January 16
There's a new council quest.

January 18
ATTENTION!A set of Policies has been drawn up. Please read them, and note the message beneath the Log In button.

January 23
A new PvP system has been rolled out. More options, more meaningful rewards and losses. I gave everybody their Hippy stones back and reset everybody's win/loss record. Have fun beating each other senseless.

January 25
I always said I'd implement character gender the first time somebody complained about it. Somebody complained about it, so now there's gender. It has no effects other than cosmetic ones. If you are one of "the ladies," you'll have to go into your profile and specify female if you want your gender to update. Even if it's already set to Female, just resubmit it and your picture will update.

February 3
Chat channels have been implemented. Everyone starts in the 'newbie' channel, but you can open up the 'normal' and 'trade' channels by visiting the Altar on the Right Side of the Tracks. Use the chat help command (/?) for information on how to move between channels.

February 6
The chat pane now has a macro system for creating shortcuts to frequently-used commands. The "chat pane" section of the documentation has been fleshed out, so check there for details.

February 25
Alright, there've been a few things added/changed since my last announcement. Let's see how many I can remember:

There is now a "clan" chat channel. Being accepted into a clan grants you access, and when you're in there, you're talking to members of your clan ONLY.

There have been some changes to the way the Mall works, largely to reduce database strain -- stores are now paginated, but are searchable on the "search the mall" page. You can also now mark stores as your Favorites, and they'll always show up at the top of the Mall list, above the top 10 advertisers.

You now have the ability to save messages into a "saved messages" folder. Again, in an effort to reduce database traffic, any read messages that are more than 2 weeks old will be automatically deleted, unless they are moved to this folder. Which is not really a folder, but it's like a folder. This will start happening in a week or two.

March 2
You no longer gain stats when somebody PvP attacks you and you win.

March 8
I'm having some more memory put into the server late tonight, so it'll be down briefly, some time between 4am and 6am EST.

March 15

KoLCon (this weekend, March 20-21, in the Phoenix, AZ area,) is just around the corner. So if you're planning on attending, please check in in the forums and let us know.

March 17

March 21
A couple of changes -- announcements are now shown after login, and will soon disappear from the login screen. In a related development, you can now decide not to enter the chat after you log in.

Also, KoLCon was a big success. Check it out!

March 24
Okay, due to popular demand, I've added the "Last Adventure" link to the character pane. It allows you to repeat your last adventure, no matter where you are -- skills, inventory, wherever. Notably missing are the Shore and the Barrel, but I'll make these work with it as soon as I can.

Oh, in Compact Mode, you click on "Adv" to use this feature.

April 1
Here we are now, on the new server. There might be some unexpected turbulence. So buckle your safety belts, because if there's one thing the human body is not built to withstand, it's unexpected turbulence.

The server will have to be referred to by IP address for a few days.

April 2
So, the transition to the new server appears to have gone pretty smoothly. I've set up kingdomofloathing.com to automatically redirect to here, but it'll still be a few days before the DNS records point to the right place.

At this time, I'd like to extend the greatest possible volume of thanks to everyone who has donated to cover the cost of our blazingly fast new server. Without you all, none of this would've been possible.

April 5
Sorry about the weirdness over the weekend -- I was out of town. I'm paying more attention to things now, so the rollover tonight should go smoothly.

Also, sorry about e-mail notifications failing to go out, in some cases. This will be resolved as soon as I can get DNS working properly on the new server.

April 13
The first 2/3 of the Sorceress quest is live. Those level 10 and above, visit the Council for details.

April 15
Okay, so I finally found the Ancient Tome of Annoying SQL Quirks, and fixed the problem whereby multiple copies of the same accessory only gave you one "copy" of the enchantment.

In other news, there is no other news.

Oh, wait, yes there is -- the chat pane should now behave correctly when it's resized, in both IE and Mozilla/FireWhatever.

April 16
The multi abuse section of the Policies has been updated.

April 22
Okay, so now we've got more RAM in the server. I'm hoping this will stem some of the nightly lag and crashery.

