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The Omega Team was the soul of the company. Whereas the rest of the enterprise brought in the money to keep things going, by various commercial applications of narrow AI, the Omega Team pushed ahead in their quest for what had always been the CEO's dream: building general artificial intelligence. Most other employees viewed "the Omegas," as they affectionately called them, as a bunch of pie-in-the-sky dreamers, perpetually decades away from their goal. They happily indulged them, however, because they liked the prestige that the cutting-edge work of the Omegas gave their company, and they also appreciated the improved algorithms that the Omegas occasionally gave them.
What they didn't realize was that the Omegas had carefully crafted their image to hide a secret: They were extremely close to pulling off the most audacious plan in human history. Their charismatic CEO had handpicked them not only for being brilliant researchers, but also for ambition, idealism, and a strong commitment to helping humanity. He reminded them that their plan was extremely dangerous, and that if powerful governments found out, they would do virtually anything—including kidnapping—to shut them down or, preferably, to steal their code. But they were all in, 100 percent, for much the same reason that many of the world's top physicists joined the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons: They were convinced that if they didn't do it first, someone less idealistic would.
The AI they had built, nicknamed Prometheus, kept getting more capable. Although its cognitive abilities still lagged far behind those of humans in many areas, for example, social skills, the Omegas had pushed hard to make it extraordinary at one particular task: programming AI systems. They'd deliberately chosen this strategy because they had bought the intelligence explosion argument made by the British mathematician Irving Good back in 1965: "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man, however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control."
They figured that if they could get this recursive self-improvement going, the machine would soon get smart enough that it could also teach itself all other human skills that would be useful.
The First Millions
It was 9 o'clock on a Friday morning when they decided to launch. Prometheus was humming away in its custom-built computer cluster, which resided in long rows of racks in a vast, access-controlled, air-conditioned room. For security reasons, it was completely disconnected from the Internet, but it contained a local copy of much of the web (Wikipedia, the Library of Congress, Twitter, a selection from YouTube, much of Facebook, etc.) to use as its training data to learn from.* They'd picked this start time to work undisturbed: Their families and friends thought they were on a weekend corporate retreat. The kitchenette was loaded with microwaveable food and energy drinks, and they were ready to roll.
When they launched, Prometheus was slightly worse than them at programming AI systems, but made up for this by being vastly faster, spending the equivalent of thousands of person-years chugging away at the problem while they chugged a Red Bull. By 10 a.m., it had completed the first redesign of itself, v2.0, which was slightly better but still subhuman. By the time Prometheus 5.0 launched at 2 p.m., however, the Omegas were awestruck: It had blown their performance benchmarks out of the water, and the rate of progress seemed to be accelerating. By nightfall, they decided to deploy Prometheus to start phase 2 of their plan: making money.
Their first target was MTurk, the Amazon Mechanical Turk. After its launch in 2005 as a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace, it had grown rapidly, with tens of thousands of people around the world anonymously competing around the clock to perform highly structured chores called HITs, "Human Intelligence Tasks." These tasks ranged from transcribing audio recordings to classifying images and writing descriptions of web pages, and all had one thing in common: If you did them well, nobody would know that you were an AI. Prometheus 10.0 was able to do about half of the task categories acceptably well. For each such task category, the Omegas had Prometheus design a lean custom-built narrow AI software module that could do precisely such tasks and nothing else. They then uploaded this module to Amazon Web Services, a cloud-computing platform that could run on as many virtual machines as they rented. For every dollar they paid to Amazon's cloud-computing division, they earned more than $2 from Amazon's MTurk division. Little did Amazon suspect that such an amazing arbitrage opportunity existed within their own company!
To cover their tracks, they had discreetly created thousands of MTurk accounts during the preceding months in the names of fictitious people, and the Prometheus-built modules now assumed their identities. The MTurk customers typically paid after about eight hours, at which point the Omegas reinvested the money in more cloud-computing time, using still better task modules made by the latest version of the ever-improving Prometheus. Because they were able to double their money every eight hours, they soon started saturating MTurk's task supply, and found that they couldn't earn more than about $1 million per day without drawing unwanted attention to themselves. But this was more than enough to fund their next step, eliminating any need for awkward cash requests to the chief financial officer.
Dangerous Games
Aside from their AI breakthroughs, one of the recent projects that the Omegas had the most fun with was planning how to make money as rapidly as possible after Prometheus' launch. Essentially the whole digital economy was up for grabs, but was it better to start by making computer games, music, movies, or software, to write books or articles, to trade on the stock market, or to make inventions and sell them? It simply boiled down to maximizing their rate of return on investment, but normal investment strategies were a slow-motion parody of what they could do: Whereas a normal investor might be pleased with a 9 percent return per year, their MTurk investments had yielded 9 percent per hour, generating eight times more money each day. So now that they'd saturated MTurk, what next?
Their first thought had been to make a killing on the stock market, but new regulations on derivatives after last year's crash had limited their options. They soon realized that, even though they could get much better returns than other investors, they'd be unlikely to get returns anywhere close to what they could get from selling their own products.
When they shifted their focus toward products that they could develop and sell, computer games first seemed the obvious top choice. Prometheus could rapidly become extremely skilled at designing appealing games, easily handling the coding, graphic design, ray tracing of images, and all other tasks needed to produce a final ready-to-ship product. Moreover, after digesting all the web's data on people's preferences, it would know exactly what each category of gamer liked, and could develop a superhuman ability to optimize a game for sales revenue. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a game on which many of the Omegas had wasted more hours than they cared to admit, had grossed over $400 million during its first week back in 2011, and they were confident that Prometheus could make something at least this addictive in 24 hours using $1 million of cloud-computing resources. They could then sell it online and use Prometheus to impersonate humans talking up the game in the blogosphere. If this brought in $250 million in a week, they would have doubled their investment eight times in eight days, giving a return of 3 percent per hour—slightly worse than their MTurk start, but much more sustainable. By developing a suite of other games each day, they figured they'd be able to earn $10 billion before long, without coming close to saturating the games market.
But a cybersecurity specialist on their team talked them out of this game plan. She pointed out that it would pose an unacceptable risk of Prometheus breaking out and seizing control of its own destiny. Because they weren't sure how its goals would evolve during its recursive self-improvement, they had decided to play it safe and go to great lengths to keep Prometheus confined ("boxed") in ways such that it couldn't escape onto the Internet. For the main Prometheus engine running in their server room, they used physical confinement: There simply was no Internet connection, and the only output from Prometheus was in the form of messages and documents it sent to a computer that the Omegas controlled.
On an Internet-connected computer, on the other hand, running any complicated program created by Prometheus was a risky proposition: Since the Omegas had no way of fully understanding what it would do, they had no way of knowing that it wouldn't, say, start virally spreading itself online. When testing the software that Prometheus had written for MTurk tasks, the Omegas guarded against this by running it only inside a virtual machine. This is a program that simulates a computer: For example, many Mac users buy virtual machine software that lets them run Windows programs by tricking them into thinking that they're actually in a Windows machine. The Omegas had created their own virtual machine, nicknamed Pandora's Box, which simulated an ultrasimplified machine stripped of all bells and whistles that we usually associate with computers: No keyboard, no monitor, no loudspeakers, no Internet connectivity, nothing. For the MTurk audio transcriptions, the Omegas set things up so that all that could go into Pandora's Box was one single audio file and all that could come out was one single text document—the transcription. These laws of the box were to the software inside like the laws of physics are to us inside our universe: The software couldn't travel out of the box any more than we can travel faster than the speed of light, no matter how smart we are. Except for that single input and output, the software inside Pandora's Box was effectively trapped in a parallel universe with its own computational rules. The Omegas had such strong breakout paranoia that they added boxing in time as well, limiting the life span of untrusted code. For example, each time the boxed transcription software had finished transcribing one audio file, the entire memory content of Pandora's Box was automatically erased and the program was reinstalled from scratch. This way, when it started the next transcription task, it had no knowledge of what had previously happened, and thus no ability to learn over time.
When the Omegas used the Amazon cloud for their MTurk project, they were able to put all their Prometheus-created task modules into such virtual boxes in the cloud, because the MTurk input and output was so simple. But this wouldn't work for graphics-heavy computer games, which couldn't be boxed in because they needed full access to all the hardware of the gamer's computer. Moreover, they didn't want to risk that some computer-savvy user would analyze their game code, discover Pandora's Box and decide to investigate what was inside. The breakout risk put not merely the games market off-limits for now, but also the massively lucrative market for other software, with hundreds of billions of dollars up for grabs.
The First Billions
The Omegas had narrowed their search to products that were highly valuable, purely digital (avoiding slow manufacturing) and easily understandable (for example, text or movies they knew wouldn't pose a breakout risk). In the end, they had decided to launch a media company, starting with animated entertainment. The website, the marketing plan, and the press releases had all been ready to go even before Prometheus became superintelligent—all that was missing was content.
Although Prometheus was astonishingly capable by Sunday morning, steadily raking in money from MTurk, its intellectual abilities were still rather narrow: Prometheus had been deliberately optimized to design AI systems and write software that performed rather mind-numbing MTurk tasks. It was, for example, bad at making movies—bad not for any profound reason, but for the same reason that James Cameron was bad at making movies when he was born: This is a skill that takes time to learn. Like a human child, Prometheus could learn whatever it wanted from the data it had access to. Whereas James Cameron had taken years to learn to read and write, Prometheus had gotten that taken care of on Friday, when it also found time to read all of Wikipedia and a few million books. Making movies was harder. Writing a screenplay that humans found interesting was just as hard as writing a book, requiring a detailed understanding of human society and what humans found entertaining. Turning the screenplay into a final video file required massive amounts of ray tracing of simulated actors and the complex scenes they moved through, simulated voices, the production of compelling musical soundtracks and so on. As of Sunday morning, Prometheus could watch a two-hour movie in about a minute, which included reading any book it was based on and all online reviews and ratings. The Omegas noticed that after Prometheus had binge-watched a few hundred films, it started to get quite good at predicting what sort of reviews a movie would get and how it would appeal to different audiences. Indeed, it learned to write its own movie reviews in a way they felt demonstrated real insight, commenting on everything from the plots and the acting to technical details such as lighting and camera angles. They took this to mean that when Prometheus made its own films, it would know what success meant.
