Site News

Hi everyone! We wanted to do some activities back in July and August, and it’s already September! Time flies. So we’ll be running these activities from now until the end of September!

Overarching Rules

• Activity answers/responses will be submitted via claim(s) using the appropriate activity form provided alongside each activity below.
• Claims can be submitted from now until September 30th, 11:59pm PST.
• Activity claims submitted after 11:59pm PST on September 30th will be rejected.
• There will be no edit period past the activity end time, so please do not submit or resubmit anything late!
• That said, if you submit an activity claim and it gets rejected for whatever reason (not enough syllables, missing words, etc.) you’re still free to resubmit a new claim with revisions as long as it’s before the activity end time stated above.

Activity #1 : Haiku Hijinx

Create some regional or Eyre related haiku!

Guidelines

• You can earn a maximum of 2EC from doing this activity (6 haiku max).
• Every 3 haiku submitted is equal to 1 EC earned.
• Each haiku must have the correct number of syllables! (5 on the first line, 7 on the second line, and 5 on the third)
  
  • We will be using these syllable counters here so feel free to use either one to make sure your haiku’s fit! If you use a specific one please let us know which!
  • https://www.haikusyllablecounter.com/
  • http://writeahaiku.com/#
• Every haiku must be written in English.
  
  • It doesn’t need to be perfect English as long as the theme you’re trying to get across is clear! (Example: Don’t write a Palu’au Islands beach themed haiku and then put the theme down as mountains!)
• Please do not use region names or location/character names in general in these haiku. You can list your region in the theme section of the form, but just not the haiku itself!
  
  • We were having difficulties with the number of syllables in regional names not coming across right in counters so we’re requesting names be avoided!

Activity Form

• Theme:
• Haiku

Please submit your themed haiku as a claim under the “Current Activity Participation” category here (https://worldofeyre.com/claims/new). You can use this link for the “URL” field: https://worldofeyre.com/news/35.september-activities . Remember to attach the correct amount of EC for the number of haiku you have submitted.

Activity #1 Claim Example

Hello! I’d like to submit these 3 haiku! I am claiming 1 EC for the Haiku Hijinx activity! I used http://writeahaiku.com/# to count syllables for these.

Theme: Faerindell Ambiance
Flower fields in bloom
Blossoms smell so fragrant now
Time to relax here

Theme: Eyre Harvest Kittom Strife
Small paws running off.
Help! They stole my crops so fast!
Which way did they go?

Theme: Zevija Signage
What is the sign for?
Dangerous water it reads...
Not a good hot spring.

Click here to view a screenshot of a Claim for the Haiku Activity.

Activity #2 : Amusing Tales

Let’s try to write a short story, you supply the words to fill in some blanks and we’ll supply the story in a response!

Guidelines

You can earn a maximum of 2EC from doing this activity (6 word lists max).
Every 3 word lists submitted is equal to 1 EC earned.
Word lists must follow the instructions beside each number on the list provided below.
Word lists must be in English (aside from your elnin’s name!).

Word List Form and Instructions:
Word List #

1. The name of an elnin you own (For Manaberry it could be Sunleth!)
2. The ID of the elnin in #1 (ex. ELN### / MYO-ELN###, for Manaberry it could be ELN001!)
3. A verb ending in -ing (ex. Running, Swimming, Fishing, etc.)
4. The name of a region in Eyre that is not Vahl D’Sari. (ex. Palu’au, Silveil, etc.)
5. An item you would find in Eyre (ex. A manaberry, a flower, a bag)
6. An elnin rank (Nestling, Villager, Adventurer, etc.)
7. A location you could find in a town in the region listed for #4. (House, bar, casino, dock, garden, etc.)
8. A second item you would find in Eyre.
9. An emotion your elnin feels often.
10. A third item you would find in Eyre.
11. Another emotion your elnin feels often.
12. Another location you could find in a town in the region listed for #4.
13. An adjective. (Handsome, annoying, friendly, pink, etc.)
14. Another elnin rank.
15. The name of a different region than the one listed in #4.
16. A word to describe a relation to your elnin. (Friend, Mother, Father, Parent, Guardian, Neighbor, Rival, etc.)
17. An occupation in Eyre.

