Diamonds

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In OTIS parlance, diamonds refer to secret codes hidden around the Internet and even occasionally in real life. Collecting diamonds can increase the level of a student in the OTIS platform. (Specifically, collecting $n$ charisma grants $\lfloor \sqrt n \rfloor$ to the level of the student.)

Anatomy

A diamond code is usually a hex string of length 24-26, such as 4e6565644369746174696f6e. Often, the hex code produces an intelligible message when converted to ASCII. On occasion, some diamonds are activated by special events rather than a code.

Diamonds also come with the following additional data:

• An image, which sometimes provides subtle clues at where it is hidden, usually revealed to others only after the first user discovers it.
• A title and humorous description, usually only revealed to users who find it.
• A Charisma value, often from 1 to 4 diamonds, but can be as high as 7 or as low as -1 (not including the special Rizz Bomb diamond).

Notable diamonds

Some notable diamonds include:

• Unlocked "achievement unlocked": the first diamond most people find.
• Each OPAL hunt rewards otters with a special diamond upon completion.
• Citation needed: a diamond on the OTIS Wiki.
• Permission denied: an unusual diamond worth -1 Charisma. Once redeemed, it cannot be normally removed. If a user redeems only this diamond, their total Charisma becomes negative. This first happened in September 2021, crashing the server until it was patched. Starting in June 2024 the code was further updated so this would grant the user an imaginary total level.
• Rizz bomb: a diamond worth -100 Charisma that cannot be obtained normally. It could be obtained during a one-time event by giving a hat to Evan.

Wiki bug

Prior to the introduction of catalog.evanchen.cc, there was a bug on the former internal OTIS Wiki where the image of a diamond could be revealed by entering its ID number into a wiki page with a special tag. This bug was eventually patched inadvertently by the transition to a public wiki managed by a static site generator.