🔔 Group Updates 🔔

This page details updates that were mentioned in the group's #announcements channel over the months! Everything you need to know about what's been going on will be documented here, as well as a few reminders for upcoming activities!

This resource will be kept up-to-date to the best of our abilities, but pardon our dust if it's ever delayed! All the information can still be found in the Discord if this section is ever found to be out-of-date!

💻 Website Updates

✦ The entire website is currently being updated! This includes things like updates to wording, clarification on rules that have been vague or confusing in the past, formatting, and potentially visuals (eventually™)! The goal of this update is as follows:

     ✧ Updating outdated information such as mechanics or other group rules and removing references to old, deprecated functions

     ✧ Editing and rewording information in a way that is easier to digest for newcomers

     ✧ Adding new pages that describe group functions that may have previously been included in other pages (including a quick references page)

     ✧ Formatting so that all text is a more comfortable size to read, all text and formatting is consisten across the entire site, and highlighting important information by sectioning them off more clearly

     ✧ Sprucing up the place and updating some of the visuals to be more appealing than large text-walls ✨

💻 Website Updates

✦ The first version of the submissions graders have been deprecated. As it seems the overhauled graders have been stable, we've now sunset the first version of the Dungeon Grader, Daily Life & Tasks Graders, and their Holiday Hills variants.

✦ When uncovering a Recruit Token, you may now immediately roll for your first result in the dungeon grader(s). Simply click on the icon of the die/dice to roll your token immediately! This applies to the regular dungeon grader as well as the curremt Ultra Space Wilds Grader being used for Bingo.

   ✧ The recruit and the fact that you've rolled once will be logged upon submitting.

   ✧ You can still re-roll your token in #inventory after the fact. This update is simply a convenience/quality-of-life change for those who wish to use it.

   ✧ You do not have to roll immediately. Using this new function is completely optional. If you wish to save your token to later roll in #inventory, simply submit without clicking on the die/dice icon and proceed as normal.

✦ You now select items from the submissions detail page instead of at the start. In order to properly lock off items from being used where they cannot be (i.e. Wishing Stars in <90 dungeons, etc.), using items is now at the same time you set your submission's link and grading details.

   ✧ The Pick Items menu has been removed from the starting screen.

   ✧ Only items that your team owns will appear as options. Options that are not available for the dungeon you have selected will be grey and unclickable.

   ✧ In instances where you may choose between a Tera Orb and Wonder Chest, you will only be able to use one and not the other. Selecting one while the other is active will immediately deselect the other.

   ✧ The Guide to the Dungeon Grader still needs to be updated with this information.

✦ Only characters with an application will be available to select from your team list on the dungeon grader(s). Thanks to our amazing new update to the inventory links, we were able to gather a list of characters with and without applications! As such, only characters with a link in the inventories will appear when picking your team members.

   ✧ If a character does not have a link but should have one, please let the mods know in #questions or via #submit-a-ticket.

   ✧ The Guide to the Dungeon Grader still needs to be updated with this information.

✦ Not as integral to the inner workings of the grader(s), but there is now a Credits list for all the assets used in the regular dungeon grader and similar updates will be forthcoming for the others!

✦ The World Map on the List of Islands & Cities is now interactive! By default, the view is set to a regular image of the map, but you can toggle an interactive mode to click around the islands and read up on them! You can also search for all the dungeons that have a specific recruit if you so choose.

🎮 Changes to Activities & Mechanics

🎁 The droprate of items in the Ultra Space Wilds dungeons has been increased across the board! After doing a lot of boring math and looking at statistics, we've decided to increase the droprate for finding items as well as specifically for finding Rare and Very Rare items!

    ✧ Increased the chance to find an item from 60% to 85%

    ✧ Decreased the chance to find a Common item from 80% to 50%

    ✧ Increased the chance to find a Rare item from 15% to 35%

    ✧ Increased the chance to find a Very Rare item from 5% to 15%

    ✧ As a reminder, these numbers and the possible items you can find can be found in the Ultra Space Exploration Guide!

✦ Heroic (80+) dungeons now offer a selection of Recruit Tokens! To justify the level requirements of Heroic-level dungeons, a new type of reward has been added to the dungeons!

    ✧ We are currently calling this a Token Box, in which you may be rewarded with a recruit token from the list below:

        • 70% chance: Random, Random Generation (1-9), Random Type (excluding Stellar and other non-typical typings)

        • 20% chance: Category of Choice (only includes Type or Generation of Choice)

        • 5% chance: Pokemon of Choice ✨

    ✧ These dungeons will also always provide a Treasure Box as a reward in place of a Pokemon recruit! Keys still must be purchased to open them.

    ✧ Recruits who were previously in any Heroic (80+) dungeons have been removed or otherwise moved to other dungeons. A full list of the changes are below.

