This was a beast of an update that had its grabby little mayor hands on nearly every page of the site. For that reason, it's possible some things might not be working the way they should be. Please do visit the
bug reports forum if you see anything that looks off.
This is a pretty text-heavy update, so buckle up for a whole journey.
Rules Reminder
Since a registration window is coming up at the end of this week, here's your regularly scheduled TOS reminder:
First of all, you agree to only register one account per user, so if you're already here, appreciate your existing cats! Don't make a new account.
Second of all, funneling is not allowed. No account must exist to benefit another account. Getting a friend who has no interest in playing the game on their own to make an account just to send you the cats generated via the random squad is considered a violation of this rule and will result in both accounts being closed. While it is possible to trade cats on the random squad, make sure that you are negotiating
fair trades/sales with newbies and that
both accounts are playing independently and continue to play independently in the future.
It is unfair to users playing honestly to abuse the sign-up sequence or create alternate accounts to benefit your own.
New Crafts
The following new buildings can now be crafted at the Builder:
Of the above items, you may notice that the lodges are particularly resource-expensive to craft. Once you craft one of these, you will gain access to the
Village Lodge, a late game feature targeted towards those who have largely filled their villages and finished all of the other unlocks.
I'm also particularly excited about the new mid-sized houses. They might be my favorite items on the site right now as they are perfectly sized for a workshop downstairs and a little living area upstairs.
New hanging flag and sign items are also now available for craftscats to craft:
Village Lodge Part I
This update brings the first portions of the
village lodge. Once you've crafted one of the village lodges, you'll gain access to these new features.
A) You can now
purchase new scenes for a large amount of notes. The cost goes up by 500 notes with each purchase. Up to 12 new scenes can be bought.
B) You can now
appoint a mayor! Mayors are the leaders of your village, making sure everything is organized, all of the residents' needs are met, and resolving any potential interpersonal conflicts that might arise. The mayor is a multifaceted job where the chosen cat should be a wise leader, a fair judge or mediator, a clever problem-solver, an experienced teacher, and a kind listener. It's a difficult job, and not every cat is qualified to take it on!
Mayors provide bonuses to every cat in your village, depending on their own stats and personality archetypes. While they can't do their day jobs, they are able to participate in every other part of village life. They also don't contribute to your cat capacity.
Mayor Effects on a Village:
Leadership Stat Boost: All residents will get a +1 stat boost for every stat where the mayor has a value at 19 or higher. For every additional 4 points on top of this, that stat boost is increased by 1. See below:
Stat 0 to 18: No effect
Stat 19 to 22: +1 Boost
Stat 23 to 26: +2 Boost
Stat 27 to 30: +3 Boost
Stat 31+: +4 Boost
Optional Personality Influence: This effect can be turned on or off once per day. Some residents will have one of their personality stats slightly altered based on the personality archetype of the mayor. See below for the specific values:
- Pleasant: +1 Benevolence
- Gentle: +1 Benevolence
- Protective: +1 Bravery
- Adventurous: +1 Bravery
- Commanding: +1 Dedication
- Ordinary: +1 Dedication
- Rebellious: +1 Energy
- Jovial: +1 Extroversion
- Dramatic: -1 Benevolence
- Imaginative: -1 Energy
- Curious: -1 Energy
- Mysterious: -1 Extroversion
Exceptions: Commanding and Rebellious cats do not have their personalities influenced by leadership. Pleasant cats' personalities are doubly influenced by leadership.
Appointing a New Mayor
There are two methods of acquiring a new mayor:
Election: You can allow your cats to choose the mayor. Four of your most-qualified and most-interested cats (both traveling and active) will choose to run and then each cat that is an adolescent or older will cast their vote. If you choose this method, who is chosen will be completely out of your hands and you will not be able to change it until the 7 week term is up!
Think carefully as to whether you trust your village's judgment or not!
Elections are not random. Each cat will vote based on their own personal experiences and values.
Player Choice: If you aren't a risk taker, you can choose any cat of your choice to be your mayor.
Sorry about the ID soup on the election poll page. I
really wanted you to be able to see who voted for who for the hot gossip that would create, but the reason this update is 45+ minutes behind is because cats with long names, when running for mayor, would cause the election to crash because it hits the character limit for what the database can handle.
Taking the names out fixed the problem, but unfortunately it's not quite so fun to look at.
The next update will bring additional specialty jobs, such as a doctor and innkeeper. These will function similarly (though they won't be elected) and each will have a unique effect. There is a
pinned dev corner thread with some ideas for specialty jobs.
The only two confirmed (not necessarily listed in that thread, since I haven't updated that since it was posted) are Innkeeper (slightly raise odds of cat from Nestor and allow traveling cats in scenes) and Doctor (raise max HP for adventuring).
Forum Scene Share Code
You can now type scene=sceneid to share your scenes in the forums.
[scene=1]
Somehow, the process of implementing this also fixed the columns bug. So, columns are here! They have a horizontal scrollbar on small screens.
New Cat Preferences
Under "Edit Biographical Info" you'll now see a few new options:
- You can select two different pronoun sets. They'll use whichever one you select first more often. For just single pronouns, select "none". Note: New cats can't yet generate with all possible combinations. I didn't have time to get to this and was already running late.
- You can select whether a cat will appear in the dropdown when Nestor allows your cats to adopt.
- You can select whether your cat will prompt for beans in social scenarios and show up under the catmint tea menu. (You can set a setting for null cats, but it won't do anything.)
Market & Cat Board Changes
There are now dropdowns to select notes only, fragments only, or both in both the open market and the cat recruitment board. When sorting by price, fragments will also now automatically group together separately at the back. This prevents the two currencies from getting shuffled together.
Daily Scenarios Changes
You may have noticed that cats with family don't seem very fond of making new friends. I've made some changes to the priority tree, to hopefully encourage them to be a little more social, even if they have lots of siblings. Cats that don't have friends will no longer default to almost exclusively hanging out with their family, and will instead now seek out some friends!
They'll definitely still hang out with their family, but family should no longer be the majority of interactions.
Forum Changes
You may notice that the forum categories have now been grouped into category-categories! It should be much easier to find things now.
Other Changes
- The gardenhome city graphic has been updated
- We now have an upgraded server! We're ready for registration!
Bug Fixes
- Trinket text no longer shows up randomly at the top of the page when opening packages
- The link to the bank on the bank breadcrumbs has been corrected
- Cat Recruit Board search has been corrected such that trying to find "tan" cats no longer returns "standard" pattern
- Curious personality is no longer missing from cat recruit board search dropdown
- An issue that was contributing to double text on skill challenges has been corrected
- The missing shadow layer on white markings has been restored (after accidentally deleting it when correcting stray pixels earlier this year) (cache clear is required to see the changes, but they're subtle anyway so may not be super noticeable)
- Columns is no longer broken (???!)
- Blocked users are no longer able to view a user's cats using the bbcode tags
- Scene sandbox now allows up to 30 decor items
- Luck-based skills are no longer using the incorrect cat's values
New job time for my cats to build the Village Lodge 
