gameplay:guides:what_s_new [Improbable Island Wiki of Often Not Lies]

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This is currently a legacy page, ported over without editing from the Old Enquirer on 21.11.2023. It may actually belong in meta:history, or may need so much updating that it needs to be scrapped.
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===== Introduction =====
So! [[You|You're]] a veteran, eh? Mayhaps you stopped playing for sometime then you <del>were dragged back here from your intense addiction</del> decided to come and visit! Well... Welcome back! We missed you!\\
But... This kinda seems odd... Why... Isn't anyone talking in Banter? What IS [[Banter]]??? What the heck Is all this candy doing in this outpost?!? WHAT'S A MONTHLY MEMENTO?!?!?\\
If you've found yourself asking these questions, this page is for you.
So! Without further ado...

''Note: I'm not perfect, and I don't exactly know how long you've been away, so for the first "What's New?" I'll help you come in contact with the current players, so you can bother them with all your beautiful questions, if they aren't answered here!
...''\\
\\
Okay, that was more ado. Sorry. Without further further ado...\\
\\
''Second Note: I (different I now) am going to make a liar of this preamble once more. If your character timed out, we know that character restoration used to be a thing. Character backups were, unfortunately, lost with the server move, and we have been informed by CMJ that as a result character restorations are officially No Longer A Thing.''\\
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\\

====== So, What IS New? ======
===== Player and Character Chat -- As of ??? =====
One of the most prominent, and possibly the first thing that you may have noticed, changes has been our global chat, aka [[Banter]]. Banter has been split, straight in half. Now we have Player Chat and Character Chat. They are basically exactly the same, except in Player Chat "'s player says" is added to the end of your name for everything you say, and emoting is disabled. For more info, try [[Banter]] or just try bantering in Banter.

==== Story Chat in eBoy's, Sheila's and Restaurants -- As of July 8th 2014 ====

As the result of a successful campaign to turn the donation kitty white, there is now the ability to Story in these previously Storyless spaces.

===== Monthly Mementos -- As of July 2014 =====
[[Donating]] has always been the most fun part of the Island, and yet... Our wonderful [[CavemanJoe|admin]] has come and made it at least 10,000 times better! How, you ask? MONTHLY MEMENTOS!\\
Monthly Mementos are just cool little things you get for donating about $5 or $10. They just make the game more fun. Simple as that. More info and a full list [[Monthly Mementos|here]].

==== Latest Monthly Mementos ====
...may or may not be posted here.

===== Mini-Games =====

==== Holes and Crows -- As of July 1st 2014 ====
Holes and Crows was the first game to appear, and combines Whack-a-Mole with a certain amount of strategy. Moves from Outpost to Outpost; has a Hall of Fame entry. More details to follow as soon as I ask someone who actually plays them.

==== Rook Trader -- As of March 9th 2015 ====
Rook Trader has joined Holes and Crows, and works slightly differently from Holes and Crows: it costs a 100-Req stake to play, but whoever has the highest score at the end of the day is awarded the pot plus a cigarette.



===== Down Below -- As of September 9th 2014 =====

A portal to a land of mysterious mazes and furious foebots. Unlocks upon reaching Level 10 on your character. Caution is advised when entering from non-New Home outposts, as their level is subject to change, and foebot HP rises dramatically as you go farther down. However, their difficulty is not affected by rank, per a MotD from November 2014. More general information [[down_below|here]].

===== Candy! -- As of Oct. 2014 =====
Candy is this new thing. It's like [[cookies]]! Except, individually, they're much smaller. They give you 5% stamina, each, and give a minor percent buff to your attack and defense. They also stack with each other! With a total of 30 different kinds, each buff lasting 1000 rounds each, they end up giving a MASSIVE buff! You can get them in the Hunter's Lodge. More info [[Candy|here]].

===== Dimensional Shifter -- As of Jan. 7th '16 =====
Full info on this in the MotD about it: [[http://www.improbableisland.com/motd.php?month=2016-01|here]]

As of December 2016, Kittania is now up.

===== Jungle -> Travel -- As of ??? =====
You can get to the map from the Jungle now, yay!