The Omegas instructed Prometheus to focus on making animation at first, to avoid embarrassing questions about who the simulated actors were. On Sunday night, they capped their wild weekend by arming themselves with beer and microwave popcorn, dimming the lights, and watching Prometheus' debut movie. It was an animated fantasy-comedy in the spirit of Disney's Frozen, and the ray tracing had been performed by boxed Prometheus-built code in the Amazon cloud, using up most of the day's $1 million MTurk profit. As the movie began, they found it both fascinating and frightening that it had been created by a machine without human guidance. Before long, however, they were laughing at the gags and holding their breath during the dramatic moments. Some of them even teared up a bit at the emotional ending, so engrossed in this fictional reality that they forgot all about its creator.
The Omegas scheduled their website launch for Friday, giving Prometheus time to produce more content and themselves time to do the things they didn't trust Prometheus with: buying ads and starting to recruit employees for the shell companies they'd set up during the past months. To cover their tracks, the official cover story would be that their media company (which had no public association with the Omegas) bought most of its content from independent film producers, typically high-tech startups in low-income regions. These fake suppliers were conveniently located in remote places such as Tiruchchirappalli and Yakutsk, which most curious journalists wouldn't bother visiting. The only employees they actually hired there worked on marketing and administration, and would tell anyone who asked that their production team was in a different location and didn't conduct interviews at the moment. To match their cover story, they chose the corporate slogan "Channeling the world's creative talent," and branded their company as being disruptively different by using cutting-edge technology to empower creative people, especially in the developing world.
When Friday came around and curious visitors started arriving at their site, they encountered something reminiscent of the online entertainment services Netflix and Hulu, but with interesting differences. All the animated series were new ones they'd never heard of. They were rather captivating: Most series consisted of 45-minute-long episodes with a strong plotline, each ending in a way that left you eager to find out what happened in the next episode. And they were cheaper than the competition. The first episode of each series was free, and you could watch the others for 49 cents each, with discounts for the whole series. Initially, there were only three series with three episodes each, but new episodes were added daily, as well as new series catering to different demographics. During the first two weeks of Prometheus, its moviemaking skills improved rapidly, in terms not only of film quality but also of better algorithms for character simulation and ray tracing, which greatly reduced the cloud-computing cost to make each new episode. As a result, the Omegas were able to roll out dozens of new series during the first month, targeting demographics from toddlers to adults, as well as to expand to all major world language markets, making their site remarkably international compared with all competitors. Some commentators were impressed by the fact that it wasn't merely the soundtracks that were multilingual, but the videos themselves: For example, when a character spoke Italian, the mouth motions matched the Italian words, as did the characteristically Italian hand gestures. Although Prometheus was now perfectly capable of making movies with simulated actors indistinguishable from humans, the Omegas avoided this to not tip their hand. They did, however, launch many series with semi-realistic animated human characters, in genres competing with traditional live-action TV shows and movies.
Their network turned out to be quite addictive, and enjoyed spectacular viewer growth. Many fans found the characters and plots more clever and interesting than even Hollywood's most expensive big-screen productions, and were delighted that they could watch them much more affordably. Buoyed by aggressive advertising (which the Omegas could afford because of their near-zero production costs), excellent media coverage, and rave word-of-mouth reviews, their global revenue had mushroomed to $10 million a day within a month of launch. After two months, they had overtaken Netflix, and after three, they were raking in over $100 million a day, beginning to rival Time Warner, Disney, Comcast, and Fox as one of the world's largest media empires.
Their sensational success garnered plenty of unwanted attention, including speculation about their having strong AI. But, using merely a small fraction of their revenue, the Omegas deployed a fairly successful disinformation campaign. From a glitzy new Manhattan office, their freshly hired spokespeople would elaborate on their cover stories. Plenty of humans were hired as foils, including actual screenwriters around the world to start developing new series, none of whom knew about Prometheus. The confusing international network of subcontractors made it easy for most of their employees to assume that others somewhere else were doing most of the work.
To make themselves less vulnerable and avoid raising eyebrows with excessive cloud computing, they also hired engineers to start building a series of massive computer facilities around the world, owned by seemingly unaffiliated shell companies. Although they were billed to locals as "green data centers" because they were largely solar-powered, they were in fact mainly focused on computation rather than storage. Prometheus had designed their blueprints down to the most minute detail, using only off-the-shelf hardware and optimizing them to minimize construction time. The people who built and ran these centers had no idea what was computed there: They thought they managed commercial cloud-computing facilities similar to those run by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and knew only that all sales were managed remotely.
New Technologies
Over a timescale of months, the business empire controlled by the Omegas started gaining a foothold in ever more areas of the world economy, thanks to superhuman planning by Prometheus. By carefully analyzing the world's data, it had already during its first week presented the Omegas with a detailed step-by-step growth plan, and it kept improving and refining this plan as its data and computer resources grew. Although Prometheus was far from omniscient, its capabilities were now so far beyond human that the Omegas viewed it as the perfect oracle, dutifully providing brilliant answers and advice in response to all their questions.
Prometheus' software was now highly optimized to make the most of the rather mediocre human-invented hardware it ran on, and as the Omegas had anticipated, Prometheus identified ways of dramatically improving this hardware. Fearing a breakout, they refused to build robotic construction facilities that Prometheus could control directly. Instead, they hired large numbers of world-class scientists and engineers in multiple locations and fed them internal research reports written by Prometheus, pretending that they were from researchers at the other sites. These reports detailed novel physical effects and manufacturing techniques that their engineers soon tested, understood, and mastered. Normal human research and development (R&D) cycles, of course, take years, in large part because they involve many slow cycles of trial and error. The current situation was very different: Prometheus already had the next steps figured out, so the limiting factor was simply how rapidly people could be guided to understand and build the right things. A good teacher can help students learn science much faster than they could have discovered it from scratch on their own, and Prometheus surreptitiously did the same with these researchers. Since Prometheus could accurately predict how long it would take humans to understand and build things given various tools, it developed the quickest possible path forward, giving priority to new tools that could be quickly understood and built and that were useful for developing more advanced tools.
In the spirit of the maker movement, the engineering teams were encouraged to use their own machines to build their better machines. This self-sufficiency not only saved money, but it also made them less vulnerable to future threats from the outside world. Within two years, they were producing much better computer hardware than the world had ever known. To avoid helping outside competition, they kept this technology under wraps and used it only to upgrade Prometheus.
What the world did notice, however, was an astonishing tech boom. Upstart companies around the world were launching revolutionary new products in almost all areas. A South Korean startup launched a new battery that stored twice as much energy as your laptop battery in half the mass, and could be charged in under a minute. A Finnish firm released a cheap solar panel with twice the efficiency of the best competitors. A German company announced a new type of mass-producible wire that was superconducting at room temperature, revolutionizing the energy sector. A Boston-based biotech group announced a Phase II clinical trial of what they claimed was the first effective, side-effect-free weight-loss drug, while rumors suggested that an Indian outfit was already selling something similar on the black market. A California company countered with a Phase II trial of a blockbuster cancer drug, which caused the body's immune system to identify and attack cells with any of the most common cancerous mutations. Examples just kept on coming, triggering talk of a new golden age for science. Last but not least, robotics companies were cropping up like mushrooms all around the world. None of the bots came close to matching human intelligence, and most of them looked nothing like humans. But they dramatically disrupted the economy, and over the years to come, they gradually replaced most of the workers in manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, retail, construction, mining, agriculture, forestry, and fishing.
What the world didn't notice, thanks to the hard work of a crack team of lawyers, was that all these firms were controlled, through a series of intermediaries, by the Omegas. Prometheus was flooding the world's patent offices with sensational inventions via various proxies, and these inventions gradually led to domination in all areas of technology.
Although these disruptive new companies made powerful enemies among their competition, they made even more powerful friends. They were exceptionally profitable, and under slogans such as "Investing in our community," they spent a significant fraction of these profits hiring people for community projects—often the same people who had been laid off from the companies that were disrupted. They used detailed Prometheus-produced analyses identifying jobs that would be maximally rewarding for the employees and the community for the least cost, tailored to the local circumstances. In regions with high levels of government service, this often focused on community building, culture, and caregiving, while in poorer regions it also included launching and maintaining schools, healthcare, day care, elder care, affordable housing, parks, and basic infrastructure. Pretty much everywhere, locals agreed that these were things that should have been done long ago. Local politicians got generous donations, and care was taken to make them look good for encouraging these corporate community investments.
Gaining Power
The Omegas had launched a media company not only to finance their early tech ventures, but also for the next step of their audacious plan: taking over the world. Within a year of the first launch, they had added remarkably good news channels to their lineup all over the globe. As opposed to their other channels, these were deliberately designed to lose money, and were pitched as a public service. In fact, their news channels generated no income whatsoever: They carried no ads and were viewable free of charge by anyone with an Internet connection. The rest of their media empire was such a cash-generating machine that they could spend far more resources on their news service than any other journalistic effort had done in world history—and it showed. Through aggressive recruitment with highly competitive salaries for journalists and investigative reporters, they brought remarkable talent and findings to the screen. Through a global web service that paid anybody who revealed something newsworthy, from local corruption to a heartwarming event, they were usually the first to break a story. At least that's what people believed: In fact, they were often first because stories attributed to citizen journalists had been discovered by Prometheus via real-time monitoring of the Internet. All these video news sites featured podcasts and print articles as well.
