you will want to have if you want to have highly specialized loadouts/
Support Bombs
- Electron Vortex
- Obsidian Crusher
- Torpor Tantrum
- Ash of Agni
- Venom Veiler
- Shivermist Buster
Vortex and Venom Veiler can be used just about anywhere, but the others are more specific. Torpor Tantrum is usually best in Shadow Lairs and Dreams and Nightmares, and Shivermist is good in Red Roarmulus Twins, but Torpor will outclass it almost everywhere else. Ash of Agni is great for Ice Queen and levels with lots of minis.
Bomber
This play style is severely underused, but it is still viable in most places.
Damage Bombs
- Dark Briar Barrage
- Dark Retribution
- Nitronome
These are the bread and butter of any bomber’s loadout and have uses in most places. Either DBB and DR is better than Nitronome at any given monster family, but Nitronome can be useful when there are multiple families in a place at once (like in Dreams and Nightmares).
Support Bombs
- Electron Vortex
- Obsidian Crusher
- Torpor Tantrum
- Ash of Agni
- Venom Veiler
- Shivermist Buster
These are the same support bombs a gunner will use, and they should be used in all the same places.
Useful Guns
- Arcana
- Riftlocker
- Phantamos
- Iron Slug
- Blitz Needle
These are either great sidearms or great at dealing with enemies that are difficult to kill with only bombs.
What to Avoid
Normal Damage Weapons
The utility of being able to use them everywhere is far outweighed by the damage more specific weapons will do. Iron Slug is the only Normal Damage weapon that deals enough damage to be worth using for most people, and a dedicated bomber can find some use of a Nitronome, but beyond those, normal damage weapons are useless.
Antigua-Line Guns
While the idea of a kiting gun with lots of shots seems good, it is much better to learn to weapon switch and use an Arcana.
Freeze Weapons
As a rule of thumb, Freeze causes more problems than it solves. Frozen enemies cannot be shield bumped, but they can still attack. Some Freeze weapons (Glacius, Shivermist, and Permafroster), however, can still be very useful in Red Roarmulus Twins and Compound 42.
Shard Bombs
They’re not balanced properly, so they are basically useless unless you have a full party of shard bombers.
Catalyzers
Neither Neutralizer nor Biohazard are good as a result of their mechanic charge in the Gunner Update. Neutralizer’s damage is also “bugged.” FND.
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