I'm still working on the DNS problems, but I think they're almost solved.

Also, PayPal donations are now processed automatically, so you can get a Mr. Accessory even when I'm asleep.

April 23
The Forums are currently down because of a DOS attack on my hosting provider. They're working on it.

In other news, what flies around going "zzzub, zzzub?"

April 23
I'm going to be making some changes to the way skills work (technically, not in game terms) today, so don't bother reporting any bugs about skills.

In other news, it was an eeb.

In other other news, how many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol Hordes got bored?

April 26
I changed the way the alternate-stat weapon skills (Crossbow Fever, the effect of the Special Sauce Glove, Spirit of Rigatoni) work. You should hit quite a bit harder if you're using these skills now.

In other news, never mind.

April 27
I've made some changes to the way food and booze work. See my post in the forums for details.

In other news, Tuesday is here -- did you bring your coat?

April 28
Every place that you can go should now have a link back to its "container" location in the main pane -- let me know if there are any missing.

April 29
The problems with the Donate popup window should be fixed now. In other news, Gatorade is delicious.

May 2
Sorry about the "delete all messages" problem and the Hall of Records not updating -- they're fixed now.

May 6
Over the course of today/tonight I'll be migrating stuff to the shiny new second server. There might be some weirdness with images, and there will very likely be an hour or so of downtime while I move game data over.

May 6, later
The transition to the new database server seems to have gone pretty smoothly. 500 simultaneous players tonight, and nary a connection error in sight.

Again, my thanks go out to everyone who has donated, and made these perpetually necessary upgrades possible.

May 17
The fifth 1/6 of the Sorceress quest is now available.

May 24
I came to the realization today that people who never use the chat weren't ever getting any event notifications. Now, if you don't enter the chat, it automatically switches you over to the old-style message notification.

In other news, as of tomorrow or the next day, you will no longer be able to e-mail me at kingdomofloathing.com. All places that used to have an e-mail link now have a contact form instead. See My post in the forums for a more detailed explanation.

May 26
The Policies have been updated.

May 27
Some changes last night -- you can now purchase items from the Mall in quantity. You can also now disband a clan if you're the only person left in it.

May 28
That bug whereby having part of an outfit on made it so you couldn't auto-equip the whole outfit is now fixed. Also, non-buff skills can now be used in quantity.

June 9
A much-requested feature has finally been added: the ability to define a Custom Outfit, to make switching between item sets easier. Hitting the "Save Custom Outfit" button in the equipment section of your inventory will create an Outfit out of the items you currently have equipped. Selecting "Custom Outfit" from the Dress Up menu will reequip all of those items.

June 10
Sorry about the downtime earlier -- there were some hardware problems at the facility where the servers are kept. Everything should be fine now.

June 11
There are some problems with outgoing e-mail right now, so if you don't receive an activation code, please be patient. I'm working on getting it resolved, and all of the queued-up e-mails will go out as soon as it's up and running again.

In other news, I finally fixed some long-standing problems with the clan rankings system. If you were having trouble (unable to assign certain ranks to clan members, weird ordering problems) before, you should be able to redo your rankings now in a way that makes sense. Thanks to everybody who reported these problems.

June 12
The problems with activation e-mails should now be solved. Sorry for the inconvenience.

June 14
Okay, so maybe the e-mail problems AREN'T entirely fixed. I'm still looking into this stuff, and I'm sorry about the continued activation delays.

June 15
From out of the eldritch mists and sinister vapors of the nether regions of the Kingdom, the Spectral Pickle Factory has emerged, in a fog of adjectives. Look for it in the Nearby Plains.

June 16
And as quickly as it emerged, the Spectral Pickle Factory fades back into the mists. And fogs.

June 21
I think all of the glitches involving Custom Outfits with more than one copy of the same accessory are fixed now. Thanks to everybody who reported them.

