I've got a couple more questions, though others asked a lot of what I was wondering.

What goes into setting up the festivals and other annual events, besides the obvious player facing stuff like picking theme and avatar contest winners and commisioning new art for avatar items?

Do you get site-wide player engagement data? Like how many players are at various stages in the lost grove, which festival features people are using, or hyper specific things like which pet elements are popular?

Edit: And why do we get lost grove bonus events at the start of festivals? It helped me finally finishing ranking my team for the ancient temple at the start of this fest, but dividing attention between that and the festival's first week was a lot.

I forgot to ping TvT

Im really terrible at thinking of multiple questions at once, so I might come back several times ^^;

One of my questions is why are festivals when they are and how did you decide on the spacing for them? Ive been talking with other players about how the end of the year feels like theres a lot more festivals compared to the start of the year. I know we have mini fests like the Fortune Festival, but I would love to know more details about that!

I thought I had more but thats all for now. TvT Maybe if you are willing to share any more details about being able to get more scales from multiple sources? If that happens will the scale prices of certain items, like philters of nullification, go up?

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=110784&page=5#50 Author: Xavion Time Posted: 11/21/2025 at 9:44 AM Question: Any plans to upgrade the pet gear inventory and party menu at any point in the future? Currently I'm training up a new team, but I want to use the same gear as my main team. (Primo +5 gear; of course I want to use it!) This requires 67 different clicks in total, with 48 of those requiring me to mouse from the top to the bottom of my screen which starts to strain the wrist a bit. (This strain is from clicking one piece of gear on the pet - the slots for which are beneath the image so quite far down, considering - and then clicking into the inventory slots above, 4 times in a row, then going to the other 2 party members to do the same. And then it's the same thing again in the opposite order by taking those items I'd just removed, and clicking those into the other team's armor slots.) This process can take me like a minute depending on how quickly I can spot the different stables housing the other team. Stressful when I want to go after the Horseman, but need to swap teams first. Something like a dedicated armory tab along with the party menu would be awesome, where you can move a piece of gear into an armory instead of the regular inventory, and the armory can have slots where you make "sets" of armor and apply all 4 pieces to a pet with one move. Like keeping a "set" for different level brackets for people who level pets; as the pet grows, remove "fire 25" and place "fire 50" for a quick change of armor on the same pet. If you're swapping one team for another, the "set" just stays in place as the party's armor, and you just swap the pet that's in the party slot to get the gear applied. Just a thought; I'm not even sure if that'd be possible. (But it would be nicer than 67 different clicks, lol)

Yep. This will come with the whole Exploration revamp. I am going to completely change how items work (in the backend), Inventories, etc. All of that will be brand new, updated, better QOL, streamlined, improved on the backend, etc.

For the Party Manager page, I don't have anything specific in mind right now, but it's possible I redo it a bit as I redo everything else - just maybe to combine everything in a more convenient location or to update it to sync better with the newer systems.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=110784&page=6#51 Author: Wavypavy Time Posted: 11/21/2025 at 4:59 PM I've got a couple more questions, though others asked a lot of what I was wondering. What goes into setting up the festivals and other annual events, besides the obvious player facing stuff like picking theme and avatar contest winners and commisioning new art for avatar items? Do you get site-wide player engagement data? Like how many players are at various stages in the lost grove, which festival features people are using, or hyper specific things like which pet elements are popular? Edit: And why do we get lost grove bonus events at the start of festivals? It helped me finally finishing ranking my team for the ancient temple at the start of this fest, but dividing attention between that and the festival's first week was a lot.

1. Fortunately, a lot of the code can obviously be re-used since it already exists. If I'm releasing a new feature, then that has to be coded from scratch. A brand new Event/Festival feature from scratch typically takes between 1-3 weeks to build. This is why sometimes I am late on getting these features put in when a Festival launches and they don't fully come online until 1 or 2 weeks into the Festival. I waited too long to start working on them and, with everything else involved, it just took too much time so I couldn't get it done on time.

