All the news the island lets us print
Vol. 2026-09No. 5PvE Hardcore edition
The wipe in reviewEarly edition
Twenty six days, one name never headed, and a wheel that finally called in the debt
The island opened clear at 14:23 EDT on a Thursday, seed 1970479863 pressed into a fresh 4000 metre square with nobody's footprints on it yet. By the time it closed, 262 residents had put a combined 5,037 hours into it, fought their way through 87.9 thousand NPCs, and hauled 23.9 thousand barrels back to base. One name sat over all of it from early in the first week to the last: X_X T0A5T3D finishes the season with 4,181 NPCs killed and 235 hours and 10 minutes logged, both clear of the marks the previous wipe left behind, crass_user's 3,962 kills and Yadernij_Gus's 185 hours. The nearest challenger on the kill count, MB, closes at 3,208, nearly a thousand short.
The middle of the wipe belonged to whoever was standing in front of a keycard door or a planter box at the time. TreeManeZane put in 117 separate harvesting sessions, more than anyone else on the island, while X_X T0A5T3D also swiped more keycards than any other resident, 118 of them, on top of everything else he was doing. BzK's 829 coins looted broke its own wipe's record by a comfortable margin over the old mark of 683. It was that kind of season: one runaway leaderboard, and a long list of residents quietly setting their own smaller records underneath it.
The final week logged here ran passing showers into showers and back, Thursday through Wednesday, fog banks thickening to 0.55 on every one of those days, well above the island's usual haze. It was a quieter close to a wipe that opened clear, turned thundery and squally within its first week, and spent its middle fortnight swinging between calm stretches and sudden storms before settling, for good, into this last week's steady drizzle.
Six thousand stretches of gunfire, and a closing day full of helicopters
The island logged 6,393 separate stretches of NPC fighting across the wipe, spread from the Ferry Terminal to the Arctic Research Base and every substation in between. Nobody put in more of them than crass_user, whose 253 fights lead the field by a wide margin. The rarer calls turned up throughout the season too: signal drops at basic, standard and premium tiers, and on 24 September the island's two toughest helicopter tiers fell within ninety minutes of each other, MB taking the elite version at 20:49 and crass_user answering the easier draw just over an hour later. The wipe's last day closed the same way it had run all season: three patrol helicopters brought down within a few hours of each other on 29 September, by MB, SaiyanKing and Sofa in turn.
A hundred and eighteen swipes, and one door that took sixteen hours to argue
Keycard doors opened 1,951 times this wipe and puzzles gave up their loot 4,433 times, most of them without much drama. Not all of them: one puzzle, cracked on 10 September, sat untouched for an hour and fifty minutes before its owner spent nearly seventeen hours actually working it open, the longest standoff the alarms desk recorded all season. X_X T0A5T3D swiped more keycards than anyone else on the island, 118 of them, on top of the NPC count and the hours that already carried his name.
One wheel, one 2,184 scrap night, and a very expensive closing week
The big wheel and its slower cousins took 87 bets and paid out 22 times across the wipe. Suwako placed more bets than anyone, 48 of them, mostly at the Large Barn's terminal. CapCon's early Saturday morning spin, 104 scrap in for 2,184 back, remains the biggest single payout the wipe ever produced. Nobody topped it, though MB tried the opposite approach in the final week, staking thousands of scrap across a handful of spins and getting none of it back.
Five hundred crates surfaced, one diver never quite dry
The deep water gave up 518 crates across the wipe and saw 85 recorded trips down into it. MB surfaced more of those crates than anyone, 183 of them, including a burst of seven inside eight minutes early on the second day. Later in the season DaveThePleb and Lil-Poot took to treating the deep water like a hallway, diving in and climbing back out again within minutes, sometimes several times in an afternoon.
Two thousand sessions at the planters, and one life that outlasted them all
Growing sessions were logged 2,081 times this wipe, hemp and pumpkin and corn cycling through planter boxes from the first week to the last. TreeManeZane put in more of those sessions than anyone, 117 of them. Away from the planters, Tken's longest surviving life ran 59.3 hours before it finally closed, the longest life anyone on the island managed to hold onto all season.
Nine cars, fifty three sales, and a bow twice over
Nine cars met the shredder this wipe and vendors paid out on 53 separate scrap sales, TreeGoat's 900 scrap the single biggest haul any one resident brought to a stall. The water's edge saw 31 separate fishing trips, maks.internetov the steadiest hand on the rod with 12 fish landed across the season, more than anyone else. The kit machine turned up a Bow twice all wipe, once for Nova on day 10 and once for Sofa on day 16, and the cargo ship's egress alarm sounded 30 times over the same stretch.
