Hi everyone! Popping in with a few updates.

June's Event & Prompt

The Spring Summer Splash Event is coming tomorrow! We'll be aiming to get the schedule/info posted some time today. The mod team has been working hard behind the scenes on some pretty spiffy designs. Keep your eyes peeled! The first sale will be on Tuesday! ^^

The prompt should go live Tuesday as well. We'll be doing something a little extra for this June's prompt. We're looking forward to it and hope you will too!

Trait changes

Light Reactive Coat has been split into three separate mutations (Shimmering Suffusion, Metallic Markings, and Iridescent Suffusion).

• Hereditary discounts will only apply to the variant/type the parent has.
• Users can get multiples of this mutation now without tripping up some of the behind the scenes breeding mechanics since previously handling this stacking of a single mutation type on one parent didn't fit well into the structure of how we do rolls.
• So how does this impact breedings? Elnin will still have some opportunity to get a different type in their breedings similar to how trine/tetra/twin tail mutations have overlap and variability but the hereditary discount will not apply to variations the parent does not have (as stated above).

The Undine tail type has been renamed to Overwild but will have (Aquatic) extra text to denote they should remain tail styles with a fishy flare! You'll notice this change over on existing undine tailed elnin. The "Undine's Blessing Token" has been renamed to be "Overwild (Aquatic) Token".

Relative to Design Reverts and old art

This has been a bit of a hot topic lately. At this time we require some sort of an art update if you're wanting to shift markings/traits back in the direction of a previous version and costs will align with those changes. The site doesn't have a button to "undo" all the changes someone made to a design, and even if it did we're still left with looking at both the simplest cases and the most elaborate and complicated ones.

Going back to an old marking scheme where something minor was changed is probably the simplest case. Edits are always compared to the very first original design. So it is inherently cheaper to try to shift markings back towards the original design than stray from it. That said, we still require an art update of some kind to make this sort of change, even if it's just redrawing the art in a different pose with the original markings.

The problem is there is no one size fits all solution once you start getting into designs where mutations have been added or ranks changed. You cannot use old art if you're trying to keep some of the mutations but not others since it would be inaccurate to the current design stats and therefore not allowed on the masterlist. Also if you go from a new piece of art where an owner dropped mutations there is no easy solution to having mutations readded without someone re-earning the AP for them. Due to how much mutations vary in cost we can't put a single price to account for every possible situation so much like the rest of the system this is unfortunately pretty variable. This is something we've discussed multiple times now and honestly haven't found a good approach to yet without the costs being too high or too low one way or another.

We know it's really unfortunate for users who loved previous designs that maybe had mutations that were dropped, but for now if you like an elnin's old design the best we can recommend is making sure you have the currency to return the design to the stats you liked and have the art redone or edited in some way. We do not allow rank drops so for elnin with hair length/ear fluff length/tail size stats exceeding their originals there are a few things group members can do.

We would recommend keeping existing trait lengths or adjusting the elnin to have a crown to compensate for shortening them. For prompts, crowns can be hidden and hair length/ear fluff length/tail size can all be drawn smaller if you're wanting to go back to an original look for those.

Hopefully this helps bring some insight. We can't say it's the most ideal but for now it's where we're at and will probably be for a while. This is something we will continue to think about as time permits, along with a few other things that have been in ongoing discussions for a while.

Pending Things

We're coming to the end of our ease back in period. We've been doing our best but there's still a lot of things that need to be discussed with Mana including some trait clarifications and lore questions and aligning schedules has been challenging for us. The ongoing patience is greatly appreciated. We are not able to move quickly on a lot of things at times but things have not been forgotten. We're keeping an eye on queues and trying to find consensus where we can.

You'll at times notice some things that seem really out of the blue (like the trait changes today) that have been discussed on and off for a while now and only recently landed on a final decision after conferring with Mana. These changes usually play a role in answering some current questions as well as help try to future proof some things moving forward.