Please submit your word lists as a claim under the “Current Activity Participation” category here (https://worldofeyre.com/claims/new). You can use this link for the “URL” field: https://worldofeyre.com/news/35.september-activities . Remember to attach the correct amount of EC for the number of word lists you have submitted.

A mod will reply back with a short story filled in based on one of your submitted responses upon approval if everything has been done correctly!

Activity #2 Claim Example

Hello! I’d like to submit these 3 word lists for the Amusing Tales activity! I am claiming 1 EC!

Word List 1
1. Caelan
2. ELN125
3. sleeping
4. Enmir
5. bag
6. Villager
7. shack
8. bed
9. sleepy
10. stick
11. irritated
12. swamp
13. wise
14. Noble
15. Strynhalde
16. friend
17. messenger

Word List 2
1. Hermes
2. ELN681
3. standing
4. Bellmoril
5. mail
6. Villager
7. school
8. dress
9. grumpy
10. wagon
11. tired
12. inn
13. tolerant
14. Noble
15. Enmir
16. father
17. baker

Word List 3
1. Rynne
2. ELN046
3. writing
4. Kyendi
5. pen
6. Nestling
7. shrine
8. coin
9. excited
10. paper
11. calm
12. waterfall
13. perceptive
14. Adventurer
15. Ealei
16. daughter
17. storyteller

Click here to view a screenshot of a Claim for the Word List Activity.

Final notables

Both activities should be submitted via claim(s). If you want to submit all your haiku and word lists in one claim then you may, or you can submit them in sets of 3 haiku or word lists per claim. This isn’t meant to be a high pressure activity, just something small and fun to earn a little extra EC.

The mod team here with an update on July, August and hopefully some fall plans!

July Wrap Up

It's mid August and July is well in the past. On the moderator front, the month of July has been going pretty well! We got a good system going for the prompt changes that were made in place. The team has been absolutely wonderful tackling these things.
On a side front, the mod that usually heads up event planning (Starbask/Nai) had a very rough July (and unfortunately first week of August). Event planning and some things on the site side were delayed due to that. So while the moderator team itself has been fantastic this month Nai has been working on getting things back on track on the event planning side and some other areas she coordinates/focuses on. (More will be included in sections below on this.)

Please thank the mod team for their hard work every so often if you get a chance! They've been working very hard and been incredibly supportive to one another during tough times that might not always be apparent to the broader group. This isn't new and as a team we may not wear our hearts on our sleeves and openly talk about when things are difficult for us, but we've worked very hard over the years to maintain a pretty supportive space so that for the most part it doesn't show when we're struggling. I (Nai) dropped the ball here a bit and it is showing in the delay on Starfall Faire's timeline but behind the scenes it's been pretty positive despite this. So thank you everyone for your patience. It means a lot!

Website News

A bit of good news and bad news here. Please bear with us!

The good news is our site developer is currently hard at work on site updates. We were in the process of working with our website developer to get updates to our codebase in place (as our last larger update mentioned). Those plans have been finalized and we're now no longer just planning out what all changes we're expecting to see or requesting, Mana has OK'd that work to be done on the site. We were aiming for this to take place in early August, and as you can see it's mid August now and the website hasn't really changed. Patreon's patrons are wondering too about changes on that end. So what's up?

Well here comes the bad news. It's taking longer than expected because of previous changes we made to get the site into the state it needed to be in to function for our group. Our site developer is working on this but there's a lot more file conflicts than expected. I've been informed 1-2 is usually...bad and we have, well a lot more than that. More than 10x that amount. With that in mind we're a little unsure of the timeline on this. We'll keep checking in with development but with that said this will likely be a pretty big expense Mana will be paying on top of what she currently pays for routine site upkeep and support from our site developer. If you see Cy around as well please extend support their way, as they're dealing with the headache that is our codebase right now to get it upgraded. Thank you Cy, you're amazing!

