Inner Circle Trinket

The Inner Circle Trinket is a Powerup that appears to be a light orb, but has the ability to be taken and used. Unlike most other Powerups, the effects of the Inner Circle Trinket are randomized, meaning the player could get positive or negative effects from picking this up.

Good to bad effects appear at a ratio of 6:4, meaning there is a slightly greater possibility of getting a positive benefit to a negative one.

The "Inner Circle" refers to a group of players on the Boston DWANGO servers between the ages of 14 to 17. They were infamous for being frequently banned or trying to hack DWANGO whilst using various aliases such as "hacka", "tracka", "laqueefa", and "tacopaco".

Strategy
Due to the randomized nature of this Powerup, it becomes difficult to plan in advance. The consequences can be highly severe from taking it, but might also be highly beneficial, resulting in a risk/reward benefit that mostly will depend on what the player needs. Note that the map it is featured on, *- giggler.bsp -*, lacks any resources outside of the Powerup and a couple Weapons. This means it is quite beneficial, especially early on, to keep trying these trinkets in the hopes to get something which can give a great advantage. Due to the quick respawning nature of these Powerups, they can be used quite frequently, with the balancing factor that it can cause devastating results.

Note due to the quick respawn and the fact that some of the effects aren't timed, or there might be multiple in a map, it is quite possible to have multiple effects going at once. Repeating the same timed effect will often reset the timer, as a normal Quake Powerup would.

One of the common effects of this trinket is the planting of a bomb. Unlike the normal randomization, triggering this will cause the next spawned Inner Circle Trinket to be a bomb. The bomb will instantly Gib the player that touches said Inner Circle Trinket, giving the bomber a frag. If the player picks up their own bomb, however, they will lose two frags.

One of the beneficial results in a Two for One Fragging Sale. Any frags gained or lost during this period of 60 seconds will be doubled. Note that touching a bomb planted by the player themselves can result in losing four frags. Another beneficial result is All Weapons & Maximum Ammo, which works much like the Impulse 9 Cheat. Players can also acquire the Super Health and Armor, which immediately gives max health (250) without decay as well as Red Armor, regardless of what they previously had. There is also the Quad Power, which is identical to the Quad Damage.

There is also the Max Axe effect, which only boosts the Axe damage for 60 seconds, though does such to the point it can Gib someone in a single hit. There is no visual cue for the Max Axe outside of messages, but there are more audio cues.

There are only two negative effects that can come from the Inner Circle Trinket. The first is a Quarter Damage, which works much like a Quad Damage in inverse, meaning the player now only does 1/4 the normal damage. It will cancel out any Quad Damage effects, but does not cancel out the Max Axe.

The other negative effect is far worse for it causes the player to become an Honorary Inner Circle Member for 60 seconds. As membership has no privileges, this can be quite negative, especially as it results in the player only being able to hold 25 health with no Armor at any given time. Trying to pick up any Health or Armor will result in an "Access Denied" message appearing, though this can result in stuttering, which is likely why no other Powerups are included on *- giggler.bsp -*. This also means they are prevented from getting the Super Health and Armor. Unlike most timed effects, the player cannot even escape this with suicide, they must wait the full 60 seconds. To make it even worse, the player's name is changed to a random alias of the Inner Circle. Trying to change the name back will result in being instantly Gibbed before the embarrassing name is restored. Note that leaving the level will result in the player's name not changing back at the end of the allotted time.

Timeout Messages

 * Two fer one sale ending soon! - Two For One Sale
 * Max Axe ending soon! - Max Axe
 * Shucks! Quarter damage is wearing off! - Quarter Damage
 * Inner Circle membership is expiring, Care to renew it? - Honorary Inner Circle Member