Hi friends!

I am finally here to tell you what we have been up to. TLDR - Short and sweet, we are fully updating to the latest version. The server will be version 1.20+. Keep reading!

Island Clash has been on a base version of 1.9 since May 2016 and then allowed versions up to and including 1.12. We had to change something, nothing would improve staying where we were.

We had several options to look at during season 3 regarding the future of IC. Here is a quick rundown of our options,

• Revert to 1.8 for stable PvP, arguably the most popular version with older players who are dedicated to said version.
• Go full Bedrock (and always the latest version). Bedrock is succeeding and will continue to grow compared to Java, which sees fewer players.
• Allow players to join on all versions (1.9+), which opens us up to a massive pot of new players. The easiest option.
• Update the base version to the latest, 1.20, which does the above.
  

ALL options have downsides and drawbacks with varying difficulty and time/commitment.

When I asked a group of community members their thoughts about us moving to 1.20, it was a lot of "ehh.." but followed the realisation that it makes complete sense. That might be your first reaction - or you'll be the few I asked who were immediately happy. 1.20 gives us the best advertising opportunities, opens us up to the biggest and most active community, and gives us 11 versions of extra MC content.

Where are we at now with updating?

Ooo boy, it has been long. It took a very long time to get our custom Spigot upgraded. The original dev tried to make time but was unable to. Linc came out from the ashes, saved the day, and got this done with Ryan's help and advice from others. We have finished going through the backend, updating all our code and making it work with all the changes. We are currently on the mountain of work, which is front-end. We have a working 1.20 hub server, albeit not much is functional yet, but it's the start! Part of this update included the essential job of getting brand-new boxes to replace our crazy old ones.
We will need help searching every aspect of the server for bugs and issues. If you are interested in helping, please PM me on Discord. I will be looking for players who have played IC for a long time and know the ins and outs of gameplay.

Season 4 Content

At the moment, we haven't decided on the final form of S4. There will be the massive change of not being seven years out of date; however, given the upgrade being so huge and time-consuming, I am unsure if there will be any new gameplay features. With or without new gameplay, we will focus on improving the game's current state.
A huge thanks to Aiboh, Linckode, Ryan, and Stephen for dedicating their free time to IC and making this possible!

Thank you so much for your time and patience. We are excited to update IC and bring it to more players.

-Beth and the team

Welcome to the full Season 3 changelog, listed below are all the features, bugs and issues we have fixed and added into the game. Bugs and issues also include some issues we had while adding these new features into the game.
Credit: Each feature/bug will be labelled by the developer who was involved

Contents:
1 - Main features and poll results
2 - Smaller features categorised into island, warfare, and general
3 - Bugs categorised into island, warfare, and general

Conquest

15 Islands compete to take over a long-lost temple. Teams must hold the center point for 15 minutes total to win the game, however, you will be competing with all the other islands to do this. It is big king of the hill (KOTH).
Full information here - LINK

Island Queue

Creates a queue where players in parties can join up and queue in an attempt to be placed into a free island or put into an existing island.
Full information here - LINK

Logging Camp Revamp

Completely revamped the way you gain wood. Adds new wood types and ability to have more people participate in the activity.
Full information here - LINK

Skills

Skills in Melee, Ranged, Defence, Agility, Mining, and Woodcutting, gain experience by participating in those activities to claim the top rankings and allow yourself use to Custom Items!
Full information here - LINK

Custom Items

Adds new Unique Custom Items which have cool effects. These drop from Mob events and occasionally show in some building shops!
Full information here - LINK

Mob Events

Mobs invade, infest and storm your island randomly. Giving rewards, custom items and penalties if not finished in time.
Full information here - LINK

Island Level

Island Level is created so that you can no longer fully max every building on your island. Every building and/or upgrade counts as 1 level.
Full information here - LINK

ISLAND FEATURES:

• The logging camp now has different rarities of logs, similar to ores in the mine. -Unknowncmbk
• Sawdust can now spawn from Birch logs. If the sawdust is not destroyed, silverfish will spawn and attack the player. -Unknowncmbk
• TNT can now spawn from Acacia logs. The explosion clears out all remaining logs and starts fires which must be put out in order to continue log production. -Unknowncmbk
• The logging camp will now speed up log production based on the amount of active players in the logging camp. -Unknowncmbk
• Logs now fill the logging camp bin in a random order to prevent the player from predicting where it will fill next. -Unknowncmbk
• Buried treasure has been buffed to include better, more unique rewards.
• A chat message now notifies all players on the island if a mob event has been cleared. -davidlang55
• Mob spawning will begin 3 seconds after the chat message notifies players of a beginning mob event. -davidlang55
• Players can no longer deposit resources into the warehouse/bank while a mob event is active. -davidlang55
• Players can no longer use double jump or building teleportation while a mob event is active. -davidlang55
• Mob events will now spawn mobs equally between two spawnpoints in larger buildings such as the Warehouse and the Mine. -davidlang55
• Mobs now have a health indicator to show their current HP amount. -davidlang55
• Admin command (/disablemobevent true/false) has been implemented and will enable/disable mob events from spawning on the current island server. -Ryaen
• Mobs on the island no longer give the same amount of Melee/Defense/Ranged XP as players in combat. -Ryaen
• If there are no available/suitable islands to declare war on, a message is now sent in chat to notify the players of the island. -Excel
• Admin Command/shieldremove has been implemented and will remove an island's shield from an island server. -Ryaen
• Islands now have a limited amount of total building upgrades available measured by Island Level. The max island level is 40. -Unknowncmbk
• Building levels can now exceed the island's Townhall level. -Unknowncmbk
• Match score calculations originally from Warfare Queue are now tied into Warfare Target Select. -Unknowncmbk
• The system for starting a warfare is changing to Target Select. -Unknowncmbk
• Wood and stone are now custom items to accommodate alternate methods of resource collection. -Unknowncmbk
• The warehouse now only accepts custom item versions of wood and stone as an input. -Unknowncmbk
• Core buildings (Town Hall, Warehouse, Logging Camp, Mine) can now be reset back to level 1 -.davidlang55