(Skip down to "Events & Activities" if you don't want more background on site update delays.)

So why is it taking longer, Nai?

The above paragraphs are probably for the most part what everyone cares about but others may appreciate the context. First, I'll give a bit of background about our site specifically. Then I'll give some background about Lorekeeper and general codebase stuff for those who may be less code development savvy.

Our site is pretty customized. This means we've asked for a lot of things, some small and others bigger, that are outside of the base lorekeeper code that our site is built on top of. Development was done earlier on to handle how complex elnin can be and customizations made to how our staff workflows are (things like being able to soft reject prompts with a message if I'm remembering right). We have also requested some quality of life things that the community mentioned they wanted to see early on (toggles for breeding or to hide profile images, changes in filters, bug fixes, etc). This all happened mostly towards the start of our site's founding Summer of 2020, though we do ask the occasional site bug to be squashed since then.

Other groups and open source contributors have been working on some neat stuff for Lorekeeper since it's creation, doing their own unique customizations they have paid folks to code for them just like we have! Not all features developed for Lorekeeper are automatically shared and contributed towards the Lorekeeper project though. So you may see other Lorekeeper sites with some pretty different features their developers were paid to make that you will not see on our site because we did not pay for them.

That said, some really neat features have been contributed towards Lorekeeper's project by some generous folks out there who were willing to contribute their work for vetting with the intent to become a part of Lorekeeper. Once they’re vetted they get added to the main core codebase. Lorekeeper from a year ago has undergone some really awesome improvements. Some of those features are new and we would love to have them on our site. The problem is...some of the changes at times are similar to things we've already asked for since then. They may have been created by another developer for a different site with sometimes fewer or more advanced features than our site currently has. This...ultimately leads to conflicts between files. It's like two people trying to solve the same problem at the same time but using different methods. Our developer is going to need to be paid to resolve those conflicting files and make sure that when stuff is added in our site doesn't break.

This is pretty normal in coding, rather if you have two people that have never met before not communicating on things, you're likely to see overlapping ideas. This is going to take time and some patience. We really hoped that there wouldn't be a lot of conflicts but it wasn't the case, and to be honest a bit expected to a degree. Our site was an early supporter of Lorekeeper and we got access to the foundation pretty early. It's to be expected it's grown a lot as more sites have picked it up.

This delay will mean there are delays in other places people are probably expecting movement. We've been cautiously trying to plan our events and other site updates to avoid compiling a ton of changes on top of work that will come in once the code is sorted out and updates are able to be added. We'll post news as it comes but until then I'll give updates on the other fronts our team is working on and how those are impacted.

Events & Activities

After the slump that was July for our event planning mod, we're getting back on track here. Plans for Starfall Faire are underway. Expect to see announcements about that event going up in September! We'll also be working out prompts and activities for the coming fall months.

A few notables:

This Starfall Faire we'll be seeing some fresh faces guesting. The event is a bit smaller than it has been in past years to accommodate timelines and planning delays. That said, we're pretty excited and the elnin are looking spiffy so far. We hope folks enjoy seeing them in September! These will be adult elnin designs.

We're also slowly starting to plan out what the rest of fall will look like, as well as winter. We had a very large Kittsunami last spring, with hopes of maybe doing some smaller breedings this fall but with site development and July's delays we'll not be doing any more breedings this year. Looking at timelines we'll need to be really on top of things to not rush an event we plan to host late October and throughout November. With Starfall Faire in September and likely more designs in November in general we just don't want to add more work on top of these events. We want the events themselves to be enjoyable and that's difficult to accomplish if mods get burnt out.

With the above in mind there will be some side activities popping up in October/November. We’re aiming to keep December relatively calm after 3 months of higher activity behind the scenes.

Patreon-Related News

Typically we don't address Patreon things but due to the website update impact and our own event planning, some of the things we want to implement Patreon-wise will take more time. Some of it's a matter of coding, some configuration that I (Nai) am hesitant to do not knowing when other site configurations will fall. Events will also largely be absorbing the moderator time so implementing anything larger all at once will definitely be challenging.

