THE FROG GATHERING EVENT
Event Ends at 11:59PM DVT June 8th, 2024

• This is a gathering event to help boost the community's initial frog coins.
• Gather Tadpole Tokens by finding gatherables around the site.
• Water other users' frog buddies in order to grow their pond plants.
• Alchemize Tadpole Tokens to receive Frog Coins!
  

This has been one of our first potato sink focused updates, so we'd like to share some plans as well as discussions with everyone about it. There have been many ideas posted about different kinds of potato sinks and mechanics we can try to balance the Trades Market, here's a short list of some key types we'll be exploring in future updates.

Additional Incremental Potato Sinks

• These are normally tied to a themed content drop of some kind similar to the Frog update.
• The idea behind this type of sink is that it tackles the max potatoes that can be earned through site mechanics daily and helps stabilize Market prices that way.
• We have several future plans for sinks of this type and are closely monitoring feedback in regards to how it's presented and how it feels in this update so far.
  

Large Sum Potato Sinks

• This includes any items sold in shops for a very high flat potato sale price.
• We don't currently have shop stock of this type anywhere, which is something we're planning to add in the future!
  

Mechanic Tax Potato Sinks

• These are potato fees for using various parts of the site, ranging from more cosmetic things to convenience based mechanics to taxes or fees on different areas of the game. 
• There are a multitude of possibilities with this sink type which we're excited to explore and will be mindfully planning with future feature updates as well as new features.
  

Co-op Donation Potato Sinks
These could help unlock new features such as new content in shops, new NPC's etc and require the community to chip in potatoes until fulfilled. We have some ideas on how to implement this with future content drops!

UPDATE PLANS
Here is an overview of the two parts of this update.

PART ONE

• New Frog Pond Area
• Paulie the Frog's Arrival
• Paulie's Trolley Shop
• "Paulie's Dream" Daily Quest
  

PART TWO - UPCOMING!

• Arrives between May 20th-25th
• Gathering Event for participation trophy and additional frog coins
• Additional clothing items added to Paulie's Shop
• More Pet Species added
  

Between May 20th - May 25th we'll be releasing part two of the frog pond content! We're parcelling it out in part due to some php related bugs and in part to also test out smaller but more frequent content updates. The frog pond will also get new content and stories periodically to replenish the potato sink!

• Speak to the First Mate at the Shipwreck to begin the quest "The Captain Behind the Curtain"
• There are 5 quests in total, to be unlocked in succession.
• 2 quests will be repeatable, allowing for progression and accumulation of currency.
• The Neat Ship Shop is stocked with Aeolin items and will be open all month, taking Sand Dollars as currency!
• Other than quests, Sand Dollars can also be obtained through Random Encounters, Adventuring, and Vaer Sea Forage.
  

FROG UPDATE STATUS
We had a slight delay on our frog undertakings, which is why the froggening will officially begin at the end of this week!

DATABASE UPDATE STATUS
Our codebase updates are progressing steadily, last month we pushed 2 different updates and worked on various fixes for bugs that appeared. We're currently working on the last two upgrades which we're testing internally. We're aiming to do the updates this month, after which we'll be very up to date and have a more secure codebase!

Note that some aspects of the upgrades may require a longer than usual maintenance to go through the whole database. We'll be keeping everyone in the loop on when/if that happens!

UPCOMING NEWS POLLS
Last month, we tried out a different bundling method for pet hatches in the monthly shops. After gathering feedback diligently, we're planning to host a poll about which options are prefered so we can keep it in mind for future monthly shops with pets.

We're also planning on a poll to ask if our community would prefer to not see forum game threads on the latest forum activity box on the front page, as well as other more lore or content related polls!

VAER REEF BALANCING UPDATE
Our artists are getting to work on assets this month for the Vaer Reef balancing update which will include all rebalancing and new content as well as the affection quests and an additional story's end quest. We'll keep everyone posted on our progress!

• Speak to Lian at the Lotus Pavilion to begin the seasonal quest "A Drop in the Lake"
• There are 3 quests in total to be unlocked in succession.
• "The Lotus Festival" is a daily repeatable quest which can be completed 4 times per day.
• Lian's Temple Stall is open again for the month of April!
• Stocked are Signi's items, with 1 new item available!
• Signi's seasonal currency "Ceramic Scale" can be obtained from seasonal quests in the Lotus Pavilion as well as through several other regular site mechanics.
  

FROG UPDATE STATUS
The ribbiting will occur later this month, are you ready?

MAJOR CODEBASE VERSION UPDATES
Along with our amphibian wonders, we'll be busy this month with updating several aspects of the codebase to keep up to date with security and compatibility. We may experience some downtime here and there along with potential bugs and areas of the site temporarily not working. We'll be keeping a close eye on everything and working to update and fix things as smoothly as possible. Status posts will be shared if we're anticipating down time or maintenance. Thank you for your cooperation!