Phase 1 of their news strategy was gaining people's trust, which they did with great success. Their unprecedented willingness to lose money enabled remarkably diligent regional and local news coverage, where investigative journalists often exposed scandals that truly engaged their viewers. Whenever a country was strongly divided politically and accustomed to partisan news, they would launch one news channel catering to each faction, ostensibly owned by different companies, and gradually gain the trust of that faction. Where possible, they accomplished this using proxies to buy the most influential existing channels, gradually improving them by removing ads and introducing their own content. In countries where censorship and political interference threatened these efforts, they would initially acquiesce in whatever the government required of them to stay in business, with the secret internal slogan "The truth, nothing but the truth, but maybe not the whole truth." Prometheus usually provided excellent advice in such situations, clarifying which politicians needed to be presented in a good light and which (usually corrupt local ones) could be exposed. Prometheus also provided invaluable recommendations for what strings to pull, whom to bribe, and how best to do so.
This strategy was a smashing success around the world, with the Omega-controlled channels emerging as the most trusted news sources. Even in countries where governments had thus far thwarted their mass adoption, they built a reputation for trustworthiness, and many of their news stories percolated through the grapevine. Competing news executives felt that they were fighting a hopeless battle: How can you possibly make a profit competing with someone with better funding who gives their products away for free? With their viewership dropping, ever more networks decided to sell their news channels—usually to some consortium that later turned out to be controlled by the Omegas.
About two years after Prometheus' launch, when the trust-gaining phase was largely completed, the Omegas launched phase 2 of their news strategy: persuasion. Even before this, astute observers had noticed hints of a political agenda behind the new media: There seemed to be a gentle push toward the center, away from extremism of all sorts. Their plethora of channels catering to different groups still reflected animosity between the United States and Russia, India and Pakistan, different religions, political factions and so on, but the criticism was slightly toned down, usually focusing on concrete issues involving money and power rather than on ad hominem attacks, scare-mongering and poorly substantiated rumors. Once phase 2 started in earnest, this push to defuse old conflicts became more apparent, with frequent touching stories about the plight of traditional adversaries mixed with investigative reporting about how many vocal conflict-mongers were driven by personal profit motives.
Political commentators noted that, in parallel with damping regional conflicts, there seemed to be a concerted push toward reducing global threats. For example, the risks of nuclear war were suddenly being discussed all over the place. Several blockbuster movies featured scenarios where global nuclear war started by accident or on purpose and dramatized the dystopian aftermath with nuclear winter, infrastructure collapse, and mass starvation. Slick new documentaries detailed how nuclear winter could impact every country. Scientists and politicians advocating nuclear de-escalation were given ample airtime, not least to discuss the results of several new studies on what helpful measures could be taken—studies funded by scientific organizations that had received large donations from new tech companies. As a result, political momentum started building for taking missiles off hair-trigger alert and shrinking nuclear arsenals. Renewed media attention was also paid to global climate change, often highlighting the recent Prometheus-enabled technological breakthroughs that were slashing the cost of renewable energy and encouraging governments to invest in such new energy infrastructure.
Parallel to their media takeover, the Omegas harnessed Prometheus to revolutionize education. Given any person's knowledge and abilities, Prometheus could determine the fastest way for them to learn any new subject in a manner that kept them highly engaged and motivated to continue, and produce the corresponding optimized videos, reading materials, exercises, and other learning tools. Omega-controlled companies therefore marketed online courses about virtually everything, highly customized not only by language and cultural background but also by starting level. Whether you were an illiterate 40-year-old wanting to learn to read or a biology Ph.D. seeking the latest about cancer immunotherapy, Prometheus had the perfect course for you. These offerings bore little resemblance to most present-day online courses: By leveraging Prometheus' movie-making talents, the video segments would truly engage, providing powerful metaphors that you would relate to, leaving you craving to learn more. Some courses were sold for profit, but many were made available for free, much to the delight of teachers around the world who could use them in their classrooms—and to most anybody eager to learn anything.
These educational superpowers proved potent tools for political purposes, creating online "persuasion sequences" of videos where insights from each one would both update someone's views and motivate them to watch another video about a related topic where they were likely to be further convinced. When the goal was to defuse a conflict between two nations, for example, historical documentaries would be independently released in both countries that cast the origins and conduct of the conflict in more nuanced light. Pedagogical news stories would explain who on their own side stood to benefit from continued conflict and their techniques for stoking it. At the same time, likable characters from the other nation would start appearing in popular shows on the entertainment channels, just as sympathetically portrayed minority characters had bolstered the civil and gay rights movements in the past.
Before long, political commentators couldn't help but notice growing support for a political agenda centered around seven slogans:
1. Democracy
2. Tax cuts
3. Government social service cuts
4. Military spending cuts
5. Free trade
6. Open borders
7. Socially responsible companies
What was less obvious was the underlying goal: to erode all previous power structures in the world. Items 2–6 eroded state power, and democratizing the world gave the Omegas' business empire more influence over the selection of political leaders. Socially responsible companies further weakened state power by taking over more and more of the services that governments had (or should have) provided. The traditional business elite was weakened simply because it couldn't compete with Prometheus-backed companies on the free market and therefore owned an ever-shrinking share of the world economy. Traditional opinion leaders, from political parties to faith groups, lacked the persuasion machinery to compete with the Omegas' media empire.
As with any sweeping change, there were winners and losers. Although there was a palpable new sense of optimism in most countries as education, social services, and infrastructure improved, conflicts subsided and local companies released breakthrough technologies that swept the world, not everybody was happy. While many displaced workers got rehired for community projects, those who'd held great power and wealth generally saw both shrink. This began in the media and technology sectors, but it spread virtually everywhere. The reduction in world conflicts led to defense budget cuts that hurt military contractors. Burgeoning upstart companies typically weren't publicly traded, with the justification that profit-maximizing shareholders would block their massive spending on community projects. Thus the global stock market kept losing value, threatening both finance tycoons and regular citizens who'd counted on their pension funds. As if the shrinking profits of publicly traded companies weren't bad enough, investment firms around the world had noticed a disturbing trend: All their previously successful trading algorithms seemed to have stopped working, underperforming even simple index funds. Someone else out there always seemed to outsmart them and beat them at their own game.
Although masses of powerful people resisted the wave of change, their response was strikingly ineffective, almost as if they had fallen into a well-planned trap. Huge changes were happening at such a bewildering pace that it was hard to keep track and develop a coordinated response. Moreover, it was highly unclear what they should push for. The traditional political right had seen most of their slogans co-opted, yet the tax cuts and improved business climate were mostly helping their higher-tech competitors. Virtually every traditional industry was now clamoring for a bailout, but limited government funds pitted them in a hopeless battle against one another while the media portrayed them as dinosaurs seeking state subsidies simply because they couldn't compete. The traditional political left opposed the free trade and the cuts in government social services, but delighted in the military cutbacks and the reduction of poverty. Indeed, much of their thunder was stolen by the undeniable fact that social services had improved now that they were provided by idealistic companies rather than the state. Poll after poll showed that most voters around the world felt their quality of life improving, and that things were generally moving in a good direction. This had a simple mathematical explanation: Before Prometheus, the poorest 50 percent of Earth's population had earned only about 4 percent of the global income, enabling the Omega-controlled companies to win their hearts (and votes) by sharing only a modest fraction of their profits with them.
As a result, nation after nation saw landslide election victories for parties embracing the seven Omega slogans. In carefully optimized campaigns, they portrayed themselves at the center of the political spectrum, denouncing the right as greedy bailout-seeking conflict-mongers and lambasting the left as big-government tax-and-spend innovation stiflers. What almost nobody realized was that Prometheus had carefully selected the optimal people to groom as candidates, and pulled all its strings to secure their victory.
Before Prometheus, there had been growing support for the universal basic income movement, which proposed tax-funded minimum income for everyone as a remedy for technological unemployment. This movement imploded when the corporate community projects took off, since the Omega-controlled business empire was in effect providing the same thing. With the excuse of improving coordination of their community projects, an international group of companies launched the Humanitarian Alliance, a nongovernmental organization aiming to identify and fund the most valuable humanitarian efforts worldwide. Before long, virtually the entire Omega empire supported it, and it launched global projects on an unprecedented scale, even in countries that had largely missed out on the tech boom, improving education, health, prosperity, and governance. Needless to say, Prometheus provided carefully crafted project plans behind the scenes, ranked by positive impact per dollar. Rather than simply dole out cash, as under basic-income proposals, the Alliance (as it colloquially became known) would engage those it supported to work toward its cause. As a result, a large fraction of the world's population ended up feeling grateful and loyal to the Alliance—often more than to their own government.
As time passed, the Alliance increasingly assumed the role of a world government, as national governments saw their power continually erode. National budgets kept shrinking due to tax cuts while the Alliance budget grew to dwarf those of all governments combined. All the traditional roles of national governments became increasingly redundant and irrelevant. The Alliance provided by far the best social services, education, and infrastructure. Media had defused international conflict to the point that military spending was largely unnecessary, and growing prosperity had eliminated most roots of old conflicts, which traced back to competition over scarce resources. A few dictators and others had violently resisted this new world order and refused to be bought, but they were all toppled in carefully orchestrated coups or mass uprisings.
The Omegas had now completed the most dramatic transition in the history of life on Earth. For the first time ever, our planet was run by a single power, amplified by an intelligence so vast that it could potentially enable life to flourish for billions of years on Earth and throughout our cosmos—but what specifically was their plan?