WARFARE ADDITIONS

• War Camp now gives extra gold per level in the post-war gold breakdown. -Unknowncmbk
• Crux damage/healing in warfare now scales with the number of players on a team. -davidlang55
• Crux damage/healing in warfare now scales depending on the difference of both teams. -davidland55
• Players will now be rewarded for destroying or protecting cruxes in war to incentivize protecting/destroying cruxes in extraneous buildings. -davidlang55
• Crux protection/destruction incentive now divides among all participants of a team instead of awarding the full amount to each player. -davidlang55
• Players are reminded of global warfare gold boosters before the warfare begins. -Excel
• The post-war gold breakdown now includes gold earned through boosters. -Excel
• All metrics that give gold in the post-war gold breakdown have been increased. -Unknowncmbk
• An island will forfeit a war after 60 seconds of concurrent absence from Warfare. -Unknowncmbk
• All players will spawn at the start of the warfare instance. -Unknowncmbk
• The player differential limit in warfare (more than the smaller team) has been changed to +2 or +3 depending on team numbers. -Unknowncmbk
• The player differential limit in warfare only applies after players have died. -Unknowncmbk
• The player differential limit in warfare will be entirely removed if both teams has 7 or more players. -Unknowncmbk

CONQUEST FEATURES

• Players no longer spawn into Conquest with a temple-tracking compass due to a simplified Conquest map. -Ryaen
• In Conquest, the Wizen now gives players increasing levels of weakness the further they travel from the Wizen. -Ryaen
• The Wizen will teleport the currently capturing team to itself. -Ryaen
• Winning a Conquest no longer awards a Totem. -Aiboh
• Influence values for Conquest placements have been changed to accommodate Totem purchasing. -Aiboh

GENERAL FEATURES

• Players wishing to join an island can now join a queue to create an island with other players. -Unknowncmbk
• Staff members will now get a chat notification notifying them that another staff member has joined the server. -LINCKODE
• A load option has been added to the entity builder -Unknowncmbk
• Potion effects such as blindness, slowness, poison, etc. can now be added as an on-hit effect. -Unknowncmbk
• Axes now have a collection rate trait to change mining speeds. -Unknowncmbk
• Mobs can now have potion effects such as speed, regeneration, strength, etc. -Unknowncmbk
• A trait for a Villager Zombie has been added to the entity builder. -Unknowncmbk
• Mobs can now be given a trait to resist projectiles in order to prevent cheesing mob events with bows. -Unknowncmbk
• Skills now have an overall level cap of 20. XP can go past 20 for showcase on the leaderboards. -Excel
• Players can now equip items obtained from a drop party to their hotbar for use. -Excel
• Global boosters are now displayed through a bossbar on the appropriate server (island, warfare, conquest, etc.) -Excel
• A new player now starts with 10 gold. This includes players returning at the start of a season. -Unknowncmbk
• Shields can now be applied to islands network wide. -Ryaen
• Menus for island creation and island creation queue have been created and integrated with previous menu structure. -Unknowncmbk
• A bossbar has been implemented to show the queue time to players currently in the queue. -Unknowncmbk
• Admin Command (/islandqueue true|false) has been implemented as a killswitch for island creation queue in case of doomsday scenarios. -Unknowncmbk
• Newly created islands created through the island creation queue now have access to a free /rename command to choose the island name. -Unknowncmbk
• Skill leaderboards have been implemented to publically share the server's XP leaders in particular skills. -Unknowncmbk
• Global boosters now have a global message when initialized. -Ryaen
• Skaarl the Skill Master can now be found in the Hub and shows global skill leaderboards. -Unknowncmbk
• Players can now /tip players that activate global gold boosters. -Unknowncmbk
• Barricades now have a max stack size of 32 (originally 10). -Unknowncmbk
• A new rank, Lord/Lady, has been added to the shop for purchase. -Unknowncmbk
• Purchaseable player ranks starting from Lord/Lady now have a perk to discount purchases made with gems from Sale Sal. -davidlang55
• Lord/Lady ranks now have a bi-weekly party favor reward. -Ryaen
• Sale Sal now contains relevant information to the new Lord/Lady rank. -Ryaen
• When purchasing a skin pack from the store, any duplicate skins previously owned are refunded for 50% of its Gem value. -LINCKODE
• Added speed/strength extended II to the T4 potion crate.
• A conquest shop has been added to spend Influence awarded from Conquest on items, including Totems. -Ryaen
• FROG PET -Ryaen

ISLAND BUGS

• Unlocking an island at the start of a new season now grants a shield as if the island was just created. -Excel
• Clicking on an item outside the play area in a cave-in minigame will no longer take remaining moves away from the player. -LINCKODE
• Certain problems with mob events no longer crash the island server. -davidlang55
• Islands with a shield no longer appear in the warfare target selection menu. -Unknowncmbk
• Mobs spawned from the horde event now choose one player instead of splitting between all players. -davidlang55
• Warehouse Raid Tier 4 now spawns the correct type and amount of mobs. -davidlang55
• Islands with a shield can now open the warfare target selection menu; however, this does remove the island's shield. -LINCKODE/Excel
• Mobs spawned through a mob event will now despawn and damage the invaded structure instead of existing until the island is deloaded. -davidlang55
• Players no longer have the GUI option to change the Wonder building's skin as it is not a skinned building. -LINCKODE
• After all possible buildings have been built, an Overhaul era chat message has been replaced to reflect current building design. -LINCKODE
• Wool included in certain logging camp skins is no longer replaced with produced logs. -Unknowncmbk
• Changing a building skin will no longer impact a shield's effectiveness at preventing attack. -Unknowncmbk
• Building skin changes now take an appropriate time to reskin the building. -Ryaen
• Small changes have been made to the Wonder's lore in its GUI. -Ryaen
• Players now have the ability to change a building's skin back to HUMAN if it has been reskinned to another skin. -davidlang55
• An in-progress building reskinning will now continue after players return from warfare. -Unknowncmbk
• TownHhall and Warehouse can now be correctly reset by the player if wanted. -davidlang55
• Warfare select is now properly regarded as "Select Target" in the GUI/lore (when warfare queue is disabled). -Ryaen
• Players can no longer resign from an island during Conquest. -Ryaen
• Going to war when a building is being reskinned no longer breaks warfare and no longer resets building level. -Unknowncmbk
• Players can no longer purchase infinite custom items from shopkeepers by reopening the shop menu. -Unknowncmbk
• Mobs now correctly path across rails when pathing to the player. -Craig
• Mob events have been tuned to accommodate different player counts after sufficient testing. -davidlang55
• Mob events will no longer start when no one is on the island. -Aiboh
• Warfare can no longer be declared from an island with an ongoing mob event. -Aiboh
• A recruit limit display can now be found in the Recruit menu with a timer until next reset provided. -Aiboh

