Site News

Hello everyone! We're back with more news~!

Adoptable TOS & Community Etiquette Updates

Starting with some important things!

The following two pages will have slight updates: Adoptables Terms of Service and Community Guidelines

Specifically on "Adoptables Terms of Service", a small section is being added that addresses expectations the group has relative to distancing group adopts from characters from franchises and original works that are not your own. We understand there may be a lot of love for fan characters, however we want to make sure that a respectful distance is kept towards material/characters that in no way belong to our group and could have repercussions on the group.

Under the General section we will be adding:
"Do not directly copy characters from existing franchises or original works that are not your own. While you may use character names or hairstyles for inspiration, please make sure they are not a 1:1 copy, and should not be treated as that specific character itself. Any outfits or props used should be distanced from the specific character themselves and exact replicas may not be used (ex. Do not use the tri-force as a crown, pokemon cards as a prop, etc.)"

On the "Community Guidelines" page, we'll be amending how we reach out to users when we need to give warnings. While we don't have to give out warnings frequently, we realize that some emails used for our site run the risk of being throwaway emails. With that in mind we'll be updating our methods of contact to include that when a warning needs to be given, we will be sending that warning via email and via modberry note if a dA account is available.

This isn't a guarantee folks will get the warning if they do not check their email or dA account but we felt going through both would possibly help at least double the chances someone will get an important message if needed. (Note: We will be looking into a way of giving warnings on site, but right now we're focusing just on site updates we've already put forward towards our website developer.)

Website Updates

At the moment website updates are still being worked on. Nothing has been implemented on the website yet. Things are still in progress. We will not be requesting any additional/new features outside of what we've already put forward towards our website developer until the current planned updates are complete.

When updates are ready to be implemented on the site, we'll let the community know in advance and announce a time window when we will need to restrict access to the site. During that time the site will be largely inaccessible to the general user base but it will give us the opportunity to configure things that have been updated and do any necessary correspondence with our website developer if we find something that needs fixing.

Palu'au Party Pandemonium Event

This fall's event is now live! You can find the event journal here: Palu'au Party Pandemonium Masterpost

If approvals have been lagging a bit behind or the mod team has seemed a bit slow lately just know the event was the likely culprit for delays. We've been pretty busy setting up for this event. With that in mind, expect approvals and other areas of the group to still likely be a little on the slower side throughout November as the event runs! We're very excited to host this one. ^^b

Notables:

• This event will include some interesting adult elnin sales
• A larger flatsale raffle of kittoms will occur towards the event's end
• There will be a free kittom raffle later on after all event sales are done
• Similar to our Masquerade Mystery 2019 plot, this event will have a side plot activity with puzzles and prizes

We hope you enjoy this event and hope that there's a little something for everyone. We try to mix it up activity-wise in the group knowing that not everyone will like every single aspect of a given event and that's ok! If one aspect of an event or group activity does not appeal to you, then maybe the next one will. With that in mind though, please keep any commentary or feedback on the event positive and constructive. Feel free to participate in those that you're interested in!

If you have feedback that is not constructive ("I can't afford any of the designs." or "I'm not good at doing puzzles.", etc.) those sentiments are best shared privately outside of group channels. A lot of time goes into planning and hosting events and we want to try to focus on the positives.

Username Changes

We've been pondering this for a bit. At this time we're going to just start slow with this type of allowance. Similar to other processes in the group, please give us time to make this change. If it doesn't occur within a week, you can poke in the discord #questions channel with a link to your ticket.

We know this has been highly requested. We're making a note now though that this is a manual process that a moderator will have to do. We know it may be tempting to ask why this is not more automated. The answer is that not all of our organizational workflows are contained within the WoE site.

This being done manually ensures we're aware of when these changes are happening so our records elsewhere and communication chains with group members remain clear. If we have an internal note pinned or stuck somewhere that says to follow up with someone (or that someone is vouching for another member) but then their name changes before we follow up, it can be a real confusion point. So for now this is what we're going with!

Currently we will be allowing users to change their username 1 time in a 12 month period. This means if you request a username change in October 2021, then we would not see another request for a username change until October 2022. We may update the frequency of this allowance later on but for now this is where we're starting.

To ask for a username change, please submit a ticket under the "Website" ticket type with the following form:

• Current WoE username:
• New WoE username:

If you would like your dA alias cleared, we'll use a similar scheme of 1 time in a 12 month period.

To ask for your dA alias to be cleared so you can connect a new dA account, please submit a ticket under the "Website" ticket type with the following form:

• Link to current dA account:
• Link to new dA account:

Hiring Additional Mods

We'll be looking to hire new mods soon. Expect to see a separate news post for this specifically as it's a lot to cover in this news post. Mostly though we just wanted to pre-emptively say we're heading in this direction. Compared to the last time we hired, this next opening we'll be hiring for more specific positions to build upon our existing internal teams. While most mods currently are capable of wearing multiple hats, we currently have mods that specialize/focus on certain areas more than others.

New mods ideally will fall respectively under those existing specialized areas with less bleed across roles as time goes on. Communication between teams and mods will still be required, as our tasks often impact other mods in some way. The group is very interconnected. ^^b

Lore, Trait, and Guide Updates

It would be putting it lightly to say there's probably more than half a dozen trait guidelines being discussed back and forth. Some are taking a lot longer than others. We've been slowly tackling backlogged questions.