June 29
I've changed it so you can no longer PvP somebody who isn't EXACTLY the same level as you. It will be like this until I either a) get some sort of retaliation system in place, or b) decide not to do a).

July 4
The burrito bug from yesterday has been fixed -- thanks to everybody who reported it.

July 15
A bunch of little changes and improvements were today. See the trivial updates page for details.

July 18
An exploit/scam involving mall price changes has been plugged up. Shame on all y'all who abused it, and know that The Eye is on you.

In other news, /exit will now let you leave the chat.

In other other news, the player search feature has been modified a little. It now shows win/loss records for PvP-only searches, and if you leave the name field blank, it'll return 100 players in random order. This should make PvP a little easier on the players whose names start with A and B...

July 19
The message system has been revamped. There's now an Outbox, and the interface for managing messages has been enhanced quite a bit.

July 21
UPGRADE! The new servers are all online, and stuff seems to be working quite a bit more quickly. The way it works is that when you go to www.kingdomofloathing.com, it figures out which of the three web servers has the fewest people logged on, and redirects you to the login page on that server.

Apart from the speed, it doesn't matter which server you're on. Everybody's still in the same world, the same chat, etc.

Enjoy, and be sure and use the report bug link to let me know if there are any problemswith the new setup.

Again, my heartfelt thanks go out to everybody who has donated money. As I'vesaid before, without you, none of this stuff would be here.

July 26
The Clan interface has been revamped. There are a lot of little enhancements and improvements, designed to make your clan administration day just a little bit brighter.

July 27
Minor change: Stat requirements for zones now check against your modified stat, rather than your base. This means you can now get temporarily powerful enough to adventure in places you otherwise couldn't.

Speaking of places, there's a new one. The Limerick Dungeon has been added to the Dungeon full of Dungeons. It's appropriate for levels 3-4, but there's some new stuff that I'm sure the higher-level players will want to see, as well.

July 28
Hippies everywhere! Protestors at Mt. McLargeHuge!

August 1
The McLargeHuge event got slowed down a bit by some hardware failures on my end. Everything's back up and running now, though, so expect more happenings on the peak starting tomorrow.

In other news, I think I fixed the problem with chat messages dropping out randomly. Please use the "report bug" link if you see this still happening.

August 4
The Penguin Mafia has reportedly sent scouts to the Icy Peak, hoping the recent turmoil will make it easier for them to set up a base of operations there.

In other news, August 4 is only one day later than August 1. Seriously.

August 8
I'm still reviewing my options as far as what to do about the massive influx of bugmeat and duped items. Thanks to everybody who has offered suggestions, and please know that I'm trying to figure out a way to solve this with the least possible negative impact on the innocent. It might be a few days before I arrive at any conclusions about what to do, but I feel that the current economic problems are not too high of a price to pay to avoid making a hasty decision that might have horrible unforseen consequences.

Rest assured that one way or another, things will get squared away.

UPDATE: Mall Store owners can now specify a daily per-person limit on individual items for sale. This should make it a little easier to lower your prices without having to worry about being completely bought out by people reselling your stuff at a profit.

In unrelated news, the Penguin Mafia has begun ramping up their operations in other areas of the Kingdom. Tensions are running high as the council tries to come up with a plan of action.

August 9
Even as the Penguins are driven out of the Hole in the Sky, their operations increase in scope. A shady-looking antiques store has just been built on the Wrong Side of the Tracks...

UPDATE: In an event ostensibly completely unrelated to the economic turmoil, Clan Armies all across the Kingdom abruptly came to the realization that they haven't had anything to eat in months. Luckily, they found a couple of days' worth of oatmeal before anyone was forced to desert. Gert Slacarach, A La-Z Archer spokesman, said of the situation: "Wow. This oatmeal makes me feel approximately twice as powerful as I was yesterday..."

August 10
In an effort to test out the new clan army mechanics, and

stir things up a little bit, clans are now allowed to attack every 3 hours,instead of 12. This will taper off after a little while.

There's also now a "Most Clan Warfare Wins" table in the Hall of Records. As always, don't touch it.