WARFARE BUGS

• Players can no longer type chat messages when the post-war gold breakdown is occurring. -Excel
• Crux damage in warfare no longer counts non-fighting members of the attacking island. -davidlang55
• Crux healing in low defender scenarios now scales correctly. -davidlang55
• Defending players can no longer pick up their own loot in warfare. -Unknowncmbk
• The new custom versions of wood and stone resources can no longer be placed during Warfare. -Unknowncmbk
• Barricades, cobwebs, explosives, etc. can no longer be placed on spawnpoints in Warfare. -Unknowncmbk
• Barricades can no longer be placed within core buildings (Town Hall, Warehouse, Logging Camp, Mine). -Unknowncmbk
• Signs and wool used for logging camp functionality are now correctly removed in Warfare. -Ryaen
• Staff members can now locally broadcast messages to all participants of a warfare instance instead of using /g. -Ryaen
• A defender's inventory is not wiped when a defender dies during the warmup period of Warfare. -Ryaen
• Defenders who join with less than 20 seconds on the warmup timer are now correctly teleported to the Town Hall. -Ryaen
• Players no longer get stuck on the boat when joining after the defenders initially get teleported. -Ryaen

GENERAL BUG FIXES

• /stats now works for players in different servers and offline players. -Excel
• Buying an item from Pedro only notifies players in the hub of the purchase and no longer the entire server. -LINCKODE
• Sir Chesterly no longer informs players that Cargo Keys can be purchased. -LINCKODE
• Admin command/setprice now allows for 0 gold as an argument. -LINCKODE
• The BARRICADE trait no longer transforms blocks into wool blocks. -Unknowncmbk
• Arrows can now trigger on-hit potion effects such as blindness, slowness, poison, etc. -Unknowncmbk
• Admin Command (/currency set) now sets the player's gold amount to the specified argument instead of adding the gold to the previously existing amount. -LINCKODE
• Jump boost potions dropped from drop parties can no longer be used in the hub parkour. -Excel
• Item lore and menus related to drop parties have been updated to reflect the changes made to drop parties. -Ryaen
• Drop tables shared between mobs now function with both mobs. -Unknowncmbk
• A mob with multiple drop tables will now respect both drop tables. -Unknowncmbk
• Poison and wither effects now do true and magic damage respectively instead of the previous physical damage. -Unknowncmbk
• Baby Cow Pet is now common rarity instead of the previous epic rarity. -Ryaen
• Players can now place the Tower schematic purchased in the building basics tutorial. -LINCKODE
• Pro Tip chat message no longer states incorrect tutorial information. -LINCKODE
• During the resource collection tutorial, Bob the Lumberjack now provides the player with a free axe to continue. -LINCKODE
• Sequencing issues during the resource collection tutorial have been fixed. -LINCKODE
• The resource collection tutorial now includes the updated logging camp. -Unknowncmbk
• Ores can now be mined and correctly give stone in the resource collection tutorial. -LINCKODE
• Lore in the resource collection tutorial has been updated to reflect the changes in the tutorial. -LINCKODE
• Players are no longer allowed to purchase multiple of the same Victorious skin in the hub. -Unknowncmbk
• Chat messages, menus, and item lore for hub NPCs has been changed to reflect changes and additions of currencies. -Ryaen
• Broken users stemming from account migration are now automatically repaired, restoring island ownership and ability to join. -Unknowncmbk
• If a player incorrectly places a block in a tutorial instance, the player's inventory is updated to return the block to the inventory. -LINCKODE
• Code relating the the proxy is now optimized for large player amounts. -LINCKODE
• Traits given to a player through an equip are now reset upon relogging to prevent infinite stacking of traits. -Unknowncmbk
• Roles will now update when joining the hub server. -Unknowncmbk
• Menu for picking a civilization has been removed as civilizations are no longer utilized. -Unknowncmbk
• Players are no longer able to create islands while in the island creation queue. -Unknowncmbk
• The top tier drop party has been rebalanced. -Unknowncmbk
• An instance of Slowness effect no longer makes a player faster after expiry. -Unknowncmbk
• A player will no longer be notified twice of gold rewards from Cargo Crates. -Ryaen
• Natural health regeneration has been changed to mimic more closely to vanilla. -Ryaen
• Natural health regeneration no longer removes the visual effect of a regeneration potion. -Unknowncmbk
• Rank increases from Drop Parties now give gems if the player already has a permanent rank. -Ryaen
• /tip now works across all servers. -Unknowncmbk
• Chat messages indicating a gold booster have been made prettier. -Unknowncmbk
• The punishment system, Jarvis, now correctly kicks players after a punishment. -Unknowncmbk
• Melee and Defense XP is now correctly awarded to the player. -Ryaen
• Picking up a rank extension drop party item will now reward permanently ranked players with Gems. -Ryaen
• Shooting a bow no longer has a broken animation. -Ryaen
• Drinking a potion no longer has a broken animation. -Ryaen
• Drinking speed potions no longer lowers your default walking speed after the potion effect wears off. -Unknowncmbk
• Speed modifiers now apply correctly to players. -Unknowncmbk
• Instances where Speed was too fast have now been toned down. -Ryaen
• The maximum XP amount was changed from 101333 to 13034431. -Ryaen
• Skill leaderboards have been optimized and aesthetically improved. -Ryaen
• Rank modifiers for voting have been nerfed on all ranks. -Ryaen
• Poison can no longer kill the player. -Aiboh
• Weakness no longer disarms the player entirely. -Ryaen
• Rank discounts no longer apply to every shop in the hub. -Aiboh
• Any instance of an interactable armor stand no longer provides melee XP when hit. -Ryaen
• Cobwebs can now only be broken by TNT. -Ryaen
• The invulnerable time between hits in combat has been changed to 19 (previously 20). This should result in better hit registration. - Ryaen

CONQUEST BUGS

• The new custom versions of wood and stone resources can no longer be placed during Conquest. -Unknowncmbk
• The World Destroyer no longer pulls in players from anywhere on the map. -Ryaen
• Players that join Conquest late are able to play and are no longer stuck on the boat. -Unknowncmbk
• Duplicate kills will no longer be given to a player in Conquest if a player dies from fall damage after a preceding death. -Ryaen
• Players can no longer drain the Conquest map of all its lava. -Unknowncmbk
• Barricades, cobwebs, explosives, etc. can no longer be placed on spawnpoints in Conquest. -Unknowncmbk
• Players can no longer die on the boat to Conquest. -Ryaen
• Relogging after all lives have been lost no longer grants infinite lives. -Ryaen
• Kill credit in Conquest is now awarded correctly when multiple damage sources are in play. -Ryaen

A huge welcome back to Conquest! Conquest was added to Island Clash back in March 2016 (wow). It has taken a lot to get Conquest back and updated. You can imagine how old that code is.
We have made a few changes to Conquest, the main game change being the map. And a big change to how the game runs/starts.
Credit and thanks to: Unknowncmbk for updating Conquest so it can work again and Ryaen for fixing bugs and changing/updating some features.

If you haven't seen the trailer, watch it!