Please do not be critical of Mana for website delays/rewards on site relating to that. She has spoken with me (Nai) in the past on this. Some of it I was interested in possibly doing sooner but July was pretty terrible on the mental health front for me. I also wanted to get a better handle on where everything else was sitting before diving into changes that would consume a lot of time I needed to commit to keeping other aspects of the group moving.

Our developer Cy is working hard on the site. It's a big job and it will not be done for free. It’s fair to say a good chunk of Patreon funds will be sustaining this work. If Mana needs additional funds to pay for these site updates (due to them taking longer and being larger than we initially thought they might be), I fully expect she'll communicate with the moderator team to let us know where that sits. She has not been in close communication with us but the ball has not been dropped relative to getting back on track on the moderator side.

While this work was planned in advance, things cropping up is always an uncertainty and we're all working around things to keep the group active every month. Apologies in advance that we don't have a solid timeline on this but the things we do have down more concretely we'll keep folks up to speed on. Thank you for sticking it out with us. We hope the things we can do in the coming months remain largely positive, although we know it can be hard to prevent things from overshadowing the things that are good. >^<b

The Overwild (Aquatic) Tail Token Raffle has been rolled and our winners aarrreee~

1. Night-Class (dA) / night-class (WoE)
2. FruitCrepe (dA) / FruitCrepe (WoE)
3. Trashiebags (dA) / ThePiedPiper (WoE)
4. umbral-wind (dA) / umbral-wind (WoE)
5. nyamomask (dA) / nyamomask (WoE)
6. mild-arts (dA) / mild-arts (WoE)
7. LeechiPeachy (dA) / LeechiPeachy (WoE)
8. lumephobia (dA) / Lume (WoE)
9. gIassmoth (dA) / glassmoth (WoE)
10. CrystalBerri (dA) / CrystalBerri (WoE)

Congratulations winners and thank you everyone for participating in this past month's prompt. Tokens will be sent out to winners shortly!

Rolling took place in our discord #games_and_raffles channel today. This was a fun raffle to host! ^^

Hi everyone! We're here to bring everyone up to speed on what's up as far as wrapping up activities this past month and changes to the group this July.

June's Spring Summer Splash Event

The moderator event has come to a close but as the last news post stated, we'll be wrapping up the Overwild (Aquatic) tail raffle this upcoming Saturday, July 3rd. Please be sure to double check your form was submitted. We'll be rolling the raffle in our group discord.

We'd like to extend a big thanks to everyone for your participation this past month in showing your support for our mods, wether it was through kind words shared or directly supporting our sales.

Prompt & Questing Changes & Group Activities!

For those of you who've been following Manaberry's patreon updates you might already know she's been working with the mod team to get some more autonomy in areas, including some quality of life suggestions we had for our written monthly prompts and questing acts.

Starting in July...

You'll see the bonus wordcount for our usual monthly prompt will drop down to be 900 words (opposed to the old 1200 words). Questing acts will mirror this change, dropping down to be 900 words per written act as well (opposed to the old 1000 words). Our mini-requirements when standalone are roughly 300 words, and when we break things down into smaller pieces 300 words is typically the number we're using. So for consistency and to make things a bit easier for future opportunities, for prompts, and questing alike this is a change we're hoping will help in the long run.

Two new prompts available called "Monthly Regular" prompts. (Maybe not the best naming choice but it's the content that matters right?) These prompts will be open long term, unlike our standard "Monthly" prompt, and will allow for 1 submission per month for a little extra currency. Please be sure to read the details for these prompts when they come out as they vary a bit in terms of what currency you're able to earn, requirements, and so on. That said they should sound familiar! The prompts are...

1. [MR-001] Regional Scenery
   and
2. [MR-002] Gift Giver

You can find them under our "Monthly Prompt" category alongside our standard monthly prompt entry.

Please keep in mind this is just a first small step. We will continue to take it slow as we get a feel for how our changes are impacting the group and workload on the moderator end.

On the group activity front...

