Howdy, howdy. I hope everyone is having an amazing Friday...it is Friday yeh? My weeks been super WHAT DAY IS IT?! So just got to make sure! Before we dive deep into the weekend, what's everyone's plans? I'll randomly be selecting 10 people to get 2 shiny CWPs! So make sure to include your IDs and tell me what you're up to this weekend before 9 AM 3/12! Winners will be announced on the Winner thread , but I will not be pinging since it's CWP and not anything needing claiming. This will become staff only once time has passed.

Good afternoon CE players! We are super excited to share some exciting updates with everyone.

2022 Vision

Firstly, we have updates regarding our vision for 2022! Celestial Equine has continuously morphed year after year and 2022 will certainly follow that pattern. Members of CE staff constantly brainstorm ways to provide new immersive content to allow Celestial Equine to continue to be an amazing escape for its players. The focus for 2022 is to continue to develop our storyline and release more interactive content for players to enjoy. As of now, we are well aware many players thoroughly enjoy the breeding + genetic components of CE. Our goal is to expand player interest to give users more of a guide to gameplay with individual goals for your horses, account activity, and more. We will expand on these ideas in our development update section!

Development Update

As mentioned above, we are thrilled to release more interactive content for players to enjoy. Our first release will be our highly anticipated Alliance Feature, which will allow players to bond with wild horses in an interactive environment. If bonding is successful, the wild horse is yours! In addition to providing a new way to acquire new enchanting steeds, players will also have a chance to collect loot! These fantastic wild horses may include CS genes or alliance exclusive genetics.

Here is a preview of an alliance exclusive body color and mane!

This area is expected to enter phase I testing this weekend with a goal of completion by March 19. Alliances will be thoroughly tested and tweaked by CE staff before fully releasing to our player base.

Stay tuned for more updates regarding this feature!

New Releases

As many of you have seen, our new gene releases are live! This month’s spotlight feature was the Space World and Rainbow World.

The Anrami (Rainbow World) received a new horn genetic and a brand new eye! These new genes have been added to the Anrami and are also circulating in the Magic Shop as gene items. We are absolutely in love with the new Anrami gene expansion. Here is a preview!

Next up, our Cash Shop genes included a new horn and wing set with a special Celestial feel. The Space World is one of our favorites and it was so fun releasing a highly themed set after many months of more mild gene themes.



Spotlight packages are also live in the Spotlight Event area of the Cash shop!


Custom Art Update

Lastly, we have a significant change regarding the Art Depot moving forward. As of today, we have made the decision to close custom orders in an effort to revamp this area of CE. Art is the heart beat of Celestial Equine, and with that means there needs to be a larger focus on site releases. With that being said, customs will not be closed forever. Recolor orders will remain open at this time while we get a handle on monthly site needs vs extra time available for custom works. However, gene/wearable/breed auctions will resume regular posting.

We understand this decision will not be well received by all players, but please know this choice was made to ensure CE as a whole continues to develop. Alliance genes will be just as jaw dropping (if not more amazing) and compliment our current CS/MS releases and we will be actively restructuring our custom format to ensure there are future opportunities to bring a fresh idea to life. Our main goal is to ensure all players can enjoy beautiful artwork and immersive game-play without feeling like custom art orders are the key to success.

Thank you for reading and happy gaming! 

Have you heard what the buzz is all about? Insects are swarming across Sornieth, and bug-loving dragons everywhere are taking advantage of it!

Springswarm, one of Flight Rising's quarterly "micro-holidays", is in full swing! From Thursday, March 10th (06:00 Server Time) to Monday, March 14th (06:00 Server Time), all players will experience a couple of battle-related boosts!


Bountiful Battles

For the duration of Springswarm, all all Coliseum enemies will have the chance to drop insect food items in addition to their normal loot. Performing activities around the site can also yield these tasty treasures. Dragon clans everywhere are taking this time to stock up on ants, bees, cicadas, caterpillars, butterflies, worms, beetles, and more to keep them satisfied until the summer time.

Battle EXP Boost

During the event, all battles will yield 50% additional EXP, so now is a perfect time for dragons to train. Grab your newest team and head out into battle!