Map Changes

Anyone who has played Conquest before will remember the underground tunnels to find your way to the temple, and most likely getting completely lost on the way. We have streamlined this massively. There are no more tunnels, the map has been raised to one level. Every spawn point is spread equally around the map to the center and is the same number of blocks away from the nearest entrance.

Starting Conquest

Previously Conquest was on a constant timer which players could reduce by ‘sponsoring’ it with gold. This meant we could have multiple Conquests in a day because people would pour gold into it for a time which would benefit them greatly. This is changing. Conquest is now going to be scheduled to start at specific times. These days will be Wednesday and Saturday. Specific times are yet to be determined and will be announced in Discord in due course. The times will flip flop to suit EU timezones and NA timezones, as these are the most popular timezones. For example, Wed 5pm GMT and Sat 5pm EST, the following week it flip to Wed 5pm EST and Sat 5pm GMT. So on and so forth! We will have special weekends which will hold a Conquest on a Sunday too, those would be announced in advance.

Sponsoring

Although sponsoring to shorten the timer is long gone, it is still very important to sponsor Conquest. Sponsoring conquest costs gold and rewards you with tickets. The more tickers you have, the higher the chance your island has to participate, only 15 islands can play at once. If you don’t sponsor, you might not get in. Aside from that, the island which has the most tickets from sponsorting will claim the coveted spawn 1. Dun dun dunnn.. With the new map, this spawn still gives an advantage compared to the previous map. It is a direct line towards a temple entrance and a shorter distance to run! Spawn 1 gets you to the temple faster than any other spawn.

The Conquest Event

15 Islands compete to take over a long-lost temple. Teams must hold the center point for 15 minutes total to win the game; however, you will be competing with all the other islands to do this. It is big king of the hill (KOTH). Conquest is late-game content, it is advised you only turn up in the best gear, tier 4, to stand a chance.

Elimination/Lives

You do not have unlimited lives, and they are not individual. Your team has a set cumulative number of lives depending on how many players you have. Every time anyone on your team dies, your team lives will go down. Once your team is at 0 lives left, after dying, you will not respawn. Once there are no more alive members, your island will be eliminated from the Conquest and another team can join in to replace you.

The Center

The temple is located in the big volcano, gravel paths lead players to the entrance closest to them. Capturing is quite simple, if I step into the center, I start capturing and the timer goes down. If an enemy or two join me and try to kill me off, I remain the capturer until I am killed. So if there are 10 of the Red team currently capturing, you will have to kill all of them or have them walk off the point before it switches to your team. The timer is 15 minutes and is cumulative, it will not reset if another team starts to capture.

Wizen Boss

If the temple doesn't swap island ownership that often, a powerful beast will spawn in it, targeting everyone, specifically the winning team. It is called the Wizen. The longer people ignore it, and it isn't killed, the more powerful it becomes. Young, Old, Ancient, and World Destroyer. As time goes on the Wizen will gain more abilities, some of these abilities target the current island capturing! Run too far away, get teleported back to the Wizen! The team that finally kill it each receive a large amount of gold.

Joining Conquest

There are a few steps to go through to get into Conquest, first is sponsoring! This is done at Jorah the Explorer in the hub. After sponsorship is over, you will be able to queue for conquest on your island, speak to Jorah in the Townhall to queue. Beware, you can be warred during this time, so make sure you are armed with some shield scrolls.
If you have been accepted, you will be notified and will be able to join Conquest shortly after, again through Jorah!
Bam you’re in Conquest. If you are not accepted, that means you did not sponsor enough, if teams are eliminated, you might be chosen to replace them, so hold out hope.

Reward Breakdown

Rewards are a little different now. After a lot of discussions, we found that it is important to allow everyone, after some time, to be able to receive top rewards. Conquest is a competitive game, it is end-game content, but we do not want to block that content off completely from islands who might not be able to compete against the top.

End-of-Game Rewards

Everyone who participates receives Influence, the higher placed you are, the more you get, see image for values. You receive gold depending on how long you hold the center for “Capture Bonus”. Additionally, 1st place gets a hefty amount of gold for winning.

Totem

The Totem is the true prize of winning Conquest, apart from bragging rights. They are the currency that allows you to build The Wonder. More on what the wonder is below. However, how they are obtained has changed compared to old Conquest. Totems are purchasable through the Conquest Shop using influence won in Conquest. Only the Emperor of an island can purchase this. It will take a few Conquest wins before you have enough Influence to buy the Totem, or more than a few if you place lower down in the rankings.

Conquest Shop

You can use your winnings to buy items such as scrolls, cargo, and exclusive cosmetics.

The Wonder

The Wonder is a big building, built into the terrain next to the waterfall. You’ll see the ruins of the steps up on your island! The Wonder provides buffs per tier, 4 in total. The number of totems you need increase per tier,
Tier 1 = 1 Totem / Tier 2 = 2 Totems / Tier 3 = 3 Totems / Tier 4 = 4 Totems
The Wonder is by far the biggest building on the island, it takes a lot of work to build, and so your workers need a break before they are able to work on upgrading it again. There is a time limit on how often it can be built. No rushing to build it!

Here are the perks for the wonder, for each tier you can only choose one perk. Once you pick it, it cannot be changed. So choose wisely!

Tier 1
x2 Party Modifier - Having multiple active members on your island at once rewards you with a 'party' bonus. This increases the amount of gold that you gain from depositing resources, having this modifier increases that bonus.
Repair prices are halved - When a building gets damaged you need to spend resources in order to repair it to make sure it does not get destroyed this perk reduces the cost of the resources required.

Tier 2
Double warfare match bonus - at the end of the war there is a match bonus given out to both teams. This perk doubles the match bonus for both teams, so if you and the other island have this perk.. that's even more gold
+20% extra on shield timers - This perk adds 20% extra to any shield that you have on your island. If you use a 30 minute shield scroll with this perk, your shield will now be 36 minutes.

Tier 3
10% chance of resources instantly respawning - This is nice and simple, any resource you mine has a 10% chance to respawn instantly.
Permanent haste on the island - This gives your tools haste when mining resources

Tier 4
Buried Treasure - You saw a preview of this in the trailer, upon gathering resources, you have a chance of a treasure map dropping, digging where the 'X' is digs up a casket, this contains tier 4 gear and will drop one per casket.
Increased drop rate of cargo keys - When gathering resources you have a chance of collecting a cargo key fragment, this perk increases the chance of this occurring.

That is it for the Conquest update! A full changelog  for Season 3 will be out before release this Saturday.

Today's post is all about Warfare and everything we have done to improve the systems etc!
Firstly, I will go over an important island feature
Credit and thanks to: Unknowncmbk for re-adding target select and tying match quality to it and spawning. davidlang55 for balancing crux damage based on player count, and difference and adding gold for cruxes! Balancing help from Uncurse, Aiboh, ShadowTan and plenty of their alts.

