Along with the new wasteland map today, we have another smaller update.

Introducing...

1. New Abilities - There's a whole new category of abilities called Items that comes with a few abilities for now (and more in the future). This comes with Item Study, Intermediate Item Study, Armor Honing, Weapon Honing. Item Study is unlocked for everyone whose level is greater than 20 in Information > Abilities.

Armor Honing and Weapon Honing are 2 new abilities that let you passively train equipped Armor and Weapon XP per hour.

Intermediate Item Study let's you use certain special items. For now, there's only one green radioactive item that you can use. (Hint: ).

It comes with another ability too but more on that in a few weeks.

Using the gives you...

2. Player Status Effects - These are effects that either provide players with buffs or debuffs or both . Right now, if you use a , you can get the following Effects:

a) Radioactive Efficiency

b) Radiation Sensitivity

On using a , you will always receive the first status effect, while having a small chance of getting the second! Bare in mind that you can only use a once every 3 hours (unless otherwise blog-posted).

I hope you like this smaller update. I expect there to be ..polarizing opinions on the new abilities in particular but enjoy

On a separate note, or notes:

1. Contributors for the Phoenix Key phase of the event - your reward will come soon!
2. We've been slowly increasing in average online now. General online now numbers have gone from 60-70 to 70-80s and occasionally now 90s!
3. We hit Online Now 101 earlier this week Whether these numbers are to do with new year's, advent, or updates, or none of these, I think they're great and encouraging!

As a tiny dumb celebration for #3, this weekend will have Double Gains active. The effects of Radioactive Efficiency? They'll stack on top of Double Gains. Enjoy

You wait ages for a blog then 3 come along at once. In addition to the previous change, the following tiles will be unblocked for movement.

8:2, 2:8, 14:8 and 8:14

As funny as it would be to see one gang permanently locked in to their little alleyway, this isn't really very good sportsmanship!

Ok, as per the previous blog. Following this hourly tick the Grounding Station will no longer be capturable by normal means. It will be under the permanent control of the lowest scoring gang. In addition to this it will not earn the controlling gang any additional points towards their score. (Although it was only giving +10 points anyway because it was technically red zoned, despite being accessible)

Results for the last round of warfare are below. New mechanics are working, we got a few bugs fixed early on. As fun as it was to have a tile that was controlled by both Outcasts and Blade of Dawn, that is now fixed.

The auto-switching to the weakest gang mechanic is working but at present the strongest gang can just recapture before the hourly tick to set their own conduits. I'm undecided on whether or not this is a good thing at present. It will definitely be annoying to have to recapture it 24 times a day but if gangs are willing to do that it kind of defeats the point of giving it to the weakest gang in the first place.

Warfare: October - December 2016
1: Outcasts: 2,980,420
2: Dark Flame: 1,302,590
3: Blade of Dawn: 427,860
4: Chapter: 399,550