Also, thanks, everybody, for your patience, suggestions, and words of encouragement. We're getting through this.

August 11
Fairly significant change to the Mall: Price caps have been raised from 99,999 to 999,999,999.

August 12
The Penguin Mafia appears to have introduced a new kind of booze into the Kingdom, and the pirates of the Obligatory Pirate's Cove seem to be involved in its trafficking.

August 14
Like thieves in the afternoon, the Penguin Mafia have infiltrated every last nook and cranny of the Kingdom, and have stolen every last sober pill that occupied those nooks and crannies.

August 17
You've probably already noticed that Trophy Hut went up on the Right Side of the Tracks. Trophies are like tattoos, only shinier.

Also, the stat gains from booze have been adjusted, slightly, to more closely correlate with the quality and rarity of individual booze items. Fermenting powder has also been made available in the Demon Market, sincenobody ever bothered with it when it was at the Hermitage.

August 18
Okay, so I've done the same thing with food that I did with booze. Some food items got worse, with respect to stat gains, but most of them got considerably better.

Also, you may have noticed the pre-rollover downtime. I'm trying to reduce the amount of time the rollover and the backup (the thing that causes the hour or so of downtime in the middle of every night) take, and the best way to do that is to kick everybody off while it's running.

After the weekend, there'll probably start to be a period of about 15 minutes every night where you can't log on. I realize this is somewhat annoying, but it's a lot less annoying than what happens to all of the Europeans when they try to play between 4 and 5 CDT now.

August 19
Mystery Raffle #2 went off with very few hitches, and tickets are on sale for the third one!

Also, you can now attach multiple items to a single message, up to (you guessed it) 11. Hit the little plus sign next to the item dropdown to add another dropdown.

Also also, I finally fixed the Cobb's Knob Lab Key bug. Y'know, the one where you'd adventure and adventure, but never get it? Yeah, sorry about that.

August 22
Okay, so Mall Stores now have a link at the bottom which will repeat your previous search. Sorry for the goofiness while I was rolling that out.

In other news, the They Might Be Giants show was great. A good time was had by all.

August 26
As you probably noticed, a new dungeon was added last night. Thanks are due to Xenophobe and Ayndin for their creative input.

Third raffle down, fourth one ready to start.

To anybody who's gonna be at PAX: See you at PAX.

September 8
Sorry for the long period of announcementlessness. We got back from PAX, at which point I immediately got sick just as every single electrical system in my house shot craps.

I'm back on track, and a number of minor things have been accomplished in the last couple of days.

Due to popular demand, the offer system has been changed to allow item-for-item trades as well as item-for-meat trades. It even allows multiple-items-and-meat for multiple-items-and-meat trades, in case anybody wants to do that. It's now a two-step process: offer and respond. The offerer can include a note telling the offeree what he/she wants in response. Note that the system only works for hermaphrodites.

All items that were floating in the old system have been returned to their original owners.

September 9
Okay, so the Cake-Shaped Arena is now available in the plains for your familiar-battling pleasure. In a related note, there is also now a class of familiar-equippable items. Good stuff!

September 10
Some repairs have been made to the flea market code. Nothing you'd notice, gamewise, but it should operate quite a bit more quickly now.

September 13
Cynn's Boys of Loathing Calendar is now up. Everybody thank her. Clan Leaders can switch between the Girls and Boys Calendars on their administration page.

September 16
There was a problem with the daily script today that caused people to not get their extra 3 adventures from Clan Calendars.

I went ahead and gave everybody 3 extra, whether they were in a clan or not, because... well, because it was easier.

September 21
The Council has finally ended its fund raiser, and handed out 8 bottles of Time Juice to each and every player.

In completely unrelated news, there are a couple of new items for sale at the Bugbear Bakery.

September 27
The bug where /w and /? would screw up the scrolling of the chat in Mozilla (and its ilk) has finally been fixed.