===== HyperRings -- As of Nov. 3rd '15 =====
HyperRings are no longer needed to exist forever! Now, if you want immortality all you have to do is donate one penny to the Charon!((That is not at all how it works.)) Yay!\\
\\
More factual information in the [[http://improbableisland.com/motd.php?month=2015-11|MoTD dated 2015-11-03 06:30:41]]

===== Contestant List off of the login page -- As of ??? =====
It's been taken off. Not much more to say about this one.

===== Cigarettes give stamina -- As of March 2016 =====
Smoking Cigs gives you stamina now, in addition to their previous buffs and crippling addiction! Hooray!

Be careful, though, as they give diminishing returns. Meaning the more you puff, the less you //stuff//... you get.

The first time you smoke should give you 10% stamina. From there it seems to go down by .2%. However, it hasn't been fully tested yet.

===== Stones -- As of April 13th '16 =====
Stones are nifty things you get from the Wizard's Sleeve in [[Kittania]].\\
Can be upgraded in the Mineral Appraisal Hut in [[AceHigh]].\\
More links and stuff coming soon. In the meantime, most of the info is [[http://enquirer.improbableisland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=33922|here]].

===== CAVEMANJOE IS PREGNANT?!? -- July '16 =====
{{http://www.improbableisland.com/external/improbablebaby.jpg?250x250}}\\
[[https://www.improbableisland.com/motd.php?month=2016-04&newcount=10|Yup]]. [[https://www.improbableisland.com/motd.php?month=2016-07&newcount=10|That happened.]]

===== Monster Diary -- As of May 21st '16 =====
Monster's fight text is now far more comprehensible, as the fights will be logged. Where, you ask? Why, in your memory, of course! Well. More specifically in a diary.\\
\\
{{http://improbableisland.com/images/items/hunterslodge_monsterdiary.png}}\\
The Monster Diary is a nifty tool available in [[the Hunter's Lodge]] for 500 Supporter Points.\\
The Diary will store any and all monster texts in which you have gone in and rated the monster, 1-5.\\
The J and F listed next to each monster tells you where each monster can be found. J = Jungle and F = Failboat.

===== Double Comma -- As of June 13th '16 =====
Typing ",," (without the quotes) works exactly the same as "`" (also without the quotes) for color codes in just about any place.
Designed to help mobile users with using color codes, as the grave mark is often difficult to find on mobile.

===== Travle Ajents and Skronky Pot -- As of December 27th '16 =====
A new means of traveling around the Island has opened its doors in Squat Hole. Bring padding. The Skronky Pot also //warns// you when it's getting full.

===== Rabbits -- As of May 2017 =====
These Monthly Mementos get an entry, because they behave a little differently. Clicking the Use button throws up a link to turn them into Meat, which replaces the Rabbit in your Inventory with five pieces of Tasty Meat. After you have done this, you no longer have a Rabbit, because it is an ex-Rabbit.

If you have a pair of rabbits of the opposite gender, they will breed a new rabbit every Newday if left unchecked. This is the reason that Cool Springs Cafe in Kittania has a new limit on Meat you can sell (only 100 pieces per Newday now; all other Outposts that accept Meat are unaffected), and also may explain it if you find yourself with surprisingly high Stamina costs for everything.

After the number of Rabbits reaches some number that I do not recall (perhaps 200), they will all run away, except for one. Stay on top of your Rabbit inventories.

===== Midnight -- As of June 7th '17 =====
Before, at every Newday, the Island would lag while chat logs were cleaned up, Titan corpses were carted off to the incinerator, and Seth wandered off in search of a drink from the bottle Dan keeps on a special shelf behind the bar. Now, the Island will kick you off, displaying a blue screen that runs through all the things that are updating, which should then auto-load a green screen indicating completion and a link to click to be taken back to where you are. If you are logged out during a Newday transition, or you've been inactive for auto-update to time out and don't come back until after everything's over, you may not see this screen. Some people are reporting issues with the loading, though, so if it looks like Midnight is lasting forever, closing your browser and restarting may be required.

===== HyperTeleporters (and Teleport Beacon changes) -- As of June 30th '17 =====
Like One-Shot Teleporters, but available for SP in the Hunter's Lodge, this items will teleport you to any map square. If used, restoration behavior upon Failboating may be a little unpredictable; it may also not be possible to hyperteleport to the same map square twice in a Newday (requires further testing).

