April Fool's Day

From TheKolWiki

Each year on April 1st, things in the Kingdom of Loathing are a little different than normal.

[edit] Dates

• April Fool's Day I: April 1, 2005 (Starch 7, Year 9)
• April Fool's Day II: April 1, 2006 (Jarlsuary 4, Year 13)
• April Fool's Day III: April 1, 2007 (Boozember 1, Year 16)
• April Fool's Day IV: April 1, 2008 (Petember 7, Year 20)
• April Fool's Day V: April 1, 2009 (Bill 4, Year 24) (predicted)

[edit] 2005

• Site Announcement:

  The announcement "In an effort to increase revenue, a small number of tasteful and unobtrusive advertisements have been added to the site." was posted and one of the following (quite hilarious) ads were randomly added to the upper left of the character pane each time it refreshed.

• Combat Sponsors:

  In addition, rounds of combat were preceded by the text, "This round of combat brought to you by:", after which appeared one of the following ads:

• Special Items:

  The emo roe was available for purchase in Mr. Store just for this one day.

• The Spectral Pickle Factory:

  Also, the Spectral Pickle Factory appeared in the the Nearby Plains, but was inaccessible.

[edit] 2006

• Site changes:

  When accessing http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/, the page appearing was changed from the regular login page to a parody of an atrocious domain-squatting directory site. Clicking on its title led you to http://www.site-pimp.com/, a web site owned by Jick which contained even more hilarious content. Any of the "domain squatting" links on the fake "directory site" took you to the legitmate KoL login screen.

• Forum changes:
  • The Ring of Flame was pushed to the top of the KoL forums.
  • Several new, hybrid forums were created, such as "Gameplay-Ramblings, "Random-Discussion," and "The junk pile - mod forum." Anarchy reigned. Gameplay-Discussion and Random Ramblings were nowhere to be found.
  • When you posted in the forums, "the" would be changed to "TEH", "are" to "R" and "you" to "U".

• Special Adventures:
  • All ultra rare adventures were appearing in the appropriate areas at non-rare frequencies and "forgetting" to drop the rare.

  [icon] You acquire an item: Fatal error: Call to undefined function giveitem() in /var/www/virtuals/www.kingdomofloathing.com/htdocs/fight.php on line 5035

  • Among these ultra rare encounters was Count Bakula in the Misspelled Cemetary, who had never appeared before, and who appeared to drop a Talisman of Bakula (except with the above Fatal error message). The Count Bakula was later discovered to be a real ultra rare adventures.

• Special Items:

  McPhee's Grimoire of Hilarious Object Summoning was available for purchase in Mr. Store as April's item of the month. The grimoire grants the skill Summon Hilarious Objects which allows a player to summon (classic April Fool's) joke objects like whoopie cushions. It was thought to be specific to April Fools Day (Like the emo roe before it) but has since stayed in the store, making it a legitimate Item of the Month.

• The Spectral Pickle Factory:

  The Spectral Pickle Factory appeared in the Distant Woods, but clicking on its image had no effect. However, users who clicked on its usual location in the Nearby Plains (despite the fact that their mouse cursor did not change to indicate a link) were rewarded with the rare opportunity to explore the factory, battle its inhabitants, and gather the valuable spectral pickle ingredients within.

[edit] 2007

• Kingdom of Loathing Announcement:

  "March 31
  April's Item-of-the-Day... er... Month is in Mr. Store.
  Also, click here to check out our exclusive sneak preview of NS13 content. It's exciting!"

• Supposed NS13 content:

  Lies ;)

• April's item of the month:

  Bad penguin eggs became available at Mr. Store. The KoL news announcement suggested that they were going to be available for one day only; that, too, was a lie.

• Special Items:

  The Traveling Trader appeared in town with Deactivated O.A.F.s on sale for 100 twinkly wads each.

• Weird summons:

  The skill Summon Snowcone yielded yellow snowcones only. Summon Hilarious Objects on the other hand produced regular snowcones.

[edit] 2008

• Kingdom of Loathing Announcement:

"March 31
April's Item-of-the-Salad is now available in Mr. Store."

• Site changes:
  • During maintenance, the Kingdom became the Kingdom of Salad.
  • Most effect, avatar, monster, adventure and item pictures became replaced with images of a bowl of salad.
    • The Petite Porter, Scrawny Stout and Infinitesimal IPA drinks from The Gnomish Micromicrobrewery were unchanged.
    • The first and third forms of the Naughty Sorceress were replaced with the bowl of salad, however, the second form remained the same as normal.
    • K-mails sent with item(s) on this day retain the original salad picture even though the event is over.
  • In combat fumble messages, <body parts> were replaced with salad ingredients, like raspberry vinaigrette, fresh ground pepper, etc.
  • Random words in monster and item descriptions were replaced with "salad".
  • Players with a "KoL Player Pic" in their profile had their photo replaced with a photograph of a salad (one of five types -- a normal salad, a bread salad, a meat "salad", a fruit salad or a cheese "salad").

• Forum Changes:
  • The forums were changed to "Forums of Salad" and all of the public subforums had their names changed (e.g., Kingdom Community became "Fruit Salad" and the Ring of Flame became the "Circle of Friendship and Love")
  • Some moderators had their names changed to the names of infamous users; John Crerar became Pappabear and Hogulus became xsmootx (after xSmootx, a player who is banned from the KoL forums).
  • All the threads in RR were deleted and some users were jokingly banned.

• The Spectral Salad Factory:

The Spectral Salad Factory appeared in the Nearby Plains, in the same location where the Spectral Pickle Factory has previously appeared. The Salad Factory contained only one adventure, dropping one delicious salad per adventure.