Also, I changed something that I meant to change a long time ago -- maximum MP is now based on your modified Mysticality, rather than the base. So, yeah. You now can hold a lot more MP if you're buffed up.

October 2
Due to popular demand, I changed it so that Mall limits reset at the nightly rollover, rather than on a rolling 24-hour schedule.

Also, search results that point to items you can't buy because of these limits are now grayed out.

Also also, you can now use MP-restorative items directly from the skills page. It's convenient, and it's fun!

October 3
Because of a dumb typo, the "using MP items from the skills page" thing was only appearing for buffing classes. This is fixed now.

More to come...

October 5
Small change to the way the familiar arena works -- each time you win a prize, there's a 25% chance it'll be a lead necklace, and a 75% chance it'll be an accessory that the familiar you're using can equip.

October 6
There's a new store in Seaside Town, on the Right Side of the Tracks, in which you can trade Mr. Accessories for various other groovy gifts.

October 8
Alright, so the host took the database server down for maintenance, and one of the tables got corrupted. I'm rebuilding everything right now, and everything should be back to normal by 9:30 or so, PST.

UPDATE:Okay, so everything should be fixed. Sorry about the inconvenience.

October 13
Clan attacks no longer affect the defending clan's win/loss record in any way.

October 25
Fernswarthy's Basement has been placed in its temporary home,the Dungeon Full of Dungeons. It's sort of like the Daily Dungeon, only it doesn't reset each day, it's much, much deeper, and each room is more difficult to pass than the previous.

There's also a new section of the Hall of Records for the deepest Basement delvers.

Everybody give mad props to Riff for coming up with a lot of the monsters.

October 26
There have been some changes to the way the chat works. As of now, the Altar of Literacy test is required to enter the chat, in ANY channel. Once you pass it, you're granted access to newbie, normal, clan, trade, and a new channel ("games") created for trivia and other contests.

Keep all trade offers in trade. Keep all games and contests in games. Newbie is now a place for new players to ask questions. Trading in newbie is no longer allowed.

If you already passed the Altar, you'll have to do it again before you can enter the chat. Sorry about the inconvenience.

October 27
The site may go down for maintenance sometime in the middle of the day today, while I work with a MySQL consultant on tuning and optimizing the database.

October 30
Trick or Treat! Check the main map for the special Halloween event. The event will last until the rollover on Monday night.

October 31
Due to my being out of town for an appearance on TechTV's The Screen Savers (November 1st at 4PM Pacific, I think,) November's familiar of the month will not become available until the 2nd.

November 3
Sorry about the downtime this morning -- some weirdness with the mail server brought the whole thing down.

Also, you've probably noticed that HP and MP didn't get restored at rollover last night. I forgot to announce it when I did it, but this was an intentional change -- the first step in a series of changes to the way MP and skills and buffs work that we're hoping will fix some game balance issues.

UPDATE: The second step in this process has been rolled out -- the amount of MP gained from restorative items has been adjusted to reflect the difficulty of obtaining the item. All items that previously restored MP in its entirety have been toned down to reasonable levels.

ALSO UPDATE: MP restorative items can now be used in quantity from the Skills screen. I'll add this feature to the regular inventory screen when I figure out a way to make it not completely clutter everything up.

November 4
Okay, so starting tonight, the nightly rollover willregenerate a flat amount of HP and MP, that amount depending on your campsite equipment. Better housing = more recovery, and there are a couple of other items that impact MP specifically.

Also, the beanbag chair, which lets you Relax instead of Resting (which heals double MP but no HP) can now be created by combining two items. Which two items? You'll just have to guess.

November 11 (11/11 -- it's ridiculous.)
Short Notice Extravaganza: Tonight at 7:00 MST, Mr. Skullhead and I will be broadcasting, live, the third episode of 120 Minutes of Misanthropy with Jick and Mr. Skullhead, on Radio KoL. For those of you that haven't listened to the last two episodes, here's what we do:

First, we spend about a half an hour trying to get the audio set up correctly, during which you hear a lot of silence and the occasional hemiconversation. Fun!

