Pameow

Open Gobbler Server Closing. This first version of the Open Gobbler Server will be closing on 26 August 2023. Thanks to all who participated. It will be saved and kept, perhaps used in events. In the future we may run an Open Gobbler server with a few modifications, namely a different map, probably smaller in area and having a run time of 6 months rather than a year. We have decided to leave the other two servers, Arboretum and Frenetia as they are, joined together as a cluster and by request, unchanged geographically. I certainly agree that there are very few maps which are as beautiful as the Frenetia map. Any climate change code would be better suited to an Open Gobbler server. However, for now, real life has been busy and our attention has been captured as players, saving Eco worlds from meteors. Best wishes from Pam and Tam.

Introducing "Mystery Portals" Eight travellers' mystery portals have been located on the Frenetia Server at useful locations, including the Black and White Lights. The Portals allow instant travel from one portal to another, at a different location in a random manner. Sometimes the portal itself may be the random destination. Eventually, with a sufficient amount of trips it will be possible to return to the starting portal. About 30 seconds may be needed between trips to allow dizziness reduction (and graphics recovery time!). The mystery portals will be permanent. The following message appears when a portal is examined, "This magical portal shows rapid glimpses to other lands. It allows instant travel to a random portal." As well as being of practical advantage allowing easier movement around the server, the mystery portals have been coded to deliver event prizes. Over the Easter season one of the portals gives a picnic basket with eggs and Easter eggs. There is no limitation on accounts, one prize per account. Tour around the portals to to find the portal with the Easter Bunny's basket. Happy Easter to all. Best wishes from Pam and Tam.

Refunds for Downsizing Deeds Tonight's restart includes the ability to downsize deeds and receive a refund. The one exception is the initial, minimal founding size of the deed (11*11 tiles) will not be refunded. Only the Mayor may perform this action using the Village resize menu. The refunded coins go automatically into the bank account of the Mayor. Each deed on the Frenetia and Arboretum servers has had five weeks of upkeep placed into the deed's funds to assist players in the transition to paying Deed upkeep, commencing on the 25 March. Best Wishes from Pam.

We will halve the standard code's amount of upkeep. It will be 10 iron coins per tile per 4 weeks. For example a 100*100 deed has 10,000 tiles which will have upkeep of 10 silver per 4 weeks. All creatures will be protected by the Gobbler entity. The amount of cared for creatures is determined by the player skill of animal husbandry, and as such there needs to be a special exemption for this skill not to be halved due to unwanted side effects. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, we will attend to it. Best wishes from Pam.

You are right, initially the world of Frenetia will be a less gentle and easy place, introducing some amount of stress. This is intentional. The purpose is that over some amount of time in each year's tasting, which is absolutely defined by player activity, the environment will become a less harsh and unforgiving place. At this stage one Gobbler game server is enough, so we have chosen the Frenetia server as the one to proceed with. Some may recall at the very start of the Frenetia server, three years ago, we had an "earn your own Feasting table" event. By reaching a predefined group Gobbler score, it became easier for all players to eat. The current planned changes are a more extreme version of exactly the same idea. Trees will reappear if players plant them, skills are quicky gained, and there are well defined pathways to reduce lava and viri. After some predefined group Gobbler score has been reached a water decontamination building will be able to be built which acts on all the water of the server, ceasing the need to use water purification tablets. The stoneage will last only so long as the players determine, because after some predefined group Gobbler score Transmutation rods will be available for use. We had to make a compromise about deeds and earthquakes. We promised that the server will be ongoing, so there needs to be a way to preserve player buildings across tastings. The solution is to have maintained deed areas of land that are tagged to be uneffected by earthquakes. This includes the six public spaces where players have almost all permissions including building private, lockable houses. We will maintain these deeds. I use the word regular player on purpose. Regular players, including casual hours players, will be able to maintain a personal deed, because the activities of foraging, botanising, harvesting sprouts, fruits and nuts, and digging treasure maps all have a high chance coin drops. Maintenance of the deed is the signal that earthquakes will not happen to those particular tiles. They will still have the other environmental changes. Whilst deeds could be especially coded to disband after 60 days of the mayor not logging in, and has even been noted as an idea on the wish-list, there are two reasons to not approach the new changes in this way. It would still only preserve the maintenance-free deeds from earthquakes. The other environmental changes will still occur. The second reason is that this definition has the potential to create a situation where non-active players only have to log in for a few seconds each two months to pass an arbitrary activity test. Best wishes from Pam and Tam.

