Seasonal World

The Seasonal World is a special event server set up by Screeps. It costs Access Keys to gain entry to play and lasts for a set period of time using the enter screen. Modifiers and new mechanics are expected for seasons, such as modifying constants or new resources. Most seasons have a few weeks between the announcement and when ticks start, allowing players to devise strategies for handling any new mechanics.

Each season is implemented via a mod to the game, which the developers upload to the official Github. A current list can be found here.

Season #1 - Score

Announcement	2020-09-27
Period	2020-12-01 to 2021-02-01
Status	Complete
Winner	Tigga
Chronical	[1]
Mod	Github

Season one was announced September 27th, 2020. It began December 1st, 2020 and lasted for two months until Febuary 1st, 2021. First place was taken by Tigga.

This season saw players starting off at GCL level one & GPL level zero with a CPU Limit of 100, spawning in a completely empty world. The twist comes with new resource items spawning periodically on the map in random places, that players needed to collect and bank in new structures spawned in highway rooms to increase their score. These structures were behind large constructed walls which needed to be removed first before a creep could access the structure. Rewards were announced for the top 100 scoring players.

Season #2 - Symbols & Decoders

Announcement	2021-01-09
Period	2021-03-01 to 2021-05-01
Status	Complete
Winner	Tigga
Chronical	[2]
Mod	Github

Season two's concept was announced January 9th, 2021. It began March 1st, 2021 and lasted for two months until May 1st, 2021. First place was taken by Tigga.

This season saw players starting off the same as last season (GCL 1 and GPL 0) with a CPU Limit of 100, spawning in an empty world. The mechanic this time was a new set of resources ('symbols'), which spawned around the map in a new structure ('symbol container') and had to be brought to a new structure ('decoder') in rooms with a controller that matched the symbol of the resource. A higher room RCL increased the amount of score a player received when depositing into it's decoder. This season was also designed with co-operation between players in-mind, though not strictly enforced.

Season #3 - Power Creeps

Announcement	2021-06-28
Period	2021-07-01 to 2021-09-01
Status	Complete
Winner	Tigga
Chronical	[3]
Mod	Github

Season three was announced June 28th, 2021. It began July 1st, 2021 and lasted for two months until September 1st, 2021. First place was taken by Tigga.

This season was dedicated to power harvesting, processing, and usage. The goal was to acquire and process as much power as possible.

From a mechanics perspective, Power Spawns were available from RCL 5 (instead of the usual RCL 8), Power Spawns were significantly cheaper to build, power processing itself was cheaper, power banks didn't reflect damage back to attackers, and power usage was permanently enabled on all rooms. Additionally, regular spawns were limited to 1/room, and sources in single-source rooms had their energy doubled. Lastly the map was significantly swampier than usual, complicating traditional movement and logistics.

Season #4 - Caravans & Commerce

Announcement	2022-01-09
Period	2022-01-15 to 2022-03-01
Status	Complete
Winner	Tigga
Chronical	[4]
Mod	---

Season four was announced January 9th, 2022. It began January 15th, 2022 and lasted for one and a half months until March 1st, 2022. First place was taken by Tigga.

This season featured caravans of unarmed creeps that travelled between crossroads. Each creep in the caravan carried a randomly-spawned commodity, and accepted the same commodity in return for score. The goal, naturally, was for players to produce commodities and then transport them to an appropriate caravan.

To make things interesting, caravans would explode if damaged or blocked, and would drop commodities that didn't match their randomly-determined one.

Season #5 - Resources & Reactors

Announcement	2023-05-24
Period	2023-06-01 to 2023-08-01
Status	Complete
Winner	Tigga
Chronical	[5]
Mod	Github

Season five was announced May 24th, 2023. It began June 1st, 2023 and lasted for two months until August 1st, 2023. First place was taken by Tigga.

This season saw the introduction of a new season-specific resource: Thorium. Players gained score by placing harvested Thorium into new Reactor structures that were placed in the center of each sector. The difficulties were threefold: Thorium was non-renewable, and thus new deposits had to be secured and harvested from new rooms as old deposits were drained; Thorium was also damaging, causing faster aging and decay for creeps and structures, respectively; Reactors were claimable, and thus players had to fight to retain control over them to continue receiving score from their hard-won Thorium.

Additionally, Reactors increased their score gain the longer they operated, providing heavy incentive for players to keep them stocked with Thorium and operating continuously.

The formula for the aging/decay increase was: `Math.floor(Math.log10([total Thorium on the tile]))`

The formula for the score gained from an operating Reactor was: `1 + Math.floor(Math.log10([ticks of continuous operating]))`

Season #6 - The Shifting Frontier

Announcement	2024-01-15
Period	2023-02-01 to 2023-04-01
Status	In Progress
Winner	Tigga
Chronical	[6]
Mod	---

Season six was announced January 15th, 2024. It began February 1st, 2024 and lasted for two months until April 1st, 2024. While scores have not been formally announced yet, Tigga has been unofficially determined to be the winner based on leaderboard stats.

This season was uniquely focused on expansion. While previous seasons have been limited to a map of 36 sectors (bumping up slightly in season five with respawn zones), this season bumped that up to a 10x10 grid of 100 sectors, totalling 10,000 rooms. This was critical, as the main mechanic of the season was an ever-shifting map where score was given for the controller progress of rooms as they were closed. Columns of rooms were closed from the West and opened up in the East on a daily basis. Closures happened at a rate of 1 column per day for the first month, then sped up to 2 columns closed per day. The rate of room openings remained constant at 1 column per day for the entire season.

This constantly-shifting map upended many traditional strategies of building up entrenched rooms that remain controlled for the entire season, instead forcing players to improve their expansion code and implement tactics such as energy funneling and room evacuation.

Additionally, the resource distribution of sources was adjusted to be more numerous in the north compared to the south, allowing for a natural stratification of novices in the south and more established codebases in the north.