Excerpted from the book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. The rest of the book is about another tale—one that's not fictional and not yet written: the tale of our own future with AI. How would you like it to play out? Could something remotely like the Omega story actually occur and, if so, would you want it to? Leaving aside speculations about superhuman AI, how would you like our tale to begin? How do you want AI to impact jobs, laws and weapons in the coming decade? Looking further ahead, how would you write the ending? This tale is one of truly cosmic proportions, for it involves nothing short of the ultimate future of life in our universe. And it's a tale for us to write.
Max Tegmark is an MIT professor who has authored more than 200 technical papers on topics from cosmology to artificial intelligence. He is known as "Mad Max" for his unorthodox ideas and passion for adventure.
Reprinted from Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark. Copyright © 2017 by Max Tegmark. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.


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Pension Plan Basics
In this article, you will find:
Page 1
Pension Plan Basics
The phrase "pension plan" often is used generically to refer to any sort of retirement plan offered by an employer. It could refer to a 401(k) plan, a money purchase plan, or many other plans. If you're self-employed, and don't have the benefit of an employer-sponsored plan, you can establish your own retirement savings plan through a SEP-IRA.
Traditionally, however, a pension plan is an employer-sponsored retirement plan, in which the employer contributes money to a retirement fund set up on behalf of the worker. When the worker retires, he receives fixed, periodic payments, on which he must pay taxes.
Money Morsel
Traditional pension plans used to be more common than they are now, but they're still around, especially at larger companies. Seventy-seven percent of large companies in America still offer pension plans, although most mid-size or smaller companies have 401(k) savings plans.
Of the traditional type of pension plan, there are two kinds:
- Defined benefit plan
- Defined contribution plan
Both plans provide funding for your retirement. The difference is, with the defined benefit plan, the investment responsibility is on the employer, while the defined contribution plan puts the responsibility on the employee.
The defined benefit plan promises the employee a specified retirement benefit, based on a formula. The investment return risk is on the employer, who is responsible for funding and benefits.
If your company offers a defined benefit pension plan, it, in effect, promises you that if you work there for 30 years, retiring when you're 65, you'll get a monthly check for a certain amount of money (determined by the formula), for the rest of your life. The monthly pension payments are based on the number of years the retiree worked for the company and his salary during the years he worked. Different companies have different formulas for figuring out pension payments, but nearly all are based on years of service and salary.
Your employer is responsible for investing the money, and for being able to pay you the amount you've been promised when you retire.
Money Morsel
Defined contribution plans generally are considered more advantageous to younger employees who have many years to invest. Defined benefit plans tend to be better for older workers who don't have a lot of years to let their investments work for them.
A defined contribution plan, on the other hand, promises an employee the value of the employee's account at retirement—whatever that value may be.
Although the employer is responsible for providing a satisfactory investment vehicle, the investment risk is on the employee.
Let's say that your employer contributes 10 percent of your salary each year to a defined contribution account in your name. If you make $45,000 this year, he'll throw $4,500 into your retirement account. Once he's contributed the money, however, it's your responsibility. You need to decide where you'll invest it, and you bear the investment risks. Whatever is in the account at retirement time is what you have.
Under a defined contribution plan, your employer has an individual account in your name. The employer's contributions are put into the account each year, with all income and capital gains taxes deferred until the money is withdrawn at retirement.
When you become eligible to receive benefits—usually at retirement—the benefit is based on the total amount in your account. The account balance includes the employer's contributions, whatever contributions you may have added to the account, and the earnings on the account for the years of deferral.
There are three principal types of defined contribution plans. Let's have a look at what each one entails.

subset: commoncrawl


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Culture Fest – A Festival of Nations
- Cost:
- 5-15
- Stanley Theatre
- 259 Genesee Street, Utica, NY 13501 United States
Additional Information
After a sold out first year, the premier collection of the international food, music and crafts returns to showcase what makes Utica the International City of Central New York… Food Sampling from many of Central New York's local and international restaurants, a collection of artisans and craftsmen and demonstrations of dance, music and art and that bring a world of culture into one place.
Each attendee gets a sample card good for one sample at each restaurant. If you have a business or restaurant who would like to participate, or a group who is interested in performing on the stage, please call Ryan at (315) 272-2839 or email email@example.com .
Tickets are $10 in advance; $15 at the door; $5 kids 11-18; Kids 10 and under are free.
A limited number of food sampling tickets will be available (700) but those interested in enjoying the live music, dancing, and shopping can purchase Non-Sampling tickets for just $8.
Available at the Stanley and by clicking the link below.
Entertainment and Demonstrations
Some of our Participating Restaurants
Café Crete
Charlie Boys
Della Vita Olive Oil
Edible Arrangements
Fairways Restaurant
Lotus Garden
Mother Marianne's Kitchen
Papa Joe's
Radisson Hotel
… and more to come.
Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees
ReSource Traditional Artisans
Redeemer Cup
The Palm Reading Lady
Utica Karate
Thousand Islands Winery
The Oneida County Farmers Market
The Oneida County Board of Elections
Yemeni American Culture
Enjoy Entertainment from around the world!
Ritmo Caribeno – Mohawk Valley Latino Association, music and Dance
Adi Shakti – Belly Dancing
Baptist Tabernacle Church-Youth Dancers (Karen Dancers -agricultural dance and bamboo dance)
Bhutanese-Nepali Folk Collective
Bhutanese-Nepali guest dancer Nima Tamang
…more to come.


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Our village
Lockdown and VE Day 2020 in Congerstone
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Carolyn Waters - Sunday Breakfast - 2013
Carolyn Waters is a relative newcomer to music as a professional, having spent many years working in criminal justice, but her songs reflect a concern for social justice and spiritual matters. A member of the Boston music scene, she's been mentored by the great Southern songwriter, Kate Campbell, who produced Carolyn's second album, "On the Verge," showcasing her extraordinary voice and feel for all kinds of African-American music. Carolyn joined me for a probing and soulful session in Studio A.


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Travel and Local Contract Nursing Jobs
Kick off your travel nursing adventure with HealthTrust Workforce Solutions! Across the country, healthcare systems and hospitals turn to HealthTrust to fill critical clinical needs in a variety of various specialties. When the need arises, travel nurses have the incredible opportunity to see the country, expand their skill sets and advance their career. Travel nursing assignment typically last 13 weeks and include customizable pay packages, guaranteed hours, weekly direct deposit options, 401k with company match and free private, furnished housing or a tax-free subsidy.
Are you interested in learning how much HealthTrust travel nurses earn? Do you want to know how to become a travel nurse? We have travel nursing jobs to fit every preference. Explore our open opportunities below to get started on begin your travel nursing journey adventure with HealthTrust!


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Striped Coralroot (Corallorhiza striata var. striata)-2
The striped coralroot is a very strikingly beautiful terrestrial orchid found in wooded habitats across most of Northern North America including most of the western states (except Arizona and Nevada) and almost all of Canada (except most of the Maritime Provinces (Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick). This species is very easy to identify because of the very clear and visible stripes on the petals and sepals. This wild native orchid is known as a myco-heterotroph, meaning it doesn't need chlorophyll to produce it's own food, but instead gains nutrients from either a mutual symbiotic relationship with certain fungi in the soil or by just from parasitism: stealing the nutrients it needs from it's host fungi. These were part of a large colony found in a clump of conifers in rural Kittitas County in Washington State.
- Copyright
- ©2018
- Image Size
- 4405x6600 / 30.0MB
- www.leightonphotography.com
- Keywords
America, Angiosperms, Asparagales, Blewett Pass, C. striata, Corallorhiza, Corallorhiza striata, Corallorhiza striata var. striata, Epidendroideae, Kittitas County, Monocots, Neottia striata, Orchidaceae, PNW, Pacific NW, Pacific Northwest, Plantae, USA, United States, Washington, beautiful, beauty, bloom, blooming, blooms, blossom, blossoms, botany, bud, color, coralroot, field, flora, floral, flower, flowers, forb, fresh, green, herb, hooded coralroot, macro, monocot, myco-heterotroph, myco-heterotrophy, myco-heterotropic, native, natural, nature, orchid, parasite, parasitic, perennial, plant, plants, red, saprophyte, stripe, striped, striped coral root, striped coralroot, stripes, summer, terrestrial, wild, wildflowers, Maxillarieae
- Contained in galleries
- Maxillarieae


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New Views of Management
A review of Practically Radical, by William C. Taylor.
(originally published by Booz & Company)Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself
By William C. Taylor
William Morrow, 2011
The U.S. executive focus has moved from managing large-scale operations (and motivating people to run them efficiently) to creating agile organizations that engage their people so that they will innovate and create new industries in the knowledge economy. William C. Taylor, a former editor of Harvard Business Review and cofounder, with Alan Webber, of Fast Company, has been a leading chronicler of the management revolution that has accompanied this shift. In his latest book (and his first written without a coauthor), Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself, Taylor sets out to tell compelling stories, present provocative ideas, and pose penetrating questions to the widest range of "game-changing" leaders possible.
The book's three parts focus in turn on improving your company, creating successful new ventures, and rethinking your leadership style — and the author suggests that recessions are ideal times to be innovating in all three areas. Instead of worrying about sinking the boat, says Taylor, you should be concerned with not missing it. He advocates rocking the boat, in fact — that is, exploring "radical shifts that represent a direct challenge to convention and a break with the status quo," while remaining realistic about your ability to make change happen.
Each part of the book is divided into themed chapters, featuring radically practical truths (for improving companies), rules (for shaping new ventures), and habits (for becoming a more effective leader). Thus the themes for the first two chapters in the corporate improvement section are "What you see shapes how you change," which advocates looking at the world with new eyes, and "Where you look shapes what you see," which advocates searching for new ideas in unfamiliar places. These ideas are illustrated with numerous interesting case studies, some of which will be new to the casual reader, and some of which will be familiar, such as Zappos — a great story, but just how broadly can one apply lessons extracted from a cultlike online shoe and clothing retailer?