Goals for 2023 We have the situation where inactive players have large deeds. We are going to introduce deed maintenance costs. If this causes a problem for regular players we may be able to make personalised arrangements. This change will be implemented on 25th March update. We have decided to run one Gobbler Server commencing in July. This will be the original Frenetia server. The Arboretum and Open Gobbler servers will be saved and archived. The Gobbler Game will have the current request list. A Climate Extinction Event will result in some changes to the Frenetia Server leading to a new version of the Gobbler Game. This multi-faceted event will be held at various times in the lead up to the end of June, 2023. It will consist of : (1) Fires. Due to increased storm activity it is predicted that there will be inevitable, devastating fires on all the Gobbler servers. Every tree will burn in the great fires of '23. All items made of wood such as in inventory, storage containers, contents of piles are burnt. The only exception will be the Gobbler rewards won in the first tasting, which will be found in a "time capsule" during the second tasting. The Gobbler will be promoting new tree growth in the second tasting by paying Gobbler points for planting each tree and subtracting points for each tree cut down. (2) Earthquakes and Volcanoes. Deep in the underground there will be increased tectonic activity. The amounts of earthquakes will be much greater. Deep trenches will develop in the landscape. Buildings will shatter and turn into rubble, excepting on maintained deeds (which have in-built reinforcement). Lava will appear in random spots. Caution will be needed moving around to avoid danger or death. However, lava may be turned into stone using the attributes of the Power path of meditation. Metal veins will melt away. A new Stone age will be inevitable. There will need to be a serverwide gobbler score in the second tasting, some amount yet to be determined, to reintroduce metals usage, only available via use of transmutation rods. (3) Contamination of water. The inland waterways and underground aquifers will become contaminated. Drinking water will need to be treated with water purification tablets. Crops are more difficult to grow and take longer to mature. The Gobbler will make available plans for a very expensive, water decontamination building in the second tasting. (4) Pestilence. The amount of viri in the landscape is exponentially growing. Touching one will result in influenza- like symptoms which need to be treated to regain health. The antibody building will become useful to carry in inventory to reduce the local viri. (5) Loss of knowlege. In all the upheaval of the new, harsher environment there will be erosion of knowlege, resulting in reducing skill levels. By the start of the second tasting skills will be reduced by half. Best Wishes from Pam and Tam.

Player Determined Gobbler Requests. Today's backup includes new code to support player determined Gobbler requests. We are starting with Treasure maps. A treasure map may now be fed to the Gobbler at any time. To do this activate the Gobbler wand and right click on the treasure map. An option to feed the Gobbler will appear. The Gobbler will add 50 points to the player's score. If it is preferred to use the treasure map to locate treasures, 200 Gobbler points will be credited to the player each time a treasure chest is dug up. We hope that 2023 brings happiness and good fortune to all, Best wishes from Pam and Tam.