Regarding the regular stuff, just a ton of backend updates for the new year. Updating Avatar Items, Themed Pets, Named, etc - and all of the backend ID's to sort everything out so that players battle the right things, the enemies drop the right items, etc. Then I usually make a pass and make minor tweaks on drop rates. I will look at data from the previous year and adjust. I'm looking for things like, how common was thing - too much or too little? How hard was this? Too hard or too easy? How many people participated in this feature? Too many or not enough? And then as I answer those questions, I'll adjust to make things more rare, more common, harder, easier, more expensive, cheaper, more appealing, etc. It's just always a nonstop process because the data is always changing. My end goal is to always have players happy, excited, have a sense of feeling rewarded, and the site making enough revenue.

There's a bunch of other stuff too, like coming up with the Forum Games, stocking the shops, posting the news updates, etc.All in all, Festival preparations are about 3-4 weeks in total work, sometimes longer if a big new feature is being added.

2. I do. I definitely don't track everything, but I try and track everything that makes sense and could be useful. I rely on this for a lot of things, as mentioned above in my previous answer. I can also run any script that I want on demand if I want to - as long as I spend the time to write it. This can be used to answer pretty much just about any question I might have of active data assuming it's somewhere in the database. An example would be like, how many of a specific item are players getting from the Haunted House? Which Stage is the item coming from and at what frequency? What percent chance is this item having relative to the other prizes? Etc. Simple questions like this help me to balance features to make sure they are handing out prizes at a proper rate.

3. We didn't used to, but I eventually figured, why not? The option is there for people to want it if they want it. It helps boost playtime. It helps to get people back on the site during an exciting time (new Festival/Event). Maybe they'll stick around and check something out that they otherwise wouldn't have. The basic TLDR: I am trying to get maximum player activity during sales as it greatly helps to keep Sylestia funded. Going back to data tracking, I have noticed a tangible increase in activity since I started doing it. The increased activity then leads to increased revenue - which helps me to recoup the costs of funding said Event/Festival + the dead time inbetween Events/Festivals. I generally just coincide these Boost Events with sales as I want that to be an extra excitement point for when sales are active. It seems like a fair trade. Everyone wins. =)

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=110784&page=6#53 Author: Jenrette Time Posted: 11/21/2025 at 10:25 PM Im really terrible at thinking of multiple questions at once, so I might come back several times ^^; One of my questions is why are festivals when they are and how did you decide on the spacing for them? Ive been talking with other players about how the end of the year feels like theres a lot more festivals compared to the start of the year. I know we have mini fests like the Fortune Festival, but I would love to know more details about that! I thought I had more but thats all for now. TvT Maybe if you are willing to share any more details about being able to get more scales from multiple sources? If that happens will the scale prices of certain items, like philters of nullification, go up?

1. Mostly the combination of two things. One, the obvious one, Events and Festivals occur around already existing national/international holidays. This is often when people have time off of school or work, people are feeling extra festive, and it's easy for us to come up with features for said Event/Festival based on the specifics of the holiday - Trick or Treating during the Fall Festival because of the Halloween holiday, for example.

The second thing is just kind of trial and error. When Sylestia first launched, we basically immediately decided to whip together a little holiday event for that first Christmas. Players enjoyed it. So that got the ball rolling. From there, we initiated more Events for future holidays. Eventually, we settled on doing 4 major seasonal Festivals a year. Fall and Winter were easy to pick - we just scheduled them around Halloween and Christmas/New Years. I think we originally put Summer around the 4th of July holiday, but then there was a huge gap between Summer Festival and Fall Festival. So as time has gone on, we now our have our own dedicated Patriotic Event around the 4th of July and then a month or so later, Summer Festival. Spring Festival always kind of moves around depending on where Easter falls year to year.

The goal of all of our Events/Festivals at this point is to try and have at least one thing going on each month of the year. This not only greatly helps to improve player retention, but also helps us to maximize sales which greatly helps to fund the site. With exception to Fall Festival through Winter Festival, I try and have at least a couple weeks inbetween Events/Festivals to let players have some downtime and to avoid burn out - which absolutely is a real thing. I'm sure just about every player has felt it at some point - whether for Sylestia or another game - and I definitely can track it via player activity.

But yes, Fall Festival into Black Friday Extravaganza into Winter Festival is definitely a very busy time - both for you guys and for me lol. But, without fail, it is always the highest peak of activity throughout the year. You guys collectively love these holidays and Events/Festivals, so I see no reason to change the scheduling for it. I do try to get Fall Festival going around mid October, but there's a lot of reasons a Festival gets delayed so it usually doesn't start until the end of October. There are a lot of players who hardly play throughout the year, but then come back during November and December. Happens every single year.