These Boars Want More

Dragonkind are not the only ones taking advantage of the swarm. As the forests, jungles, and fields teem with life, enterprising critters rummage through the undergrowth. A few clever species of boar add their talents to this bug bonanza, using the moss and dirt to shimmy themselves into the perfect hiding spots. For the duration of Springswarm, these snorting familiars will drop fairly commonly in the Coliseum and rarely during Insect Catching. Once the swarms have subsided, they'll go back into hiding, but there's always a chance you may run into one or two while Insect Catching.

This year we have a new scene that has a chance to drop in the coliseum and many other site-related activities.

Mistral Jamboree Skin Contest

The ninth annual Mistral Jamboree will begin March 27, 2022, and we're running a skin and accent contest in celebration! Click here for more information!

Seasons Come, Seasons Go

Right on schedule, the seasons are here to usher us into a new phase of the year. Right after rollover on March 21, winter-themed items will cycle out of the Marketplace and spring-themed items will cycle in!

Last week's round of What Am I has ended.

The item description was: Grown in the orchards of Cupid`s Cloud
The answer was: Heart Apple.

12 out of 15 Ichuans answered correctly.

A new round of What Am I has started. Good luck!

Today's winning Mega Money Madness number is: 1872

There were NO winners.

If you want to be a winner next time, check out the Mega Money Madness under the GAMES icon.

We've begun our spring cleaning, and that includes cleaning up some old Item designs! So next time you take a peek at your Plushie collection, you may notice your Evil Penguin Plush, Furious Evil Penguin Plush and Vampire Plush look slightly different. Rest assured these are still the same Plushies you've come to know and love. And as always, you can find these spooky Plushies at the Plushie Palace.



Joining the ranks of a new category and look is the Evil Teddy Bear Plush (formerly Evil Teddy Bear) which can now be added to your Plushie collection! As with the other Plushes this can still be purchased through the Plushie Palace if you catch it in time.



Not one to be left ouf of this change the Witch Plush also received an updated look. It is still as soft as ever though, no stuffing has been lost in this process!

If you're having trouble viewing the new changes, try doing a hard refresh using Ctrl+F5 on Windows or Cmd+Shift+R on Mac.

In today's Developer Update, we give you a peek into the progress we're making on our code refactor projects.

As we mentioned in our last Developer Update, the engineering team pivoted this year to make a concerted effort to finish refactoring the remaining parts of the Flight Rising website that have yet to undergo conversion.

Wrapping up refactors allows the website to handle larger player concurrency, improve its showing in search engines, reduce code redundancies, and allows us to focus more time on new and exciting features and content.

Below are some updates to the current projects we're working on.




Launching Today

The following refactors are live as of this posting:

Crim's Collection Cart

Although Crim's Collection Cart was technically refactored already, we made a few more optimizations and took the opportunity to spruce up her artwork!

[Image Caption: Crim got a glow-up! Look at those curls! That grin! She loves building her collections!]

Dominance

The Dominance page received a full 1:1 refactor, and is running on all new backend code. You should notice little to no difference to this page.




Launching in the Near Future

The following refactors are in development and will launch in the near future:


Gathering

The Gathering page is receiving mostly minor visual changes to more closely align it with CSS styling we use in other newer features (i.e. button states, progress bars, etc.) We also took the opportunity to add an elemental rune to the corner of each gathering job's level container based on the dropdown selection you currently have focused.

We received some feedback (both in the Suggestions forum and via some lamenting threads in Flight Rising Discussion) where players had spent all their gathering turns in the wrong region. It was simple enough to add into the refactor, so we hope this extra visual cue will help alleviate gathering mistakes.

Clan Profile

Out of all the 1:1 refactors, the Clan Profile is perhaps receiving the most significant "glow-up". We're not changing how the page functions at all (any new functions would be in a Clan Profile reVAMP), but are taking the time to really put a fresh coat of paint on what was one of our most dated-looking pages. Below is a mockup of the direction we're going, though at this stage things are still early and subject to change.

[Image Caption: The updated Clan Profile page, no longer a 2013 aesthetic. ]

Arlo's Ancient Artifacts

With today's update, we also deployed a change to the Muster Resources action in Arlo's Ancient Artifacts. We've received some feedback that the randomized and opaque spread of resources didn't feel great to interact with. It led to some discussions and claims that some players were being shorted or receiving impossibly low resource counts, so we wanted to make that process a little more transparent for everyone.

