The Nurture Circle is currently only an idea and is not yet operational. Input is appreciated as well as any affiliations that would be interested in making this idea possible. Edits to this first post will most likely be numerous as more information is taken into consideration.

Dear Readers,

For years we of Sylestia have prided ourselves in our small and friendly community. We welcome new members with open arms and shower them with gifts, greetings and guides and while none of these are bad things we're still suffering as a growing community as new players continue to struggle and annoy their older counterparts or give up altogether. One must ask, are we really doing enough to guide these aspiring players? Many of the support groups or services that were once available for new players are no longer around. Some guides don't really take into account the limited options that some new players might have. Some new players do not realize the time and effort that goes into breeding and what makes a project successful. Time moves forward, changes happen and guides do become outdated. We however are still around to offer our support and to teach these new players what we can, not from guides, but from our own experiences. For this reason, The Nurture Circle is an idea I'd like to propose for anyone who might be interested.

Goals:
1.) To nurture new players and aspiring breeders so that they may become self-sufficient members of the community.
2.) To bridge the gap between new, aspiring players/breeders and project breeders via nurturing, both literally and figuratively.


The Nurture Circle is a simple concept.

~During the beginning portion of the game, when a new user has very little resources available to work with, we encourage them to nurture. Literally.

The beginning of the game is the most grueling portion for any new player, especially outside of a festival. They do not have good equipment, they only have a single party member to start out, their pet falls unconscious constantly, they don't have enough pets to work with, they have no gold and very few ways of making gold. Literally, the gold making guides are absolutely useless at this point.

By encouraging new players to nurture, they can save gold (by not spending it at the healer - they can nurture while their pet revives itself) and then purchase with scales one of the most important items in the game for project breeders, lesser pet dyes, and sell those to help fund the beginning of their game. They also have the chance of getting essences so that they can start their own projects.

This method is discouraged in guides because it's not a direct way to make gold even though it's literally the easiest available method by far for newer players. The answer to this is to offer a flat, guaranteed rate for Lesser Pet Dyes. 25k gold per lesser pet dye, a maximum of 12 pet dyes per new player or 300k gold. This is WAY cheaper then they could sell it for on the trade broker but still a substantial amount of gold for a new player - we will not hide this information from them - be open and honest that they could sell them for more on the trade broker. To make up the difference, if a player does cash in the maximum amount of lesser pet dyes for the 300k gold they will also receive an infertile max stat project pet.

This allows that new player to start the game with 300k and a very strong pet that they can play with and raise throughout the game. The best part is that the player will have earned them. They could also just sell the lesser pet dyes via the trade broker until they're able to access the gold making areas listed in the gold making guide.

Other suggestions so far have included:
~Affiliates: Project Breeders who trade max stat pets for pet dyes. (This will let new players know who they can get max stats from early.)
~Advanced Guidance (?) - Gear/Super Max Stat Pets/Etc.

As I said in general chat, I love this idea and would love to contribute, both in ideas and prizes. :)

Feedback on Nurturing Idea:
First, building off of your current set up, I think it may be beneficial to add at least one midway prize. While nurturing is a great way to earn gold, it's super dull. Since many new players are fairly young, I'm worried that they'll give up a couple of dyes in. The fest 10k nurturing task generally takes me all three contest rounds to complete (I point nurture puffs), so it's a commitment that I'm afraid new players aren't willing to put in. The midway prizes can be pretty small; just something to keep them motivated. :) I'd be happy to donate project offspring, extra avi items, or equipment for these.

Ideas for Other Tasks:
For ideas of new tasks, they again stem from the problem that nurturing is time consuming and boring. Furthermore, nurturing is just a gold earning method; it does little to teach the player about actual game play, which is a goal you mentioned. To further this goal, I suggest having several tasks running in parallel to the nurturing task so new players have a variety of things to do while fully exploring the many features Sylestia has to offer. Here are some tasks I had in mind:

Unlock zones:
Encourage new players to push through the beginning zones to gain a basic battling ability, unlock the towns for supplies, and access LG/Astryl's Vale for mini-fest events.

Earn Reputation:
Earn the Friendly/Trusted reputation in the towns. This is a good measure of how many missions a player has done, so this task would encourage new players to send pets on missions which is a stable, low effort income that will continue to be beneficial. It's also a great way to level pets.

Set up a Party:
I've been seeing lots of new players ask about how to set up a party (or rather, they complain that they can't beat a boss and an older player points out that their party has poor armor / bad alignments / no proficiency points allocated, etc). This part can be as simple as a) get a team to level X (lv30?), b) pick a setup for elements (we can provide info on the usual setups), and c) allocate all proficiency points.
The prize for this can be a set of legendary/epic gear which would be super helpful in the fest zone and for continuing the storyline.


Sorry, I got carried away and wrote a lot lol. I hope at least some of this was helpful and could maybe be implemented one day. :) As I mentioned before, I'd be happy to supply infertile project offspring for prizes.