📜 Rules & Other Reminders

✦ An update and very important reminder on the group's mature/18+ content has been published. As a reminder, it is imperative that folks remember to properly tag their characters' backstories with the correct content warnings. We also now ask that any content that describes -- in detail -- violence, gore, death, or sexual content be hidden from view. This does not mean that this content is now disallowed nor that we are asking you to completely hide it away. For all the information on this change, see the Joining & Character Creation page.

💻 Website Updates

✦ The group's DeviantART has gotten a makeover! Unfortunately, by the middle of April, all of DA's groups will be forcibly migrated over to the new Eclipse layout. Due to this, the group's DA has been updated appropriately but will otherwise be untouched for the foreseeable future.

    ✧ Members who are interested in joining the DA group may still join up if they'd like and submit work on DA.

    ✧ In light of the forced update and disagreements with DA's recent conduct, the moderators are aiming to be as hands-off as possible with DA.

✦ All of the group's graders have received visual and technical overhauls! This includes the Daily Life & Tasks Grader, the Dungeon Grader, and the Holiday Hills variants of both!

    ✧ If there is any feedback for any of the updates, please let us know via the Suggestions Form! As always, bugs and errors can be reported in the #questions channel or through #submit-a-ticket. Just let us know if something goes wrong and we will attempt to remedy it ASAP!

    ✧ Both of the Holiday Hills Graders are now available year-round on the site but attempting to access it will tell you that you're a bit early!

    ✧ The old graders are available on the website for the time-being! Once the integrity and stability of the new graders have been verified however, we are going to migrate to them officially! For now, you're free to use whichever one you please! We will likely be deprecating the older ones by the middle of April at the latest.

✦ A guide to the Dungeon Grader is now available! This page features slideshows and a visual guide to take you through parts of the Dungeon Grader that may require some assistance. If there are questions or feedback on how we can improve the guide, let us know!

    ✧ A list of known issues and future update plans is available at the bottom of the guide as well!

March 2024

🌟 Reminders!

✦ March will be a rest month! As part of the overhaul, there will no longer be on-going activities for every month of the year! Instead, we'll have Holiday Hills, Missions & Tasks, and one rest month somewhere in between (either immediately before the next Holiday Hills or immediately after the previous one). Take a load off and recharge before April!

    ✧ There will be no Missions & Tasks for March while we gear up for the next Holiday Hills and take a much needed rest after 3 consecutive months involving the major overhaul, Holiday Hills, and a return to Missions!

    ✧ The Traveling Shop will still be available from the 15th to the 22nd during rest months!

✦ February's Missions & Tasks be open until March 7th! To compensate for the slightly delayed start in February activities due to the overhaul, extensions will last until March 14th at 11:59 PM EST.

    ✧ We will return to the usual cycle of monthly updates starting in April with updates rolling out on the 1st of the month at 9 AM EST, and extensions lasting until the 7th of the month at 11:59 PM EST.

✦ The next Activity Check will be in April! There's still quite a bit of time, but remember to plan accordingly if you know you'll be busy around that time!

💗 Chronos's Impromptu Speed Dating Event is still underway! There is no time limit on your RPs, so chat away to your heart's content! Roleplay logs may be submitted as Daily Life for Poke rewards at any point!

❓ Something's got the Creation Trio riled up... something about "strange visitors" from "before"?

    ✧ Be sure to check out the latest updates in #event-hints to keep an eye on what may be coming in the next chapter of Beyond the Sea!

🌱 Holiday Hills will return in April! And with it, we will be running a Mini Event for Guest Designers!

    ✧ All information about how to submit a Variant design can be found over on the Mini Event page!

💼 Moderation Team Changes

✦ 🎉 Keiava and CrystalCoven (Paopao) have joined the moderation team! They'll be helping with checking character applications and designs going forwards!

    ✧ And on a smaller note, dragon-heist has been promoted to Branch Leader from Helper!

📜 Rules & Other Reminders

✦ The Rules have been updated! A few of the group's rules have been updated for clarification! Be sure to check in on these:

    ✧ Updated policy on 18+ submissions; what's allowed and what isn't

    ✧ Using Tickets and when mods check in on inactive Tickets

✦ Remember to include a "TL;DR" or a summary of a character's backstory if it's particularly lengthy! We ask that any written application backstories that run longer than 4 paragraphs include a short summary!

    ✧ There was a huge number of applications that came in during February and it would help app checkers and mods in speeding up the process, even if only by a little bit!

🎒 Inventory Updates

✦ Submission Logs are now public! These logs include every submission that has come through the Grader(s) since the group overhaul!