How it Worked Before:

How it Works Now:

We hope that making the change and describing how it works will help alleviate some of the frustration and confusion that had surrounded this part of the feature. Not only does this change result in more certainty when mustering resources, it is also a slight boost to the action's output.

This change was implemented during our last rollover period, meaning that anyone that has already mustered their resources today has benefited from the change!

We are still gathering feedback and considering further changes to Arlo's Ancient Artifacts, but don't have any information to share right now.




Mistral Jamboree Skin Contest

The ninth annual Mistral Jamboree will begin March 27, 2022, and we're running a skin and accent contest in celebration! Click here for more information!

And that's it! Thanks for tuning into this Developer Update, and we'll continue to work hard and provide you with further check-ins as we have news to share.

Congratulations to lovador, who has just won the Ichu Lottery! The jackpot was worth 29,500 iP and the item prize was Magical Purple Gryphix Mirror Shard!

This week's item prize will be Magical Astro Gryphix Mirror Shard! Lottery is drawn every Wednesday.

Every week, we will be selecting a random pet's blog from the Pet Zone. Only up-to-date blogs will apply for this.

This week, the award goes to Henry, who has now crossed rainbow bridge. (read the blog to find out more)
For having an up-to-date blog with cute pictures, they have earned their owner steenbokker a free account upgrade! Congrats!

Make sure you don't forget to put your real life pet images in the Pet Zone and ADD/keep UPDATED BLOGS to your pet images, so you have a chance to win!

Who knows, they might win the next weekly Pet Zone contest.


¢ Deepest condolences to *steenbokker* on the loss of your furbaby :(

St. Patricks day is coming up! As we celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, we have prepared some new goodies for you to pick up!

J.C. Bunny has a brand new Shamrock Sweater and Shamrock Cropped Sweater.


The playpen also has some cool new toys in the colors of the Irish flag. Can you get your hands on the Irish Tennis Set, Irish Roller Skates and Irish Tricycle?


Meanwhile, All Things Stuffed has received Angry Clover Stuffies. Maybe you can grab one of those!

All that getting dressed and playing around is sure to make you hungry. Do not worry, Simply Delicious has a variety of new foods available for you. Try out an Irish Donut, If you aren't in the mood for dessert, have some Colcannon or Boxty - a traditional Irish dish made from potatoes! If you are really hungry, maybe you can go for some Irish Beef Stew.

Sorry puma peeps, Discord is having issues and appears to be down. Not sure when it's going to be back up. I'll know as soon as you do. xD

https://discordstatus.com/


EDIT: Everything seems to be back in order. Carry on with your mad puma selves. <3


Edited: 03-08-2022 05:06 pm

Hey all! Esty Link: Wajas Pens with Floating Pears I had some custom Wajas Pens made with floating pears that I had posted on SM about a month ago? Then got sick so I had to close my store for a bit.. and then totally forgot to reupdate everyone about them. So I apologize for being late on that front but I still have a good amount left if anyone is interested? The colors are mostly random but I will try my best to get the color(s) you request. They write nicely and the pears are quite fun to play with lol... (There's a short video on the listing that shows them in action) I've also been helping a YouTuber with their graphics and they sent me a TeeSpring hoodie with my art on it... I'm actually quite satisfied with the print job of it and was considering opening up a TeeSpring for Wajas. I wasn't overly thrilled with RedBubble's quality so I kind of abandoned that project.... but TeeSpring might be worth trying? Is that something you guys would be interes

Working my way through all the stuff needing judged between SM and the Site. First up is the NPC Name, we've created the POLL here, so go vote! Rest will be done over the next week or so as there's quite a bit built up from FriendFest. Also there's an important merch post that was done earlier so be sure to go read it if you haven't. Love y'all lots, happy Tuesday! ¢¥

Tomorrow, March 9th, is our monthly staff dicey challenge day. You could win $500,000 PB and a cool brand new, never seen before, Dicey Giant Squid Stuffy!

To win, all you will need to do is defeat a staff member in a 500k Dicey Challenge.

Once you have won, please do not continue challenging the staff.

Good luck, and we hope to see those who dare take on staff, tomorrow!

It's time to head over to Miles Magic Box and see if you can figure out which item is depicted by the artistic rendering. If you do before next week, you'll win a cool prize!