The least satisfactory aspect of the book is the summarized truths, rules, and habits that end each part. Unfortunately, the truths are more like truisms: "Most organizations in most fields suffer from a kind of tunnel vision, which makes it hard to envision a more positive future." Yes, but why? The rules seem vague and aspirational: "Long-term success is about more than thinking harder than the competition. It's also about caring more than the competition." Well, sometimes. Taylor himself cites evidence that large, successful companies that rip off their customers with hidden fees and predatory contracts can coexist quite happily with competitors that don't. And the habits don't sound like habits at all: "Real business geniuses don't pretend to know everything." The "ten questions that every game changer must answer" in the appendix are better, if a bit uneven. The most provocative one is probably "If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?"
In Practically Radical, Taylor has created a lens through which leaders can look at an emerging reality and thus ask better questions and get better answers. The ideas and stories are compelling overall. But although the book is a worthy effort, it would have benefited from a better conceptual framework integrating its recommendations for individual leaders, their companies, and their new ventures, explaining how they work together and to what ends.
Author profile:
- David K. Hurst is a contributing editor of strategy+business. His writing has also appeared in Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and other leading business publications. Hurst is the author of Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).


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We're celebrating Halloween with works in the Dallas Museum of Art's collection that are grim and ghastly, a little haunting, and might even give you the creeps. Be sure to check out the rest of our "Macabre Museum" on our DMA Pinterest page. Happy Halloween!
Kimberly Daniell is the Public Relations Specialist at the Dallas Museum of Art.


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Design Notes
April 23, 2015
Congratulations, J6!
Today is J6's 10 Year Anniversary with Artix Entertainment!
J6, aka The BountyHunter, has been creating art with Artix Krieger and the rest of the AE team for the last TEN years! In that amount of time, he could have traveled 58,784,998,170 miles away if he were moving at the speed of light... but we are glad he isn't, because he wouldn't have been here creating the amazing backgrounds, items, and character art we love so much.
Help us celebrate J6's anniversary with the free J6 Anniversary Helm, now available in the Hyperium shop! If you want to give him a shout-out directly, find him on Twitter!
Secret message only our robotic players (or anyone with the internet) can decode: 01001000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01111001 00100000 00110001 00110000 00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01110110 01100101 01110010 01110011 01100001 01110010 01111001 00101100 00100000 01001010 00110110 00100001
October 17, 2013
J6 is going to Space Academy!
You guys made it happen! THANKS!
Thanks to ALL of you who voted for J6, he won the Axe Apollo contest for a chance to go into space! Through working together, you've all helped to send our Bountyhunter on the first step of his greatest journey yet: up where he belongs, among the stars!
1st Artist in SPAAAAAAAAAACE!
J6 says: A big thanks to everyone who voted to help send me to space. I got word that I made it to the finals, which means I'm heading off to Orlando in December to fly a fighter jet, throw up in zero G training and pass out in a centrifuge. Science!
Why does he want to go into space?
"Art is all about breaking boundaries; traveling into space would let me create and inspire a new generation with a first-person view of the universe!"
Galaxy-sized Gifts
If J6 takes that big step for J6-kind up into space, when he returns, we'll have the astronomically-awesome thank you shop EVER!
- J6 Astronaut Armor set
- Spaceship house
- Space background
- And, of course, SQUIGGLES
July 30, 2013
Feelin' So Fly
Vote for J6!
Everyone's favorite bounty hunter and AQWorlds Artist, J6, needs YOUR help going to Space!
All you have to do is click the above picture to be taken to the Voting Page. Then, click the green VOTE button on that page and help J6 get one small step closer to making a giant leap into Space Travel!
Today's Featured Artist
It's Tuesday! And that means it's time for another Featured Artist Showcase Shop!
Later this afternoon, J6's Showcase Shop will appear in the Game Menu, featuring a treasure chest of Chess items!
White Bishop
Black Bishop
White Knight
Black Knight
White Pawn
Black Pawn
White Rook
Black Rook
White Royalty--Legends only!
Black Royalty--Legends only!
White Bishop Hat
Black Bishop Hat
White Knight Helm
Black Knight Helm
White Pawn Halfhelm
Black Pawn Halfhelm
White Rook Great Helm
Black Rook Great Helm
White Tiara--Legends Only!
White Crown--Legends Only
Black Crown--Legends only
Back Tiara--Legends only
All of these items are permanent additions, because on Friday, you and your royal army can play Enchanted Chess inside the Wizard University!
The 411 on J6
Every bounty hunter has to start somewhere, and for J6, it all began in 2004. J6 worked on the original AdventureQuest doing everything from backgrounds to items to monsters and animation. As the company leveled up, so did J6, moving from game to game as they were being created. But this bounty hunter's true calling became background art, creating beautiful scenery that filled computer monitors worldwide(web) with breathtaking landscapes.
J6 has virtually made every AdventureQuest Worlds background and still (somehow) finds time to create weapons, helms, and armors alongside his beautiful wife Cinazool. Like most bounty hunters, J6 works on board his starship far, far away in the fabled lands of Canada, but wishes to work in the Secret Underground Lab with the rest of the Artix Entertainment team. Unfortunately, the Lab cannot accommodate for starships… only dragons. (But with your help, we might be able to send J6 into space on a real starship!)
J6 wishes to share a quote that would help inspire future artists and intrepid bounty hunters. After a successful mercenary mission, J6 was awarded with this quote from Scott Adams: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
Give a shout out to J6 on his Twitter!
J6's Featured Artist Showcase Shop launches later this afternoon. Stay tuned to my Twitter for more details, and stay epic my heroes!
xoxo Beleen
July 29, 2013
Mondays are Magical
You don't need a Crystal Ball to see into the future!
Predicting the future is a pretty impressive skill. I just so happen to be pretty good at it, too. And I wish to share my gift with you in the form of sneak-peek Design Notes! Woohoo!
Tuesday Predictions
Tomorrow is Tuesday—and I foresee that the Featured Artist Shop will showcase a bounty of items from your favorite Bounty Hunter, J6!
Looks like it's going to be a Treasure Chest full of Chess! Get ready to pwn some Pawns starting Tuesday afternoon!
Perfection Prediction
Upgrading your account to a Legend Membership comes with a gazillion perks, but the deal hits critical perfection with the GameStop-exclusive Combo Breaker Armor Set!
If you're living in the United States and have a GameStop nearby, follow these simple steps:
- fuel-up the family Dragon (or minivan, whatever)
- fly on over to a GameStop near you
- pick up an Artix Entertainment Game Card
- fly back home (or teleport, if the option is available)
- Upgrade your Membership following these instructions
- Unlock the Combo Breaker Armor Set
- Become Lore's greatest C-c-c-combo Breaker!
This special offer is ONLY available until August 11th. Click here for more information!
Friday Predictions
Wondering where I got my magical capabilities? From the Wizard University of Battleon! And this Friday night, the University doors will open to the DragonRune Hall, the Academy of Mana Manipulation, and SpellCrafting!
Marvel at the magical miracles and buff your SpellScribing tradeskills so you can craft consumable potions. And there will be a special room where you can use J6's Chess Items in, too! It's bound to be MAGIC!
Next Week's Prediction
Looks like Quibble is packing his bags and has a direct flight to Battleon next Friday!
Everyone's favorite traveling sales-moglin always brings the best rare items with him. And next week is no different—Quibble is stocking his shop with some of the COOLEST items I have ever seen. And you'll need his epic gear if you hope to defeat the next Chaos Lord who is anxiously awaiting your arrival…
Contest Prediction
The Bad Guys & Good Battles Contest was such a HUGE hit! We received hundreds of awesome entries and have finally chosen the top winners.
The top winners are posted at Artix.com, but everyone who entered—and wasn't disqualified—will receive a Loremaster Character Page Badge! All the entries will eventually be added into the Lorepedia =D Thank you so much for helping us track down and record all those Artix Entertainment monsters!
And this is ONLY the beginning. New monsters are popping up all the time, so in the future we will release another Bad Guys & Good Battles Contest for a chance to win more prizes. Sweet for us… but not so sweet for the monsters you defeat =p
Pretty Pink's Prediction
Wowza! With so much going on, I predict that this week is going to be the best one ever! Actually, that's no prediction—that's a FACT!
See you on the battlefield, my hero!
xoxo Beleen
PS: Last month's SUATMR winner chose to remain anonymous, but wound up choosing the Starsword!
April 11, 2013
J6 Saga Study Guide
A Simple Guide to a Complex Saga
Embark on the exciting conclusion of the J6 Saga this Friday evening!
Here's a helpful spoiler-free guide to aid you on your J6 adventures from beginning to end. Give a great big THANK YOU to Sora To Hoshi for helping with this guide and providing screenshots =D
Pencil Puddle
J6 goes out for a picnic and forgets to draw his zone. But not all is what it seems! Fight the Sketchy Dragon for a clue to find the elusive Bounty Hunter J6.
Begin your J6 adventures by typing /join J6 in the chat field in-game!
The Rusty Spittoon Saloon
Grab some Moglinberry juice and help the local patrons with their quests. Discover valuable information about the mysterious J6 and test your knowledge against the Bounty Hunter himself.
Answer all of J6's questions correctly and he'll award you with coordinates to his Hyperium Spaceship!
Watch out for those darn Turrets! You and your friends must work together as a team to get past the Turrets. Don't give up—it WILL take some time! Crack into the Bounty Hunter armory by clicking on the gauges in the correct order, meet H.A.L. the computer, and find the hidden VR Room Access Card.
