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'''Summary:''' You never permanently lose access to your extra items or characters. They're still hidden in the background until you make room for them -- or until you have a VIP membership again!
===Autodidacticism (and Non-Fiction Writing)===
Autodidacticism - in addition to being a hard word to spell - is a new skill available only to VIP members that lets you gain XP while offline. It's intended to help players who can't play as often as they'd like, or who want to slowly level "alt" characters.
So where do you get these textbooks? Well, NPCs sell books for some skills, but books for most skills (and most level ranges) come from players who write them. There's another new skill called Non-Fiction Writing which is used to make these books.
===Non-Fiction Writing===
Non-Fiction Writing is not a VIP-specific skill. Any player can learn this skill and create textbooks, provided they have at least 50 levels in Calligraphy to unlock the skill. (And they need time, since writing a textbook is done via a multi-day hangout as well.) But the resulting textbooks can only be used by VIPs.
Because of this requirement to be 25 levels higher than the book, it won't be possible to create the highest-level books right now. Most skills don't go higher than level 80 or 85-ish (depending on how many bonus levels are available for each skill), so the highest textbooks would be for level 55 or 60. This limitation will naturally disappear as we raise the level cap.
=====Limitations to Keep in Mind=====
There are other wrinkles to using Autodidacticism:
Autodidacticism is a skill that has to be leveled up! You can't read a textbook for a skill level that's higher than your Autodidacticism level, so you'll need to practice by studying low-level books first.
These skills are brand new, and as with all new skills, you should expect changes while we experiment with them. Again, the goal is to make Autodidacticism a useful auxiliary leveling mechanism... but not TOO useful, and not TOO annoying to use, either! We'll find the sweet spot eventually, though it may take some iteration.
===Special Reports===
VIP players can access special reports, including:
'''Character Sheet: ''' generates a .csv (comma-separated-value) text file of all your character's stats. This file can be loaded in any spreadsheet app. '''Inventory Dump: ''' lists every single item that one character possesses (including the stuff in various storage chests) as a text file. This file can be loaded into any word processor. '''Combat log: ''' records every hit your character takes or deals to others in a text file. This text file is too verbose ("spammy") to be useful to most players, but it's being provided as a way for 3rd-party tools to generate new kinds of reports.
With more reports added in the future!
These reports are actually available to all players right now, VIP or not, so that we can test them and gather more feedback about them. They will continue to be available to everyone for another patch or two, and then they'll become VIP-members-only.
===VIP Is a Big Deal... But Never Mandatory===
Releasing the VIP service is a huge milestone for us, because it represents a new stage of the game's development.
But we're finally in a place where it makes sense to hire several more people and widen our production capacity. This is incredibly exciting: we're talking about better graphics, more content, and lots more polish. (We're honest with ourselves and know this will never be as polished as a "AAA" game... but we can eventually come pretty close!)
===Not Mandatory But Useful===
In terms of game systems, we have two goals for VIP:
Although we talk about it as "patronage", the benefits of VIP should be worthwhile. We aren't asking for charity here, so VIP should be useful!