Welcome to the fifth Mycena Cave Secret Santa! It’s described fairly well on the intro page, so without further ado, I’ll plop the link here:

In order to participate in this Secret Santa, your account has to have been created at least one month before this announcement. That is to say, you must have created your account before October 17th to be eligible. If your account is more recent than this, we hope to see you in next year’s Secret Santa :)

December 1st at 23:59 server time: Signup deadline! No exceptions!
Sometime on December 2: Santas will be paired with their Santa’ees
On or before December 8: Establish contact with your Santa and Santa’ee via SantaMail
On or before December 24: Your Santa’ee should have received their present.
On or before January 7: Hard deadline. Your Santa’ee must have received their present (or proof of shipment).

If both you and your Santa are okay with it, your Santa can mail you a physical present! Santa’ees who do not wish to give out their name and/or address (or who would simply prefer a digital present) may select a “digital presents only” option. If you’re a Santa and you want to send someone a physical present, we’ll do our best to match you with someone who has not selected this option, but of course we can’t guarantee it.

• We are building in a gifting mechanism, which you should use to deliver your gift if it’s digital. This will make it easier to send Mycenians if that’s what you want to do (rather than having to trade via the Bone Monster).
• Gift giving is no longer required to be anonymous: you can identify yourself with your gift if you like, though remember to keep your identity concealed until the recipient receives their gift. You can of course choose to stay anonymous if that’s what you’d rather do.
• Last year involved a lot of time spent following up with un-received gifts. This year we’re making it simple: if your present hasn’t arrived by the hard deadline and you can’t furnish a tracking number that shows that it’s on its way, you will be blacklisted from future Mycena Cave Secret Santa activities with no exceptions.

For much more info (well, all the rest of the info, in fact), head over to the Secret Santa page and get started!

WHEEZES THANK YOU glitch YOU SNEAKY SNEAK

I’m so excited omgomgomgomgomgomg I can’t wait to be able to pick out the perfect thing for someone!!!

I can’t believe we’re halfway through November already! I dunno if I’ll be participating in Secret Santa this year, though. My life has been so hectic and stressful, I dunno if I’ll be able to make a nice gift for my Santaee ; A ; Tama is debating… xnx At least I have a few days to decide if I wanna sign up.

*edit* To add on to Nephele’s plea… Perhaps there could be some kind of Flake Santa redemption implemented to get taken off the blacklist?

Dragongem23
I can give you a partial answer on that, in that it kind of depends on the mushroom. Mushrooms for any OotS pet can be pretty confidently priced at 8-10 gems minimum (they cost 10 to buy in the OotS shop, but sometimes someone will quick-sale one for slightly less). Now for event mushrooms, those vary rather widely. It depends on how easy they were to obtain, now popular they are, and how long ago the event was. It would probably be best to search the sales forum to see the prices of any event shrooms. (Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen any sell for less than 6-7 gems, but I could be wrong about that.)

Personally, my suggestion would be to add a little extra onto the present if you’re wondering if it meets the required amount. Better a little over, since there isn’t an upper limit, than under.

Oh so would a Cloud nine or a sailor albatross shook be worth it?

Nephele

Thanks tho for the input

Dragongem23 Those two shrooms combined would likely not be enough to hit the 10g min. You can always also check the bazaar - sometimes items are listed well above their real value on there, but rarely below in my experience. Both shrooms you listed were priced at around 3 gems each.

That said, it tends to be best to aim for something your assigned person might like, based on wishlists posted, pets owned, general interests expressed in their profiles or pet themes, rather than sending some spare items you have that you hope might hit the 10g value. It’s not against the rules to do that or anything, but it’s much more fun for both of you to really take your time to make your person’s gift special for them!

Definitely excited for this!

A quick note here: Canada post has been on a rotating strike since late October. If your Santee or Santa lives in Canada, you can except any physical gifts to be greatly delayed.

I concur with the above post.

With that being said, :D I’m looking forward to this year’s SS. I’ve had fun in the past. BUT!

This time I signed up as a super Santa. Hopefully my services or any of the other SSS wouldn’t be needed cause there won’t be any flakes. :X The only flake I want is a snowflake.

Just adding too what talicinx said.

Canada Post Just Confirmed That You Likely Won’t Get Your Packages Delivered This Christmas
https://www.narcity.com/news/canada-post-just-confirmed-that-you-likely-wont-get-your-packages-delivered-this-christmas?fbclid=IwAR34qbCCUkCsJ-5uwjvdGfBW_HlDTx_WOATd3LXvV-eTK9iLM5Z8d9QQx-o

talicinxSage14 i echoed myla and glitch about this yesterday.  Theyve been kind enough to add a reminder banner on the preferences page.

HOWEVER. If anyone needs to ship something TO OR FROM CANADA I would advise using UPS or Purolator. If those arent an option for anyone, theres also DHL and FedEx! Again, please note that none of these companies cant promise on time deivery either. I have a feeling theyll be pretty busy to begin with.

They will all be more expensive, but your stuff ahould at least arrive somewhat on time.

Ally We will go ahead and put you on the Super Santa list.. thank you! <3

Nephele I just shot an echo your way!

I think everyone else’s questions got answered by other players, but if I missed a question, feel free to edit a ping in to me or to echo me. :D

Thanks again for the heads up about Canada Post; I read up on the situation and the whole thing sounds very messy and unfortunate.

Myla
Very much appreciated, thank you. <3

Random ideas love hitting me early in the morning… lovely.

For Super Santas who have been called to action, how much time would we have to package a gift and send it? Also would we be able to communicate through the Santa channel or whatever it’s called? :O Asking since I have no idea and I’m the type of person who prefers to plan in advance, namely with the dates. Not to mention, I love crafting something for my target… I mean :D recipient. Thus, I need a bit of time.

So in short, how does the system work?

Chibi Envy Chan
I don’t remember there being hard deadlines for Super Santas, but I think the idea is that it should be fine, as long as you’re in contact with your Santee the whole time and provide as much info as you can (e.g. tracking numbers, etc). Because santee’s that get flaked have already waited long after everyone else has received their present, I personally would plan for having something digital to provide right away (even if it’s just small/low-value, and matched with being attentive/kind and chatting), and the physical present comes later.

but idk I also take these things a bit too seriously probably lol.

glitch

:D Thanks for clarifying things for me. I tend to reply between one to two days… So yeah. I’ll definitely be in constant contact should my Super Santa Services be required.

Just thought of something. It’d be ironic if my SS happens to flake, which I hope not, and my services are called upon though with a different person.

Please reach out to your Santas and Santaees via SantaMail and say hi! Over the previous years we’ve found that one of the biggest indicators for whether someone enjoyed Mycena Cave Secret Santa or not was how communicative their Santas and Santaees were, so show your Santaee that you’re thinking about them by staying engaged via SantaMail :)

Over the next few days we’ll be enabling a feature that will let you send pets anonymously, so if that’s your plan, keep an eye on this thread for when this feature becomes available!

Everyone needs to have established contact with their Santa’ee and Santas via SantaMail by the end of today. We will be checking for flakes tomorrow and re-assigning to Super Santas if necessary!

Anyone who is waiting on a first-time response: It is likely that IRL craziness like finals before the holiday means that a response has slipped your Santa or Santa-ee’s mind. Give a gentle reminder poke to your Santa/Santa-ee (e.g. “Hi there! I just wanted to remind you that the response deadline is today, and I’d love to hear from you if you are still able to participate”). <3

Hi everyone!

As promised two posts up, you now have the ability to anonymously send Mycenians to other players. See the thread about it here for more details :)