Hi everyone!

The ability to order custom Mycenians is a highlight for quite a few of our players, and many have spent time dreaming up designs. Custom creation was integrated into Mycena Cave shortly after its creation; as such, the artists have been filling custom orders for our player base for over two years now!

And, yet, through all of that, there has been very little information available about what to expect once you take the leap and create your custom order.  What happens once your order is accepted?  What goes on during the custom-creation process? What can you expect from the artists?  What do the artists expect from you?

In an effort to answer these questions, our artists have come together and discussed the custom-making process, finding commonalities in where we see player confusion or encounter difficulties that result in delays.  We also discussed general aspects of the process that we thought needed to be made clearer — ordering a custom for the first time is likely pretty intimidating if you have no idea what to expect.  From there, the artists, along with the rest of staff, have put together a set of custom order guidelines.

The custom order guidelines outline the following topics:

• Custom Payment and Price Estimates
• Custom Process
• Custom Etiquette
• Artistic Freedom Orders
• Helpful Tips
• Right to Refuse or Limit Service

Artists are expected to know and follow these guidelines, and players ordering customs are strongly encouraged to read through them before the artist begins to work on their custom.  Those of you who have ordered customs in the past and are familiar with the process will likely not be too surprised by much of the information; however, there is still plenty of new information to be found!

For example, where you send your price estimates has changed in an effort to streamline the process.  In addition, whereas artists may have had individualized workflows before, a more standard approach has been put into place.  We’ve also solidified custom etiquette, so if you’ve ever wondered if it’s acceptable to ask your artist where they’re at in your order, this is a good place to find out when you can do that!  We’re seeing a dramatic increase in “artistic freedom” and “drift friendly” requests, so we’ve included information regarding what you’re signing up for when you ask for these types of things!  I could go on, but I encourage you to go ahead and read it if this has made you curious! :)

The guide will be permanently available on the Custom Pets and Sprouts page, and artists will link to it when they send out their first echo to a customer after accepting their order!

If you have questions or have something you think ought to be added somewhere, feel free to ask/suggest here (or, alternatively, shoot me or any other staff an echo)!  We feel that the guide will make it less intimidating for new customers to order a custom and that it will help direct good communication practices with your artist throughout the custom creation process.  The end result, we hope, is your satisfaction and a lovely new Mycenian to add to the site!

Wonderful!!!  Have just placed my firstever custom order, I am daunted and will now go read the guidelines voraciously c=

Myla
“the unused PP converts to gems at a 5 PP to 4 gem rate!”

pretty sure that’s supposed to be 1PP per 4 gems :P

Ah, what a wonderful page. Thanks, very helpful!

Pigeon Whoops!  Thanks. :D

This is very clear. Kudos to whoever drafted it for getting a lot of complex info into an easily understandable package.

Mycena Cave maintains the right to refuse service to orders that prove too unreasonable to fulfill. Problematic behavior as a customer can result in limited access to the queues and/or restrictions to future orders on a case-by-case basis.

I would suggest here either linking to the refund policy, or making explicit that PP on a refused order isn’t refundable at this point.

Jacq  That’s a good point; we’ll discuss how to work that in!

A behind-the-scenes look is that much of our official writing is discussed by staff beforehand, written by one to two staff members, and then heavily edited by a different set of staff—it ends up very much being a combined effort that takes a lot of planning and time.

In this case, Plasma, Ruori, and I were the ones playing the biggest role in putting together the initial draft, and Eluii who did the main overhaul/heavy duty editing with some additional editing byyy.. Crow and Grey, I believe (though I’m possibly missing some of our other regular editors)!  We tend to work on documents in Google Documents in suggesting mode to try and keep track of the revision process. :)

Thanks for this! I was a tiny bit intimidated making my first custom order so I’m glad to know people making their first orders in the future will have this guide ^^