Island Level

Maxing all buildings to level 4 doesn’t provide anything interesting for players. So what we have introduced is an Island level. The island level determines how many buildings you can build and upgrade. Each tier counts as one point. Once you’ve hit the max, you can no longer upgrade or build any more buildings. This provides a really interesting strategy for the game, you can no longer have all tier 4 buildings! Which building tiers will you have to forgo to prioritise a tier you want? The level for Season 3 is 40. I wanted to make it a lot lower, but I got told off. This number is restricting enough to make you think of a strategy but not too much that gameplay isn’t being impacted. Oh, I forgot to mention, you can build your buildings over the Townhall level. You can have a tier 4 Weaponsmith and a tier 1 Townhall if you want!
Example of levels:
Tier 1 - Townhall, LoggingCamp, Fletchers = 3 levels
Tier 2 - Armoury, Weaponsmith, Bank = 6 levels (2 each)
Tier 3 - Siege Workshop, Alchemists, Mine = 9 levels (3 each)
Total Island level of 18! Island Level does not count Tower and Wonder

Now onto warfare.

Warfare

No real gameplay features have been added to warfare, it is still the same you know and love. Due to the nature of the game it is uncommon that you will get a perfect war. Perfect is defined as the exact player count, same armour, and weapons. We have however added a lot of balancing mechanics to improve situations for those imbalances.

Target Select

We have moved back to the target select option for warfare. No more queue. If there is an available match, it will be shown in the menu. The targets shown to you are based on match quality, similar to last season but with improvements to the algorithm.

Balancing Player Numbers

Difference in player count is the biggest complaint we get. Only allowing wars with equal players would not work, people can always join late for wars once war is declared which changes the numbers anyway. We’ve added different types of balancing to even some things out

Spawning

We restricted players in the war last season which people really did not like, the difference could not be more than 2. We believe we have come up with something much better!

All players regardless of numbers at the time of war declare will spawn at the start of the war. We take the smallest team size and set the max players that can participate. For example, if the attackers have 2 people, the defenders cannot go over 4 alive people, which is the max team size. You see I said alive there right? You can go above the max team size, but the others will be spectating. You can have 6 defenders on but only 4 will be able to participate. If one dies, a new player will be respawned at random.
Let’s say the attackers with 2 people let their other members know they are in a war and one gets on, that brings the total to a 3 v 4 alive (excluding 2 specs, 6 defender total). We could increase the max team size, since the minimum has changed (from 2 to 3), to allow the other spectators to play but this would be unfair considering a 3v4 is fair player difference.

So, just a little bit more, hang in there. If Attackers get two more people on, that brings it to a 4 v 4 alive and 5 v 6 total (incl specs) both teams are now above max team size, which was 4. Since both teams are above the max team size a new smallest team size is found, which would be 5. This then scales and stops when both teams are at 7. Over 7 players and we disregard balancing numbers.

Damage to Crux

There are two variables that change the damage/healing you do to a crux.

The first is team size.
While larger islands are better for Island Clash for many reasons. We understand that there are islands that have less than 4 people on. In warfare, if your team is 1, 2 or 3 players you will deal more damage to cruxes. This also applies to healing, you will heal more damage. This scales from 1 dealing the most, to 4 being default damage. This means that 1-2 players can have a ‘normal’ war being able to take a few buildings out. Rather than sweating because you can’t break cruxes fast enough to even get a star.

The second variable is a difference in team size.
While we have balancing changes in place to numbers, we wanted to still implement this especially for larger player differences. Player difference applies specifically to both teams. We look at giving a buff to attackers if there are more defenders and to defenders if there are more attackers separately. Each variable scales differently. We buff defenders, if there are more attackers, heavier than we do for buffing attackers if there are more defenders.

Smaller notable features:

Warfare leavers
If you are in a war and the other team leaves, after a certain amount of accumulated time passes, you who stay in the war will win by default! You will gain all the spoils from winning a war.

More gold
We love gold, gold was hard to come by last season. We think we’ve added plenty now. Both of these were shown off in the season 3 launch trailer!

Gold for Cruxes
You will now receive gold based on how many cruxes you have destroyed or protected. This total is divided up and shared amongst your team.

Warcamp gold!
The WarCamp has a new feature that gives gold at the end of warfare based on its tier.
Tier 1 - 20 gold per player
Tier 2 - 35
Tier 3 - 50
Tier 4 - 65

That is the last S3 big update post. The Conquest update will be coming soon, after the trailer, on the 17th of January. Aaaaaah.

Today’s post will solely focus on Mob events! Over the many years of Island Clash, island life has stayed the same - you collect resources and build your buildings. As we add big content, such as Conquest (trailer on the 17th), it is vital to expand and add more depth to the island. For Season 3, we wanted to add something which would break up the normal monotony this is when Mob Events were created.
Credit and thanks to: davidlang55 for the sole development of this feature, huge thanks to him! The design of most of the mobs, Uncurse, Aiboh, and Jakku. Uncurse for creating and re-creating the mobs hundreds of times with me (it was awful), and Jakku for helping with some too. For help with testing, Uncurse, Aiboh, Mada, ShadowTan, ClumsyBlaze, and Tyler.

Spawning

There are 6 different events, and some have certain conditions which need to be met for them to spawn. Events have a chance to spawn after a certain amount of time, all events have equal chance to spawn, providing conditions are met. There is a slightly lower chance for an event to start if your island has an active shield.
Each event spawns its mobs based on percentages. You might have a Warehouse Raid event with 90% of one mob, and then the next time you see the same event, you won’t see any of that mob. This is great to make sure that each event of the same type provides something different each time you see it.

Balancing

We choose how many mobs to spawn based on the number of players on the island. If you have two players, we will spawn an appropriate amount of mobs for two people. If you have 8, we will spawn a tonne more. The strength of mobs is based on the level of your Weaponsmith. That is why some mobs are tier 1 and others tier 4. Their damage, health, and effects increase to keep the intensity going!

During the events

Once an event has started, you will have a few seconds to prepare before the mobs appear. Use that time wisely, you can no longer teleport to buildings or use double jump (premium) to get around.
Some events are tough if you don’t have strong enough gear. You may find yourself dying a few times. If you die, you will respawn in your townhall and lose 15% of any resources you have on you. You would think you’d just store them quickly before going to the event but nope. The Bank and Warehouse deposits are disabled upon event activation.

The Events

The good stuff, here are the 6 Events.

Your Townhall is looking mighty fine, the centerpiece of the island, how about we change that?
The Boss attack event spawns one or two Ancient Guards with Parasite minions to protect them, even if the guards attack them… with high resistance to ranged attacks, you’ll have to get up close to take them down. If you are slow at that, your Townhall will be damaged.

