This update celebrates one year (well, 11 months) of beta testing and 2 years since the start of alpha testing. Thanks to everyone who has been here through this wild ride of an experience thus far!
File Movements
All cat and clothing files have been moved into subfolders in order to modify the infrastructure to handle potential future species. If you were blocking any cat or clothing images, you may need to update your filter to include the new "/c/" portion of the url.
"images/cats/imagename.png" > "images/cats/c/imagename.png"
"images/clothing/imagename.png" > "images/clothing/c/imagename.png"
Note: You will get some lag when viewing your village for the first time as your browser will no longer have all of the images cached.
An Explosion of White Markings
Four new white types have now appeared in Not-Earth, bringing the total possible white markings from 10 (Classic) to 50 (Classic, Piebald, Left, Right, and Inverse). Three of the new types can appear on not-cats that come from Earth (aka are given out by Nestor), but one of the new types is exclusive to cats with the new "Born in Gardenhome City" origin.
Cats from Gardenhome City can be spawned into the game with the new Business Card item. Business cards will drop rarely when defeating a boss in adventuring. They can also be given out very rarely by Nestor.
The albino cats of each white type have a unique eye color to differentiate them. Classic is Pale Red, Piebald is Pale Violet, Left is Pale Blue, Right is Pale Green, and Inverse is Pale Gold.
All new markings are below:
Piebald Group, From left to right:
Row 1 (None, Nose, Nose & Toes, Nose, Bib, & Boots, Bib, Ears, & Belly)
Row 1 (True Piebald, Scattered Piebald, Painted Spots, Confetti, Speckled Van, Albino)
Left Group, From left to right:
Row 1 (None, Toes, Tie & Toes, Tie, Toes, & Chin, Chin, Boots, & Belly)
Row 1 (Left Bicolor, Left Piebald, Left Patches, Left Spots, Left Van, Albino)
Right Group, From left to right:
Row 1 (None, Tail Tip, Tail Tip & Toes, Tail Tip, Toes, & Tie, Tail, Boots, & Belly)
Row 1 (Right Bicolor, Right Piebald, Right Patches, Right Spots, Right Van, Albino)
Inverse Group, From left to right:
Row 1 (None, Ear Tips, Ear & Tail Tips, Ears, Tail, & Toes, Snowspots)
Row 1 (Snowmelt, Ghost, Owl Mantle, Heart Mantle, Heart, Albino)
Here are some examples of newly generated cats:
Acorn:
New white markings are now appearing everywhere on site, from the random generator on the front page to starter squads (though starter squads only pull Nestor cats so do not include the inverse group). Custom cats will be limited to Classic. Some of the groups are more common than others, and the odds of getting certain white marking groups are different for cats from Earth vs cats from Gardenhome.
Note: While alchemy is a ways off, do rest assured that there will be ways to change things like white marking types as part of that feature. This disclaimer is added to encourage you not to commit crimes in order to obtain one of those spicy new-looking cats. No biting or murder thank u.
Everyone is guaranteed to get a cat from Nestor the next time you visit Nestor (unless you're getting an anniversary bundle, then it'll happen after that). (The cat you get is not guaranteed to have new markings though - that's up to chance.)
Genetic String Modification
Observant genetics enthusiasts may notice a strange new segment has been added to the end of all cats' genetic strings. These have been added at random to all existing cats, regardless of their parents, but going forward they will be inherited like any other pair of genes.
This new segment does not do anything (and will not do anything) on not-cats. It is added for use by future species.
Anniversary Baskets
If you visit Nestor on or after your account's creation anniversary, Nestor will have a special gift for you! That gift includes one business card, one cake item, three confetti clothing items, and 100 essence fragments. You will receive one each year.
Experimental Adventuring Re-balancing
These are all front-end changes (meaning no coding was required and they can very quickly be changed). We're going to try it out, and if we don't like it we can undo it easily.
In order to help bridge the wide gap (or rather, the immense chasm) between level 1 and level 2, the introductory skills have been modified to include +1 bonus die. The reasoning for this is to help make the jump from level 1 to level 2 cats less extreme, and allow the introductory skills to feel stronger and more useful when used by not-fighter/ranger cats.
Pros
- This will speed battles up slightly because if, on average, attacks always use more dice than defense, the amount of damage per turn will go up.
- This will help even the playing field between biting fighters and everyone else.
- There will be less missing because the quantity of dice lessens the effect of rng at low levels.
- Helps the other classes compete with fighter and ranger at the low levels.
Cons
- Monsters get these boosts too, so they hit harder. My impression is that this should be okay because you both hit harder equally and snack items are readily and easily available. My adventures with level 1 cats didn't make it any less far than they did before (they actually were doing a little better).
Changed Abilities given an additional die include: Claw, Bolt, Kick, Double Shot, First Aid, and Cooperative Care.
In my testing, I ended up pulling the stats down of some of the existing monsters to counteract this a little. Monster stats have been modified as follows: Forest Hound's strength is reduced, Juvenile Corrupted Maple's health is reduced, Rubble Sprite's finesse and strenght are reduced, and Fungus Pup's strength is reduced.
I only put around 5 or 6 hours of testing into this and my impression so far was that I personally really liked it, but 5-6 hours is not nearly enough time to test every pack (especially since adventuring runs way slower locally) so definitely let me know how you feel about it and if there are monsters that feel a little too strong now.
Other Changes
- Introducing the glitter gel pens of Not-Earth. The student job can now use paint. No more must you send your village to the mines to pay for their childrens' educations.
- You can set a default romantic preference
in your account settings. No more changing every single cat to walk in the door by hand. Random is also an option now.
- Item effect information has been added to the marketplace. No longer must you have two tabs open to figure out what the trinkets and food listed even does.
- Cat reorganization has been somewhat wrangled ( hope). They actually go to the end now, at least. And then they stay there (hopefully). Changing their pages puts them precisely in the last slot on that page. There are also now some autosort settings if you want to quick-sort your cats a certain way. I'd like to change to a tab system at some point but that's a task for another day.
- Unit price sort in the market also now divides them by currency (like overall price does) instead of mixing them together.
Bug Fixes
- Lodge descriptive text no longer says teachers use agility in the formula
- Teachers having trinkets no longer breaks the job change page
- Student modifier is no longer missing on cat profile pages
- Fixed issue where specialty jobs can't be changed due to a false "not enough spaces" error
- Students when growing to adult now appropriately list as unassigned on their profiles
- Count of special vs active cats was added to the bottom of the cats page
- Adolescent students no longer give a +10 EXP message when gathering even though there's no leveling for student
- Students when turning to adults now properly shows as unassigned on the gather resources page
- Mail carrier odd increases have been corrected at the post office
- Fixed temporary issue where students were unable to gather
- Nestor no longer gives out homework to prevent whiskers from trying to sell it
- Doctor HP boost in adventuring is no longer missing mayor's effect on pleasant cats
- Fixed issue where mayor and specialty position changes weren't available until one day later than they should be
- Cats are no longer being removed from scenes when they are sent traveling if you have an innkeeper
- Fixed issue where mail carriers were not giving the correct bonuses at post office
- Fixed issue where student bonuses were not being applied
- Cat board and open market filters by currency type are slightly wrangled
What's next?
- Burst of clean-up / qol / bug fix work
- Seasonal Events!