Transmissions

For all those who have been inquiring about how to support the site and its development, we've finally finished the last preparations needed to release (drumroll please)... the premium shop! This real-currency shop will be for decorative items such as backgrounds and an upcoming item type called decor. We have no intention at this time of adding any items to the premium shop that would give an unfair advantage to anyone who can't afford them; this is purely for decoration to keep our site online!

Premium backgrounds have a golden frame around their new chipset-style item art, whereas free backgrounds available in the Background Emporium have a dark blue and natives/immigrants/other such specialty backgrounds are red-orange.

With this change, the four original Native regions (not the Ocean, which has fairly recent art) have new background art! The item backgrounds has been automatically changed over to some fresh new art, check it out! If it doesn't automatically update for you, give your browser a hard refresh so your cache clears.

Cleaned up versions of the old Native backgrounds are available for purchase at the premium shop and can be seen here:

You finally make your way to the end of the Emerald Enclave, having fully mapped it out, when out of the broken wall pops a brown head.

The golden eyed creature observes you. It looks a lot like one of the Tark'ee you've seen before, more Aquatic than Draconic, but its features are a bit more feline, with a sharp beak and clearly more land-faring in nature.

He eyes you deftly before bolting past with a golden-horned male, into the wilds of Issiq. Behind him is a soft-snouted creature that definitely looks more like the aquatics, but is still clearly not. He runs off towards Mireh, along with a very fluffy maned one. Finally, two pale-furred females head out towards Rekes. A final singular Tark'ee flees towards L'hatzif.

It's clear that none wish to return to water, so none head towards the Ocean.

Anyone who has been watching the Discord might have seen that there was an adjustment to Leveling. With every level up, your colonist will earn a randomly rolled amount of base HP, calculated based on their species (all current species have a base of 10) with the current constitution modifier applied. Leveling up a colonist with a negative constitution modifier? No need to fear! If it would have resulted in no HP or even a negative number, that will be swapped out with a 1 automatically. Colonists leveling up also will have their Health Points replenished!

All existing colonists who are level one or two have had this boost for their existing levels automatically applied!

Stage Two introduced two different lines of prompts for each of the event-based factions, Rebel and Respect. Both focused on collecting Suspicious Reports, though Respect followed DPIP's request to turn in reports while Rebels instead followed the clues.

Respect colonies were also able to visit various elders and Xunari at the different ports and dockyards, learning about the strange monsters that had been spotted in the Oceans of Xiunus. On the other side of things, Rebel colonies went about gathering clues and mysteries, intercepting DPIP transmissions and taking to the waters to seek out these strange beasts.

The colonies learned that those creatures were a new species called Tark'ee along with a new subspecies of Belemoid who enjoy the water as their home. This brought about the beginning of our Tark'ee migration, where two subspecies of Tark'ee entered into gameplay and a good handful of imports from the Tark'ee ARPG were migrated over.

Thus revealed the name of the event: Tark'ee Trespass.

To keep things moving, we will be adjusting some of the existing event prompts and shifting them around. Most prompts have met their planned conclusions, but others still need user participation to complete their goals! This is in particular true with "Genetic Research," which unlocks philters to apply markings to colonists—which one of your fellow colonies has made a spreadsheet for on Discord. These particular prompts will remain open, but any others will be closed for submissions. Unused Suspicious Reports may be converted into Simple Reports for the Investigation activity.

If you are very close to one of the currently available treasure maps and want to try to finish the map for the other rewards, you have one month from the posting of this news transmission to submit to Out to Sea or Follow the Clues before those prompts are disabled and the items recycled.

It's finally time for our rebalancing of colonists' stats.

Colonist stats Moving forward.
Stats have had the following adjustments:

• RNG generated colonists should no longer roll with any stat below 5
• Stats can't be normally added to stats that have reached 5 below their level's upper limit, meaning a level two colonist (upper limit of 20) can only have stats added via repool/zapper up until all their stats reach 15. After that, they can be added to reach 20.
• This applies to repools and stats earned via level up.
• The only way to get permanent, inheritable stats above that, is to do Crucibles, which are now tracked separately.
• Crucible-earned stats are now locked to their stat.

The canon stats-in-common-terms explanation page is still in the works. As a temporary explanation, stats 5 or below should be quite bad at that stat, stats around 10 should be pretty average at them, and stats at 15 should be very good. Stats at 20 are almost superhuman in skill.

Brain Zapper.
The brain zapper is now automated on a new page, accessed via a button on the top right of a colonist's Level Area / Gameplay page. It will automatically grab a brain zapper from your inventory and use it. Please alert us if there are any oddities with this functionality!

Using a Brain Zapper will now apply one severity of "Mental Fatigue" which must be tended to by a new prompt called "Treat an Illness," which has specific subprompts and requirements per condition. This allows for reimplementation of an old feature we had several years ago, illnesses. Mental Fatigue in particular requires use of a new item called Ginkgo Tea, which is brewed using a Tea Pot and some other ingredients, including another new item, Ginkgo. Ginkgo can be found while Foraging in Mireh, while Tea Pots can be purchased at the food shop. For the time being, Ginkgo Tea will be served in the rotating Wandering Merchant, limited to 5 purchases per person.

Existing Colonist Stat Rebalancing
In about a week's time, we will be running a script I wrote that will go through all existing colonists and boosting low stat counts as well as fixing colonists with very low stats. All colonists whose stat pools are below 45 or who has a stat below 5 will have their stats automatically repooled. Those with stat pools below 45 will have extra points added to their pool to reach 45.

Living unweaned whelps will have any stat below 5 lifted to 5 but will not have them repooled.

Any affected colonist who has gone through a Crucible in the past may submit a claim (a submission without a prompt) to request a free "re-stat" where we will manually apply that stat and mark it as gained by a crucible, to thank the colonies for participating in Crucibles in the past. This will cover any Crucible done on affected colonists before the rebalance script is run, so if you do a crucible that's processed in the next week on a colonist with a low stat range, you will benefit.

To quickly see what colonists you have who have been repooled, you can see what colonists have available stat points on your "At a Glance" page.

We have adjusted the rules on how many entries may be made for Native raffles via Diplomacy.

From now on, for every 5 Natives present in a colony, the colony will have One Less submission attempt. So, a colony with 5 natives may attempt one fewer time than a colony with 4, but one more time than a colony with 10.

We also request from now on, that all submissions for natives are in the system at least 24 hours before the raffle ends, so that staff may have time to process and approve the piece and not risk missing an entry timed too close to the deadline.

For easy reference regarding the new rule around Woo submissions, Imagi made a chart:

No Natives: 3 submissions, 4 with Extradition research
1-4 Natives: 2 submissions, 3 with Extradition
5-9 Natives: 1 submission, 2 with Extradition
10+ Natives: 1 submission with Extradition only
If original finder: Add 1 submission to each level

As a reminder, all Diplomacy entries should be featured within the region the Native currently lives in. Your colonists are going to their home region to try to convince them to come home with you.