News

So I have been thinking and thinking about lair slots lately, because I know a lot of people have been saying they would like more lair slots to fool around with, and do breeding experiments, particularly with the opacity changes. The main reason that we have to have lower lair limits is due to the khimera search - if there are too many khims in the database, searching would eventually become nearly impossible and also lag the site badly as well (as some of you may have experienced on other sites).

However, it came to me that there are lots of khimeras that people own that have no need to be in the search results at all. If you have khimeras that are just derping around in your lair that are not up for sale and are not up for breeding, there is no need for the search script to have to wade through allllll those khimeras to look for relevant results.

Therefore it occurred to me that if we could simply exclude these unnecessary khimeras from search results, we could vastly increase the number of lair slots that users have at their disposal!

So, this is what I propose.

Every existing user will receive an extra 100 lair slots, for a total of 300 slots, however, only your original 200 slots will be "searchable" slots. That means that you have 200 slots for putting up khims for sale or breeding and have them able to be searched, or to just put up random khimeras that you would like to have searchable for whatever reason. Customs will be searchable by default and will not count toward your searchable count, but you will be able to make them non searchable if you choose. New users will be given 300 lair slots to start, with 100 of these being searchable slots.

Note that "searchable" only means that they can be found using the khimera search. All khimeras will be visible in your lair, unless you put them in a hidden lair, as usual.

When you put up a khimera for sale or breeding, a popup will ask you if you want to make them searchable, so you don't forget. Additionally, this lets you put up khimeras for private breeding, set them to be not searchable, and cut back on those random breeding requests when you have khims you only want to be available to certain other users!

Every month, active users will receive additional lair slots (actual khimera storage slots, not "searchable" slots), depending on their activity during the month (related to logging in to the site daily).

You will still be able to buy even more lair slots if you need them, or buy more "searchable" slots if you need those.

For those who have bought lair slots and feel you no longer need them, you will be allowed to cash them in for what you paid for them (trinkets or beads, depending what you paid for them).

We WILL need to put some reasonable limits on the number of khimeras that can be released daily for profit. To be honest, this is a change that was going to be inevitable regardless of what we do with lair slots, because the mass release of khimeras for profits will eventually start unbalancing the economy, otherwise. The proposal is that we introduce a decreasing chance to get trinkets and breeding slots when releasing khimeras every day. We would try to calculate how many khimeras the average user releases for profit, so that we don't cut back severely the average user's ability go gain some trinkets from releasing, while curtailing the more extreme cases of release-for-profit. In order to encourage users to keep releasing khimeras past the point where they no longer receive TR rewards, however, we'd introduce shimmering crystals as a possible rare-ish reward for releasing. To keep up the value of SCs, we'd add more possible prizes, perhaps including things like firefly potions, to Crystal Quest.

I personally think that there's very little lost by this solution, and a lot to gain including much less stress on the server from the searching of khimeras, which helps improve the overall performance of the site, especially as we grow and add new features.

We're going to use the news comments as an unofficial poll. If most of the comments are positive, we'll go ahead and implement this. If there are mixed reactions to this change, we'll have an official poll. Please keep in mind that some kind of restrictions on release-for-profit WILL be necessary eventually, so that aspect is not really up for debate, only the additional lair slots idea.






126 Comments

Hi guys! Here's Wisu, cautiously bringing you the latest update.

As you all know, opacities were scheduled to be rolled off the site - the changes have now gone live, so you'll notice that you can no longer view your khimera's opacities on their pages.

The search tool has now changed, when viewing the search page you can now choose between searching for "Strong", "Weak" or "None" of a marking.

You may also now enter a khimera ID under "Khimeras Matching..." in order to search for other khimeras that have similar markings. If you check "Match all Markings" right below that box, the search tool will automatically search for any khimeras that have all markings within a 20% range on either side of your selected khimera. If you uncheck this box, you can go through the list of markings and manually mark which markings you want to match, by selecting the "Match" option.

You can also be brought to this page directly from a khimera's page by clicking "Find Similar Khimeras" just underneath a khimera's lineage information.

