It looks like a new kind of hobby is spreading through Godville. Nobody knows how it all started, but more and more heroes, from beginners to the most seasoned adventurers, are being spotted sitting next to rivers, ponds and other water bodies, with an artifact attached to a line on a stick… They call it “fishing”.

Surprisingly, the loot is not just fish: it could be a golden brick or something else easily activatable. Taverns are already full of stories about a bigger catch fished out on a “bolder” bait. In the best ZPG tradition, divine influence is not required or it can even be harmful – nobody wants to scare away all the fish with noise or thunderclaps.

In the mean time, a few overly enthusiastic shipwrights got their hands on some ancient scriptures and realized why they needed arks in the first place. All this time they were meant to preserve life in this world – which in their heroic minds translates into finding a thousand pairs of twos of every kind and packing them into their arks, just in case.

However, there is a problem – heroes have gone back and forth through Godville countless times and all they saw were some genderless and occasionally male creatures. Where do they find fenimals? Well, checking the waters is worth a shot. While high-waters are not yet available due to the ongoing construction in Godville’s port, a recent fishing craze should come in very handy.

This new heroic undertaking won’t get unnoticed: Godville’s accountants are already crunching some numbers and the builders were noticed erecting something new in the pantheons area.

Some miscellaneous news:

• a recent major update of Godville Android app has added support of Material Design, improved notifications and very handy Mini-Remote. Make sure to check it out if you haven’t yet.
• if iOS is your choice (and the app was crashing recently), get the latest update from the AppStore as it might help you.
• if you’re an active Ideaboxer keep in mind that your ideas can be accepted at any time of the month (unlike from just the beginning of the month like it used to be).

Godville Times editors are always looking for the new ways to entertain the readers. Еspecially if it’s something interactive… like a crossword, but different. Bingo!

Yes, Bingo is a new newspaper mini-game – with a Godville twist in it. Instead of collecting boring numbers, here you’re filling a grid with pieces of artifacts. Yep, the real virtual artifacts from your hero’s pockets! Just pick a moment when your hero has something worthy in the inventory and “borrow” the required trophies for your divine needs.

Why? Because it’s fun. But there are other nice perks too. If you extract artifacts for bingo three times during a day your hero will get a nice gold reward. Also Top-100 of the luckiest players will be published in the next issue of newspaper. More on bingo rules can be found in this forum topic.

Let’s play!

A new development in the Godville’s Economy. Just after few years of relentless savings a hero guided by Kingdada managed to collect the first ever retirement fund (which btw consists of thirty-freaking-million gold coins). You may be wondering what in Godville could cost that much and who can possible have this kind of money?

Traders, of course! These are the people managing millions day-in and day-out, profiting off the artifact circulation. They cheat and swindle our poor champions every day while calling it a “service” and being in that business sure costs money. So, what could be a better investment for a run-down hero than a long overdue right to rest and leisure.

By buying a trading shop and jumping into a merchant’s skin a hero gets a new way to lead his life. All his usual trade-pray-rest-sleep duties can now be done at one place – somewhere around a cash register. Other heroes will come to sell their stuff, some monster will drop by to buy it. Also, he finally can sell his knocked tooth to some other trader for profit! Sure he can get a tax audit once in while, but that won’t stop him from being happy, because now he has a trade level counter and he does’t even have to lift up his butt!

But what about the god? He can now send his hero to do the trade or throw him back into battlefields. Also, he gets some leverage over Godville goods markets, with the new ability to place orders on the wanted items in Godville Times. And since the god has this 2-in-1 kind of a trader-hero thing he can now have up to 200% godpower to rule them all.

Let’s congratulate Kingdada, shall we?

Short and up to the point.
Five years ago Godville opened its doors.
Five years ago first gods and heroes were born.
Five years ago first diaries were made.
Let’s make our heroes a hell of a day today!
Thirty festive charges will hopefully come in handy for this.
Congratulations, everyone!

