S1 Ecuador

**S1 Ecuador** was the first season of Rarvivor. The season began on August 1st 2020 and ended on August 30th 2020. It was won by Cookie in a 7-2 vote over Athena. Derz was awarded Player of the Season.

## Structure/Twists

* **Starting tribes:** This season started with 3 tribes of 6 people each.
* **Tribe Swaps:** There were two tribe swaps in this season, the first one at final 15, and the other at final 12, both swapping into 3 tribes with equal number of players.
* **Merge:** The merged tribe consisted of 10 people.
* **Final Tribal Council:** A final two faced a jury of 9.
* **Idol Search:** One idol was hidden in a 10x10 idol grid for each tribe. These grids were combined at merge and one extra idol was added. Players could search for idols once per day.
* **Idols:** Upon finding an idol the player had to activate it. Pay 1 fire token for it to become a 50/50 coin, or pay 2 fire tokens for it to become a regular idol.
* **Pay for FTC:** At final 6, the players got the option to pool their fire tokens for a two or a three player final tribal council scenario.

## Fire Token Menu

* **Idol Clue (1 fire token):** The player can choose between 4 different clues and what tribe was the clue associated with. It can be purchased once per day.
* **One More Guess (1 fire token):** The player gets one extra guess that day.
* **What is hidden in the idol grid? (1 fire token):** The player gets information about the contents of the idol grid.
* **Sneak Peek (1 fire token):** The player can sneak on another player and find out about their advantages and amount of fire tokens. There was also a 50% chance the player who was sneaked upon found out.
* **Thorough Sneak Peek (2 fire tokens):** The player can sneak on another player and find out about their advantages and amount of fire tokens.
* **Literally Nothing (2 fire tokens):** Literally nothing.
* **Pull a Player (2 fire tokens):** The player can swap another player to their tribe.
* **Mutiny (3 fire tokens):** The player can swap to another tribe.
* **Cast a X Debt (X+2 fire tokens):** The player casts a debt on another player. This player is not allowed to vote at the next tribal council unless they pay off their debt. The debt is repaid to the hosting team.
* **Redirect a Vote (5 fire tokens):** It allows a player to redirect a vote from one player to another, however if the person receives no votes, no vote can be redirected.

## Season Summary

The 18 players were split into three tribes of six, those being La Sierra, La Costa and El Oriente. La Sierra has lost the first two immunity challenges and both of their tribal councils had unanimous votes. La Costa lost the third challenge, also having a unanimous vote.

The first swap had the remaining 15 players randomly distributed into three tribes of five. At this stage of the game, this time La Costa has attended two tribal councils and La Sierra one. The second swap occurred at the final 12, which has again the remaining players randomly swap into three tribes. La Costa has lost tribal council on this swap, however javon was pulled out of the game due to inactivity.

At final 11 a one of a kind event occurred. A lot of players had a lot of fire tokens due to the unoptimized and broken fire token system, so after La Costa losing immunity, it started off a chain reaction of everybody except Athena mutinying or getting pulled into the La Sierra tribe. Despite La Costa losing immunity and Athena still being a part of this tribe, it was decided that Athena became safe without a vote and the La Sierra tribe went to tribal council instead. Thomas was then voted out, despite him being a part of La Sierra, which won the immunity challenge. This event is sometimes referred to as mutinygeddon and it led to fixing the fire token system for the seasons to come.

The remaining 10 players were merged into the Insular tribe. At the first merged tribal council, a 6-1-1-1 vote happened, with one self-vote included, showed the disorganized and fairly inactive nature of this season. At final 9, a vote occurred with two self-votes and final 8 had nickcb pulled out of the game for inactivity. At final 6, KitKat played and extra vote and publicly redirected a vote from Chefy to Fast. Despite this, Fast has decided not to play her immunity idol and was voted out 5-2. At final 5, the vote was between Chefy and Derz, where KitKat was the swing-vote and he decided to vote out the lesser threat in Chefy, which was his ultimate demise when he the f4 tie lost fire-making challenge again Derz. Athena managed to win the final immunity challenge, casting a sole vote against Derz, who later got the Player of the Season award. Athena had a poor performance at Final Tribal Council, which led to Cookie winning in a 7-2 vote, making him the first winner of Rarvivor.

## Reception

This season was such a drag. Almost no intriguing strategy, lack of interesting characters and an unoptimised fire tokens. The stars really unaligned for this season… however... what an iconic season it was. If I could compare it to US Survivor, it would be Gabon. This season was a real trainwreck from the terrible La Sierra tribe to the best episode of Rarvivor - MUTINY, to an endgame that looked promising, only for an inactive to win the season. This is one of the seasons that are so bad you almost think they’re good.

## Trivia

* Season logo was created by Derz on the La Sierra tribe.
* This season holds the record for most pulled and mutinied players in one episode with 6.
* No iteration of the El Oriente tribe ever went to tribal council.