Next, we take calls from people using Skype, (username: radiojick) and we answer their questions and/or talk to them about the weather. We also field questions from people in the chat, via private messages to our faithful servant, radiobugbear.

This week, we're hoping that we can skip the first portion of the show and get straight to the good stuff. So tune in! 7PM MST, right after Vida Londres's show.

November 12:
For those of you who missed it, or those of you who want to hear it over and over, last night's broadcast of 120 Minutes of Pumpkin Pie is available for download at Coldfront.

Thanks, Coldfront!

November 14
Due to the potential for multi abuse, Mall store purchases no longer add to the store's advertising budget. The only way to increase your ad budget now is to directly contribute Meat to it.

November 16
Shady new dealings are taking place at Uncle P's Antiques. The Council has called an emergency session to formulate a strategy for dealing with this new crime wave...

November 18
The Council has unveiled its plan for dealing with the Mob Penguin menace, and has taken up a new collection towards that end.

Also, be sure and tune in to 120 Minutes of Dada with Mr. Skullhead and Jick, this evening at 7PM MST on Radio KoL

November 21
The breeding Yetis have arrived from Distant Lands. See the Council for details on the next phase of the Icy Peak Reintroduction Project.

November 22
The Council has sent the first batch of Knott Yetis to the Icy Peak. Sparks have begun to fly.

November 23
The Icy Peak Reintroduction Project continues, as another batch of Yetis is sent to the Peak. This phase was not without its problems, however, as a brief stampede caused some damage on theWrong Side of the Tracks. See the Council for more details.

November 26
As you probably noticed, the promised Thanksgiving event did not occur, owing to my unexpected lack of Internet access while visiting my family. Here's what we're gonna do: We're gonna pretend that Thanksgiving is actually next week. Probably on Tuesday.

The recurring KoL Calendar holiday will fall on Boozember 7th.

Also, if anybody recorded Mr. Skullhead's and my radio show on Tuesday, could you get in touch with us in-game? The guys at Coldfront didn't know about it, so they don't have it archived.

Also also, the Hall of Records now updates every hour, instead of every day. Also also also, clans must now have at least 5 members before they show up on any of the boards that list average stats.

November 29
Some changes have been made to the PvP system. I explain them in detail in This forum post.

November 30
The 10-fights-per-day PvP restriction has been changed to reset at the nightly rollover, rather than on a sliding 24-hour clock.

Also, I fixed a bug where the second challenge (which is supposed to compare unbuffed stats) was using buffed stats, instead. Thanks to everybody who noticed this and reported it.

December 2
Better one day late than never, the Crimbo Elf is available in Mr. Store.

Also, to correct a gap in the distribution of the Scrumptious Reagent potions, the papotion of papower can now be made by Saucerors. Thanks, ShadowsLight!

December 16
By popular request, Hippy Stones are now reconstructable by players who have gone two weeks without initiating a PvP attack.

In other news, that first sentence was sort of awkward.

In additional other news, I think that the reconstruction might not actually start working until Sunday -- I've evidently been keeping track of the attack records for a few days fewer than I had initially thought. Sorry 'bout that.

So, yeah. Pretend I didn't say anything.

December 18
Now that the PvP rankings have had some time to work themselves out, I've made a slight change to the limits on selecting PvP targets. As of now, you cannot attack anyone ranked more than 50 points below you, that being the point at which you wouldn't get any rank points for winning, anyway.

The upper limit has been removed completely -- you can attack anybody more powerful than you, regardless of how much more powerful they are.

December 25
Like the opposite of a thief in the night, Father Crimbo swung by each and every campsite in the Kingdom and left a little surprise. Check the miscellaneous section of your inventory.

December 28
A couple of minor changes today:

The closet has been revamped. Thanks, BoozerBear! It now allows for multiple items to be inserted and removed from it with one form submission.

Those of you with custom avatars can now turn them off from your account menu. This change also allows the handful of people who have expressed an interest in getting multiple custom avatars to do so.