A Titan looms above NewHome, the outpost walls splintered beneath its feet. Monsters have formed alliances, small swarms combining into large packs combining into armies. The Watcher barks commands via loudspeaker as guards fire shots into the trees. Your hammer rebounds off a nail and smacks you in the forehead. Things are looking grim. It's only a matter of time before the city falls and the Outpost is abandoned. Surely, this must be the end, right?

Once upon a time? Maybe. But not any more!

The Onslaught Module was a feature of early Season Two that allowed monsters to invade Outposts, rendering it inaccessible to players. While the invasions¹⁾ themselves are currently disabled, several features related to it persist to this day, providing flavor text for the Island and scaring the shit out of many an uninformed rookie.

On December 30th, 2009, a redder-than-usual Watcher stomped into Common Ground to inform contestants that monsters were starting to roam in packs. Not long after²⁾, we got stuck cleaning them up.

bla bla nerdshit technical explanation:

• The Onslaught module would look at the amount of players online (who had at least one DK) and increase monster spawns in the Outpost they liked to chill at.
• if players kill these monsters, it's all cool and chill and everyone goes about their day
• if players fall behind in killing these monsters, they band together and start to bodyslam the walls until they collapse
• If the outpost wall's hp hits zero while the monster threat is high, in come the monsters to fuck up everyone's day
• Players would then have to kill monsters in this zone repeatedly to get them out of the outpost and get things back to normal

Rinse and repeat.

Onslaughts were eventually disabled due to reasons, but here's some stuff that stuck around.

“NewHome seems quiet at the moment - by which you mean there are no monsters actively banging on the gates. The people manning the turret-mounted machine guns are chatting jovially with each other and sharing cigarettes. For now at least, NewHome is safe.”

- Flavor text you've probably read a billion times.

bla bla bla this text appears to let u know if enough monsters have been killed lately. in very rare circumstances you might hear the watcher chime in to tell you to fight monsters, and you'll get more req per fight if you do. BUT the town's not actually in danger so you can relax.

they're useless! only there if you want to burn stamina, really.

oh yeah these dudes are still around. We probably have a titan guide somewhere so I can just link that.

scratch notes

• Improbable Island is a dangerous place but did you know it used to be DANGEROUSER
• On Datey mc Date the Month, Year, the Watcher announced monsters were beginning to roam in packs (link that page here, i know it's on the old wiki somewhere)
• Outpost threat levels: would increase if nobody Jungled in a certain area, causing fights to become harder but awarding higher requisition payouts.
• If the threat level got too high, it would also start to deplete the health of the Outpost walls³⁾
• Titans would also reduce the health of the Outpost walls to zero immediately if they reached their target.
• If the Outpost wall's health hit zero and the threat level was high enough, the Outpost was considered breached and the Outpost would be overrun by monsters. Most facilities would be unavailable for the duration, including Joe's Dojo and the Medicine Tent, making leveling up impossible for that race. (Exceptions were made for Rookies who had not yet completed a Drive Kill.)
• After contestants collectively fought enough monsters in the outpost, the threat level would drop and the Outpost became inhabitable again. And so the cycle repeats.
• That's war for you!

Today, the following relics remain:

• Threat Levels: You've probably seen the phrase “Clearly, there is no threat right now” in an Outpost's description while wandering around. Like all Outpost text, this description is actually dynamic - that phrase indicates Peaceful Days or Quiet Times status. In very rare circumstances the threat may rise above that, and you may see the locals exchange nervous glances or hear the Watcher give an announcement. You'll get more Req for jungling while this text is active, but there's still no cause for concern. The Outpost is not at risk.
• Titans: Titans still spawn, approach Outposts, and destroy their walls just as they had before, and Outpost lookouts will shout warnings. But even if a Titan flattens an Outpost's wall, the Outpost cannot become overrun.
• Outpost Walls: You can still hammer nails in to repair outpost walls, but since only Titans can lower their health it's only useful for burning stamina.
• The Council Offices were used to check the status of all Outposts. Nowadays they exist to give free shit to Humans and free exhibits to Mr. Stern.

Edit: oh look there's a page for Threat Levels on the old wiki. That's gonna save me some time.

Not worth porting over, just half articles I'm using as “sources”
“why don't you just ask cmj” I like doing things the hard way, apparently.

• The history of the chat channels, circa 2018
• Season Two suggestion box. One way to date what was around before the reset.
• Nobody ever wrote a PVP guide. Hellfire.
• The monster list - retired monsters. also has “possible scavenge options” - not sure if that's the actual scavenging drop data, or just hypotheticals?
• Season one bugs, before it got replaced with the petition system.
• Season Two changelog. Only I could find this interesting.
• jesus. things you post on the internet really do stay forever. hello, person reading this.

• Improbable Island's codebase was, initially, built off a much older game called Legend of the Green Dragon. (Which in itself is apparently based off the single player game Legend of the Red Dragon, but that's a little too much backstory for this)
• Similarities - fight monsters to gain exp, fight your master to level up, at level fifteen you go off to kill the big bad and become the hero of the realm, four hour game days
• LotGD is open source, with its code being CC0. btw you can still donate to the devs so i'll have to shill that at some point
• I should probably play LotGD at some point so I can figure out how different it was to the Pilot
• Anyway link to the Old Masters article somewhere in this mess of a preamble

I'm actually not sure what features the Pilot had gameplay-wise, other than the Old Wiki's entry saying things were super unbalanced. It may have been largely the same as the pilot, but with janky initial stat numbers?

The things I know that did happen are largely community based:

• Occasional Watcher-run contests. (Such as awarding special boons to people who got the highest Glory score in a set timeframe)
• Newbie Tuesdays (days the game would be advertised, so existing players would prepare to welcome them)
• The Watcher apparently hung out on the Island in a place called Disgrace?

• No stamina system - there were separate points for travel, combat, PVP. Systems were in place to convert one type of point for another, such as Heidi's Place allowing you to trade PVP turns for more Jungle fights.
• PVP enabled. Contestants could kick each other's asses for fun and profit.
• Sheila's shack actually had limited stock, and players could salvage scrap from monster fights or the junkyard to craft more gear?? wild
• Speaking of, armor and weapons could be gifted (and stolen!).
• Dwellings instead of Places! i don't actually know anything about the bingo hall i just thought that was a funny headline to steal
• Something called the Strategy Hut - not sure if this was an outpost thing or a player run thing, honestly. Precursor to Basic Training?

• PVP removed, sheila's shack stocks endless stuff
• Dwellings obliterated, places added
• Brand new stamina system, which is currently set to be replaced with the even newer stamina system if the latest motd is anything to go off of
• I don't know when each outpost got its own Banter, but S2 is when Banter became Global.
• Breaches came and went
• Trains. Choo choo
• oo fancy new UI oooo