Mining away, I don’t know what to mine, I’ll mine this anyway, In this Mi…Venomous Spiders, Undead Miners, and Undead Archers infest the Mine, ready to take you on. The Spiders poison is pretty nasty, will they or the confusion from the archers be too much? They’ll damage the Mine if you don’t kill them in time.

Nice warehouse you’ve got there, even better, it holds lots of resources, it would be a shame if it got raided.
Reckless Bandits, Half-Eyed Bandits, Thirsty Dogs, and maybe a Greedy Pickpocketer or two will raid your Warehouse for all it has. Leave the mobs to linger? You’ll lose all of your hard-earned resources.

Chopping logs, enjoying the new Logging Camp when it gets infested with mobs.
Mites and Revenant lumberjacks spawn and attack you, go help your members before the mobs damage the Logging Camp.

Want mobs, we will give you mobs.
The Horde will surround you wherever you are, there are lots of them, Raid Zombies, Raid Skeletons, and Raid Cave Spiders. Watch out for the Raid Skeletons, they are pretty strong. Can’t you take them all down? They will damage a random building.

Shopkeepers are very protective over their stock, don’t make them angry.
Building infiltrations will spawn Undead Guards, Rattling Rangers, and Wild Boars in multiple buildings. Remember teleporting, and double jump are disabled? Good luck getting to them before the shopkeepers anger and increase their prices for 2 hours.

If you want to see the events in action, check out the trailer, where the events feature heavily! Smol embed

Drops
As mentioned in the previous post, some of the events drop new custom items. As well as the custom items, you will see mobs drop Gold, Armour, Weapons, Arrows, Wood, and Stone.

Everything mentioned above, mob spawning values, mob stats, and drops, can and will be balanced during the season based on feedback from the community.

That is it for Mob Events! Hope that you enjoy this feature, as it is quite new to Island Clash. The next and last feature post before the big Conquest post will be on.. Warfare! It will focus on the new balancing changes we have made. I will also mention a small but very important feature that will change the island quite a lot. ETA 15th

Welcome one and all to the 2nd Season 3 update log. We will be looking at re-introducing skills and adding new unique custom items. These two features go hand in hand so lots of references will be made between each section!
Credit and thanks to: Excel (no longer with IC) and Ryaen for their work on skills. Unknowncmbk for creating new item traits. Uncurse for helping to create the items. Jakku and Uncurse for designing a few with Aiboh designing the majority.

Skills

Skills were a feature that was added back in the old days, shortly before IC closed. Skills were wrapped up with professions, such as warrior and archer, which would only allow certain professions of specific levels to use certain items. This was pretty heavy.

Skills, and the perks, have now been simplified. There are 6 different skills.
MELEE: Dealing melee damage
DEFENCE: Receiving any damage
RANGED: Dealing ranged damage
AGILITY: Completing stages on the parkour course in hub
WOODCUTTING: Chopping logs in the Logging Camp
MINING: Mining ores in the Mine

Gaining Experience and Levelling

You will gain experience when participating in these activities. After you gain a certain amount, you will level up. Experience is exponential, it gets harder and harder to reach higher levels. Each season there will be a max level that can be obtained, the cap for Season 3 is 20, and so once you hit level 20, you cannot gain any more levels. We think applying a cap is essential. Skills will stay with you throughout each season, so applying a cap allows us to add items and features relating to skills at a steady pace. The level may be capped at 20, but experience can continue to be gained, it has no limit. This is where the skill leaderboard comes in!
Skarl the Skill Master in the hub will show you the leaderboard for each skill, showing the top 10 while highlighting the top 3. If you're not in the top 10, you can still see your placement in the top 500. This is how you can keep track of your level compared to others, bragging rights. A reward for the top 3 of each skill and a top reward for the player with the most experience across all skills each season sounds pretty good.

Unique Custom Items

Technically all our items are ‘custom items’ but, these are not based on vanilla Minecraft. Let's make it interesting.  We wanted to reintroduce custom items back into the game but simply and effectively. It is very important to have a slow introduction to these items for all players. So people get used to them being present in the game, but they are not everywhere! We have 12 brand new items joining the ranks, you will have seen most of their names in the trailer, but not what they do. However, I still won’t be revealing what they do. It is way more exciting for you to experience that for yourself.

Obtaining

Introducing mob events (post soon) allowed us to be creative with a lot of things, making the mobs have drop tables, which include the new custom items was one of them. We also wanted to add some to the existing building shops, but shopkeepers don't sell these items often, and when they appear, there might only be one or, if you are lucky, two in stock. This is tied to your island, if the stock is one, only one person on the island can purchase it, then it is gone. This also applies to when they are sold. Every 15 minutes the shop will restock, giving the item a chance to appear, none of the items have a 100% ‘drop rate’.

Here are the mob events that drop the new items:
Boss Attack: Draught of the Iron Golem
Mine Infestation: Sticky Web
Logging Camp Infestation: Rusty and Sharp Hatchet
Warehouse Raid: Wakizashi

The rest of the items can be found on the island at the building shopkeepers. Armoury: Juggernaut Vest and Scout Boots
Weaponsmith: Assassin Stiletto
Alchemist: Draught of the Rabbit and Draught of the Pacifist
Fletchers: Bow of True Sight and Bow of Decay

Skill Requirement

Apart from having different effects, and adding more interesting combat features to warfare and conquest. All of these new items have a skill requirement tied to them. You can buy or pick up the item, but if you don't have the required skill level, you won't be able to use it. Save it in your bank until you have leveled up enough or be kind an give it to another island member who already has!

Our wiki will be updated with information regarding all the items and what they do, once the Season is progressing and people have seen enough of the items!

Simpler update today, the next will solely focus on Mob Events and will be up on the 11th! We are getting closer and closer to launching... which is nerve-racking.
Thanks for reading!

This post is the first of many to go over the new biggest features for Season 3. As the title says, this post covers the Logging Camp Revamp and the Island Queue. I will also be crediting those who have played a large part in development and testing in the coming posts.
These features solely belong to Unknowncmbk, one of the other founders of IC. He continues to work teaching and showing our devs the ins and outs of the server he made from the ground up. Credit to Aiboh for pulling me out of the balancing nightmare I was in, making a simple solution to what was my nightmare! Uncurse for helping me chop logs for hours before and after the fact. And for ShadowTan, MadaYume, and Aiboh less hours chopping!

First up is the Logging Camp revamp!
Note: Regarding the Island Queue. Even if you are not interested or worried about getting into an island, please read to stay informed so you can help our community grow. If you want to play IC, it needs people, let us help people to play the game!