UPCOMING NICO AVATAR CONTEST
We'll be having another Nico's Avatar Contest later this month, run by our kindly community managers. More info will be shared when we're closer to the start time!

CUSTOM QUEUE STATUS
We're a little behind on the current batch of customs due to our workload last month, but should be getting caught up relatively early this month. Thank you for your patience!

ROADMAP UPDATES
With the introduction of new features in our latest changelog post such as the previewing system as well as content updates like the Aviar Cove balancing, we've been chipping away at our current priorities list in the Roadmap.

Our most recent QoL and new feature updates have been in preparation for our major marketplace updates that we're working on. We may be releasing more partial updates like this as long as they can stand alone on our road to completing the overhaul of the trades market as well as the new pet accessory and customs markets. Our Roadmap thread will be updated accordingly when we're ready!

The following updates have been applied to all Aviar Cove Daily Errands.

• A reroll option with the player choice text "Can I help you with something else instead?" has been added to the beginning of each task.
  
  • This option can be used once per quest completion to generate a new task different from the initial one.
  
  
• Daily Errands in Aviar Cove can now be completed 3 times/day instead of 7.
• Positive quest ending potato rewards were boosted, increasing daily potato gains from each errand by about 2400 potatoes in total per NPC.
• Affection gained or lost has been increased to be equal to doing 7 quests/day previously.
• Tasks have been adjusted according to the reduced number of dailies each day. Some higher effort tasks such as adventuring have stayed the same or been reduced for better balancing.
• Candied Shell rewards were increased. Dual-stat NPC's now give out a random assortment of two types of Shells instead of one.
• Dialogue has been compressed to fewer total text boxes to lessen clicks.
• Transitions and redirects have been updated to be more streamlined and give users more freedom.
• Quest item hand-in pools have been expanded and updated across the board, this is applicable to all quests on site using these pools.

A total of 118 new items have been released!
New items have arrived in each NPC's chance shop, the following shop stock adjustments have been made:

• A Bonus Prize pool with claims costing an equivalent of 10 spins has been added to each NPC's shop.
• Totems, Pen Expansions, and Wardrobe Expansions, have been moved to each NPC's Bonus Prize pool in their shop instead of being in the chance pool.
• 2+ newly drawn items have been added to each NPC's clothing set, each item with colourations matching that of the existing sets.
• An additional 4th set colour has been added for each NPC, and can be found in their chance shop stock as well as bonus prizes.
• Pet Hatching items and NPC food have been added to the bonus prize pool as well while keeping them in the chance pool.

• Four new pet species have been released with this update!
• The first 3 are quaint pets whose hatching items are found in Pellier, Johaness, and Celestine's Shops.
• The other is a fantastical pet with a recipe which is found in the Officiator's Record Office.

The following non-general changes and additions have been applied to the NPC's Quests & Item Pools below:

• Lief's Bundle of Bulbs pet showing task now also requires 2 pet interactions as well, the same is applied to the negative route.

• Astra's tasks have not changed beyond optimizations.

• Pellier's show a catlike pet task now also requires 2 pet interactions, the same applies to the negative route.
• Pellier's answer riddles task now no longer requires the riddles to be answered correctly. The negative route of this task now accepts pet and user profile comments as well as the original forum post task.

• Johaness' equip a totem task now requires an additional 2 pet interactions.
• Johaness' show an aquatic pet task now also requires 2 pet interactions, the same applies to the negative route.
• Johaness' riddle answering task now no longer requires the riddles to be answered correctly.

• Carneau's do a daily errand task's negative route no longer requires only correctly answered riddles.
• Carneau's commenting task now accepts pet profile comments as well. The negative route now requires the creation of a trade instead of a forum post.

• Celestine's commenting task's negative route now also accepts posting on user profiles.
• Celestine's show a fantastical pet task now also requires 2 pet interactions, this also applies for the negative route.

• This is the fourth installment of daily quest balancing! We are releasing these updates town by town in order to eventually balance all existing towns.
• With the addition of new items as well as bonus prize pools for NPC shops, we're aiming to make it so that certain items are obtained by choice rather than by chance. For example, the pen expansions were being dropped too often and filling up inventories without any purpose, now they can be picked up only if the user wants one.
• The bonus prize and shop stock updates have opened up the possibility of adding new items more easily to NPC shops in the future within smaller content updates.
• Coming up next is the Vaer Reef daily balancing which will include the unreleased Vaer Reef NPC Affection Quests!
• We'll also be introducing a major potato sink update before Vaer Reef in the form of a Frog themed update some time next month!