It’s a news day again, hooray!

The term of the first-elected guild leaders is nearing to an end, which means now is a good moment to lean back with a cup of something, retrospect and make minor adjustments. According to the Godville Stats Department more than 75% of guilds have elected a leader, which shows that election system works – mostly. To make things a bit better, the minimum election threshold will be lowered to 30% and the governing period will be increased to 4 months. A quick note here – both the guild totem and custom rank won’t disappear once unlocked, even if the guild fails to elect a new leader. However, a new leader will be able to change them.

The next news come from the Godville Times reporters permanently stationed underground:

• A recently discovered dungeon of Pledge is known to nudge our boasting heroes to bet a log of wood at the entrance for finding the treasury. Thus, those who won’t find it or get knocked out in the process will lose a log of wood. Tale tallers are already anticipating a whole new wave of the AFK debate.
• Another message reports of a dungeon of Savings, which has a nice perk in its treasury – a gold coins deposit box. This enables the heroes to safely and against their will transfer all their hard-earned gold coins into Savings.

A new breed of boss was noticed in the wild. Unlike the Deafening bosses, which outvoice divine commands with their roar, the new Overhearing species are quite intelligent to actually understand god voices and even react on them, occasionally.

A new artifact was spotted in the Godville’s markets. It’s said to make kind heroes kinder and evil heroes more evil much more quickly than the normal influences do, which should come in handy for reaching an extreme alignment. Though it’s very rare and uncraftable to heroes, it’s known to be of a good value among traders.

Meanwhile the newly-discovery aura of Curiosity is reported to temporarily boost the heroes’ IQ level, enabling them to activate artifacts all by themselves, without using the godpower (except of the arena ones, those are still too complex for heroic brains). This could be very handy or very ill-timed, but it will sure be fun. Hail ZPG!

The winter is finally coming to an end. The most attentive of us have probably noticed the Shedding monsters roaming in the wild or some mangy fur coats in the pockets of our provident champions. Let’s also seize this opportunity and shed a few layers of the old content by doing our regular Spring Cleaning. If you believe that some of the game’s phrases are unfit, inappropriate or just boring make sure to post them in this forum topic.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of Spring renewal, the game got a big content update. There are literally hundreds of new monsters, artifacts, and diary phrases. Traders finally got fresh stock of new high-level equipment. Even the newspaper should look more fresh.

And finally, one breaking news. For the last few years the most often feature request was to add graphics to the game. So today, we’re happy to announce that from now on Godville has graphics! Well, not in the usual sense, but if you’re using the latest mobile app (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) you can now “Picturize” any game text into a nice looking picture and save it for your viewing pleasure in the future. Rejoice!

Warm greetings to you, Godville gods!

There are a lot of good news today. Let’s start with guild-related ones.

Guilds in Godville are self-sustaining amorphous substances and nobody really knows how they all work, which sometimes could be confusing. It’s time to bring a bit more order to this anarchy. From now on, the guild members will be able to elect a leader via newly created page. All prominent candidates can nominate themselves and fight for the mindshare of the fellow guildmates with mind-blowing campaigns in the Guild Council, forum topic, etc. It’s assumed that the leader will do things for the greater good of the guild, but in case he won’t, the guild members can always impeach him before the end of his term.

So, what a leader can do? In the ZPG spirit of Godville – probably not too much, but enough to bring a bit more order and fun to the guilds. A leader can set a daily topic for the Guild Council and setup a quick link to the guild’s forum topic to improve guild collaboration. For the high-ranked guilds the leaders will also be able to setup their own high-level guild rank and pick a known monster as a guild totem which will sure come in handy in the future. But enough words, let’s get to voting!

Meanwhile, the spirit of upcoming holidays is slowly but surely descending upon Godville. A pop-up settlement, also known as Laplandville, has opened their doors right next to the capital and began disrupting its business with bargain sales, overly generous traders, and extra efficient praying chapels. Heroes’ diaries are full of snow, and their sacks are full of gifts, while overcharged Holiday monsters are festively running around. Satan Clauses and Santa Clawses are also back in town and they look happy and quite tamable.

