Happy New Year, Aetolia! Don't forget to go check those Platinum stockings!

For January, we've got two main promotions:

Lesson sale! Go buy lessons from the website, prepare for those class revamps, and new skills coming out in the next month or two!

Second, Giftbags.

Normal giftbags come 1 for every 25 credits purchased during the month of January.
One normal giftbag for 21 days logged in with a minimum of 60 minutes played.
The first 100 credits comes with an extra giftbag for every 10 credits! That means buying 100 credits gets you 14 giftbags straight off the bat!

Now, these won't be your normal giftbags, except when they are normal. Wait wait, hear Me out:

I've rewritten giftbag code from the bottom up. They work pretty much the same was as you're used to from your PoV, but now they are in a tracked fashion where we can catch slight mistakes or errors in odds. All the same, I can guarantee less junk and a more consistent median value. They also have a minimum value, meaning they will always be worth at least 3 credits at absolute WORST.

But that's not all! This new code lets us adjust the tables in a way we normally cannot, so I give you a rainbow of options! For normal Giftbag loot, please look at HELP GIFTBAGS, which is updated to reflect the changes here. Items have been removed from the colored giftbags to make room for the listed additions, but we don't tell you what was in them to begin with, so... free information!

New Artifact!

Crafter's Folio
---------------
Only available from giftbags and other prize sources, this is a 5 design version of the crafter's workbook.

GIFTBAG EXCHANGE <color>
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Each color has a theme you might be able to guess. Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Orange, Violet, and Gold.

NOTE: Gold is special, and requires 5 unopened giftbags to make 1.

Red Giftbag
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All minipet rolls result in - a blood-coated fox (mammal)
Mint chocolate exchanged for white
Enemy_Expand, Ally_Expand, Hunters_Boon Level 2, Darkness
Compendium pages exchanged for warpaint

Blue Giftbag
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All minipet rolls result in - a heavily-fortified fox (mammal)
All the chocolates are mint!
Hunting Boon tokens
More Compendium Pages
More Style Scrolls (Including NEW STYLE, Crafting)
Lower odds for big artifacts

Yellow Giftbag
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All minipet rolls result in - a small, overburdened fox (mammal)
Stockroom_expand Level 3, extra_shelves level 1, tipjar
More Style Scrolls (Including NEW STYLE, Crafting)

Green Giftbag
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All minipet rolls result in - a spectral fox (spirit)
fast_shrines
(Look for more on the refresh!)

Violet Giftbag
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All minipet rolls result in - a stiff, rotting fox (undead)
Skullmask more likely
(Look for more on the refresh!)


Orange Giftbag
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All minipet rolls result in - a nine-tailed fox of flames (elemental)
Mint chocolate exchanged for fudge. Mmmm, fudge.
Salt, Toolboost Level 3, Listen_Painting, All sorts of tradeskill_boon
(Note, if you get Toolboost, msg Me with the tool you'll want it to work on, and I'll get coding, I've been putting that off)



Gold Giftbag
------------
No junk. Minimum value is higher than 5 giftbags separately, and all things that are more boring have been removed.

-T

PS:

I'll explain how these work, for the unitiated. Every giftbag is a table, with something like 5500 slots. A random number is rolled, 1-5500. That number is looked up on the list, and the corresponding prize put inside the bag. If that prize's value leaves the bag's overall value LESS than the minimum, it rolls again. Prizes that are worth 500+ credits tend to only have 1-5 slots in that 5500, which things worth 5 have something like 400 slots. The average value of a bag is calculated as total values / 5500, and should be right smack where it's always been.

This means a bag can potentially roll:

roll - chocolate - reroll - chocolate - reroll - chocolate (3x 1 value) - stop
roll - chocolate - reroll - chocolate - reroll - Wings (2x 1 value, 1x 500 value) - stop
roll - Wings (1x 500 value) - stop

It just depends on your luck and order of the rolls. It doesn't look like it, but that actually pushes the average value a little past IRE standard, increasing their value beyond the previous method.

And remember, these are giftbags. Their prizes are all over the place, but generally you're talking 20% shots for 5ish credits, down to .002% shots for 800.

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 12th of Lanosian, in the year 470 MA.