We're also wanting to take a crack at doing activities for small amounts of currency on the side more regularly, however some of this is dependent on some areas of the site being adjusted. So while it's something we want to do we'll have to tread a bit carefully about what we do and how much until those site adjustments are in place. We have intent to do something this month but it may take a little bit longer to roll out compared to the monthly prompt.

Event Planning & The Website

Things have been pretty busy behind the scenes. As mentioned above Manaberry has been working with the mod team (mainly with communications through Starbask/Nai) to see what we can do to get some forward movement in areas of the group. Event planning is one of these areas. The mod team has had quite a bit of autonomy in this space already, but some aspects that were previously needing approval from Mana are now ok'd for Nai to coordinate with the team on. This just means you may see some subtle changes to guest sale trait allowances or activities/puzzles mixed into some events.

We also have some other relatively important news on the website front and we want to keep everyone in the loop. As we evaluate things we want to do down the road we're taking steps in that direction on the website as well. The last week or two has involved some questions put out to the wonderful Cy, who developed our site.  Currently we're aiming to have some work and updates done on the website some time early August, sooner if time and availability permits.

"Ok so what's that mean Nai?" Well, that just means a few things...

July may be a bit slow on some fronts. We've made small steps in what we think is a good direction to prompts and a few other areas. These changes are intentionally small. This is in part so we can see what the impact is on our workload, but also to try not to complicate the site or add more deadlines than necessary during a period of time when website development work might happen.

Typically we would already have started planning some late summer/fall events by now, having them planned a month or more in advance is ideal but we're running a little behind. We wanted to get a handle on what sort of updates were feasible and which ones we wanted to move forward with. So we've been trying to get an idea of the timeline for our website work before diving too deep into event planning and setting deadlines months out.

With the website updates falling around the same time we would typically be having Starfall Faire, we'll be treading a bit carefully and Starfall Faire may be a little smaller this year due to it! The sort of changes we're looking to make to the website aren't negligible. There are some really neat features we'd like to see on site as a result of these updates, however our site is heavily customized already for how this species runs and we've already done a lot of small quality of life changes in the past that make updates potentially more tricky.

It's incredibly helpful to have the same very capable developer that built and modified our lorekeeper site present for future updates. When you do custom work on a site inherently it means you run some risk of other parts of the site that are currently functional, possibly breaking or ending up buggy as a result of changes or updates. With that in mind...it's daunting to say the least. You may experience some down time or maintenance periods in August to make sure the site is set up to work the way we want it to. As August gets closer we'll try to get an idea of when some of these periods may be if they're necessary.

It has taken us a while to dive into these site questions. Figuring out how changes will impact workflows or what they will mean for the group site as a whole is a job in itself too. Our hope though is that once these updates are done we'll be able to do some pretty neat stuff in the group. We're really looking forward to it and we hope you are too but as always we hope you'll be patient with us as we navigate this. The site work may mean having to be flexible or shuffle around some of our usual processes and adapting takes time.

Guest Artist Applications

Since we're getting back into some event planning if you haven't submitted a guest artist application in a while, or want to update your existing application, this is a gentle reminder our application form is always open and we revisit it over time! Simply visit our Guest Artists Applications page on site and you'll find a link to the form and guesting info there. You'll need to be logged into your google account to edit an existing form if you've submitted an application to us once already.

If your application is over a few years old and predates the google form's creation we highly recommend submitting an updated application to the form. A lot can change in a few years and we want to be sure our info is up to date. Some of the older forms (back before we used a google form) were missing some fields that indicated user preferences. So they're not very helpful at highlighting what types of events or sales some previous applicants may be interested in.

Thank you again everyone for the continued patience. We'll provide further updates as we work through updates to the group! ^^b

As June is coming to a close we just wanted to remind everyone for the month of June we're hosting a raffle for 10 Overwild (Aquatic) Tail Tokens. We're reposting the information here since once the prompt closes tonight people may still need form access and access to the rules/guidelines for these tokens, so we've moved this information over to a news post!

As an aside, we've also added additional info to the Overwild (Aquatic) tail entry in our encyclopedia for those of you still trying to figure out tail ideas.

