This month’s OotS is Rhyme’s Arcane Whispers, along with its Fiendish Companion and Soulstone Collar. As usual, they will be available in the Out of the Shadows shop until the end of the month (keeping in mind that February is only 29 days!).

We have finally released our much anticipated new item system! This update is detailed in full here, and includes several exciting features, including:

• Much greater control over item layering on pets. Items can now be placed between certain parts of the pet’s body!
• Backgrounds are now fixed at the bottom layer of a pet’s image. This is also true in geness images, which makes it so that any pet in a geness can be wearing a background item without overlapping their geness partners.
• You now have the ability to turn off certain edits on site colorations. For example: you can ‘remove’ the extra legs on the Peacock Spider or the extra fluff on the Grim Harvest’s neck.

Val’s Modern Composition contains a menagerie of exciting new items that can be used to alter a Mycenian’s appearance. From various shapes and styles of horns to colored contacts and wigs, Val can help you add that unique je ne sais quoi to really make your characters shine.

The new items have officially been assigned their prices, and are now available for your purchase!

In addition, it seems some rearrangement of stock has been done among the shopkeepers. If you’re looking for anything that was previously stocked in Feathers and Flame, try either Val’s Modern Composition or Fungimental Magic.

Several rule clarifications regarding queue mechanics and guest pass usage were explained. You can find the full post here. The key takeaway from our clarifications is this: an action does not have to be explicitly outlined as unacceptable in our rules to be considered exploitation. If you are ever uncertain as to whether or not an idea you’ve had would be considered acceptable or exploitative, you are encouraged to contact a moderator for a second opinion!

We have had a number of questions pop in regards to our sprout queue recently. Please understand that when you enter the sprout queue for a geness, you are relinquishing any control over the sprout’s appearance. Artists are not required to work from anything more than the official geness image itself.  Specific ‘requests’ included on geness profiles such as (but not limited to) desired sprout base, desired sprout appearance, an unofficially altered parent image you’d like the artist to use instead of the official images, and other notes to the artist should be left off of geness profiles.  This puts the artist in an awkward position, and you will be asked to remove these types of requests before an artist accepts your sprout order.  Failure to do so promptly could result in the cancellation of your order.

If you have something very specific in mind, or would like to have more control over the process, you are encouraged to go through the custom queue instead. It is acceptable to state in your custom order that you would like a Mycenian that ‘resembles an existing geness’ with any additional specifications. An artist will be happy to work with you!

Mycenaissance has been revamped and officialized! If you are not familiar with the activity from its days as a user-run event, the Mycenaissance is a prompt-based creativity exercise that runs each month. All qualified entries are then entered into an end-of-month raffle, with cave capsule prizes. In addition, a new ‘submission spotlight’ has been added to highlight one player’s creative efforts and entry each month. February’s prompt is Love Letters — you can learn more about this activity here!

If you’ve ever pondered how much a Drasillis weighs or what an Ineki’s diet consists of, wonder no more! With the release of our encyclopedia, you can find the answer to your Mycena lore related questions! Currently, there are articles available on each of the species found within the Cave, and we will be adding additional content in the future. Thank you to Prose for putting this new feature together!

We are currently running a raffle! A fun, experimental prize has been added to the mix this time, along with 80 additional prizes including cave capsules and changingshrooms. One lucky winner will be given the opportunity to shine in our Mycenian Spotlight! The winning player will select a date within the next 12 months and one Mycenian currently on their account to be featured in the spotlight.

Starting this month, we will be seeing the return of our Winter Holiday Funbook! For those of you who did not participate in our first Holiday Funbook, the event features a number of fun activity pages for players to play through and enjoy. This year, the event will be team and collaboration based, so all pages will require a group to complete! Of course, there will be an awesome reward available for those players who finish enough pages.

The event will begin on February 6th, 0:00 ST and run through February 21st, 23:59 ST. We hope you’re as excited as we are!

“The new items have officially been assigned their prices, and are now available for your purchase!”

er…should i clear my cache? they all still say “(Price TBD)” for me :o

sneaky, changing the shop name like that while i was buying something! but lookee now:

got that golden gaze and it matches her coat really well :D

I figured they were flip-flopped pretty fast.
I meant to get the upright one, but thanks for checking :]

Yeah, seconding what LAsDarkFireWolf said. I really enjoyed the fun book last time because it was something I could do by myself that wasn’t too stressful. I’m pretty busy with spring semester + work lately, so I don’t see group work.. well, working out for me. haha. Plus, I’m just.. really, really anxious about that kind of thing. Group work stresses me out in school.. I don’t want to be forced to do it in my leisure time. orz

Otherwise, liking these updates. I’m definitely going to have to save up for some contacts later. >>;

I’m not 100% on the group activities. It seems like it is maybe detrimental for a lot of the users here that are a little shyer, and I’m also a little worried that the groups may have limits that mean either its harder to split prizes among lots of ppl, or that someone gets left out. But I’ll reserve judgement until I see what shape it takes :)

because I am h y p e d for a new event :D

I am both very bummed out and very curious about this collaboration thing.  Bummed out because I just don’t like doing this sort of thing with others, and curious because I was expecting stuff like word searches and I have no idea how something like that could be a group activity.

But I guess we’ll find out!

Noooooo! I just got poor from buying the last pet, and now there’s also a new shop with a bunch of shiny new items that I want and I’m never going to be able to afford all of the stuff and…. T_T

So basically I love everything about this month’s update. Especially the sound of that Winter Fun Book thing. Sounds like it’ll be fun working with a team, but I’m wondering just how many people it’ll take to finish it since yes. Not very talky with large groups. x_x

While i like the idea of being able to do a group activity… i have to wonder how well groups would work as, like others have said… people might be busy, or may even become busy during the group activity leading to some group members having to do more of the work? o.o I’m not sure what kind of activities you guys have planned though, as this would be my first time even participating in such an event so i can’t really say much but those are just my thoughts :c

PS: I’m in love with this month’s pets and items and plan to get all of them ;w;

Hmmmmgh. I thought I was done with high-school group assignment anxiety when I graduated…almost two decades ago now. Now I feel really old as well as nervous about this event. @.@; Free time is not my best friend and I hate holding people up and I’m always so…uncomfortable in a crowd.

Will have to see how it goes and how large the groups need to be to qualify as a group before I really can say too much more on the idea, but it did notch down my excitement with the event in general about two notches. I’m sure it’ll still be fun provided I don’t end up feeling like I’m holding other people back from earning their rewards somehow in all this. While I can’t say that it’s a bad idea to have a collaborative thing going on with this site, I just hope it doesn’t end up making me have anxiety issues due to time constraints. (Hopefully it shouldn’t but I’m also a worrier. *coughs*)

(On the other hand, I also want to make sure to say thank you to the staff for all your efforts and attempts to make new and creative events for the site as a whole no matter how I feel about them personally, you’re all awesome! :D)

While I am kind of on the fence about having a group event like this, like a lot of people, I’m sure it’ll be interesting trying to get things done with a group as an experiment. I remember I joined the site just as a user-sponsored group rp event was ending and I was sad to see nothing like that happened after it once I started getting into being active here. While I know it’s not the same as rping, I’m super excited for a funbook again this winter regardless of the group requirement. _{I want to color things}

...and everything else that’s happened over January. I need all the items now D: