History of Loathing

Resurrection!
As of March 2006, The KoL Historians have dived back into this amazing project and should be held accountable for all errors or offences. From here on, the italics are by our conspicuous cabal. For now, we will be using Trog Dor's structure, and no matter what we change, we will always be striving to meet his standards.

We miss you Trog Dor, and thank you for this gift to the KoL community. - Bete Noire (#180553) & TavernWench (#358045)

FAQ

Trog's original greeting: Below is the history of the online RPG parody Kingdom of Loathing. It gleaned from the Announcements and Trivial Updates pages, the forums, and the personal records of some players. Please msg me in-game (#33932) or on the forums for additions, corrections, and suggestions. Thanks are due up-front to Jick and Mr. Skullhead for a) this game b) not deleting the hundreds of old topics that have aided me greatly in this. A 'thank you' too to the folks who have filled in details and dates for me. Thanks to Chubbles and Qrrbrbirlbel for giving me a whole load of stuff to find out about and add. Special shout-out to Gigs for hosting this originally and BoozerBear for doing it currently.

Disclaimers:

  • I'm still working on this, give me time to add in everything (hyperlinks, more dates, better formatting, etc).
  • Most dates are approximate.
  • Plaintext is Jick's writing, italics is mine.
    Enjoy.
    - Trog Dor (#33932), October 18 2004

    2003
    January - March
    April - June
    July - September
    October - December
    2004
    January - March
    April - June
    July - September
    October - December
    2005
    January - March
    April - June
    July - September
    October - December
    2006

    March

    -> Back to the History home

    January 2005

    January 3

    Happy New Year! January's familiar-of-the-month is being implemented right now, and will probably become available tomorrow.

    In other news, the Hall of the Legends of the Times of Old has changed somewhat -- instead of being limited to 30,000 Meat per day, it's now limited to 10,000 Meat times your character level.

    You can now delete your profile by submitting the form with all of the fields blank. And there was much rejoicing. By Xenophobe.

    Clan stat training purchases are now correctly affected by the moon phases.

    There is 399B liquid meat in the game, another 36B in auto-sellable goods, and a total of 51 billionaires.

    January 4

    January's familiar is now available (the baby yeti)

    Changed /listen so it bolds the channel you are actually in.

    Added "...is a proud bearer of a..." tags to profiles for Mr. A Jr's and Ms. A's.

    January 5

    A much-requested feature has finally been added - the ability to have more than one Custom Outfit. Knock yourselves out.

    January 6

    [Mall searches have] changed again. Item searches are now substring searches, the way they used to be. To do an exact-match search, enclose your search in double quotes. No more wildcards.

    Added [link] before URL's in store descriptions for hot hyperlink action.

    January 8

    Bete Noire, BunnyBabs, and Bralidon host a Seattle meetup that with 40+ KoLers, including Jick, is the largest KoL gathering to date.

    l337 sn4x0rs are the first clan in many months to steal all of the goodies Crazen Markay's Madmen possessed - and keep them, making the sn4xors the new "Most Goodies-Rich Clan."

    January 11

    The Ghost Pickle on a Stick recipe is reinstated.

    Modified password hashes so they change each time you login and are better encrypted.

    There is 384B liquid meat in the economy, with 46 billionaires and 16,000 millionaries (roughly 1B meat/day is draining out).

    January 12

    The soft cap of 200 on adventures has been removed -- during the day, if you eat or drink something that puts you over 200, you will no longer lose the extra. Adventures will still cap at 200 upon nightly rollover, though, so don't go to sleep with more than 200 unless you want to lose them.

    In other news, Mr. Store and Trophy Hut have moved to Market Square (screenshot of the old layout).

    Also, a bug whereby hennaliciousness didn't work properly when you spend more than one adventure at a time has been fixed.

    Limited search results in the mall to the first 300.

    January 13

    Added the Fez of Etymology in honor of Fautus Pringle.

    January 14

    Thanks to the efforts of TechSmurf and others, Peter Cushing returns to the KoL Forum logo - this time with peek-a-boo animation.

    January 16

    Minor change: Summoning of dry noodles and Scrumptious Reagents is now done from the skills page, not the campground. It also no longer uses up an Adventure, and instead costs 10 MP per item.

    January 17

    The interface for the campground has changed. Now it's less texty, and more like the rest of the game. Also included in this update are some modifications to the way picket and barbed-wire fences work -- you can now have up to nine units of each of them installed, and their effects have changed somewhat. Also, the Clockwork Maid is re-named to Meat Maid.

    Like Bartenders before them, Chefs-in-a-box now explode after extended use. Three new disgusting items are introduced: white chocolate and tomato pizzas, carob chunk noodles, and chorizo brownies.

    You can no longer shop at a store owned by someone whose account has been disabled.

    Fixed a bug that was allowing multiple reagents/noodles to be made from the campground.

    Fixed a bug that briefly allowed anyone access to the dev server.

    Fnord7's chefbot is permanently taken offline after many fruitful months of cooking for adventurers.

    January 18

    ChefBoiAreDee goes public with his tool for anybody to make/run a buffbot.

    January 19
    After months of painful deliberation, we're proud to announce the winner of the Yeti-naming contest: Riff! See the yetis in their new environment, as well as a list of the runner-up winners, in the newly unveiled Cannon Museum on the Right Side of the Tracks.

    The Big Cannon in Town is relocated to the Cannon Museum.

    New papaya picture! (old papaya graphic)

    Names in player store log now link to profiles.

    You can now forbid people on your ignore list from buying from your store. This can be changed from the manage store page.

    January 20
    Added the "Weeping Pizza" trophy.

    Made player names clickable in stores' recent activity logs.

    January 21
    Made the Detective Skull a hat (no longer works by just sitting in your inventory) to make it less lag-tastic when in battle.

    Added a trophy for having 500 lbs. of familiars.

    January 22
    The list of every online player has been removed from the buff target dropdown. This feature was added back when there weren't nearly as many people playing, and has become cumbersome and hard on the database.

    January 23
    The number of turns played is updated once per day instead of live as-they're-used like previously. The change is a response to shorebots that gave unfair advantages.

    January 24
    Zair discovers an item duplication bug using mall stores. He's awarded a BBFB.

    January 28
    MaxDemian finds an infinite meat & adventures bug. He's awarded two BBFB's as a result. After collaborating with Max, HotStuff uses a similar process and discovers and arbitrary item creation bug. He dupes Voodoo Dolls, which are then sold in BoozerBear's store as a meatsink.

    January 29
    The Hermit interface has been redesigned to be a little bit user-friendlier. In other news, "user-friendlier" is now the preferred way of saying "more user-friendly."

    I also added a minor feature to the chat macro system. If you put a "$$" in a macro, it'll replace it with the rest of your chat command, rather than just appending it to the end of the macro value like it does now. If you're the kind of person who will use this, that awkward sentence probably adequately explains it.

    February 1
    Lucky Surprise Eggs are implemented. This unusual food drops collectable "Tiny Plastic" items (equippable as accessories) of many varieties.

    February's Monthly Special appears in Mr. Store - the Silk Garter Snake fights like a Cocoabo and snarls like a Potato.

    31337 scrolls now may only be used after playing a certain number of turns.

    February 2
    Maiden Wigs implemented. "Clockwork" maids are magically altered overnight into "Meat" maids.

    February 5
    KoL Con Carne is hosted by the NinjaPirateZombieRobot clan in San Francisco.

    February 7
    Repbot, by Gamacodre, goes live.

    February 8
    Added favorite food/booze in profile.

    February 9
    Lemons are now available in the hippy store. 400k Player IDs exist.

    February 10
    The cocktail system is currently undergoing a revamp, in order to properly balance it. You'll notice minor changes in some of the drinks and recipes over the next day or two. Also, several new items.

    Pay close attention when you are drinking. Some items now give more drunkenness than they used to. All of the people who accidentally overdrank before this announcement have had their drunkenness reset to 19. Turns will not cap out at 200 tonight, for the benefit of those who overdrank and don't log on before rollover. Tomorrow night everything will return to normal.

    UPDATE: The booze revamp is pretty much done. There might be some more slight changes to the quality and stat gains of certain drinks, but the majority of things will stay the way they are now. Drunkenness was actually reset twice over the course of this day. Several new items are implemented, and drinks recipies are changed drastically. Base booze items now include Bottle of Vodka, Bottle of Gin, Bottle of Whiskey, Bottle of Rum, Bottle of Tequila, and Boxed Wine.

    A new skill, "Advanced Cocktailcrafting," is implemented. Disco Bandits alone are capable of making drinks containing Little Paper Umbrellas or their newly introduced equivalents, Magical Ice Cubes and Coconut Shells.

    Ent Cider and Stone of Xtreme Power no longer drop.

    February 11
    Added the /haiku chat channel and the hidden secret quest to open it up. HIDDEN SECRET. Thanks to Bragi for the idea for the channel.

    February 13
    Skycruise officially opens KolBay.

    February 14
    Valentines become available in the Demon Market at 500 meat apiece. They allow you to choose one of a large assortment of game-related image/poem combinations to send out with a standard kmail.

    February 15
    I added two new chat channels today. /radio is open to everybody, and is for discussion of (huge surprise, here,) Radio KoL. The other channel is /pvp, and it becomes available to you when you break your Hippy Stone.

    A change has been made to the way damage absorption works. It was previously possible (pretty easy, actually) to get your absorption percentage over 100%, which is obviously not the way things should've been. You'll take slightly more damage from monsters close to your own level, now.

    Also, I added a Moxie boost reagent potion to fill in what I believe is the final gap in the reagent potion structure. Thanks to ShadowsLight for pointing out the need, and to Karl Dark for suggesting the name. Megrimlock hosts St. Skeletor's day as an answer to Valentine's Day; Many people send out skulls as gifts.

    February 16
    Two new trophies are implemented: the Tiny Plastic Trophy and the Failure to Communicate Trophy

    Borax The Clean, HeyGurlfriend, Mick, One Winged Goose, c00c00c00, Kavall, Fujiko, Mikel, and Spazworrier are all made chat mods.

    February 18
    Beanbag chairs start ripping.

    February 21
    Added "propose trade" link to the player profile. Borax The Clean is briefly made a mod of every forum but RoF, to respond to a spam attack. Betrayer resigns his Random Ramblings modship in response.

    February 22
    Moved chat PMs to the secondary database server. /last should work a little more quickly now. Also in response to the events involving Borax, Tubby petitions J&S for more mods; as punishment, he is modded, as is Darionlar in General, TechSmurf, Darionlar, and Aelfrhian in the Ring of Flame, and Philanthropist in Random Ramblings.

    February 23
    Cynn is modded in the Ring of Flame

    February 26
    London KoL meetup happens.

    February 27
    It is noted that Boozer has been given a singular, untradable sober pill to put in his display case, the last of its kind.

    Stable leaks images of the Naughty Sorceress's Tower crumbling.

    February 28
    "Boozerbear's Casbah of Values," home to so many dramatic sales, hacking revelations and meatsinks (and a near-permanant fixture on page one of the Mall of Loathing) is autosold, and disappears forever.

    March 1
    Ascension testing begins. Boozerbear, Riff, Hotstuff, Gigs, and ShadowsLight all Ascend on this first day.

    A slew of items are denoted "quest items" and are flagged unsellable/untradable.

    March 2
    Sorry for the lack of announcements lately -- we're hard at work testing a big chunk of new code and content. See the Ascension sticky in the forums for more details.

    Marshall finds a post-ascension bug that allows him to reach level 69 in one day.

    March 3
    The loophole with Astral Shell that made it so that monsters did only 1 damage while star gear was equipped is closed.

    March 5
    In a classic case of "better late than never," March's monthly special has been placed in Mr. Store. It's not a familiar this month, but it's familiar-related. The familiar-related item referred to in this announcement was the Lucky Tam o'Shanter- a piece of familiar equipment which adds effectively 10 lbs worth of Leprechaun to whatever effects your familiar already has.

    March 6
    Pie crust recipe is changed to a cooking recipe; fullness of Key Lime Pies changes as a result.

