It’s been a while since the Spiral Knights Crusaders were able to get together. I’ve been doing demo videos instead, for better or worse.

It’s not because we suddenly dislike Spiral Knights. Life just gets in the way, whether it’s the pager, health concerns and medical conditions, necessary extra overtime at the day job, graduate-level school and studies, etc. In fact, in many ways, Spiral Knights is the perfect MMORPG for people who miss a dungeon crawl and need a casual option.

Tonight (well, last night, now that it’s past midnight here) was a great run, the kind of run where your closest buds all work together so well, the synergy helping us defeat new and definitely more puzzly layouts—I hope, indeed, that the puzzles get more intricate in the future, particularly the deeper you go. ((Tier 3, from what screenshots I’ve seen, already seems to have quite a bit of variety compared to Tier 2 and Tier 1. I’m now curious to go there.)) I’m thinking Legend of Zelda level of puzzles, not brain-burning but somehow pleasant to solve.

Of late, I’ve been quite happy with running Tier 1 and Tier 2. I like the familiar, and I miss the little gate in the Town Square during Preview that was just an awesome area to try new weapons in lieu of a trial room in guild halls (something not present yet, but has been suggested before).

But my solo Tier 1 run was wonderful, because the Jelly Farm levels in that gate now appear in the current Silver Rook. I plan to run that gate as often as feasibly possible for me. Which had better be pretty feasible over the next two days, since after that Silver Rook is scrolling off. Sigh. And before you write off the Jelly Farm, it’s a little akin to the Jelly Palace in some Tier 2 gates—amazing heat and plenty of jellies, slimes, and lumbers. And often a random Imposto-Cube. Green grass and blue skies are levels I quite like.

Today I also saw one of the poles of the sky sphere that rotates around such green levels:

The exposed Clockworks is a nice touch. Also, the sky sphere is actually broken up into two rotating hemispheres:

This world is a gorgeous place.