As mentioned before, there is now also a way to check what's underneath a khimera's overlay! Next to your "Regenerate Khimera" button, there is now an option to generate a "Clean" version of the khimera. This will create an image of what the khimera looks like without items or overlays - a link to the clean version will then be permanently added to the top of your khimera's page.

Good luck! :)


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We've tweaked the Khimera search a little to make searching for overlays easier! When entering the search now you can select from an overlay category, i.e. "Draakith", or "Wishing Well: Winterfest". As well as being able to search for the complete category, selecting the category will bring up an additional box that allows you to search for specific overlays. Hopefully this should make life easier for those overlay enthusiasts among you :P

In addition, the Alternates Guide has been updated and is now the Alternates and Overlays Guide. It has been updated to reflect the difference between an "alternate" and an "overlay". Not sure what the difference is? Well this is a great time to check out the guide for clarification! (Located in the Help menu).

A new category has been added to the Alternates and Overlays Guide - "Miscellaneous". This category is for overlays that were won in site contests, raffles, etc. So if you always wanted to search for a Vineyard Uwila, now you can!

At one point we were basically referring to all alternates and overlays as "alternates" but to reflect these new refinements to the terminology, de-alternification potions are also now referred to as Overlay Removal Potions (since de-overlayification potion just doesn't have quite the same ring)!

We hope that you find these new tweaks to be useful!




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It's time to announce the results of the Opacity Poll.

There were a total of 373 votes.

Option 1: "I would prefer marking opacities to be made invisible." received a total of 183 votes (48%).

Option 2: "I would prefer marking opacities to remain visible." received a total of 124 votes (33%)

Option 3: "I have no strong feelings one way or the other." received a total of 65 votes (17%)

The option to remove opacities received the most votes by a comfortable margin, and so we will be removing opacities from khimera pages.

In case anyone wants to note down the opacities of their khimeras, you have until some time on November 21st to do so, before opacities are removed.

Due to some concerns regarding the difficulty of finding mates for khimeras, we have decided that we will include the two search options previously mentioned - you will be able to search for "weak" and "strong" markings, as well as searching for markings within a certain range of the khimera you wish to breed it to.

The ability to view what khimeras look like under their overlays will also be added!


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Hey there guys, we've got a few cool new features around the site!

First off, some search feature updates!

We now have a handy dandy khimbit search, now conveniently located under the Search tab in the main menu for all your custom khimbit searching needs! This tool is able to search for khimbits that are available for breeding in a user's den, or available for sale in a user's shop, in case you wanted to refresh your den with some new blood.

Also, in the regular khimera search, you now have the option to only search for specific markings on a khimera if you so desire.

On a related note, in light of the recent marking values poll, we are currently considering adding additional search features in the event that marking opacities are indeed made invisible. This is in order to address some common concerns regarding finding breeding partners, and currently includes two options:

1. Allowing users to search for khimeras with a marking that is either "strong" (greater than 50% opacity) or "weak" (less than 50% opacity).
   
2. Allowing users to search for khimeras that share certain or all markings with another khimera within 30%.
   

Again, these are only currently being considered - these aren't necessarily going to be implemented, and if they are, numbers may be changed.

Next, updates to Grimm genetics. As some of you may know, with the release of the Grimms we were attempting to utilize a new feature; breed dominance with khimeras. Originally, Grimms were intended to be the rarest breedable khimera, but with the current complexity of our breeding system, we decided it would be best not to add the further complication of breed dominance at this time. Therefore, Grimms have been given the same breed dominance as the other khimera breeds.

However, when a breed does not have a hybrid attached to it, percentages get skewed as hybrids get replaced by pure-breeds. In order to make all of this even less complicated for you, we now have a fantabulous breed predict tool under the Help tab in the site menu. All you need to do is plug in the species of the khimeras you are going to breed and this tool will give you the rough percentages of the offspring types you can expect to get.

Also, courtesy of the Khimeros chat, we bring to you some daily listening. Though I'm sure we'd all love to add this as looping background music for Khimeros I think there might be some copyright issues...



As always, if you have questions (or notice something not working as it should), feel free to post here or make a bug report as is necessary.

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