December’s OotS is Grand Fantasia, along with their Prima Donna Wig and Golden Gallery Background! This month’s coat and Golden Gallery Background were created by King, and the Prima Donna Wig was a collaboration between Myla and King. You can purchase this set from the Out of the Shadows shop through the end of the month!

As the air grows colder, preparations for winter’s approach are underway. Bruc is once again getting ready to rotate his stock of seasonal mushrooms with strains that vibe a bit better with the cold. Autumn seasonals will be removed from Fungimental Magic on December 21st, so be sure to get yours while they’re still in stock!

The Creative Collective is back to its usual schedule! Join us this month as we welcome winter with some appropriately themed prompts, and earn yourself some stickers and Golden Tickets for participating!

Our monthly Productivi-Day will be held on Tuesday, December 15th! We look forward to spending the day productive-ing with you all!

• Our month-long creative activity, The Drawntlet has now concluded! Be sure to get your last week’s submissions in before 23:59 ST tonight in order to receive credit! The prize thread is also now open, and your selected prizes will be distributed ASAP.
• Sometime over the next couple of days, we will begin collecting feedback for this activity in the hopes of making it even better for next year.
• Over the course of the event, we’ve also been spotlighting work by the community on our Twitter and Facebook. Take a look if you haven’t already! Week 4 and week 5 spotlights will be posted soon, too, so keep an eye out for those.

Last month we finished up our artist application process, and were happy to welcome Plaid and Puppy to the team as trial artists! Keep an eye out for their art around the site soon—we are excited to see all of the beautiful things they’ll create!

Several new donated items have begun stocking in the Marketplace!

Echolocation and Cave In! have been re-skinned with some of the alternate artwork we’ve used for them in past events. Echolocation is currently sporting a buried treasure-themed skin by default, giving many folks a much-needed respite from the wasps, and Cave In! is decked out in a starry night theme.

You are able to toggle your skin preferences on the community settings page!

• Several event banners have been made available to use as your active banner through the community settings page!
• Posts made by players you’ve blocked will now be collapsed into a spoiler-like system so that you don’t have to see them if you don’t want to.
• The Mycenian management interface has received some improvements - the Mycenian’s image is now larger, equipped items can now be managed similarly to items in the Magic Puddle, and your Mycenian’s image will now update dynamically without having to submit the page for every new change!

Our 7th annual Secret Santa activity is underway. The sign-up period has ended and pairings of Santas and Santa-ees will happen soon!

Later this month, we will be hosting a cooking activity in a similar vein to our previous Meowcena Cafe activities! More information will be made available in the next week or two. We can’t wait to taste what you whip up!

This year we will be opening a new limited-time holiday shop for the Winter Solstice! Keep an eye out for that as winter draws near!

• glitch has spent time catching up on some misc. updates, the biggest being the updates to the Mycenian management interface and updates to our game code which were quite crusty.
• Myla split time between staff trial periods, making and prepping new site art, and working on orders.
• Activity upkeep/creation and guide revamping is keeping the community coordinator team busy.
• The art team has some time to focus more on orders, and the queues are flowing nicely.

Weapons Graveyard by priz + Myla was added to the Bag of Wonders!

And as some have noticed, the Magic Puddle received major updates to make it more like the pet management interface. You can see pet and item layers, rearrange item layers, and toggle any toggleable layer!

FlyingSquirrely I’ll let glitch know, thanks for catching a screenshot! Update: glitch says that should be fixed now!

Our trial artists Puppy and PlaidLabrador have finished their first assignment, both creating new site coats which are now available! Plaid created Bushel of Apples, and Puppy created Dappled Carousel! You can also check the coats out in the Magic Puddle to see their toggles. :D

You can find them in Fungimental Magic (sort by release date) for purchase for nuggets! <3

These items were donated by players!

All Seeing Circlet donated by Purr, created by King

Cowrie Choker donated by doragon, created by Mouse

Royal Gift of the Monarch donated by Lullaby, created by Rhyme

Radiant Gift of the Monarch donated by Lullaby, created by Rhyme and Myla

Patinaed Metallic Divinity donated by Lullaby, created by Myla

These are available in the market (sort by release date)! Thanks goes to the donors for all of the beautiful new items! <3

• New test adventure threads are now visible to the adventure author, even if they aren’t a participant
• Variables now fully support fractional amounts, rather than the weird partial support we had before
• Fixed a bug in `input_equals` which led to inconsistent results for unexpected casing

Also, we’ve noticed a general slowdown in game response time (Cave In, Fishing, Spellstones, etc.). So no, it’s not just your imagination. For example, here is the average response time when completing Cave In games over the last couple months:

I’m working on figuring out what’s causing this (and thus how to fix it). In the mean time, I apologize for the sluggishness when playing games.

The game sluggishness has been diagnosed and fixed! Thanks for your patience while we worked on this :)

The New Player’s Handbook has had a major update! Some of the bigger changes include:

• The different sections have been separated into pages for easier reading
• Sections have been shuffled around expanded upon where lacking for better clarity
• Information has been updated, including the Creative Collective, Discord server, and the new games

I hope it continues to serve the community well!

The Games guide has also received a much needed update! All the new games have been added to the guide, with the nugget payouts adjusted where necessary. Each game now also has a dedicated page, detailing its rules and how to play.

Have fun and happy gaming!