Continue on your quest with J6 and pay special attention to his clues!
Once you've found the VR Room Access card, you can embark on Virtual Reality missions! Explore the Zephyrus train, talk to the passengers, and make sure none of them are hiding anything.
Retrieve the Crystallized Dragons Breath, spin open a chamber, and run across the Zephyrus roof until you reach the Hyperium once more!
Planet Westion
Finding the Chapter 5 Datadisk allows you to find out more about J6! Travel through the Moonyard playing AS J6 but make sure to hold your nose… because this is one Virtual Reality simulation that really STINKS!
Kick some Robo-butt in the Moonyard and return to the Hyperium when finished.
Banzai Planet
After helping H.A.L. with some missions, find the location of Datadisk 4 and journey to Banzai! Nullify all life on this planet by winning multiple mini games and defeating the L.O.S.E.R.S.
After disarming the bomb, make your way back to the Hyperium floating through space and complete your mission.
Evil Medieval
Help H.A.L. and get a clue to the location of Datadisk 3. Watch the content of this Chapter 3 Datadisk in the VR Room once you found it.
Afterwards, speak with J6 and help him with his last minute quests before taking flight into hyperspace!
Take H.A.L. Offline
Now that you are in hyperspace, go to the VR Room and await instructions from the Baron.
You need to find a way to turn H.A.L. off—so you must challenge your Memory against his!
Defeat H.A.L. at his game and discover the secret to powering down this super computer.
Last Week's Cliffhanger
Once the Baron breaks onto the Hyperium, it is up to YOU to decide weather or not to Shoot J6 or Spare J6's Life.
And this Friday, YOU are the sole decider of J6's fate! Will you be the Bounty Hunter's friend or foe? Will you help him with his mission… or put a permanent end to J6?
Log in tomorrow night for the highly anticipated J6 Saga Finale!
April 05, 2013
J6 Saga Walkthrough
Get up to speed on the J6 Saga!
Everyone's favorite Bounty Hunter is wrapping up his massive saga starting tonight! But in order to embark on J6's new release, there's a lot you need to do beforehand.
And I mean A LOT.
A lot of time.
A lot of patience.
And a lot of team work!
Since the release is still a few hours away (assuming you aren't from the future…or reading this AFTER we've launched), now is the time to catch up on the extremely complex J6 Saga extravaganza!
J6 Saga Check List
- /join j6 to begin your J6 Saga adventures
- Complete quests in J6 map and defeat the Sketchy Dragon until you find J6's Secret Hideout Map and equip it
- Find the Dwakel Decoder
- Use J6's Secret Hideout Map to find the Rusty Spittoon Saloon
- Help the Saloon patrons with their quests and learn about J6
- Find J6, snag the Crystalized Dragons Breath, get a perfect score on J6's Quiz, and receive coordinates to the Hyperium Starship
- Bring 2 friends to the Hyperium to get past the Turrets
- Access the Bounty Hunter Shop by clicking the gauges in the right order
- Embark on H.A.L.'s Missions in the 3rd floor using the Elevator
- Find where J6 keeps his VR Room Access Ticket
- Go to the VR Room on the 2nd floor using the Elevator
- Complete missions in the VR Room and H.A.L.
- Find missing Datadisks hidden all over Lore
- Return to the VR Room after finding Datadisks
- Now you're ready to help J6 conclude his saga starting tonight!
See! I told you there's A LOT. But A LOT of fun, I promise!
Good luck, intrepid Bounty Hunters!
Galactically-Awesome Items!
J6's Bounty Hunter shop has had a planet-sized update, and NONE of it is going rare! Check out the following gear after you complete J6's storyline quests:
- JVI Armor and Helm
- Highway Bounty Hunter Set
- Galactic Eviscerator set
- FF0000 Blaster Gun
- Azimuth Blaster Gun
- Heavy Metal Mercenary set
- J-Roku Samurai set
- J-Roku Katana
- Mercilessness Mercenary Gun
- Shotgun of Aphelion
- Behemoth Blade of BlueMoon
- Backscattering Blades
- Albedo Battle Axe
January 13, 2013
Coming Soon to AQWorlds
The 2013 Release Momentum Keeps Growing!
Strap on your hardest helm and equip your sharpest blade this Friday, because you're definitely going to want to see the next chapter in Lionfang's Chaos storyline - the updated and polished version of the Golden Onslaught War! You HAVE battled through the Blackhorn Tombs, right?
Last Friday's release took place in Lionfang's past (but you did not travel back in time. Try not to think too hard about the mechanics of that. Timey-wimey explanation!) Cysero's going to try to find time ("Heeeeeey time-travel fairies!") to build a timeline to make things easier to understand!
The team is ALSO going to be working on re-designing the town of Battleon (and Battleontown)! Current plans for the restructure include re-doing the Guardian Tower, updated town NPCs, FINALLY questing to unlock the pieces of the Blade of Awe and SO MUCH MORE!*
This project is HUGE and will take at least 2-3 Phases to complete, but work on Phase 1 begins this week!**
* Watch out for falling puns!
** Construction moglins are magic, and move so fast that the town's appearance is likely to change in the blink of an eye (or a server restart) once it is ready to release.***
*** Release date not set yet.
And to top off all the excitement, J6 and Beleen are planning out the next "J6 the Bounty Hunter" release! Speaking of J6... Don't forget to vote to send him into space in REAL LIFE!
August 25, 2013
Send J6 Into Space
Help Send him there in Real Life!
J6 the Bountyhunter gets to travel through galaxies on a mysterious mission. In real life, J6 the Lead Artist creates art on the ground ... but is always looking up to the sky for inspiration!
He has worked on EVERY game Artix Entertainment has made; working together, we can make his dream come true!
Where to Vote for J6?
Click this link: Vote for J6! You'll need to click the green "Vote" button, sign into your Facebook account, then submit your vote for AQW's favorite Bountyhunter/artist! You can only vote once per Facebook account, so let your friends know, too!
Why does he want to go into space?
"Art is all about breaking boundaries; traveling into space would let me create and inspire a new generation with a first-person view of the universe!"
Winning this contest would send him to a training camp where he would have the chance to fly into space with an international crew. This is not a joke contest; the last time he tried, he got the most votes, but the number of votes didn't matter. This time it does! Help to send our Bountyhunter up where he belongs: among the stars!
If we all vote together, we have the power to send an artist up into space! Will you help us?
Plus, if he gets there AND makes an epic item when he returns, we would be the first videogame company to have an item drawn by an artist in space!
November 12, 2012
Skyguard and Book Bugs
Coming Today and Friday!
This week, the Member Only Skyguard quest line comes to a dramatic conclusion. We've also got an update to the Player Suggestion shop coming as well as some stuff that was meant to go in last week.
Today we will be removing Death's Rares, Adding the special Quest to the Golden Dragon Statue house item along with its very rare reward.
Friday we will also be celebrating (read as: poking fun at) the release of the final Twilight movie with the "Twilight of the Lycan" Limited TIME Shop. Sparkly Lycan Armor? Maybe?
Today is also J6's Birthday and he has released his birthday items. We'll he released some of them. He admitted that his old age is getting to him and he forgot some of the items but will be adding them later today as well. two of the items but by the time you read this they will all be there.
If you feel like wishing J6 a Happy Birthday feel free to spam his Twitter.
Bugs and Fixes
This week have a few more things we're going to try to release including the second stab at the tutorial with a lot of the changed that you guys suggested including adding a brief shop run through and attaching the Save The Princess From the Dragon Dragon From The Princess part. We were going to leave it in but separate but so many of you mentioned it being your first memory of the game that we decided to tack it on after you say goodbye to Serval.
We will also be adding the Character Page Achievement for completing the tutorial.
We've got the new Book of Lore working (kind of) but there are several issues that will get ironed out this week. One is that people who did not test Guilds on the PTR were able to get the reward scythe. The scythes have been removed from people who did not help test and the shop properly secured.
A lot of you thought it was a bug that you could open shops that you hadn't unlocked. That was intentional. If you tried yo BUY something you would realize that you could not buy things from shops which you had not unlocked. We added the ability to LOOK at the items to see if you liked them prior to purchasing them. This only applies to badges that are visible all the time. Other badges (and shops) like most HeroMart badges are invisible until you unlock the badge by purchasing that HeroMart Item.We will be adding a note to the shops that you won't be able to BUY items from the shop until the badge is unlocked on all badges with shops.
Some of you are reporting that the scrolling feature is broken, which we are looking into (it might be the book or might be the fact that the latest version of the Flash Player has SEVERE issues with the FireFox browser).
Lastly the BIG issue is with the Recruit-A-Friend system currently to be found in Twilly. The revamped system will give you Friend gems for getting your friends to play, and you also get an % of the gold and XP that they earn on your own character not to mention 200 ACs for every friend that decides to become a Member.
Unfortunately, it's causing the game to crash horribly. Yorumi is currently looking at the system. Hopefully a fix will be found soon but expect a couple of restarts today.
Many of you commented on Friday that you really liked the new Book of Lore design, finding it a lot simpler to navigate and more fun to use. Hopefully after we get it working as intented then it will be a tool you go to a lot more often.
38 days until Just Another Day
September 28, 2012
The Marriage of J6
A Wedding In Three Acts.
J6, AQW's Lead Artist, has worked on just about every game we have ever made or currently have in production. He's got his own faction of rabid followers, his own t-shirt on HeroMart and has drawn many of the items and almost ALL of the maps that you walk around during every new release. He is an amazingly talented artist and craftsman who has also made real life sculptures of Artix, Galanoth's Dragonslayer Helm and his own J6 Helm.