Please read below for additional info on how to enter and rules. Completing June's monthly prompt will not automatically enter you for this raffle, you will need to submit a response to a google form so please keep this in mind!

June Raffle Details

Hello everyone! The Spring Summer Splash Event schedule is now officially up. You can read more about it on our group deviantart journal!

View the Event Schedule here!

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.

Hi everyone! Popping in for a small update to address some changes and upcoming plans. Modcation does not officially end until the end of this week (Sunday PST time) but there were some specific things we wanted to make the community aware of now just due to where they fall in the grand scheme of things.

Moderator Changes

Today Mowen is stepping down from her role as a moderator in the group. The team has had a bit of a heads up so this is not quite as sudden news to us as it may be to the community. We've been working to find closure relative to tasks she has been doing on our team during our break a bit, but there will likely need to be some work done in the future to cover tasks she has been following up on.

As moderators our time within the group often gets split between our volunteer work behind the scenes and our participation in the ARPG side of the group. As bittersweet as it is to see her step down, Mowen's mentioned hoping to reconnect with the group a bit more on the casual membership side as she pursues art and other areas of interest a bit more in life. Mowen's been modding within the group since late 2017 and contributed a lot since then, usually helping with mechanics, systems, guides, and some of the higher level admin things or technical sides of the group. Needless to say her support in those areas have been greatly appreciated but not left much time for as much art in general and she really wants to get back to those roots.

We hope to see her artwork around in the future, be it in prompts or guesting. On that note we're looking ahead at...

June Plans

The team has wanted to do a moderator sale event for a while, pretty much since last Fall if not earlier. There really hasn't been much time for one though, and usually modding in conjunction with real life obligations has also kept us from comfortably setting up such an event. With that in mind we discussed last fall trying to do an event in June. Moderators have been working (just a bit) during their modcations to whip up some really amazing designs. Not gonna lie here everyone they're looking pretty dang good so far.

While Mowen is stepping down as a mod we just wanted to mention ahead of time she will be a part of the moderator sale. If we had been able to run an event last Fall Mowen would have definitely been a part of it and the moderator team discussed ahead of time that we want her to be a part of this even if she will no longer be a moderator by the time those sales are live. We're all very excited to be able to make some awesome designs for the community and hope everyone is too!

For those who have been asking how you can support the mod team, this is your chance! We hope to see you at the sales and auctions. We’ll post a schedule ahead of time as well. ovob

Our Ease Back In period starts next week.

See our last news post below for what areas we'll be focusing on specifically during that time so expect just a little more movement on some things. As always thank you for your patience!

We'll likely be adapting to some changes on the moderator end in Mowen's absence. Please do not ask if we'll be taking on more moderators at this time. Due to the nature of the role Mowen filled and her years of experience, we'll likely need to take a hard look at the team as it is currently and who will be taking on some of those tasks before we consider increasing the current team size. Thank you. ovob

With Kittsunami wrapping up mods are going on vacation!!! Time to lay back and sip pina coladas…. During this time a few things won’t be looked at/responded to, so please read below about what’s happening and what to do if you have something urgent we need to address.

We'll still be wrapping up updating ownership for this last flaffle and some correspondence with GAs this first week to close out the event.

There will be a prompt in May. More details and specifics will be posted when that goes live.

We will not be responding in #questions on discord. If something is time sensitive, submit a ticket via WoE. Trait/Lore questions are not time sensitive, any of these types of questions currently submitted in #questions will be responded to after modcation. If you need to alert us that you’ve submitted a time sensitive query via ticket you can do that in #questions.

The design approval queue will reopen next week for submissions. But we will not be looking at these submissions until after modcation. This includes asking us to cancel any design submissions.

If you want to edit your submission or are thinking of trading an elnin based on the response to a design edit question then please do not submit to the queue! You will not get an answer before modcation ends and having your elnin submitted to the queue will hamper your ability to transfer that design.

Things that will continue to be updated but will be pretty minimal:

• Masterlist transfers will be checked once a week (probably weekends).
• Monthly prompt submissions will be followed up on around the end of the month (the week prior or the week after).
  
