Skull Island (New Lands)

*This is about Kingdom: New Lands.*
*For the Challenge Island, see: Skull Island (TC).*

 · Statue of Archery
 · Statue of Building
 · Hourglass Statue
 Mounts
 Merchant

**Skull Island** is the sixth accessible island in *Kingdom: New Lands*. The island itself bears a distinctive skull shape, owing to its eponymous name.

The island is significantly harder to survive on than the other islands: the Greed comes in large numbers straight away from the first night, and unlike on all other islands, they also come on the nights following Blood Moon nights. Furthermore, the Monarch has to race against time while facing the island's harsh layout, and seeking a special win condition.

## Developer's description

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>  | This will present the greatest challenge never-before-seen in Kingdom, and will put the monarch's every skill to the test. | „
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This will present the greatest challenge never-before-seen in Kingdom, and will put the monarch's every skill to the test.
## Access

### Unlocking

To access the Skull Island for the first time, the Monarch must escape from the fifth island. Once on the boat and looking for the next adventure at the map, the sixth island appears above the first, in a skull shape, becoming a selectable option. Selecting it and clicking the Continue button will transport the Monarch and the crew to the new island.

### Verifying the arrival

To immediately verify the arrival on the Skull Island, see that the broken ship isn't over the ground, but down on the water, and it doesn't accept coins. While looking at the map though, the big arrow and the broken boat icon tells that the Monarch is on the first island. This may be considered a flaw in the map interface that has not been correctly updated as of the introduction of the new island.

### Revisiting

Upon visiting the Skull Island once, it will be available at the map as any other island, following though the same general condition: the same island cannot be chosen twice consecutively. So after finishing the sixth island, in order to play it again, another island (any other, not only the fifth) must be chosen before.
The same thing if a new game is created (menu/map → New Game): to travel to Skull Island again, the Monarch needs to escape from one other island first.

## Layout

**Boat**

This is how the Monarch firstly recognizes that he/she isn't on a regular island: the crashed boat does not lay on earth, but it's found inaccessible, down on the water.

**Statues**

The skull island invariably features the Statues of Archery, of Building and the special Hourglass Statue.

**Mounts**

The only alternative mounts available are a couple of horses. If the Monarch wants to ride any special mount, it's recommended to bring it from the previous island.

**Hermit**

There is no hermit cottage in the Skull Island. So, the only hermit available will be the one the Monarch brings from the previous island.

**Vagrant camps**

There are only two vagrant camps, one to the left, the other to the right of the town center. It will mostly follow the fifth island standard, where the camps are very far from the town, almost on the cliff portals' adjacency *(RNG may spawn one of them nearer sometimes)*.

**Portals**

There are three small portals and one cliffside portal on each side; eight in total.

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## Instant defeat condition

Apart from having the Crown stolen by greedlings the Skull Island brings an additional defeat condition, which is associated with the new sculpture: the Hourglass Statue.

If the hourglass is fully depleted, the Monarch loses the challenge. The default time for the hourglass to deplete (i.e. if no coins are given to it) is fifty days, more precisely it'll deplete during the night of the forty-ninth day. If this happens, the game stops, states **“***All is lost***”** and a new Heir will have to start again by choosing a new island.

*For the full description of the statue exclusive to Skull Island, see: Hourglass Statue.*
## Win condition

Unlike all other islands, which contain a dock at one end, both ends of the Skull Island are capped by cliff face portals, meaning that the only way to defeat this island is for the Monarch to eliminate all portals on both sides, rather than the usual strategy of constructing a boat and sailing away.

But, as cliff portals fully regenerate three days after being destroyed, to win the challenge, the second cliff portal must be taken down before the regeneration of the first. 【  】For that, the Monarch might need to well expand the walls before lauching the assault on the first cliffside, and use some teleporters to move between the extremeties of the kingdom.

## Victory decoration

Completing the Skull Island challenge grants a special decoration on the coat of arms: the four little skulls encrusted just below the escutcheon.

The prize will remain for the current and all future monarchs, even after creating new characters from the menu or the map by clicking the New Game button.

## Speedrun

This is the current speedrun world record for the Skull Island in *New Lands* with all features unlocked.

## Download

The Skull Island DLC is a free bonus content for all *New Lands* owners, and it's embed in the game files on all platforms the title is available on:

* Steam
* Epic (PC)
* Switch
* PS4
* Xbox One
* Google Play (Android)
* iOS (smartphones and tablets).

## Original inspiration

Back in 2016, the month *Kingdom: New Lands* had been released, a user started a thread on Steam to talk about the never ending winter, and how it felt tiresome going for the Day C achievement. **“***Having no money to help in any meaningful way, its literally just waiting to die...***”**—said the player.

At which another user unpretentiously replied:

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>  | That is sort of the point, though, isn't it? Watch the letters crumble in the intro. The collapse of every kingdom is a given. The game is about the folly of all human endeavor in the face of the inevitable.—Jabberwok on *Steam*  | „
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That is sort of the point, though, isn't it? Watch the letters crumble in the intro. The collapse of every kingdom is a given. The game is about the folly of all human endeavor in the face of the inevitable.Jabberwok on *Steam*
That reply unexpectedly got not only the attention of game creator Noio, it got his confirmation: **“***The game was always meant to defeat you at some point. We found that this process was too slow in *Kingdom Classic*, which is why we introduced winter: to hopefully accelerate your demise if you did not manage to escape yet.***”**

And sharing what he thought be a remedy for this lack of appeal, he ended up describing the general idea of the Skull Island and how the Hourglass Statue would work:

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>  | But apparently it is still too slow [the inevitable defeat]. Perhaps we need to introduce some kind of "failure cascade". Something like once you stop putting coins into [ITEM X] every single day, things are going to go bad really quickly.—dev. Noio on *Steam*  | „
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But apparently it is still too slow [the inevitable defeat]. Perhaps we need to introduce some kind of "failure cascade". Something like once you stop putting coins into [ITEM X] every single day, things are going to go bad really quickly.dev. Noio on *Steam*
To understand how much this thread had raised interest of the community in the earlier times of the *Kingdom* series: by the release of the *Skull Island DLC*, it would had gathered almost three hundred replies.

## History

 2017-12-19

## References

1. ↑ Raw Fury about the Skull Island on *Steam Store*.
2. ↑ Details at speedrun.com
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Kingdom: New Lands - Skull Island. DLC page on *Steam*.
4. ↑ User AtrumViridis on *Steam*. 27 October 2016.