2. Probably not a whole lot at the moment just because I haven't 100% sorted it all out. The idea though once the Scale Shop is revamped, is to allow players to 'sell' unwanted pets back to the site and receive some amount of Scales in return based on the 'quality' of the pet. I am sure there will be some sort of limitations on this as to prevent a loophole of infinite Scale farming, but the goal is for players to have an outlet for failed Breeding Project pets outside of just releasing them into nothingness. I may also do something where I create like bounties on rare Wild Pets for players to find and turn in.

Whether or not prices change - yea, probably. I doubt it will be a significant change, but I will definitely have to adjust prices to account for a new influx of the Scale currency. Any changes though will be with the intent of keeping them as balanced as they are now. I do also plan on adding some new items to purchase with Scales as well as an updated Scale Shop Eggling store that can include Themed Pets - even Retired ones.

So the TLDR is: More ways to earn Scales. More things to spend Scales on. Improved Scale Shop with better QOL and interface.

Do Halloween themeds count as restricted trait themeds? For example, will they have 2 visible traits instead of 3 when choosing a 3vis fall theme of choice?

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=110784&page=6#57 Author: Gigex Time Posted: 11/27/2025 at 7:06 AM Do Halloween themeds count as restricted trait themeds? For example, will they have 2 visible traits instead of 3 when choosing a 3vis fall theme of choice?

They are not Restricted, no. So they can be 3-Visible from prizes. The "Restricted" is for Restricted Traits only. Halloween Themed Pets don't have access to any Restricted Traits.

hi, this is super fun!


is there a timeline for when we might expect the barracks in Ethernia?


could we get a pinned list for your upcoming plans for revamps and updates? or, is there a list somewhere?


do you have plans for which map area will be released next?


has Sylestia changed a lot from what you had planned in the beginning? what's something you'd be surprised by, if you could go back in time and tell yourself about how Sylestia is now?

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=110784&page=6#59 Author: Amethystx Time Posted: 11/28/2025 at 7:08 AM hi, this is super fun! is there a timeline for when we might expect the barracks in Ethernia? could we get a pinned list for your upcoming plans for revamps and updates? or, is there a list somewhere? do you have plans for which map area will be released next? has Sylestia changed a lot from what you had planned in the beginning? what's something you'd be surprised by, if you could go back in time and tell yourself about how Sylestia is now?

1. There are no plans to add that. The Mission system, as it is, is kind of unsustainable. It needs to be completely reworked. There will be a new and improved system that will come with the Exploration revamp down the road.

2. Hehe. That probably would be helpful. There are a indeed a lot of plans. I try to avoid actual roadmaps because I feel I am always so bad at gauging timelines of this kind of stuff. I suppose I could post something that just states the planned updates but without an attached timeline.

3. When the Exploration revamp goes through, everyone will be going back to the beginning in terms of world exploration/story line. Too much is changing, both feature wise and story wise. I want everyone starting from the beginning.

My current plan is that the story will actually kick off in Astryl's Vale and it will be the first region. Then players will go to Viridian Meadows for the second region and Umbra Forest for the third region. A lot of the story will be similar to how it is now, but there will be some changes and some new, deeper story lines. From there, I haven't decided entirely and I probably won't until the new story is kind of fully fleshed out. But the next region will be either the desert region or the snowy plains region.

4. For sure. I think the biggest change is just my general conception of what makes Sylestia... Sylestia. Our identity as a game has changed and grown considerably since launch day back in 2012. Themed Pets, for example, are a thing that wasn't even a blip of an idea at launch and now it's basically the central focus for the vast majority of players and I work almost every feature around them. That would definitely be something I'd be very surprised with lol.

Having seen the gaming scene grow for the indie RPG niche over the past decade has also given me a ton of ideas for things I want to add and incorporate into Sylestia's future that I probably wouldn't have been able to come up with 13 years ago. One of which would be player housing. I intend on having player housing be a core staple of the game with the Exploration revamp that will serve both functional and cosmetic purposes. That's definitely a feature that I am super excited to start working on.