Drive Kill

The Drive Kill (DK) is a concept in Improbable Island and the primary unit in which a player's overall gameplay time is measured.

At level 15, a player character gains a new option in any Outpost's Jungle listed as  Seek out the Improbability Drive . This has a 100% chance of locating a room in which the Improbability Drive may reside, but it moves between outposts at regular intervals, requiring the player to chase it around the world.

Destroying the Drive will cause it to manipulate time to ensure its own survival, starting another Drive Kill; the game is effectively an infinite time loop with slightly different events in each iteration.

Drive Kill rank
The rank of a given Drive Kill is its difficulty, expressed in enemy power. A higher rank will also give higher cigarette drop rates from combat. They range from 1 (default) to 7, followed by "Bastard!"

The player's first Drive Kill will always be rank 1. For all future Drive Kills, the player will be allowed to select a rank.

The difficulty levels and drop rates in relation to the original are estimated as follows, though no specifics are known:
 * Rank 1 - 1x
 * Rank 2 - 1.2x
 * Rank 3 - 1.5x
 * Rank 4 - 1.75x
 * Rank 5 - 2x
 * Rank 6 - 5x
 * Rank 7 - 25x
 * Bastard?

If the player is sent to the Failboat, The Watcher will offer to lower their rank, but it cannot be raised without destroying the Drive.

Loss of Progress
Completing a Drive Kill will cause a fluctuation in time that will cause the player to revert to the point in time in which they had just arrived on the island. Due to the extreme concentration of Improbability used to do this, some of their attributes will change:


 * Weapons and Armor are lost. No refunds are given.
 * Requisition tokens in hand and in the bank will be lost.
 * 50% chance EACH to lose Helmet, Boots, and Gloves.
 * Players retain all cigarettes.
 * Retain all action level (e.g. "Travel - Plains") progress;
 * Races and implants are reset, allowing you to choose from available races and implants.
 * Dan will remember the player's current quest progress.
 * Mount is retained.

Unlockable Content
Completing a Drive Kill will reward the player with new content in their next playthrough, including new equipment, races, implants, and story instances.


 * Races
 * Players will be allowed to select a race during the otherwise familiar island introductory.
 * 1 DK - Kittymorph and Zombie
 * 3 DKs - Midget
 * 5 DKs - Mutant
 * 7 DKs - Robot
 * 12 DKs - Joker


 * Implants
 * 5 DKs - Skull-mounted Laser
 * ? DKs - Servo Arms
 * ? DKs - Tesla Frame


 * Improbability Points

After each Drive Kill, players are given one Improbability Point. This point is used to buy a permanent increase in one stat. The bonuses are carried across DKs and are cumulative.
 * 1 Attack
 * 1 Defense
 * 5 HP (Most players consider this to be a bad idea due to scaling enemy HP.)