While I'm here, I might as well note that costs to run Teleport Beacons have been reduced, from four cigarettes/Newday to one cigarette/three Newdays. They are also cheaper to buy in the first place.

===== Kissing Booth now unisex -- As of July 9th '17 =====
The Kissing Booth in the Common Grounds now no longer checks against the player's gender when randomly assigning a kisser. Go hog wild!

===== Mod Call Button -- As of October 1st '17 =====
Underneath the chat box, you now have a Mod Call button. Clicking on it (and then clicking again, to confirm) will send up a batsignal to any mods on the Island, or, if no mods happen to be logged in at the moment, will preserve that chatspace and prevent it from being deleted until a mod has a chance to look at it. The old Petitions system will also continue to work, but if the issue is something that is going on in a chat space, //please use the Mod Call button in order to preserve whatever's going on//; if you don't think the problem will be immediately obvious, go ahead and fill out a mod call Petition explaining the issue as well.

For game-related errors (such as badnavs or other problems with your account), conversely, please use the regular 'Tell us about a problem' link to submit a public or private petition, as before.

===== Contestant List currently down -- As of January 20th '18 =====
No need to petition.

===== TEN YEARS OF THE ISLAND -- February 2018 =====
Happy ten-year anniversary to the Island! Several things have been added to the Island, including:
  * the ability to change text size on the Island
  * a new default skin with stats at the top (if you liked the old setup with three vertical columns, you can still get to it via Preferences)
  * hotkey navigation can be deactivated in Preferences
  * Crate Sniffers work for multiple rounds
  * Crate Locators //give you directions// to the nearest crate
  * Bank has been updated, with new canon about what Req is made of
  * New Pittsburgh has a new building, the Fresh Start Clinic, which allows you to take IP out of HP and redistribute it betwen attack and defense, //at a cost of 5% of your accumulated Improbability Points rounded up//
  * CyberCity 404 has a new building, Helter Smelter, which takes req and, at the rate of 1 real-time second per input req token, spits out some multiple of what was put in
  * Places can now be built on water and swamp squares, and there can be 6 of them per square.

===== Player and Character Chat no longer trigger page refresh, introduction of d and D color codes -- As of May 2018 =====
This reduces the roughly five million pageloads that talking in Banter used to trigger; at the moment, it means that /chatcol and /talkcol don't always take, so if this is the case for you, enter those commands over in Story.

We also have several new yellow color codes, although they may not be playing nicely with Place and contestant titles yet.



===== Gender-neutral pronouns -- As of July 2018 =====
The nonbinary-or-nonspecific gender option is available now, along with a new Contrivance to check for this gender setting in Place programming (so one knows when the writing should show they/them/their pronouns).

===== Distraction deletion -- As of October 2018 =====
Using the "delete" button from within a Distract should now work. **Please note that Distracts will eventually time out and be deleted (this was implemented after the struggle to load everyone's very full Distract inboxes nearly melted the server that one time and CMJ had to go in and delete those tables).**

===== Jill and the Jokers, pts. 5 and 6 -- As of January 2019 =====
If you haven't been around for a while, there are two more parts to this story! You might have to level up a bit to see them, though, depending on where you left your character.

===== Monster Research Lab (Pleasantville) -- As of June 2019 =====
Some updates to combat, including a new more text-based graphical interface (NB for monsters with a lot of HP, like the Drive or Foebots, a partial bar may simply indicate that the bar has been filled up and that there is excess HP overflow). Running is [i]always[/i] successful if you have less than 3 XP (where running is an option); the option to run from your Dojo masters has been removed. Players on their first run who are below level 10 no longer lose req or XP when KOed in the Jungle.

Puzzle combat (the system of toggling everything to vulnerable, stunning a monster, and discovering the SUPER COMBO to knock them out) has been revamped a bit. Monsters should no longer be able to pretend to be stunned and then knock you out with a strong attack, or hide the status of any body part that has taken damage. In order to learn this skill, you have to spend 100 req at the Monster Research Lab in Pleasantville. (If anyone goes on to use the subsequent cig-related info, please Distract Csodas on the Island with your notes on what this does and whether it is worth it.)

Also, Patreon support has been added.