  • If you have a concern about your prompt being in our queue please check here (while logged in) before inquiring via WoE ticket: https://worldofeyre.com/submissions
  • If you encounter a bug or error when submitting your prompt, please raise it in the #website_bugs channel on discord or via WoE ticket (https://worldofeyre.com/tickets).

In summary (tldr) :

• If you have something that is an emergency or time sensitive please submit a ticket to WoE. This is the only place we will actively be checking (aside from #website_bugs).
• If your question is related to general lore or traits/mutations please hold off asking.
• If your question is related to patreon SC not coming through correctly (or at all) please submit a ticket, this is definitely time sensitive.
• All other questions deemed non-time sensitive we likely won’t respond to.

Modcation Duration: 4 weeks (April 19th - May 16th)
Ease Back In period: 2 weeks (May 17th-30th)

During the Ease Back In period moderators will be focused on 2 areas:

1. Revisiting anything submitted before or during Kittsunami
2. Prepping for a moderator run event we’d like to hold in June! We won’t say much about it since it’s still a bit early but it’s been something on our minds since last Fall that we never got around to while focusing on approvals and Kittsunami.

We want this modcation to be a genuine break for the team. While it’s not the best for all group staff to be away at the same time (and some aspects of the group will still need ongoing support) we want any upkeep to be kept minimal. I’m sure you know we were flat-out during this big event so we hope you’ll be patient while we take this much needed rest. As always thank you for the continued support and patience. We'll look forward to getting back on track mid May and hopefully into some fun things in June!

Hey guys. This news post is to address the recent heated discussions that have been happening in Discord. To start with, we are not going to be publicizing our stats or underlying mechanics. However, we are going to do our best to lay out what the expectation should be from breeding events and hereditary mutations.

Elnin breedings were originally only done by Mana, and completely up to her discretion or what she felt like doing at the time. Breedings were very highly sought after and in very low supply, and very few people got the joy of being able to have a breeding done. A breeding event was proposed by the mod team, one that could be run with little to no input from Mana, and that is how the first Kittsunami began. Mods spent months of their free time building the system, creating the breeding mechanics so that guest artists could join the event, and balancing odds of numerous traits and mutations to be in line with Mana’s wishes. Comments we have seen implying that mods don’t care about the community’s needs are pretty hurtful, to say the least.

The original intent of breedings was, and still is, the excitement of being surprised by your new batch of baby elnins, and the joy (and agony) of choosing one to take home. It is meant to be a fun event focused on building relationships between your characters and other community members. We have stated many times that the group is centered around building your characters at a casual pace and having fun exploring your elnin and their stories. While we understand some members would like to crunch numbers and min-max their breedings, we have never wanted that to be the focus of breedings, and thus the underlying stats will remain hidden for this reason. In the spirit of keeping things a surprise we even included a hidden “lucky” roll with a small chance of a mutation appearing in a breeding that can either be from the parents or a completely new mutation. This is just one of the ways we have tried to make the breeding experience fun and surprising.

We have also gone to great lengths to make the costs of breeding fair and accessible:

1. $40 for a kittom is undoubtedly the cheapest way to get a new elnin, and you get to choose between multiple designs that are likely to appeal to you since you chose the parents. I think it would be hard to argue getting a breeding isn’t an amazing deal. We have always kept the price capped to make this event accessible to everyone.
2. Crystal feathers are priced at 14 SC, and you are guaranteed to get at least an uncommon mutation (worth 16 EC), with a chance to get a rare or even exotic mutation which is worth up to 42EC + 1AP. 
   1. This item was rebalanced this year to make the odds scale more evenly with the rarity of the trait, but also to remove the potential of getting a common mutation so that you always get a mutation that is worth more than you paid for.
3. Bottled luck costs 10 SC. While it is not a guarantee, if you get even one mutation from it you will have gotten something that is at least 16 EC in value, and with the ability to pick up to 5 mutations to boost it is more likely you will get more than you paid for.
   1. This item was also tweaked for this year to make the odds scale more evenly with the mutation rarity, and to scale with different litter sizes (since that was new this year), but overall it's odds are very similar to last year. Please be aware that, like everything in breeding, mutation rarity is factored in. The boost in chances is relative to the base odds, so exotic traits are still quite hard to get, and uncommon traits are much easier to get. We have updated Bottled Luck’s description to be crystal clear on this, since there seems to be the most confusion and concern around this item.
4. Lastly, but most importantly, you get a 50% discount to purchase almost any hereditary mutation that is present on either of the parents. Even if you are unlucky, there are systems built into the group to make it easy to pick up mutations that you are sad you missed out on.