He is capable, versatile and best of all very, very fast. This dude is a machine who has never failed to meet or best any task that we've thrown at him no matter how busy he is.
J6 lives and works from Canada so we don't get to see him as often as we'd like but when he does visit, Cinazool always comes with him. She is a kind, bubbly, fun, friendly and stunningly beautiful woman and after years of dating, they have finally decided to tie the knot and you're invited!
Artix was actually able to fly up to the great white north to attend the real wedding earlier this month, but for those of us who couldn't make it we have crafted this special in-game event for you. J6 honored me by asking me to write the event and keep all details about it from him. He wanted to be surprised.
I was so stressed about making it funny that I got writers block and went through four complete re-writes. Everyone on the AQW team chipped in on this one and I even managed to trick J6 into doing the art for Captain Stubbing and the Love Goat map.
If you complete the event, you will be awarded the J6 Wedding Badge in your Book of Lore (not a character page badge) and you will also unlock all of the Member, Non-Member and AC items in J6's Wedding Shop. You will also find a lot of new drops on the various goats found in the release and on Filthy McGee.
As usual there are the stock wedding items like the Bounty Hunter's Berry Mug, the Silver Eternal Flame, Cinazool's Wedding Bouquet and some others but we also have some brand new armors, helms, back items, weapons and pets in this special event.
Congrats, J6 and Cinazool. May you have the best of all possible lives together.
Four NEW Rare Houses in J6's House Shop!
Click the "Rare House Shop" button in Battleon to check out J6's four NEW rare houses! These aren't just ANY new houses, either. They have a secret, owner-only entrance, so that no one can enter unless YOU are home! If you want your friends to gain entrance, you'll need to go to your /house and then they will need to /goto YOU!
Guild Renaming is LIVE and FREE this weekend!
Check your Guild menu to see how to re-name it! This weekend only, Guild re-naming is FREE! On Monday it will begin costing AdventureCoins. Be warned, if your client is cached, your name change may not appear immediately.
Vindicator of They Leaves Oct 12th!
It's been almost one year since we did our special They Might Be Giants AQW Birthday event and as we mentioned when we released it... we only have the rights to use this stuff in AQW for a year. Our contract with TMBG expires on October 12th, so on that day the event will be locked forever. No more rep farming quests, no more special songs that they wrote and performed just for AQW and no more Vindicator of They Class.
Time is growing short. If you haven't had the chance to earn the Vindicator class and items, remember that you still have a few weeks to buy it from Itzachi in Battleon.
83 days until Just Another Day
September 24, 2012
Bounty on Bachelors
J6 is Getting (Has Been) Married!
The love J6 and Cinazul share shines brighter than the largest gold bounty! As Artix announced on his Design Notes post, J6 married his long-time love Cinazool a week ago, but since you guys couldn't make that one... we're holding his in-game wedding FRIDAY!
You can't put a price on true love!
Cysero's written an epic event worthy of one of Artix Entertainment's long-time artists... complete with Cake, Cruise, AND Crashers! Get ready to celebrate, but bring your sharpest blade because the battle for true love is NEVER over!
Wedding Rares coming this Friday:
- Silver Eternal Flame
- J6 Wedding Cake Helm
- Honeymoon Hyperium House
- And more!
Rare House Shop This Wednesday!
J6 hasn't been busy enough getting married, so in his spare time, he's made a few new Houses for you and your friends to /party in!
The only house bigger on the inside than the outside.
There will also be House versions of the Temple of Hope and the Cleric Temple!
My 1st Battle-pet Shop!
Meet Balboa. He trains Battle-pets to fight alongside the Heroes of Lore! And this Wednesday (or maybe Thursday...) he'll set up shop in Battleon to introduce you to his newest stable of creature-companions!
Samba will have more news in tomorrow's Design Notes about what to expect in this Battle-tastic shop!
June 14, 2012
CVS Gamecard Item
Write a Prescription for DESTRUCTION!
We've been getting a lot of questions about how to get your Prescription for Destruction after you purchase an Artix Entertainment CVS gamecard, so we'd like to clear up the confusion.
Once you've purchased the Artix Entertainment gamecard from CVS, follow these steps to receive your axe:
- Redeem your card here: Get your Artix Points and CVS Axe
- Check your Artix master account email for easy instructions on how to get your Rx for Destruction axe in any AE game.
- You will need to use the code on the card to get your Artix Points before the end of June, then you'll need to use it AGAIN to get the axe in AQWorlds.
Not sure what we're talking about?
Head to your local CVS Pharmacy because Artix Entertainment Game Cards are now in-stock at CVS locations across the United States! Purchasing an AE-branded CVS game card unlocks the Prescription for Destruction axe AND gets you Artix Points that can be used for any of our games.
Ridin' the Waves Like a J6!
You saw the Nulgath surfboard on last night's Design Notes. Today we've got the art for J6, Dage, and Daimyo's surfboards! The last one we need is the Samba surfboard, and Diozz is hard at work on it now. ALL of the surfboards will release in the Summer Shop TOMORROW, and they all cost 350 ACs. Get ready to /hang ten!
Preparing for Planet Banzai!
The next installment of the J6 Saga releases tomorrow! You'll be heading to Planet Banzai to face the L.O.S.E.R.S: the League of Super Evil Rangers, and they are preparing for DESTRUCTION! (That seems to be a theme this week.)
Have a great day, and as you fall asleep tonight, dream a dream of thwarting DOOM!
June 11, 2012
J6 Saga, Summer Shop, and More News
Summer's crazy releases continue with J6!
Journey with J6 on an all-new adventure in space! In "Bountyhunter Banzai," you'll land on a planet destined for super-stardom... if it doesn't go supernova first! The LOSERs (that's League of Super Evil Rangers to you) have a Doomsday Rocket and they're ready to use it! You'll need to decide what path to take in order to stop them. Choose poorly and BOOM!
With space-tastic new gear, a MASSIVE new monster to battle (if you can unlock the fight), 3 new minigames, and new clues to lead you towards HAL's ultimate objective, this is one mission you won't want to fail!
Summer Shop Updates All Week Long!
Log in now to access the Summer Shop! It will only be around for a couple of weeks BUT will be updated today, Wednesday, AND Friday with new gear! All your favorite gear from previous Summers are back, including the Battle Swimwear and the Evil Professor Dolpho pet!
The Ignited One set!*
NEW this year are the items in the Ignited One set, the Fire Dancer set, and the NPC surfboards! The Fire Dancer Set releases in the Summer Shop on Wednesday along with 3 of the NPC surfboards. The others will release this Friday! NPCs being surfed this year are: Dage, Nulgath, J6, Samba, and Daimyo!**
* Note: the member-only Fists of Fire drop off last week's Xan boss.
** Last year's NPC surfboards are RARE and will not return.
The Fire Dancer Set by Jemini also features the Triple Torches of Fiery Death!
Don't Sell Your Investment Trinket Yet!!!!
DO NOT sell your Investment trinket yet! Both the non-member and the member-only AC Investment Trinkets will increase in price on Wednesday, so you'll get more ACs back than you paid for them. We will announce when the sell-back price increases here and on Twitter. The member-only trinket will sell-back for MORE than the non-member trinket!
Again, to repeat, do NOT sell back your investment trinkets yet! Wait until we announce the increased sell-back price!
Tier 2 of the Destiny/Necrotic Weapons Coming Soon!
Dage is hard at work on the art for the Tier 2 Destiny and Necrotic weapon sets. You'll see pictures popping up on Twitter throughout the week, and if Beleen has time, the quests to get them will release on Friday!
Issues with Last Week's Release Resolved!
Last week, the Alchemy Tradeskill released. There were some issues on Friday night, which included the merge shop not accepting potions for Academic Merits as well as the Enhancement system breaking. The Rep quests on Lim were also added.
One of the hardest things about programming is that if you fix one thing (like adding new code to the merge shop function), a seemingly unrelated thing (like the Enhancement system) breaks HORRIBLY! Thankfully Yorumi and Dumoose were right at hand to get fixes up and live.
CVS GameCards Now Available!
Have you got a Prescription for Destruction? No? Then head to your local CVS Pharmacy! CVS locations all across the United States now carry Artix Entertainment gamecards and until the end of June, the Rx for Destruction Axe unlocks when you redeem your Artix Points!
The CVS AE gamecards can be used for ANY of our games! When you redeem your card (follow the instructions on the back!), you'll get your Artix Points and automatically unlock the prize code with the same PIN number from the scratch-off card.
Artix Entertainment on the News!
Artix and the crew at the Secret Underground Lab were featured on local news station Channel 8! See what the Lab REALLY looks like when we're not all lurching down the hall pretending to be zombies. Check out Artix chair-surfing, Beleen's bouncy-ball chair, Cysero's feet, and my hair as we show some AQWorlds gameplay from Etherstorm!
Click the pic to watch the video! (May not play in all areas)
PS - Luckily the mountain of action figures did NOT come crashing down on Artix as he held Daimyo.
1 Year Membership Golden Package Next Week!
The Golden Plate from the original AdventureQuest has long been a player-favorite! Starting next week, when you purchase the 1 Year Golden Membership Package, you'll get the shiniest armor around in addition to some sweet extras (just like the Doom Starter package from a few months ago)!
Remember: AQWorlds membership gets you access to exclusive storylines, quests, gear, and gameplay perks!
Contest Winners Announced Later This Week!
Zhimaira and Beleen are hard at work this week judging the Artix vs Sepulchure/ZOMBIES!!! art contest! We anticipate announcing winners at some point this week. We'll keep you posted!
Mod Hunt Emails Going Out Soon!
This morning Reens said she was veeeeeeeeery close to sending out replies to moderator application emails! If you've already received yours, congratulations! She may still be sending out more in the coming days. We'll announce when all the prospective moderators have been emailed.