Logging Camp Revamp

The Logging Camp never stood up to the Mine regarding player interaction. However, we are limited with the space of the Logging Camp without changing the building, and how you gain logs. So thus, the revamp was born! Some of you may have seen this image on our Twitter when the revamp was being designed a long time ago. It looks funky, but it has its functionality!

Increasing player participation

Firstly on the agenda, how do we allow more players to participate in the activity? This was the main reason for updating the Logging Camp. The efficiency of resource collection with more than 1 player fell quickly. A second player was not even needed, one person could do it all alone with the log spawn timers. Whereas with the Mine, more players could participate before efficiency diminished. We wanted to replicate this in the Logging Camp, making it efficient to have more than 1 person in there.

Different attributes were added with variables that change depending on how many players are in the building and what tier it is. The length of logs spawning, the speed at which they move, and the speed at which a new log would spawn. The ‘log’ refers to a trunk of a tree, the tree trunk is broken down and sent to the Logging Camp to be chopped up. Adding these attributes, making it scale with players, and taking into consideration, so many other factors was and still is a pain. Balancing is still being done, and I’m sure it will continue on into the season. The more players you have does not equal more efficiency. With the Mine, if you have 9 people, there are not enough ores to go around, it is inefficient. This is what we have attempted to replicate for the Logging Camp. It is a pyramid of efficiency. Example efficiency: 1 player = bad, 5 players = perfect, 10 players = bad.

More logs!

Birch is old and dated, it was about time to add new log variants! Each log is different, giving you different amounts of planks and even some effects.
As follows -

Oak - 1 plank given. Available at T1+
Spruce - 2 planks given. Available at T1+
Birch - 2 planks given, has a 10% chance to spawn sawdust (see sawdust below). Available at T2+
Dark Oak - 3 planks given, takes double durability off of your axe. Available at T3+
Acacia - 4 planks given, has a 10% chance to spawn TNT (see TNT below). Available at T4
Jungle - 4 planks given for mining the log, it then spawns jungle wood which gives 2 planks. 6 Planks given in total. Available at T4

We showed the two mini-events on the launch trailer and Twitter if you want to see them.

Sawdust.
Birch logs now and then get infested with pesky Termites. If not broken in time, they will spawn and attack you. They don't drop anything, just a nuisance in general.

TNT.
This is particularly fun, Acacia can have explosive properties, and TNT can spawn in place of a log, if not broken in time, it explodes, emptying your whole collection. The explosion will shoot everyone into the air. The TNT also damages your log chute, no logs will spawn again until the fire is put out manually. It is worth letting it explode a few times just to be shot into the air.

ISLAND QUEUE

I’m sure every long-term player has seen someone complain about being unable to get into an island or make their own due to islands having a price. Giving free islands is a bad idea, I won’t go into why here, just trust it’s a bad idea.
It is so important that players who come onto Island Clash get to play the game. I’m sure we have lost hundreds of people due to being unable to play. That is, unfortunately, a big downfall of our server. So how do we get new players into islands to play the game fast? We made quickjoin, which would put players into open slots on islands, this worked to some extent but did not allow parties of two or three to join the same island.
To help combat this, Island Queue was created.

The Queue

In essence, the queue will form full islands from parties of players in the queue. If not enough people are in the queue to form an island after x amount of time, they will be put into existing islands, keeping players in their parties. The option to queue is found as a new button in the party menu or through the regular create/join /load island menu at Captain Adama.

Here is a basic outline of the algorithm:

• Once a player(s) enters the queue, start the timer.
• At intervals, the server will check if a full island can be created (6 players), if not, the definition of a “full” island will be decreased by one. However, if found, create a free island.
• The server will check first for the largest number ≤6 at each decreased increment.
• At the end of the timer, if no island can be made, players can opt for quick join, which puts them into any open island.

There are some limitations to this. Free islands will not be made if the server is at 80% capacity of island slots. For example, we have 100 island slots, but 90 are currently loaded, a free island with queue will not be made. Players will be shown to quickjoin instead.
Obviously, any party member cannot be a member of an island, including locked islands (emperors of islands from previous seasons).

Island created, what now?

/rename will be available to the island's emperor so the island members can decide on their own name. Emperor is given to the party leader of the biggest party. If there are multiple parties of the same size, it will be given to the leader who has been in the queue for the longest. Please rename your island, if not, you will be disowned by the community for keeping ‘freeisland1233456970183651930’.

This does not change some already available features. Parties of 6 will still be able to create a free island, and parties below will still be able to purchase one with the cost split between members.

That's it! That is the Logging Camp Revamp and Island Queue. I haven't decided what the next post will feature, but it will be arriving around the 5th of January.
See you here next year!

That's right, we have a launch date for Season 3. Took us some time, but we are there, finally!

The trailer briefly reviews some of the main features released in Season 3. Mob Events, Skills, Custom Items, Warfare gold additions, Logging Camp revamp, Drop Parties, and Boosters.
However, there is still more. Between now and the 21st, we will post information about all of these updates, including some which aren't mentioned in the trailer. The first post will be about the Logging Camp revamp and the new Island Queue, finishing with the full changelog closer to launch. That includes all bug fixes and smaller QOL features/updates. Oh, and don't forget the Conquest trailer, coming out on the 17th of January. Going to make you wait for that beauty.

We will be running some giveaways over that time, there is one currently up on the trailer, see video description for details! How about we giveaway the new rank at some point?

Christmas is in a few days, happy Christmas to all who celebrate! Regardless, have a wonderful day.

Thanks so much for supporting this project. See you at the next post.
IC team

Ba dum tss

It's been far too long. I can only apologise and reiterate what I said in the previous post. However, I have some pretty cool information to share which I am sure you will all be pleased about.

Island Clash has investors.
At the end of May a deal was signed between me and a cool guy called Aidan. Aidan is investing money into the development of IC, so beginning June, developers have been paid for the work that they have been doing for the server. This has made me so unbelievably pleased since I have finally been able to give something back to them other than my never-ending thanks..! Some of you have seen Aidan in the Discord and even said for him to buy IC, which made us both chuckle (but then he got DM spammed which just made me chuckle). He will be titled as an Owner! As I know people will ask, I am still remaining as Owner, you are still stuck with me.

There was an 's' at the end of that.
A few weeks ago I signed another deal with Yumokashi, in Discord Mr.Morningstar, he is putting some money into advertising costs. Yumokashi wants to help Island Clash grow which is just wonderful. We were always going to advertise Season 3, this will help as all the hard work people are putting in can get seen by new and returning people! He will be given an Investor role for his investment!