A hundred and ninety hours between two closing lives, and one spent entirely asleep
Exactly 1,206 lives on the island came to their end this wipe. Most were unremarkable. A few were not: fluxkpacitor's closed on 14 September at just over eighteen hours alive, 187 players and 206 scientists down by the end of it, and TP outdid even that on the wipe's final day, a life that ran just over nineteen hours and closed with 189 players and 68 scientists against it, the longest single life the season logged. Elsinister and Hol both put together lives of their own worth mentioning, the former nearly eighteen hours with 171 players and 141 scientists behind it, the latter eight hours with two hours and forty minutes spent camping inside monuments alone. Not every life aimed that high. On day 15, Kast_Iron_Joe's turn on the island lasted forty seven minutes, all of it, every second, spent asleep, and closed without a single kill of any kind to its name.
Seven purge wins, fifty five first loots, and a season that outran the last one
The island claimed 117 purge wins this wipe, learned 1,174 new skills, and beat 928 elite crates to their first loot. The Stoic One took seven of those purge wins, more than anyone else, and Sir Sniffalotapus claimed 55 of the first loots, comfortably clear of the field. Measured against the wipe before this one, the season closes with all three of the old marks broken: X_X T0A5T3D's 4,181 NPC kills past crass_user's 3,962, his 235 hours and 10 minutes past Yadernij_Gus's 185, and BzK's 829 coins looted past X_X T0A5T3D's own former record of 683.
Eleven columns, and the same handful of names doing most of the work
CapCon's single spin at the big wheel remains the season's biggest payout by a wide margin, Tken's 59.3 hour life the longest anyone held onto without losing it, and MB's 183 crates the clearest case of one resident simply owning a job all season.
The season, seven days at a time
Week one, "Six days in, one resident is already living an entire wipe by himself": X_X T0A5T3D opened a lead of 2,636 kills and 137 hours and 54 minutes before the first week was out, with 2,048 fighting stretches logged island wide. CapCon was the week's resident of note, a life that touched twelve different kinds of activity in seven days.
Week two, "The gap gets wider: a thousand more kills, and the rest of the island still chasing": the lead grew to 922 kills over second place, 1,947 more fighting stretches logged, and 1,164 puzzles cracked. Thick 'Ems took the week's spotlight, three nights running turning the Large Oil Rig into a routine.
Week three, "Last wipe's kill record finally goes under": X_X T0A5T3D's count passed crass_user's old 3,962 mark, closing the week at 4,087 kills and 222 hours and 55 minutes, with 249 elite first loots claimed across the island. Lil-Poot's week carried the spotlight, 182.7 hours logged and 24 of those first loots his alone.
Three predictions from wipe day, graded
Wipe day's briefing offered three things to watch. Bagadonuts opened with eighteen NPC kills in the first half hour, and the prediction that his early lead would still mean something by the finale falls: he closes the wipe well outside the top of the NPC board, the lead having passed to X_X T0A5T3D within days and never coming back. The second prediction, that somebody would chase crass_user's 3,962 NPC kills from last wipe and not quite get there, also falls, and falls the right way: X_X T0A5T3D didn't just chase the mark, he beat it by 219 kills with a week still to spare. The third prediction holds without argument: Thursday's clear skies were indeed the exception, and the ledger turned unsettled well before the finale, thundery and squally within the first week and never fully clear again.
maks.internetov
maks.internetov's wipe never settled into one job. It opened on the very first day with a fight against a standard supply signal, and by mid afternoon on 4 September he had already turned five scrap into thirty at the big wheel and logged a life that had run three hours and forty minutes, thirty two players and fourteen scientists behind it. A week later, on 11 September, he cleared a Missile Silo crate at grid O12 and had the first loot in hand by 14:13, twenty minutes after starting the fight for it. Patrol helicopters became something of a habit, three of them across the month, on 10, 13 and 14 September, each one logged within a day or two of a fresh life starting or ending.
The water was where he kept coming back to when the fighting slowed. A trout at grid unclear on 10 September, a small shark the next day, another on 12 September moments after a failed cast, then two more small sharks and a salmon inside a single half hour on 14 September, a short run interrupted twice by fish that got away. His longest life of the wipe, logged on 13 September, ran ten hours and twenty five minutes and closed with 51 players and 88 scientists down, one hundred and four hours and forty minutes of it having started as a base build that never got the chance to matter as much as the fighting did.
Whether anyone opens the next map fast enough to keep X_X T0A5T3D's 4,181 kills and 235 hours from standing unchallenged the way this wipe's old records did for weeks at a time.
Whether BzK's fresh coin record of 829 holds for a whole season, or whether the next wipe's Large Oil Rig regulars come looking for it early.
Whether the big wheel remembers how generous it was to CapCon back in the first week, or whether the island's casino keeps closing the way this one did, badly, for the house's guests.