1. Lots of things.
There's a special festival zone with special bosses that drop avatar items. Sometimes there are special events, like collect items or kill enemies as a community until a /really/ special boss appears. You can find tamed themes in that zone.
Using supplies you get in the fest zone (or buy from other people, or buy in the fest shop with fest tokens, or buy from the diamond shop), you can make exclusive themes. I think for summer fest, at least last time, they were sandcastles? You find a catalyst for the species you want, and you can add stuff to it to give it more traits, more stats, a specific gender, etc.
There can also be other "games"... there was a fishing/digging activity last year you could use to find more supplies, for example. In winter fest, there's a chess-esque game you can play PvP or versus an AI. Stuff like that.
There's a task log that was added a few fests back, wherein you complete certain tasks - e.g., kill 100 enemies in the fest zone, nurture 100 pets, successfully make an exclusive pet - and get rewards, to include fest tokens, supplies, etc.
And there are contests: nurturing contests, wherein you try to nurture as many pets as possible, and fighting contests, wherein you try to kill as much stuff in the fest zone as possible. There are separate contests for each species. If you get positions 1-4 on the board when the contest ends, you get a themed pet from that species and a special pouch of rewards. If you make it into numbers 5-10, you only get the pouch of rewards.
Even if you don't make it on the board, though, you get mini rewards pouches for getting points: one every 500 points for nurtures, and every 1000 points for fighting.
To gain points in nurture contests, you nurture pets of the same species.
To gain points in fighting contests, you fight as much as possible /with the species you want to win for in your party/. There's a common misconception that you have to kill a species to gain points, but that's not accurate.
Sometimes there's also a releasing contest, but that hasn't been around for a little while.
2. Um... there's not a whole lot you can do to prepare, really. We don't know the themes chosen until fest starts, so you have to wait to see which ones you want to collect. I guess the best things to do would be stock up on traps if you want to catch wild themes, and save up gold/diamonds in case you end up wanting to buy a lot of stuff.
3. Done. :P |