Santa's Reindeer 3 : Event Server This event server is online from Midnight Christmas eve until 8 January 2023. Santa left the South Pole Toy Storage Depot with his well laden sleigh. During a rest on Santa's Island, north of the Sea of Rejoicing, the reindeer flew over the water to the mountainous mainland and went treasure hunting! They quickly became frightened, disoriented, and forgot how to fly. The goal of this event server is to reunite Santa and his reindeer so that they may continue their journey. Players are issued with a magical sack, a pelt and a platinum pickaxe, which on this server only, has the additional feature of mining on treasure maps, suggesting the location of a reindeer on rock. A compass will still be needed to read the treasure maps. Cotton seed oil may be used to make compasses in any season. A boat (may be shared) or community bridge will be required to lead the reindeer because they are unable to swim. There are very few navigational landmarks on this event server. Some of the lakes and seas have their names as named zones. A dioptra may be used to read the coordinates on the corner of the tile where the player is standing. A list of the waterways coordinates is as follows: Lake Rudolph: W 400, E 560, N 330, S 450. Jingle Lake: W 280, E 460, N 550, S 670. North Bell Lake: W 600, E 680, N 500, S 580. South Bell Lake: W 590, E 730, N 580, S 680. Sea of Regeneration: W 480, E 760, N 690, S 890. Sea of Rejoicing: W 100, E 260, N 280, S 560. A map is attached at the bottom of this post. There are colour bubble lights where Santa is located. There are no white or black lights on this server, so not only is there less directional aid from the lights, there are no spells such as cure injuries and extend stamina. Sandwiches may be used to aid with climbing. On the steep slopes the zero karma cost of corpse retrieval may be particularly useful. The landscape has some trees. Sprouts are available via foraging. However, trees have the usual growth times (no wild growth spell). A feasting table is located at Santa's Island. A snack each day per Steam account is available using the Gobbler wand enabling easier survival away from the island. Good Luck!

Ask the Gobbler Feature Players may now ask the Gobbler for a pottery tile or healing cover request. The Gobbler wand menu has a new option "Ask for request". If there has not been that type of request in the previous three hours, the player's Gobbler request will be the next Gobbler request. A confirmation message appears in the Gobbler channel. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New year, Best wishes from Pam and Tam.

Introducing Platinum Tools. The first platinum tool is the *pickaxe, platinum*. It will be available to all players with existing or new accounts who log into the Frenetia, Arboretum and Open Gobbler servers between 11 December 2022 and 8 January 2023. Each alternate account can receive one. It is special because it has built-in bonuses of maximum rarity, runity and potion power. It allows players with low mining skill to mine ores which may be be up to quality 10 greater than that which the basic pickaxe would allow. When the player's mining skill reaches 80 a small amount of ores of quality 100 will be possible. As mining skill further increases the frequency of quality 100 ores will also increase. Players who have only played on the Open Gobbler server which will be concluding in July 2023, may also like to log into the ongoing Frenetia server during the Christmas season to secure a more lasting pickaxe, platinum. We anticipate that some Gobbler tasks may have platinum tool rewards in the future so that the Christmas season will not be the only pathway to obtaining a pickaxe, platinum. As time allows, a longer term plan will be to develop platinum ores and the ability to craft platinum tools and other items. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New year, Best wishes from Pam and Tam.

A creature considered to be in captivity is one which has been led at any time after the code change, is a result of breeding, or died on deed.

If players find a corpse off deed, which has not been led or bred it is considered to be not in captivity, and may be butchered for animal products.

Creature care in Captivity and Butchering Animal products are relatively scarce on our non-combat servers. They are found in treasure chests, obtained by trading or from butchering creatures. The Gobbler gives higher scores to reflect this scarcity, taking into account variables such as distance between treasure maps. With this update we are introducing a new relationship between creature care in captivity and butchering. Creatures that have had a pleasant life in captivity will give animal products after their death. This is defined by brushing. Creatures which have been led, are bred, or die on a deed are subject to a new check: Have they been brushed in the last 50 hours? Butchering will only give animal products if this test is passed. Best wishes from Pam.

Scheduled Downtime of Internet Connection There will be a scheduled down time of our internet connection from 0:0 (Midnight) Monday October 3 Australian Eastern Standard time, till 7 am Monday October 3 Australian Eastern Daylight Savings time. (Sunday October 2 at 2 pm till Sunday October 2 at 8 pm UTC). This time span is the expected maximum. The servers may be available to log in to earlier, depending on the actual amount of time the internet connection is down. Best wishes from Pam.

Additions to Gobbler levels 16, 17 and 18 A Q99 Adamantine carving knife, file and saw have been added to Gobbler levels 16, 17 and 18 respectively, each accompanied by a magical sack of Q100 Bush logs. Best wishes from Pam.