Hi everyone!

Happy October!! You know what that means….....

We have a lot of news for you today :) The main gist is “more features, more nuggets, more awesome”, but read on to find out exactly what changed.

Profile snippets
...or whatever you want to call those. If you haven’t noticed already, check out your Community Settings page, where you can now edit part of your profile. This area currently appears just above your pets, although we’re still experimenting with what works best (and thanks everyone who submitted suggestions and mockups!). You can use BBCode exactly like in echos and forum posts, so get creative and make your profile your own!

Transfers just got a whole lot better
You can (finally) transfer items between yourselves. So that thing you’ve been wanting to sell? You can actually do that now. You can also make any transfer anonymous — so whoever receives it won’t know who sent it. Someone’s already been wreaking havoc with this (the good kind!). Also somebody keeps throwing boots at me. Thank you, o generous bootslinger.

The Cave Exchange just got a whole lot less annoying
For those of you who’ve had… fun… submitting the form a bunch of times to buy in bulk, and those of you who only wanted a gem or three, Cave Exchange now sucks less - you can choose 1, 3, 10, 20 or 50 gems for a single transaction. Purchases under 10 gems have a small surcharge on them to cover the processing fees — 10 gems or more and we’re happy to eat the processing fees ourselves, because percentage-wise it becomes more reasonable. To allay any confusion, the Cave Exchange accepts pretty much any credit card, debit card, and any “prepaid” Visa / MasterCard.

We don’t currently plan on supporting PayPal, but we understand that a card-less system is desirable for many of you. We’re looking into Dwolla, but have not really begun any sort of official support on that yet. If for whatever reason you really want to make a given payment using PayPal, send me an echo and we’ll sort it out — it won’t be automatic so won’t happen instantly, but we’ll make it happen.

Forum nuggets got a little friendlier too
Posts for Canon RPs now pay out a slightly higher nugget-per-length rate, but keep the same cap per post (you can currently earn a maximum of 50 nuggets per post). To encourage you to help make newbies feel welcome, the Welcome Lounge forum now pays out nuggets as well. Since welcome posts tend to be fairly short, these pay out a much higher nugget-per-length rate, but are capped at 20 nuggets per post. This is somewhat provisional and may go away if it encourages the wrong kind of behavior, but for now by all means swarm over there, make our newbies feel welcome and enjoy your reward nuggets :)

So I heard maxing out in Cave In sucks
We’ve been keeping very careful logs of Cave In games and their payouts, and finally have enough data to make statistical judgements on our original parameters. We discovered something interesting: it’s awful. Yeah, so Cave In is pretty fun the first few times you play it. By your 20th frame it’s kind of a grind. By the time you’re anywhere close to maxing out, you feel like you’re actually hauling rocks. And then you get to do it all over again tomorrow. So after going through the data, we’ve decided to increase the Cave In payouts — by a factor of 2.5. The reward for fully clearing a frame has been raised from 40 nuggets to 100 nuggets. Once we have more games to play with this may (or may not) come back down a little, but regardless we hope this makes earning nuggets a little less monotonous for the moment.

It’s also not particularly fun that you have to max out in Cave In just to make it to the scoreboards, so we’re changing the High Score metric as well. This unfortunately means that high scores will be down for a little while until we get the new system implemented, but don’t worry, it’ll be back (hopefully soon). It’ll be on a per-frame basis by the number of blocks left, and ties will be broken with the number of clicks. As such, someone who clears the frame beats someone with one block left, and someone who clears the frame with 50 clicks beats someone who clears the frame with 51 clicks. If we find a lot of ties continue to occur, we may change the tiebreaker to be the number of seconds to clear the frame. We’ll see how it works out :)

So what’s this I heard on Facebook about T-Shirts?
Yes! We’re working on being able to sell T-shirts with your very own pets on them! This is a bit of a complicated process, since we have to deal with a separate company to manufacture and ship them, but hopefully we can get this up and running before the end of the month. They will look like this. A number of you have asked what they’ll cost — we expect to be able to offer a full-color digital print shipped within the USA for around $25. Unfortunately for legal reasons we can’t ship to California or Indiana* without a special permit, but if there’s interest we’ll try to get one soon. International shipping looks like it’d cost around $8.50, but hopefully we can either get that reduced, or we can eat some of the shipping costs ourselves because $8.50 is a stupidly high price to pay for shipping. So yeah, we’ll keep you posted :)

(* so to those of you in Alaska, hooray! when shipping policies say “48 states” you guys are usually left out in the cold… NOT TODAY.)