    March 7
    Giboc is re-modded in Random Ramblings

    March 8
    Some cosmetic (and invisible technical) changes have been made to the class guilds in town. There's nothing new there, but there's room for new stuff in the future.

    Tonu has now found 3 Talismans of Baio in 3 days.

    March 9
    Booze Giants now drop all six of the base booze items.

    If you search for an item, and the price when you enter the store is different than the price the search showed, you'll now get an annoying confirmation popup. Now there is absolutely no excuse if you get "scammed" by somebody switching prices back and forth in their store.

    March 10
    The look of the forums is overhauled, and "Fan Stuff" is added, to allow artists and authors to stop clogging up the "Contests" forum and to encourage them to create.

    OhGodTheRats and Alecat are made moderators of "Fan Stuff."

    March 13
    Bashy announces the Noblesse Oblige "Week of Drunken Loving." Over the next seven days, each and every Noblesse member sponsors a contest, giveaway, raffle, or some other booze-themed charitable project to benefit the Citizens of Loathing and to honor St. Patrick's Day.

    March 14
    Mt. McLargeHuge has been altered such that it opens up over the course of a multi-part quest, instead of randomly becoming available once you hit a certain stat level. The quest starts at the Council, for characters level 6 and over.

    March 15
    Another change similar to yesterday's, but less elaborate. The ability to go inside of Cobb's Knob now opens up when the Council gives you a quest to defeat the Goblin King, at level 5.

    Also, the Deep Fat Friars' Quest has been bumped up to level 7, and the difficulty of the monsters in the area has been raised accordingly.

    Fnord7 and the Trade Foundation jointly announce the triumphant return of Chefbot. It operates on a much more limited scale, to conserve its Bartenders and Chefs- but it is still capable of mixing 5 drinks and cooking 3 dishes per player, daily.

    March 17
    St. Sneaky Pete's Day is implemented. It will become a recurring holiday on the KoL Calender. Green Beer is now a cocktailcraftable item. New drunken stupor content is added, for this one day, for those whose inebriety exceeds 26. A huge number of people undergo temporary sex-changes to obtain 3 new items (beads of various colors) which are available only to those with female accounts.

    Over the last few days, the "Week of Drunken Loving" was so well recieved that Jick creates a new custom item- N.O. Beer- and gives one to each member of Noblesse Oblige. The 42 beers cannot be consumed, and cannot be kept by Noblesse's membership. They are given out to honor KoL's "Unsung Heroes."

    March 18
    Orange traffic cones appear in the inventories of some who adventured on St. Sneaky Pete's Day.

    March 19
    Radio KoL hosts Arkanstock.

    March 23
    Added some checks for really easy-to-guess passwords in the character creation and password change scripts.

    You can now edit your chat macros all at once, from the Account menu.

    March 24
    There has been a slight change to the way the Turtle Tamer's Headbutt and Spectral Snapper skills work. Headbutt now follows up a successful attack with an addition attack that effectively just uses your helmet as a weapon. Spectral Snapper's damage has been made such that it increases proportionally to your Mysticality.

    Combat change: All ranged weapons (accordions, crossbows, and a few others) now use Moxie instead of Muscle when determining whether you hit or not. Crossbow Fever, having been made irrelevant, was changed -- it now just increases your chance of hitting with a crossbow.

    Also: The way HP is calculated has changed in a significant way. No matter what class you are, your HP is now based on your (buffed) Muscle in the same way that your MP is based on Mysticality.

    Also also: There's a new Pastamancer skill (at level 5) that gives a passive 25% bonus to maximum HP.

    Also, additionally: The damage done by Sauceror combat spells now increases with Mysticality to a higher level than it did before.

    And then: Your Max HP will never go below what it would be at your base Muscle level, so negative effects (like Beaten Up) won't affect it as much. The same change has been applied to MP.

    The pixel potions have been made somewhat more effective.

    March 26
    Happy Oyster Egg Day!

    Last night, the Enchanted Flying Oyster hid his magical eggs all over the Kingdom. Grab a basket and see what you can find!

    New items implemented: Oyster Basket is available at the Demon Market, and adventuring with it equipped can result in finding Oyster Eggs of various sorts. A temporary leaderboard for egg-finding appears on the front page.