Beyond the addition of monsters and the changes to the landscape, another huge improvement was added, the addition of the platinum coin. Players would no longer need to haul around heavy gold but could instead swap 100gold for 1 platinum coin at a new bank NPC, making it easier to store your wealth in the depot and trade for items. You still had to exchange each stack manually in the depot but buying items was much less of a headache which allowed prices to rise. As far as I can tell the only NPC that could exchange coins was Suzy in Thais. This would be expanded the following update.
The content of this update was mainly focused on expanding the map with new content, so the only new item was the Golden Sycle.
Ladder mechanics also changed slightly. Previously you could trash a ladder and prevent players from using it by burying it under rubbish. With the change this update this trap was no longer possible as they would never disappear.
After the holidays had died down it was time for CIP to seriously look at the future of the game. On January 29th, 2001 CIP wrote that by the end of the year they would be finished their studies and would no longer have as much free time for Tibia. They expressed their desire to continue with the game in a more commercial capacity and posted a thread in the general board soliciting feedback on how to best achieve that end. Surveys asking various questions on what players would pay or what monetization they would be comfortable with. I recall the whole community talking about the possibility that Tibia would end. It was a reality we knew might happen seeing other games close and understanding that Tibia's already long run was anomalous. There was a magic to this game that drew people back and we felt it would be a shame to lose it. Not even in our most optimistic views did we envision the game still going strong more than 20 years later; our horizons could not see that far as mostly young people ourselves.
Despite the possibility of the game shutting down, people still wanted to keep playing and another iconic event occurred on January 30th, 2001. Ferumbras, the now massively frightening level 145 sorcerer made his return in Thais. Durin the god resumed his control of the mage, summoning warlocks and firing powerful magic spells at all players. In his first state he was immortal and couldn't be killed by players, but we still tried anyway.
The whole event was mostly confusing for players like myself who had never experienced a non-test server attack by a God. I recall logging in Thais to find bodies and people everywhere. Information was hard to come by, and it frankly looked like a mass PKing by a guild more then an event. Once I saw a Warlock spawn and decimate a group of people I knew this was something different. Despite my better judgement I made my way towards the chaos and saw the scarry wizard turn himself into a Demon. It became quickly apparent that I had no business being anywhere near the challenging menace as I was still very low leveled and a low leveled knight is no real benefit in attacking or blocking a high skilled sorcerer. I spent a great deal of my time instead looking through bodies and chatting up people for information. I am curiously in a few of the old screenshots just chilling by the temple.
From the famous screenshots of the time you can see just how much carnage was caused by his attack. Keep in mind that the 10% reduction of item loss would not come into effect until 2 days after the event on February 2nd, 2001, so players who died to Ferumbras' wrath lost everything. I recall grabbing a Golden Armor from one body only to be killed and lose it 10 seconds later. The real heroes fought the mage in the streets while the rest of us looted the aftermath like vultures.
This event lasted the entire day and I recall a broadcast going out about a quest to make Ferumbras immortal again. Some of Tibia's most well-known players including Bubble worked to beat the monster and eventually succeeded in making the mage mortal. The great Ferumbras had fought his way to the PoH temple steps before he was dispatched in a final heroic display of carnage and magic. His loot contained many multiple shot runes including an SD rune with zero charges, a SoV which was unobtainable and rare, a rare never seen rune which was not in game but was blue and had an anchor on it, and I think even a Vampire Shield which was unique at the time. Other loot likely was dropped but the looting frenzy after makes an accurate list impossible, and was no less as intense as the one going on in Thais to the many dead bodies that lined the streets.
Though this would not be the last time CIP would host an event on the live server, it would be the last time a God would play a character to terrorize the live game (not counting Guido of course). Live events like this are very time consuming and many in the community didn't like the serious carnage as it cost them everything in some cases.
The CIP news article on the main site requested that players send in their screenshots from the event to Durin. Though I've looked hard and can't find any evidence that these were ever hosted on the website. Fortunately, many screenshots from the event still exist and are preserved on Cobalt Tower's website. Though few players today would have experienced this event, it still remains one of the most talked about in Tibia's history, even 20 years later.
Unfortunately, it is also during this time that Tibia was experiencing performance issues, crashing often, and creating a difficult environment to play with crippling lag. The forum was even hacked during this time though no passwords were stolen according to CIP.
Hacking was a phenomenon that really took off and players where constantly scammed by people pretending to be CIP or offering deal in exchange for login information. To combat the brute forcing of passwords a 5-attempt failed login security feature was added which would block your account for 5 minutes before you could try again. This feature which launched on March 11th, 2001 displayed the message "you are banished" if you failed the login process. Players were confused by this message and unfortunately the game couldn't distinguish between an actual banishment and a temporary one. Stealing character's also involved sophisticated tools called Keylogers which used Trojans to infiltrate a computer and record keystrokes like password entry. Even the popular WoT Tibia Stats program had received a Trojan which frightened the community enough for CIP to place a warning not to use the program on their website. No one wanted to lose their hard fought character progress.
The webpage was also updated with helpful security tips, a new and improved magic section created by Galandriel, a revised player page, and high score page which offered high scores in skills as well as level up to the top 300. Despite these positive changes which helped make Tibia more professional, the game would encounter another major setback as Gameloft abruptly cancelled their hosting service, leaving CIP to scramble for an alternative while the game remained offline. In just the six months since CIP had used their service, Tibia had doubled its player count, perhaps overloading the servers of their provider. Without much luck finding a replacement, CIP decided to buy their own server. Their first experience in this area proved a challenge as the game remained down until days later as a faulty memory chip caused the game to instantly crash. With a replacement picked up and installed, Tibia again came to life. Just two weeks later the next update would launch, providing even more new settlements for players to explore.