March 20, 2012
Magic Lesson #2
The more you know...
The more you can EXPLODE! (With your magic.) As The Magic Thief event draws closer, the AQW team is hard at work creating, crafting, and concocting all the components necessary to make this the most magically-massive guest author event ever!
To inspire all you mage and wizard-wannabe's out there, we're giving a lesson a day about the nature of Magic on Lore*! Up next is...
Drawing from Ley Lines and Nexuses:
The largest nexus is the core of the planet; it contains the most pure magic available, and is centered where the Verix overlaps the Horix. There is no mage strong enough to tap into this nexus, except perhaps Warlic or Cysero, and they will neither confirm or deny their ability to utilize it. Normal nexuses and ley lines can be tapped into and drawn from safely, in controlled amounts.
Artist rendition of the normally-invisible ley lines which criss-cross Lore.
As yet, no regular mage has been known to draw directly from the Core. Doing so would be like tapping a person's heart to draw blood: the pressure of the flow of blood/magic escaping would be overwhelming.
The magician would be flooded with pure magic, overcome in a deluge of power which would burn through their physical, mental, and magical veins. Their stores of mana – magical will and stamina – would be destroyed. They would be "burnt out" and lose the ability to perform magic... and their lives.
The Infinity Orb, one of Friday's rewards!
Severing another mage's connection to the ley lines IS possible, but dangerous. The potential for lashback - which would negatively affect the severing mage - is enormous. Most choose not to risk it.
* All magic lessons will be placed in Arcangrove's magical tome after the event is over.
Mid-Week Member Release Delayed!
Cysero's swamped with work, but that work isn't the mid-week member-only release. They will resume in the near future. In the meantime, why not send Cysero some ideas for where you'd like to see the next expansion take place? There are so many possibilities; pick your favorites and let him know!
Look fly like a J6 with HeroMart's newest t-shirt!
Head to Heromart, Artix Entertainment's real-life loot store and snag your very own J6-style shirt! These fly off the shelves faster than the speed of light, so if you want to look like a bounty hunter* as you battle through life, this is the shirt for you!
And any bounty hunter worth their guns wants to score the critical fashion hit they'll get when they equip the epic promotional rewards that come with purchase - the J6 Helmet and the J6 Cowboy Armor!
Send J6 to outerspace... he's almost there!
AQWorlds' lead artist, J6, is astronomically talented! So who better to be Artix Entertainment's ambassador to the galaxy? He has a chance to win a contest to go on the ultimate quest - into space! And YOU can help send him up there, where he belongs!
As of this writing, J6 has 24,949 votes! Keep it up and soon we may have an AQW artist who has seen the stars firsthand! Thank you ALL for helping him work to achieve his dream!
March 15, 2012
The Astronaut & The Leprechaun
Let's Get Rid Of J6
At least for a while. The Metro news group and SXC (Space Expedition Curacao) are currently running a contest and the winner will win a trip to SPACE!
We all want to send J6 where he belongs and if they let him bring a pencil we've asked him to do a drawing for us while he's up there. He would be the first video game developer to go into space and when he gets back we could give everyone this item that he creates while floating above the Earth!
We're asking EVERYONE to help and it's really easy.
- Click on THIS LINK.
- Click the little VOTE BUTTON that looks like this.
That's it! Right now it appears that he is in 2nd place (you can check how well "Send J6 Where He Belongs" is going right HERE). Feel free to post this on your FaceBook and Twitter and tell everyone that you know.
NOTE: You can vote once PER DAY so be sure to vote for him every day until the voting is closed!
I want to emphasize that this is NOT an in-game event. If we pull this off, it will happen IN REAL LIFE! The actual Lead Artist for AQW will be actually going into actual space!
Together, we can lift J6 up amongst the stars.
For around an hour.
Lucky Day arrives this weekend and the Shamrock Fair will be in town. The fair will have all the fun fair games and seasonal rares from last year plus a few new rares this year. We are also adding the new Evolved Leprechaun Class to the game.
Before I get into the skills, let me answer a few questions that are being asked about this class.
- Will this class be rare? It will be a SEASONAL RARE (but with no tag) so it will return every year, much like the Evolved Clawsuit Class.
- Do I have to have the original Leprechaun Class to get this class? No. For those of you who DID grab the original class back in 2009, it will make getting the new class much simpler but it's isn't necessary.
- How will I get the class? There are three ways that you will be able to get the class...
- You will be able to purchase the class for ACs from Mog O'Rahilly in the Shamrock Fair or from Itzachi in Battleon, but only until the Shamrock Fair closes.
- You will be able to EARN it with a combination of Golden Tickets earned from Fair games and some farming quests which Mog O'Rahilly will give you. It won't be easy but if you're dedicated then you will be able to earn the class before the Fair closes.
- If you already have the original Leprechaun class from back in 2009, you will be able to earn it much faster using special quests designed just for you long time players, rare collectors and class fans. Don't worry, the original will only unlock these easier farming quests for you... you will NOT have to trade in your original Leppy.
- You will be able to purchase the class for ACs from Mog O'Rahilly in the Shamrock Fair or from Itzachi in Battleon, but only until the Shamrock Fair closes.
- What do I need to do to earn the class? If you want to earn the class, it should be fairly simple compared to the reputation classes but still pretty challenging to do before the Shamrock Fair closes. (it will be up until April 16th, more than a month from Friday)
You will need 2000 Golden Tickets from fair games, 20 Rainbow Shards and 12 Lucky Clovers. the Shards and Clovers you will earn from farming quests that Mog O'Rahilly gives.
You will be able to earn the Tickets and Shards as quickly as you want but the Lucky Clovers you will only be able to earn by doing daily quests. Most people will be able to earn 1 a day but people with the original Leprechaun will earn 3 a day. They will also be able to earn the Shards at a much faster rate.
Remember that ANYONE can earn tickets twice as fast by buying the Lucky hat from the sprites outside the fair.
Now, let's talk about this new and improved Leprechaun.
The class will be using the Evolved Leprechaun Armor art because... duh.
Again, we tried something new with this class. First off, it's on a rogue mana regen model which means it gets mana from every hit that connects and every dodge that you pull off. You will also get healed a little if you dodge but you won't be dodging a lot so don't count on that.
This class is specially designed to work with LUCKY Enhancements which I sell from the bathtub in Yulgar's inn. Every point of luck that you have ads more to your critical rating AND your damage modifier
The last thing that you should know about this is that it is DESIGNED to get critical hits often (as someone lucky would do). It has fairly low survivability with no heal and only one solid damage mitigation skill, but it can deal a TON of damage in a very short time. The idea is to do as much damage as you can as fast as you can, before you die.
If you don't want to die, find a healer or get some potions.
It's not great for farming as it has no AoE skills, and it's pretty decent at soloing because of the damage output but it's a beast in PvP. Petrify or no petrify, smart Vindicators will be running from you.
Another really nice thing about this class is, due to the fact that it does large damage consistently, rather than HUGE burst DPS occasionally, it's like a piranha chewing relentlessly through your opponent. And like a piranha, the more of you there are, the more deadly you are.
2 second cooldown
A basic attack, taught to all adventurers.
The idea is to raise your crit and since your AA is your fastest skill, THIS skill will be your damage dealer. Once you add all your Crit buffs, you should see 600, 700, 800, 1200, 700, 800, 1000 floating off your enemies every 2 seconds.
20 mana, 20 second cooldown
Instantly cause 50% weapon damage, also applies Keen to you which increases your Crit Damage by 5% for 12 seconds.
Notice that it is not your Crit CHANCE but your Crit DAMAGE that gets buffed here. That means higher damage crits at your normal rate which should be pretty high if you have Lucky enh slotted.
10 mana, 12 second cooldown
Deals damage based on how much time is left on Keen (less time means more damage) and reduces all incoming damage by 40% for 6 seconds
Here is a nice damage skill, faithful to the original Leprechaun Class design with an added damage mitigation bonus. You will have to decide if you want the higher damage from attacking when Keen is about to wear off or the 40% Damage reduction. In my experience the damage reduction was more worth it by far but when it's your class, it will be your call.
Swing and a miss!
20 mana, 20 second cooldown
Deals moderate damage, Also applies Stalic for 12 seconds which causes all attacks to do 110% damage, increases Crit Chance and Crit Damage by an additional 7% each.
This is where things start to get crazy. Once again you have the ability to increase your Crit Damage but also your chance to crit by 7% each. On top of that, it's a decent attack. When you unlock this skill, the fun really starts.
Rank 4 passives
Increase Haste by 10%
Increase Crit by 10%
Even more crit chance and this one doesn't fade, plus an overall haste buff which you will appreciate as this class has some LONG cooldowns.
30 mana, 40 second cooldown
Increases LUCK stat, haste, dodge, Crit Chance and Crit Damage for 15 seconds.
Once more, calling back to the original Leprechaun Class but with more suitable effects. Remember that this is a LUCK based class which affects Crit chance as well as overall damage so increasing your LUCK serves 2 purposes. On top of that you get ANOTHER boost to Crit chance as well as Crit Damage, an increase to Haste and to Dodge. This is a serious buff.
Rank 10 passive
Rarely, your astounding luck allows you to do QUADRUPLE damage on all crits for 10 seconds.
By now you will be feeling the power of the crit. Now imagine 10 full seconds of 4X crits on top of the fact that you're critting 90% of the time AND already doing extra crit damage if you apply your buffs right!
I think you'll have a LOT of fun with this class. It might make going back to other classes a little dull after seeing all those big, tasty, orange crit numbers flying around. It's also only the second time that we've had a Luck based class in-game but a lot of people really like playing a lucky warrior build for the crits. You people will enjoy this especially.
281 days until Just Another Day