So currently, Zack’s items just pile up, waiting for people to give them good homes. The original plan was to wait for enough to enter the economy, then start rotating them out. But the pile’s getting pretty big so we’re going to go for an interim measure.

Short Version
Zack’s selection of items will begin rotating, with the five most recent items and at least one older item. This will be reflected in what he returns for resets and result in rotating reset rewards.

The Actual Solution
The original plan for when items started moving properly, was to leave the last five items in Zack’s. This will be the backbone of the plan going forward. The most recent five items will appear in Zack’s, regardless of how many find good homes.

So if we implemented this right now, the items in Zack’s would be: the Midgard Player, Extreme Tackle Box, Feathered Cloak, Hungry Ooze, and Elegantly Torn Pants.

Antiques
This does open up a question of the older items that haven’t had enough enter the economy. Those will rotate through Zack’s until enough are bought (about seven times the number of the most popular now, for reference).

So when this system goes in, it would be the five newest items and the Mysterious Puzzle Box. Then when I release the next item it would be the five newest and the Prototype Coat.

Zack and Reset
Zack gives you back all items that you could get from him (and Unearthly Coins). So as items rotate in and out of Zack’s, you will get a different set of items returned from Zack.

What this does give is a nice framework for per-rotation reset contests, which I expect to be pretty cool. More details as I make sure they work, but these will supplement the existing Survivors’ Quest contest.

When will this happen?
Not when the next donation item goes in (hopefully by the end of August), but the next one after that. I wanted to give everyone some time to digest what’s up.

Why now?
Largely because we’re about to hit twelve items in Zack’s store and that weirds me out. It also changes the dynamics of runs, which donating is supposed to, but not to the exclusion of all else. And it’ll probably help move some credits around the economy some, which is a bonus.

And the math says it’ll be a while before items can be permanently retired, so we’d end up doing something like this eventually. Better sooner than later, really.

I have some feedback
Good, I want to hear it. The best place is probably in this forum thread. If you don’t have a forum account, I’ll happily take feedback through ingame messages to Kinak.

Cheers!
Kinak