Happy holidays! Ho-ho-ho!

You did enjoy the Halloween pumpkins, right? We sure did. Here is a quick heads up on what else is happening in the world of Godville.

Since the heroes spend most of their time questing it would be useful to upgrade this part of their life. A fresh content update has added a few hundred of new quests (including epics) awaiting to be completed.

There are also new types of mini-quests, which are just like the old ones, but better, more varied, and with more exciting rewards – a golden brick, godpower restore, faster quest progress, random aura, etc. Sudden boss encounters while traveling are gone now, but a hero can still meet a boss when on a mini-quest and when that happens he will be smart enough to use a potion if needed. It’s good to remember that a simple godvoice or two can cancel any current quest if a god wishes so.

Btw, did you know that quests can have endings? Some of them already have them, but some still don’t. From now on the endings will be visible in the Third Eye, so if you see a quest and you have an idea for a great punch line appropriate for the diary line, you can submit your gem here and get IQ points if it’s accepted.

Another change that should come in handy, especially for those of you ever-present, multi-gadget gods – message status sync. E.g. if you read a new friend message on your phone, it won’t show up as unread on your tablet or in a web browser. It’s a bit experimental though and it only applies to the newly received messages (so if the old unread messages are bothering you’d need to logout and login back again if you’re on mobile or reset the page’s setting if playing in a web browser). This feature should already work in a web browser, while mobile apps will require an update (updates for Android and Windows Phone are already available and corresponding iOS update is pending Apple’s review). Bug reports with the detailed description of how it happened are welcome via Ideabox.

Oh, and just in case if you didn’t know, Godville iOS app has been recently updated with a whole bunch of goodies: brand new Today Screen widget, Phone 6/6+ support and Touch ID login. Make to sure to stay up to date to get enjoy the awesomeness.

Happy questing, everyone!

Let’s add some finishing touches on the renewed arena. Firstly, the duel ties are no more. Instead of tossing the coin, arena judges will throw in potions or do whatever they can to see who would actually win, fair and square.

There are two new special duel conditions too. First one limits the maximum number of influences to two (instead of the usual four). Second one is for the beloved gods with temple – your hero now has a chance to get a log of gopher wood for winning in the arena.

Meanwhile, a new report from free-walking spelunkers mentions new kinds of dungeons with new side quests. Let’s dig!

In other changes. Due to the limitation of having constructive discussions in the Ideabox, the “Questionable Content” section is now closed. Instead, please use this forum topic to submit and discuss “not good enough” or confusing texts from the game. (Bugfixes, grammar corrections and inappropriate content should still be reported via Ideabox/Corrections).

Finally, as it was announced in the previous post a new town is about to be founded. “Roflopolis” will be its name and now it’s up to you to decide where this town would be. Any suggestions?

It’s been some time since new Arena was opened and now the time has come to lift the drapes from the new pantheon – the Pantheon of Duelers. Its rating is based on the classic Elo rating system, which accounts for the outcomes of all previous duels of both players. It’s also more forgiving towards occasional loses (comparing to the old rating).

To make things even more interesting, there now will be contest seasons. During a given season all wins and losses will be counted towards the present player’s rating. Once the season is over a new achievement will be awarded according to the final standings and the rating will start over again for the next season.

The guild dueling pantheon (previously known as the Pantheon of Aggressiveness) has been renovated as well. Now it’s called the Pantheon of Duelery and it’s also based on the Elo ratings of the most successful duelers among the guild. This rating is not seasonal and it accounts for all fights that took place since new arena rules were put in place (June 6, 2014).

In other news – the influx of new dwellers are about to settle down in some remote locations, but they yet to name their towns and decide what to do. So, if you have great ideas for a particular new feature for town (as well as a name) please voice it via comments or Ideabox.