It’s been almost a month and a half since the Gameplay Tune-Up’s first wave of testers were given their initial bumignment. What have we been up to in that time? I’ll tell you.

   The first week’s tests involved logging in to the test server, and prompted Evil Trout to shut down some “crucial” (read: not crucial) services, because some pranksters thought it would be funny to take popular names on the test server.

   The second week’s tests involved a thread casting a negative status effect (debuff) on the player, and a retool of the way lemon scoops are earned. The new status effect, called Ad Hominem, deals persistent damage to the player, and is cured by a new drug, currently called Remember-Not. The lemon formula wasn’t so hot.

   The third week’s tests involved making sure that Ad Hominem works properly in all situations, and introduced a battle log that keeps track of what has happened to you during the forum battle. Moreover, the lemon scoop formula was greatly improved, and time and thread count will no longer be factors in trying to earn your three yellows per visit. Furthermore, a new type of collectable was introduced: fans. You gain fans when you pwn fora, and lose them during rollover. The full formula for how you lose fans has yet to be discovered, but it has been noted that you lose fewer fans while you are streaking. (People like naked people, apparently.)

   The fourth week introduced an ability called AFK that increases your defense, but does nothing else. The ability has no cooldown, and at the time, had no seeming value in pwning. This was offset when Evil Trout introduced some new thread debuffs, each of which “inactivates” all of your abilities by a number of turns (1, 3 or 6 on the test server). These are prevented beforehand by consumables purchased in von Neumann’s.

   The current week introduces consumable decay. Consumables that go unused for a period of time go bad, decaying into junk items that then decay into other junk items. At present, some interesting junk items have been discovered, and there may be more to be found.

   And that’s what we’ve been up to over on the test server.