Mid Year Update

Happy halfway through the year! There are several game mechanisms that are in desperate need of rebalancing.

IMPORTANT: Colonist stats.
Regarding repools, we've observed considerable min-maxing, where users allocate most stats to one or two areas, creating colonists who excel in specific tasks. While this is acceptable, it often leads to neglecting the roleplay aspect of what these stats would realistically represent. To address this, we are developing a canonical document that outlines the functionality of characters at various stat levels, such as what a Strength of 1 would entail.

Additionally, we will introduce a permanent "minimum stat" requirement of 5 for each stat during repooling and for orphan/recruit characters. The new requirement will also ensure that orphans/recruits have a stat pool of no less than 30.

This "minimum stat" code will be implemented in early-mid July, date pending.

We will also undertake additional stat rebalancing to compensate for this change, which will likely include a boost to the current stat pools for existing colonists who have small stat pools.

Pet Drops
Pet drop resell prices have been reduced as a stop-gap before staff are able to rebalance drops. Expect more changes to pet drops in the coming months as we determine what works best and what doesn't break the game too much with upcoming additions.

Items
Items, the way they are found or crafted, and sellback prices are something that we will be sitting down and revisiting in the coming months. If anyone has experience in balancing these sort of game mechanics, we are all ears!

All items in the "Retired Items" category will be deleted and converted either into their gear equivalent or a new item called ERROR. This new item may be used in future crafting or events, but it's your choice whether to keep your retired items for conversion or sell them back for one FS during the event. This cleanup will also remove all current marking cards from the treasure maps used in previous event stages, as well as the map pieces for Ocean and Bunkers.

Recycling will commence one month after Stage Three begins. Given the recent influx of Natives being discovered, we are delaying Stage Three to allow you to focus on Natives without the added pressure of the event.

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After some deliberation, we have decided to implement a two-week cooldown period between design updates. This is valid regardless of whether the colonist in question is a whelp having a free redesign or an adult with a design update and the cooldown will reset whenever a colonist is adopted from the immigration center.

This does not apply to age-up requests, as to not add an arbitrary wait time for colonies speeding their whelps to adulthood.

Also, please remember to be considerate and compassionate when talking about Xunari designs in the Discord, particularly about Immigration Center designs and plans for design replacement.

Staff have decided to revise XP requirements to limit abuse and make sure we keep our submissions both high quality and fun!

Bonuses
A number of the bonuses for art and literature submissions may no longer be used to meet the minimum XP listed for art rolls, story mode, observations, etc. Those include foreign colonists, tribal visitors, and affiliated arpgs. The full list is on the experience guide at the bottom of the page. Note that you can still submit for pure XP/RP if you don't meet the minimums! This is specifically for activities that require a certain amount of effort and detail.

For now, these are the things that can count towards that minimum:

Story Mode Calculations
A few of the Story Mode prompts don't require colonists, which has led to some confusion about calculating RP for those submissions, particularly among new colonies. As a reminder, for most things XP cannot be calculated without a colonist present. XP is a Colonist currency.

After discussion, we've come up with this compromise:

These are the applicable Story Mode prompts, and the above is only applicable when there are no colonists present:

• C1.A2. Depict your researcher.
• C1.A3. Depict your colony location. (If there is no researcher present in the piece, calculate this as a "Landscape Only" research but you may include "Home Location" as a bonus to reach 7 RP.)
• C1.B4 - B. Investigating the plants, wildlife, geography, or anything else around their new home.