In that vein, some of the lore questions we've gotten, we grouped into an overarching lore page. This page has some older lore that we've transferred over after checking nothing had changed as well as some newer tidbits. We're likely to add to this page and probably break some things out into separate pages as we get more information but for now the bulk of it will be on one page.

See the new lore page: About Elnins and Eyre

Trait wise we've updated guidelines for:

• Phantom Step
• Colored Sclera
• Whiskers (specifically clarifying these are just thin cat whiskers/not anything fish-like or dragon-like).
• Descriptions for some of our types of elnin ears (specifically trying to clarify stacking a bit more).
• Added in the visual for horn glamours to the anima section for elnin anatomy (and confirmed this visual is accurate with current guidelines).

Questing-wise we've added a few more notable clarifying tidbits to our Questing FAQ section:

My act was soft-rejected! Do I have to have the changes completed within a specified time frame?

• No, you do not need to complete the changes within the specified time frame for acts! The edit period is a carry-over from prompts, which adhere to a stricter timeline, and the timer is unfortunately hard-coded for both prompts and acts. If you're unable to get the changes in before the edit period expires, simply re-submit the resonance claim with the updated links and you should be good to go!

If I submit art, do I need to include a written portion as well?

• While a written portion is not required, it can help provide context on what is happening, especially if the art doesn't clearly portray this in the act. If we're unsure of what's happening within the act, we may request that some context be provided via text (generally no more than 2-3 sentences), though you are also free to edit the art instead if preferred!

Due to the urgency of this update, we are notifying everyone cross platform. It has come to our attention that there is an account impersonating our group moderator account modberry on DA that is going around and contacting past bidders from auctions/sales in order to obtain their PayPal info.

We'd like to specify that if a bidder/winner should ever back out of a sale, we will never ask you for your PayPal email or send a reply through DA's chat function through modberry. We would first confirm your interest through DA notes, and then mention that the respective artist will contact you for payment info.

That said, please always make sure to DOUBLE-TRIPLE CHECK THAT THE CORRECT ACCOUNT IS MESSAGING YOU. Check the profile itself to ensure that it is the right account. If it is not the right account, we would recommend blocking and reporting them so that you don't get any further messages from them.

Hi everyone,

We're reaching out after some stress arose in discord from the flatsale last weekend.

Moving forward for flatsales:

1. If we allow GAs to choose to do flatsales in the future we will require users to type out or copy+paste the whole design name/no partials or typos. It's honestly the only way we can have a hard and fast rule about this where it's crystal clear to everyone without entirely banning GAs from a fcfs flatsale option.

People have a 1 hour preview period for flatsales currently and should read the entire post so outside of this formal announcement. Hopefully having better wording on the dA posts themselves will help us avoid concerns as well.

We will be revising the top of flatsale posts to state:

"When comments open, please include the full design name (listed in the description below) for the design you wish to claim in your comment. Typos, partial names, etc. will not count as a claim. We highly recommend copying and pasting design names when possible for claims."

Examples of acceptable claims if the design's name is "Bright Stars":

• "Bright Stars"
• "Claiming Bright Stars!"
• "Bright Stars please!"

Examples of claims that are not acceptable if the design's name is "Bright Stars":

• "Briht Stars"
• "Claiming Stars!"
• "Bright please!"
• "Stars!"

2. In the future if a user has any concerns about their own flatsale claim or other official sale comment, we ask that they send in a ticket on site and use the "Community" ticket type. Then in the #questions discord channel we ask they ping @Modberry and inform us that they have a time sensitive question/concern relative to the current flaffle and to let us know right away they've sent a ticket. This will bring a concern to our attention and we will correspond with the parties directly involved from there.

We understand that our community members can be very protective of one another and care a lot about their fellow group members. At times, though, actions like these while supporting some members can unintentionally harm others. Rapid fire commentary on things that may be undergoing further evaluation and communication applies a lot of stress and pressure on both the group members involved and the moderators working to resolve an issue. It creates sense of urgency to respond quickly that is not always the best, and we recognize that in this case, having everything happen so quickly did more harm than good. For this reason we're asking communications be left to directly involved parties.

It's important that we all recognize that these mistakes and incidents are isolated and take time to work through. We understand there are strong opinions that people want to share but posting those in the lounge and group discord are not the right places. If you want to support a fellow community member please let them know privately. If you're worried they have been wronged in some way privately suggest they submit a ticket and let them choose how they want to proceed.

If you have a concern about how moderator staff handle a situation you may DM Manaberry, as she is in charge of the staff and can express concerns to us anonymously if needed. We acknowledge yesterday our lounge became an uninviting place to other community members in the process of community members voicing their concerns. The lounge became a grounds for hostility, dispute, and inappropriate language. This is not acceptable. We believe there are better ways of addressing concerns than making it a public affair.

Moderators have made mistakes in the past. When approached about possible mistakes by those directly impacted or when we notice internally mistakes have been made, we make an effort to try to evaluate the concern, hold ourselves (and one another) accountable when appropriate, and find resolution. Perhaps it's because we usually handle accountability and group concerns privately but there seems to be some misunderstanding that moderators will just let mistakes happen without concern for users involved. This is absolutely not the case. Please give us some good faith when mistakes happen. We are not unfeeling, lacking empathy, or unsympathetic when these types of ordeals happen.

Thank you for your patience with us on this but we really do not want this to become a common occurrence. We never intend to have mistakes and misunderstandings crop up but when they do we try to do our best in a bad situation and reach out to individuals privately to address concerns.

Sincerely,

The Modberry Team

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.