It's been quiet! I've just returned from a couple of weeks vacation, and thought I'd give you a little bit of something to peruse before the next update by providing some information on an upcoming feature.
Tavern & Quests!
Taverns and Quests: that mysterious feature sitting idly as a greyed out link in your menu bar since the beginning of time. While they're not on the short term plan, some active work has begun in developing this feature of the site, mostly in the art and lore department. Since there is so little information about this on site right now, and the actual mechanics are pretty developed now (though of course always subject to change before release), I figured now was a good time to dive into how it's going to work.
What are taverns?
The "taverns" are essentially a group of kitty clubs/organizations that have popped up on Not-Earth. There will be 9 of them, each with a unique background, lore/mission and general aesthetic/vibe. Users will be able to freely and optionally join whichever one they like best at any time after sign-up, or change between them at some interval (probably the same interval as mayor elections), or not join one at all if they prefer.
How will tavern quests work?
Taverns will have their own forums for community building, but their primary gameplay feature will be the weekly group quest each tavern is assigned. Quests will likely be viewable about 3-5 weeks in advance and each week will have something different for the group. Quests will be fairly casual and run parallel to the usual gameplay activities. For example, the quest might be to collect and turn in certain common resources, defeat certain kinds of monsters, level up cats, craft items, or so on. All taverns will have the same types of quests at the same time.
Goal tiers for the quest will be scaled based on the size of the group, where the more a group collectively participates together, the better the rewards everyone gets at the end of the week. In addition to the group reward at the end of the week, participation will also reward tokens which can be used to purchase tavern-themed items, useful resource packages, and other enticing prizes from the tavern's store.
The idea is to provide a little something to do each week with other players, while also not making it into something that takes up more time than your usual gameplay activity. It can theoretically be done casually (where points are just based on what people happen to be doing, so everyone just gets a fun little free item at the end of the week) or in a more intense way (if a group wants to go extra hard some week and see how high they can make their tier rewards go).
Quest Suggestions
At this point, I'm interested in ideas for group quests, games, and prizes! I'd like to add a pretty large variety of games so that every week is a little bit different (and will add more over time). Here are some examples of quests I'm considering for reference:
- Common Resource Fetch Quests. The 18 most common items in inventories are divided up amongst the taverns and everyone tries to turn in as many of those items as possible. For example, tavern A gets the 1st and 18th most numerous item to turn in, tavern B gets the 2nd and 17th, and so on. This would function as an item sink for those who (like me) are sitting on thousands of sticks.
- Monster Hunting Week. Every tavern is assigned a list of specific monsters to hunt in Adventuring.
- Scavenger Hunt. Everyone is assigned a unique list of items and tries to turn in as many of the items off their list as possible. Since every player has a different list, you can help each other out by trading for what you're missing off your list.
- Training Week. Level up as many cats as possible in Adventuring.
- Capture the Flag. Special Adventuring chest / touchpoint encounter where you pick up flags as you go.
Please feel free to get creative with suggestions!
More information on the specific 9 taverns?
More individual information about the actual taverns will come later, but as a little bit of a teaser, here is one word, one color, and one terribly unhelpful number that relates to each of them:
curtains
#9b505b
5 | compass
#bc9b7b
3 | candles
#505257
3 |
arcade
#d58eb5
2 | archive
#745a7b
4 | audacious
#83b6d0
4 |
tea
#4b5c4f
4 | teamwork
#946f5e
3 | turbine
#42475f
3 |
No idea! It will happen whenever it's done. Could be before Glowbug Cave or could be after Glowbug Cave. The community aspects and simple games are not very complicated, so this is going to be slotted into the development space I'd been using for building new seasonal events.
Looking for Freelance/Contract Illustrators
The taverns will each have their own locations and NPCs and I'm looking for illustrators interested in working on the page art for them!
Please
send links to portfolios via
Contact Us. If you've sent a portfolio in the past, feel free to either resubmit or bump up your previous message to let me know you still have availability. When sending your portfolio, it would be great if you could also
briefly describe your favorite aesthetics/settings to draw for. This will help me match you to a tavern I think would be a good fit for your style. (There are too many of them for one person to do all of them, so I'll be dividing them up.)
Bug Fixes and Other Changes from the Live Code Update Frenzy Last Month
There were wayyyy too many of them so they made this post too long for the front page.
Visit this post for all of them, or subscribe to the
changelog thread to get them sooner than these update posts.
What's next?
- Relationships Expansion Pt 2 (New Relationship Types + More)
- Ascension
Welcome to Cat's End
Introduce Yourself
Have any questions?
Free Stuff!
"Advertisements"
Please Note: If you do not receive your sign-up email after about half an hour or so, please send in a support ticket to indicate this and we'll make sure you get yours forwarded.
