BrainKing Knowledge Base

I am sure that there are people who would never agree with me but an experience shows (and proves) that an average BrainKing user does not want to learn more complicated strategic board games at all costs but, shortly said, to have fun and compete with other users in many different ways. It does not mean that we would never add a new game to our site in the future but the priorities are split to a couple of sub-projects and all of them are being developed concurrently, so to speak.

And my current favorite sub-project is called Achievements because their total number has recently exceeded 200 and more than 100 other ones are already planned to implement in upcoming weeks. One of the newest achievements introduces the feature named Reward, the achievement itself is called Bonus conqueror and is related to nothing less than a free Black Brain Rook membership level which never expires.

In fact, it is not an easy task to achieve - a user must successfully catch all available bonus color codes and use them for 1 year or longer membership purchase/renewal. Some of the partial achievements are difficult to accomplish but it would make little sense if everyone can easily get them in a week. Let me explain the advantages:

• The standard price of the lifetime Brain Rook membership is 360 Euro which is equivalent to 10 years of a normal Brain Rook level. Since you need to earn 7 different achievements and each of them would cost you 36 Euro. The outcome is that you save 108 Euro, paying only 252 Euro - not a bad deal.


• It is not mandatory to use all required bonus codes for yourself. In fact, you can do a nice favor to 7 different BrainKing users who, for instance, cannot afford to pay for a Brain Rook membership - the Pawn Registry is a good source for this purpose. Another option is to dedicate some of these purchases to prize tournaments. And, as a reward, the lifetime Brain Rook membership should be more than an adequate result.


• Since every BrainKing feature or functionality is, in some way, connected to many other BrainKing features, it helps us test them much better if more people use them. I am sure that a stable and rock solid site is what everybody wants.

And I am really glad to see how many people are already hunting achievements and, as a side effect, playing games they never played before. This observation gives us ideas how to make the system even better and user friendly.

The system of vacation days at BrainKing belongs to the most controversial features of the site. Really. Some people like it because it allows them (under certain circumstances) to use more vacation days (for games) than their membership level allows. Some people hate it because it allows their opponents to move in games very slowly which usually results in tournaments that last more than a year. An unbiased overview says that it is a no-win situation because no matter how the vacation system works, it can never please all types of BrainKing users.

So we don't try to create a flawless feature but the best possible compromise, in order to minimize the group of annoyed players. The new vacation system has been created today and the most important changes are listed below:

• Each level of paid membership defines the maximum number of vacation days that can be used every year - 10 for Brain Pawns, 25 for Brain Bishops and Brain Knights, 35 for Brain Rooks and 45 for Black Brain Rooks. This is the same as before.


• After some vacation days are used, it is possible (twice a year) to get some extra days (during the same year) if the membership is renewed by another year (or longer period) - 10 after the first renewal and 5 after the second one.


• If your membership level expires or drops to a lower one, the system will check if the number of already used vacation days (of the current year) does not exceed the active level maximum. If it does, BrainKing will automatically delete all "future days" which are marked at your Profile / Calendar page. The purpose of this functionality is to avoid situations when a Brain Rook player marks all available 35 vacation days, then his membership expires and he can still use all marked days, even if his current level (Brain Pawn) allows to use no more than 10. After unpleasant dealing with a few smarties who had tried to hack the system in this way, I have decided to put this check to automatic.


• The system remembers how many days you used during the current year. If, for instance, someone is a Brain Rook and uses 20 vacation days (out of 35), then his membership expires nad after 1 month he decides to upgrade to Brain Rook again, BrainKing will give him only 15 vacation days for the rest of the year.

I hope that many BrainKing users will like this change. From my point of view, it should be the best option for all normal players.