Welcome

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!