    ✧ These submissions are sorted by Dungeons, Tasks, Daily Life, and there are also pages to keep track of Recruits and even Recruit Tokens (there are links provided to the Discord posts and wheren you last rolled your Tokens on the sheet).

✦ Recruit Token results are being tracked differently! Previously, they were tracked by a note on an item in members' inventories called something like "In-Progress Recruit Tokens". From now on, Recruit Tokens are listed as individual items in the inventories with its status in the box where the quantity of the item would normally go.

    ✧ This means that you'll see Recruit Tokens show up in your inventory as something like the below image!

    ✧ Unused tokens will have "Unused" in the box where the species of your result would go.

    ✧ Tokens that have been re-rolled with have an asterisk (*) beside the Token name.

🎮 Changes to Activities & Mechanics

✦ ✨ New Recruits may now start off evolved! You are no longer limited to having each new character start off as their base evolutionary stage!

    ✧ To start with a fully evolved Recruit, you must have the appropriate amount of Evolution Crystals in your inventory and submit a Luminous Spring piece depicting their evolution along with their application!

    ✧ For all information on this exciting new change, see the Evolution Crystal item here!

✦ Sandy Cloak Burmy can now be found in "We didn't want you to see this!" Unfortunately for the little fella, it was the only Burmy that was unavailable up until this point! It has been added to one of the Dungeons so anybody who may want to seek one without having to use a Form Change item on a different Burmy can do so now!

✦ Z-Crystals have been moved to the regular Ethovalon Shops! As they no longer provide a benefit to Dungeons, we've decided to make them readily accessible! Z-Crystals allow access to Z-Moves, which are now purely cosmetic and used for story flavor!

    ✧ Snag a set of Z-Crystals now for the low, low price of 5,000p! 💰 💰 💰

✦ Mega Potions and Mega Stones have been deprecated! With the group overhaul removing the bonuses you gained from using Mega Stones in Dungeons, we've decided to change the Mega Stones to simply be... Mega Stone! This new(ish?) item combines the two now-deprecated items!

    ✧ Mega Potions and Stones have been removed from people's inventories and instead, a Mega Stone has been provided to each character who had a Mega Potion applied and to each character currently capable of Mega Evolving.

    ✧ For example, if you had the Mega Stones (which previously bundled every Mega Stone) and you had an Absol on your team, you were reimbursed with a Mega Stone for that character.

    ✧ For teams that had the old Mega Stones but no recruits who could use presently use them: if you did have a recruit that could potentially use them (i.e. an unevolved recruit who could evolve into a Pokemon who can Mega Evolve), a few of new Mega Stone items were added directly to your inventory for future use.

    ✧ For all information regarding how Mega Evolutions work now, see the Mega Stone item on its shiny new shop page!

💻 Website Updates

✦ Ethovalon's Shops have gotten an update! Shops and items are now categorized such that you can find information on related items more easily! This includes limited event items, which are not readily available but you can read up on them at your leisure!

    ✧ Team Items & Services is where you can find Recruit Slots, NPC/Child Slots, information on acquiring a 2nd or 3rd team, and items related to managing your team such as the Team Member Swap and Team Vacation Pass.

    ✧ Character Items & Services is where you can find Evolution Crystals, Wedding Bands, Move and Ability Tutors, and items related to managing an individual character such as the PC to NPC Swap and vice-versa.

    ✧ Expedition Items is where you can find all items related to Dungeons and exploring them. This includes Keys, Treasure Boxes, Recruit Swaps, Poke Radars, Tera Shards, the various Monthly Items, and the different types of Random Tokens.

   ✧ Potions & Customization is where you can find all items related to changing your character's appearance and commonly available Potions such as the Shiny Potion, Regional Potion, Pinkan Berry, and more. This also includes items such as the Gijinka Form Change, Pokemon Form Change, Transformation Scarf, and Strange Vial.

   ✧ The Traveling Shop is unchanged, but now will only list items available to be purchased!

✦ The Potions & Variants page now features additional, previously unmentioned Variant Pokemon! Cosplay Mimikyu, Fruity Applin, and Costume Pikachu have been added to the page with examples where we were able to get them!

✦ Past Official Holiday Hills Variants have been moved to a separate page! To de-cluttered the main Potions & Variants page, the archive is now its own section! These designs include mod-created and contest-winning Holiday Hills Variants that were featured in the Dungeons.

✦ The Suggestions Form can now be accessed from the website! Anonymous feedback and suggestions may now be submitted directly on the website! You may use this page or go through the Google Forms page -- it's up to you! This can be found at the bottom of the sidebar if you ever need to come back to it!

✦ The NPC Glossary has been updated! Previously out-of-date by quite a while, this new list includes prominent figures with relations to the GCSF and who you might see around Ethovalon and on your ventures!

January 2024's updates can be found here!