Now that work on the Iron Carnival has concluded, we're free to return to other projects. A few words on the Iron Carnival first, though, because that was a behemoth of a project. It was by no means mandatory - Imperian did not participate - but we didn't want you to miss out on what would be available elsewhere. The bulk of the work was submitted by the other games; however, the actual implementation was still on our end. Turns out you can have all the descriptions and progs made available and it will still take forever to actually manifest a finished product. All IRE games technically script their items, denizens, and quests in the same scripting language, but over the years we've all developed so many different tools and conventions that it's impossible to reuse things. We essentially had to make everything from scratch. And don't get me started on coordination of work, resources, and implementation between four games. Oof! Ultimately, we got a lot out of it that will come in handy later. For example, we had to make it possible to apply custom look effects on the fly (see facepaints in the Big Top), and can now reuse that elsewhere.

Before I go over what we'll be working on next, here's where we stand on projects mentioned in the last update:

- Custom Beast Submission System - finalised, released, and working really well. There were a few hiccups to iron out live, but things are working smoothly now. Not long ago, we also imported information about old beasts into the system, meaning everyone with a custom beast can now use the system too. Doing so created a whole host of new problems, though. There were a lot of discrepancies between the display and the actual beast due to old admin mistakes (related to how tweaks were made). This led to a lot of confusion among owners. That's all been fixed up. A parallel system for custom dwellers is ready, partially backfilled (sans delivery/retriever lines, as we need to manually pull that out of progs and that takes a while), and officially releasing soon.

- Plaxios Lowlands - still underwater, sitting in the 'near completion' phase. For this particular project, the schedules of two people need to align, and those people are also managing a lot of other things. As a result, it has not been a priority just yet.

- Uilani's Secret Project - you'd think that had to be restaurants, right? It's not. There are two almost-done projects, actually, and they're both roleplay-oriented. I already got the main project to a point of functionality last year, but there was still more I wanted it to do. I intended to return to it after restaurants, but I'm happy about the coding detours taken instead since they really expanded my skills.

- Mystery Pocket - ah, mystery pocket, you were wronged by restaurants. We were going to release it the weekend that restaurants released but there was too much testing left to do on that still. Eventually, the story of Caerlan and the reef in the Inner Sea found a timeslot and was released!

- Arowin's Sketchartist Academy - is still seeing a lot of use, making us very happy. We have not made much progress on releasing the second rank yet, though. It is not difficult work as groundwork is laid for the next rank, it's just time-consuming and the current story arc is taking precedence. We'll get back to it as time allows.

Now onto what's next as a priority:

- Seasonal Events - we're heading into back-to-back seasonal events - the Anniversary, the Haunting, and then Solstice. We try to improve and expand those events every year, but preparing and running them takes time too. So we're not fussing overmuch about expanding things, but we'll definitely try to make use of facepaints and such.

- Story Arc - the nightmare on Ackleberry Highway marks the beginning of a new story arc, one that's been in the works for a while. The story is not planned as a 'year arc', a story that culminates in Ascension, but we're also not ruling it out. We don't know where it's going yet, we just know what we want to release as part of it. We're trying a lot of new things as part of the story (orclach bosses use a custom attack routine!) and will appreciate your patience and help as adjustments are made. For instance, making a challenging denizen fight these days is incredibly hard. With so many buffs, resistances, crit rates, and madness that is gnome weapons, a regular denizen set to max level and with normal attacks is pretty much tissue paper. It's a problem, but not a problem for today. Yay story!

- Envoy Reports - with Iron Carnival done, I can look at the reports at last. We'll get decisions in first, divvy up the work, and then roll out the implementation. Once that's all done, we'll probably open reports again a few months later. There is still the matter of the Special Seren Report too, which is meant to address their lack of synergy. I need to check in with our mortal coder and see when we can resume work on that. Due to wiccan/druid overlap with Glomdoring, they are sure to be roped in at some point too.

- Event Posts - we're missing quite a few, I'm sure you're aware. They're not quick to write, even fresh, but it needs doing. What we'll do first is post the latest event post (about the nightmare) and then backfill missing event posts as time allows. The posts about old events will be marked as such, and once all of them are in, we'll redo the post order on the Events board and correct all the dates. The April Fool's event post is getting removed too and will remain only on the website.

- Anomaly Vaults - Magnagora and Hallifax are missing anomaly storage solutions that other organisations have. Gaudiguch has a solution, but one that is missing a lot of the functionality that Celest, Serenwilde, and Glomdoring have, so we'll be looking at that too. Timequakes and anomalies are part of everyday gameplay, so it's important we address that among our priorities.

There's much more in our backlog and much more that needs doing besides, but what's outlined above is the primary focus right now. We're having an admin productivity party next weekend, but we might focus on other things than bugs this time - I might just sit and write event posts the whole time. RIP. I'll also probably collect changelogs into one or more update posts again, kind of like Updates post #4, because a lot has happened this year already. Frankly, we've probably done more code work this year than in the past few years combined!

And on that happy note, thanks for being with us - old faces and new - and as always, I'm just a message away. If you have any questions or concerns, let me know.

Penned by My hand on the 15th of Kiani, in the year 747 CE.