Wait, what’s this about Facebook?
Yeah we have a Facebook page now. We use it for posting previews, making small announcements and things like that (like the T-Shirts, for example). It’s only got 29 likes though, which is teeny-weeny. Glitch feels self-conscious about things being teeny-weeny, so we’re gonna try to beef up the numbers a bit by sweetening the deal. We were thinking of having some kind of referral contest, but then we figured why not do something everybody can enjoy… so here it is: if the Mycena Cave Facebook page hits 200 likes by November 1st, November’s pets will cost 8 gems instead of 10, and November’s items will cost 2 gems instead of 3. Sound good? :) Lets make it hapen!

These Proxy Errors I get periodically are really. annoying.
Yeah. We know. Unfortunately, it’s a problem with our hosting company, and they have decided that it’s a problem that doesn’t need to be fixed. So… we’re moving! We’re getting our own private server that we can control entirely — which means better software and faster connections among other things, so this is most certainly something to rejoice over. The move will require a short amount of downtime while we move the database over and redirect the domain, but this should be no more than an hour. We’ll make sure to put up notices at least a day in advance so you can make sure you’re not in the middle of a Cave In marathon or something. The move itself will probably happen sometime on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for the notice. If for whatever reason Something Bad happens and it doesn’t come back up as expected, don’t worry — we have full backups of everything, and we’ll keep you updated via Facebook until everything’s back up and ticking.

So….. yeah! We’ve been busy! And we’re not done being busy, either.

We just finished the first round of custom recreations (minus a couple people who were unresponsive), and are about to get cracking on round two — this is particularly exciting because it means regular customs are on the horizon! In terms of code, next things to do are user shops, a revamp of the trade system, and to actually have a useful “home” page instead of just a list of stuff to know. And then we’ll see about adding another game for those of you who are sick to the teeth of Cave In ;)

We hope you’re as excited about all of this as we are! Thanks for reading this epic wall of text :D

Oh my, information overload e.e
Though it’s good information! I would’ve squealed about the increase in Cave In payout, but it’s past midnight and I don’t think the sleeping people would enjoy that too much.

But eeeeeeeeeee -insert virtual squealing here- ... *reluctantly goes to sign into FB too* :D;

Oh wow! I’m really excited over these updates! Thank you for boosting the monetary reward for Cave In. It’s very appreciated. :D;

p.s. I love that video of the husky playing in the leaves. eee!

Hooray on customs!  I was wondering how much longer till round two started. And of course I can’t wait for regular customs to be available. So many plans…

And also cheers for Cave In!  Even I’d sort of given up on the game. Grinding at work was starting to get old…

This is all such fantastic news. Might be worth playing a game of cave in now and again now. XD Those are all amazing updates.

I hate to ask again (and I really do apologize for asking so often, but this does sorta matter to me quite a bit), but has there been any word on a possible semi-canon or more accurately a pet-represented non-canon RP board with the intention of allowing Nugget payout through it?

These are excellent updates! :D

Gonna hop back on the Cave In bandwagon, whee.

-also very curious about said board-

“(* so to those of you in Alaska, hooray! when shipping policies say “48 states” you guys are usually left out in the cold… NOT TODAY.)”

\o/ HUZZAH
though I do find it’s strange that the two states are California and Indiana… like.. what?
All the T-Shirts for us -hoards shirts-

AND IT IS INDEED AN EPIC WALL OF TEXT!
thanks for the updates and stuff! :D
It’s all exciting!

Yay to it all :D Especially user shops being first on that list :3 Thanks for the update, glitch!
(I was one of the people who already liked the facebook, so can’t help there lol.)