For patrons, Patreon has always been intended to provide an alternate route to earning currency through group activities. It is an option for those who have the money but not the time to participate. However, regardless of whether you chose to purchase mutations with money, or earn mutations through questing and EC, the result is the same. Hereditary mutations are not a guarantee. The odds of passing a hereditary mutation is reflected in its rarity, so naturally it is much less likely to get an exotic mutation passed than an uncommon mutation. It is not unusual or abnormal for rare mutations to not appear in the kittoms, and is part of Mana’s wishes to keep rare mutations rare. As has been said, if you were really keen on a specific mutation, there is an easy solution to get it with a 50% discount through the EC edit system. You can still get this discount in future Patreon purchases even if you never participate in group activities. The only exception to this is faenin traits, and while we know everybody loves them, they are intended to be the rarest traits at the moment and that is by design. Still, getting a breeding is always a good deal and gives you a lot of tools to work with to get a design you are happy with.

Lastly, we simply are not going to adjust an on-going event. For one thing, all of our time and resources are going into keeping up with the event, and we are at max capacity. When we went into this event we spent months and months discussing and hashing out our thoughts and approaches. Some of the concerns raised have already been discussed long before they passed through suggestions, and decisions for this Kittsunami have already been made. The other reason that we have never made adjustments mid-Kittsunami is that we feel it would be unfair to anyone whose breeding got done before (or after) the change had been made. If any changes will be made, it will be reviewed and discussed after the event is over. We're sorry if this seems harsh or if we seem unresponsive but please understand we are genuinely that busy.

We also need to address how concerns are being hashed out in Discord. There have been some heated discussions this past week that are burning out staff and causing distress among the community. While we understand the need to discuss concerns, we ask this be done in the suggestions channel rather than the lounge. We’ve received a lot of feedback from members that they are feeling the Discord is increasingly toxic and not a place that they want to be. We need to keep the lounge a place to have fun and hang out, not air your grievances with the group. If someone begins to start in the direction of negative criticism towards how the group is being run, consider directing them to #suggestions. We can pin an exact sentence if it empowers our group members to keep this out of the lounge and other channels if that's what it takes.

It is not up to community members to make a final call on how facets of the group are approached, everyone is entitled to their opinion and nothing more or less. Do not attack other members' opinions. We cannot express how important it is that these conversations remain constructive and respectful. Try to re-read what you type before you post it and be considerate that there are those who will agree and disagree.

We're sorry for the tension in the lounge the other day, and that it wasn’t promptly put to a stop. Our moderator staff is not 24/7, but more significantly we are not all thick-skinned nor are we robots. For those moderators who deal at times with anxiety or emotions that would cripple them from approaching such a large and seemingly hostile conversation, we would never expect them to take on that task at risk to their own well-being. We are volunteers with lives that we absolutely cannot ignore. Not all moderators are fit for Discord moderation. Sometimes the overall tone of the group is too much for some of us to handle. Sometimes the weight of the sheer amount of group members and expectations are a lot for us.

In general, this first week has caused some of our moderators who have had free time to not even want to be in the space of the group and some guest artists as well. This means less motivation directed towards Kittsunami. If you've ever faced apparent hostility before, intentional or unintentional, please know that it is crippling. This is clearly becoming a concern of toxicity towards the group as a whole and damaging the success and enjoyment of Kittsunami and the group. This cannot continue. If it does it will only serve to make things worse for all group members. Thank you for your understanding.