Even though I am finally able to pay developers, development has still been slow. Now don't fret, progress is and has been made (you would hope so considering the time it has been). Investments don't make the project 'boom', new developers need to be found and available time for current devs is still limited. This however, is a fantastic step for moving forwards. IC has the ability to do much more than we were able to do before any deals were made and future Island Clash now has the chance to be a slice of its past.

Some content teases
We have live leaderboards for leagues! If you head on over to our leaderboards page you can see the S2 results.  This will of course update and show live data when season 3 begins. You can keep track of you biggest rivals even closer now.

I've very lightly teased about one of the biggest features for Season 3, Mob events. I will now show you one of the mob events which come and disrupt your island.

Welcome the Warehouse Raid. Kill all the mobs before they take all your resources.

Here you can see the 4 different tiers 1-4. That's all the information you get regarding the event. For now...

Any support that is given is always so welcome and immensely appreciated. This is and has been a very stressful and difficult position to be in. I refuse to give up.

More soon, that's a promise.

That being said, I don't know when I will be able to launch Season 3. I said that we would launch it at the beginning of summer, when that didn't happen, I said before the end of the year. It's now nearing the end of the year and unfortunately, we aren't ready. There have been a lot of struggles with development. Some developers don't have enough time, some have other priorities. Since these devs are doing tasks for IC in their free time, that is completely understandable and that's fine. However, when it comes to developing the server, that doesn't make progress.

What is the plan for the new year?
I've had a lot of time to think about what to do while watching our funds dwindle away.
I'm fully committed to launching Season 3. In the new year, I'm going to use what is left in our bank to get Season 3 out. We have 850$ left. I'm going to put that money into hiring devs to do specific tasks and getting advertising from content creators on launch. What is remaining is going to go to the developers who have been working on the server since the end of S2 and paying for server hardware.

During Season 3
I will be using all the revenue we receive to start developing S4, continue developing S4 and keep advertisement up. After we had launched Season 2 the whole team was burnt out, the only work that was being done was fixing major issues, no work was being done to start S3 development. So when it came to S3 release, we were not ready.

What is left to do?
It has been about a year and since the last update, nothing major has been completed, however, that is not to say we have not made progress. Like I said earlier, we have been struggling a lot. What has been developed is not a year's worth of work - if it was.. well, we'd already have completed all the content up to Season 7.
Considering everything below, most of Season 3 is done.

Here is a list of all the tasks left to do (Excluding bug fixes)
I will go over each point and give some more detail.

• Improving PvP
• Island queue System
• Extra cosmetics
• Balancing the logging camp
• Re-testing Conquest
• QA of mob events
• Balancing skills (hold up?!)
• Balancing mob event drop tables (say wah?!)
• Balancing new custom items
• Potentially updating to latest version?!

Balancing
Logging camp, Skills, Drop tables and Custom items
These all come down to myself and the team. Order of completion will be Logging Camp -> Custom Items -> Skills -> Drop tables

Improving PvP
One of the most important aspects to competitive players. I'm unsure how I am going to go about starting this. We started to test and experiment with different configurations early on in the year, however, we lost all the data on our Jira issue tracking system so we lost all the notes for those tests (Blame Logan)... It will be starting from scratch. I hope to be able to hire someone or drag a current dev into experimenting again.

Island Queue System
This system has been designed to improve the experience when first joining Island Clash. Players will join a queue where it will pair with others in the queue according to the logic and filter people into islands or create new ones. We still need to finalise the logic of what we prioritise when creating and putting people into islands.

New Cosmetics
I will be hiring a dev or two specifically for these additions

QA -
Conquest and Mob events
Both of these have already been tested heavily, conquest needs another full test with players and mob events just need to be checked over a few more times! This shouldn't take long to complete but will be done towards the end of everything else due to the impact of Custom items/drop tables on these events. Will be revealing more about Mob events in the new year.

Considering everything above, most of Season 3 is done.

I am sorry for keeping you all in the dark for so long. I'm doing everything I can do on my end to progress S3 as best I can. Progress stops as soon as our volunteer devs become busy with other projects and life. I am not blaming the devs at all, they are doing so much great work for the server not knowing when and how much they are getting paid for it. I wish that I could hire a developer to work full time on the server, but we don't have the funds to do so. As such we get stuck in this state of limbo where front end work gets completed and back end work moves slowly. I hate seeing the server slip away as much as you, as I and countless others put so much time and effort into IC to try and make it thrive and be self-sufficient. I thank you all for bearing with us, and I will be doing my best to make sure that something like this does not happen again.

We've still been posting teaser updates over on our twitter!

Once again thank you all. If it were not for you, we would have no reason to be here and pour all this passion and effort into the server.

See you all soon and have a great winter break and Christmas!

-Beth

We have a lot to talk about! A lot of things have been going on behind the scenes. We are also hosting a Q&A this Saturday, 31st of July at 5pm BST // 12pm EST, come join, ask us questions about IC and the development of Season 3! We are going to be trying out a software called Branch for this Q&A, looks like it could be fun doing community things like this on there! I will post the link to join in Discord closer to the time.

First off you may have noticed our new website. We have planned for a while now, which needed much persuasion from Stephen to get me along with it, to move away from our forums. Although I love the forums and it has many good uses, we want to modernise, the forums are a bit outdated for us now and we feel that Discord is the best place for communication for us to you the players and player -> player communication.
We still have the forums up for now as we slowly migrate over to Discord for most uses. Also having our main posts on a site like this is super pretty!

Secondly, you also may have noticed some new names with the Developer role on Discord. We have been hiring! These new devs have been doing wonders, picking up the slack and overall are doing an amazing job in fixing and creating things for the server. I will share an update on the server status with a changelog in due course.

Thirdly, we have taken huge action into getting the whole team more involved with IC. As I have taken over Ownership of IC, I don't have the time to do all the front-end work for the server anymore. So we decided to involve the current moderators in actual work and design for the server. We have weekly meetings where we gather together and discuss what has been done and what needs to be done within each of these roles - Content & Technical Design, Community Communications, Game Balancing, Quality Assurance, Events and Customer Support. Previously I would do all this myself, albeit some not very well!
We have been doing this for nearly 2 months and we are making good progress (I went on holiday for a week and organisation went out the window...smh).
Within this we also want to involve community members, we currently have 1 non-staff member involved and will be looking to add more. We don't have spaces open at the moment but will be looking to expand soon.

Finally Season 3. With the above things said, Season 3 is coming along swimmingly. We still have some important aspects to address and look into, such as improving PvP. However, we have also been addressing some major issues of the current gameplay and are improving those by adding new features and content within the game. One of those you will have seen in our #polls channel, a queue system to allow players to easily get into islands. We now plan to communicate with you guys more, post teasers on new and returning features and give you changelog updates!

See you at the Q&A!