Sapphy: I don’t know about Indiana, but I’m a Californian. Our state is pretty gosh darned stupid when it comes to driving out business. It’s mostly with the intention of preventing business from becoming too powerful or evil or whatever, but it’s still annoying as hell to people who like buying things.

I feel like I’m looking at a different newspost. I don’t see news about customs, nor about user shops D=?

Very curious what the highscores will be like, what about people only playing one game in a month and clearing the frame, won’t they have the highest average? Or would the person that clears a frame with the least amount of clicks be the number one then?

Veeery last paragraph Juney :D
and I am stoked about the usershops.
Means I can start lurking them. XD

that and the 2nd round means Kalliyan is coming ;w;

Oh my gosh, yay! Especially the Cave In! bit. I played nearly every day last month, and I gotta say, putting aside at least two hours of my day to cap out was getting exhausting (especially in my current state of health). ; n ; I’m decent at the game, but I’m by no means good at it. XD I finished Cave In! this morning in like, less than a half an hour, I think? MUCH better. ; u ; I appreciate this change SO MUCH, and I’m sure people who are even worse at the game than I am will appreciate it as well.

Seriously, if you’re really good at the game, you can cap out in 20 frames if you clear each frame. INSANE! 

Question about t-shirts: I’m a full figured lady… > 3>;; I’m just wondering what the size range will be? I like big, comfy shirts, so even though I am bigger than most, I still buy my shirts big. XD

I’ve spent the last couple of days wondering how I was going to fit in uni work, management of my site, communication with friends and the two hours needed for me to max out cave in, so this change really couldn’t have come at a better time. Hopefully it will make life far easier for everyone ^^

I also find this new anonymous gifting feature quite an interesting idea. Something tells me that people are going to have a lot of fun with that in the future, if only because they’ll never quite know if they might get gift-bombed. Just one more thing to make Mycena Mycena, huh?

It has been increased.

83 for one left, 69 for two left. You also no longer receive a pity nugget for having half the board left.

Question related to Tamako’s: I’m an empty-figured lady. Will there be T-shirts that fit me? xD

About Cave-In: On the one hand, it was a grind before. On the other hand, I feel like I haven’t played enough now x3 Getting in like 30 screens tops.

Responses time!

“semi-canon” board: we’re still weighing it. As a number of you have surmised, it is a technically easy thing to implement, but that’s not what’s holding it up. I expect it will probably happen though.

high scores for Cave In will be on a per-frame basis, and so averages won’t enter into it. A single frame can take you to the top, but multiple frames won’t drag you down. As for cave in scores, they have been updated for everyone. For single-digit rewards, this isn’t a very dramatic increase.

tshirt size ranges depend on the brand of the tshirt. We’ve been looking at “Hanes Ladies Comfort Soft” which ranges from small to xxx-large, but there’s also a (slightly) cheaper brand “Gildan Ultra” that offers x-small to xxx-large. Also, working with tshirt manufacturers you learn things. Did you know there’s such a thing as an organic tshirt? As far as I can tell the main difference is that they’re more expensive. ANYWAY the point being, if you fall within xs - xxxl we’ll have a shirt for you, and if you don’t then we’ll find a way to make it work.

@Saeta Inoue: thanks :) It’s not just the coders though. I do this to Myla like every day.

We bug each other a lot and sometimes things get really exciting:

glitch: oh
glitch: hmm
glitch: I DONT KNOW
Myla: WELL YOU SHOULD
glitch: WHY DO I HAVE TO MAKE ALL THE DECISIONS AROUND HERE
Myla: BECAUSE I SAID SO AND I’M THE DECIDER
glitch: shush don’t cry mycena cave, it’s ok, mommy and daddy aren’t fighting they’re just “discussing” things

:D <3

“Discussing” “Things”
Right sure.
YOU ARE PROBABLY SCARRING THE CHILD FOREVER
-pats-

XDD
god that made me giggle. pff
-continues giggling at it-

What is this shirt thing? I want a shirt! Can’t like your Facebook page though, since I’m not allowed a Facebook.

Also, I miss my pity nugget.