yay <3 im glad the discord is being closed. forums are a more permanent option for communication and building of a community.

This event looks fun! And the new items are beautiful!

I actually don't mind items soft-retiring but I agree with what Ember said -- items that are soft-retiring should cost a LOT less.

And, just to clarify about the consumed companions, are ALL of them only available during the Icerun event? The announcement states that they will return in future Icerun seasonal events, which implies that they won't be in the other clan events. Or will the general consumed companions be in all clan seasonal events, and it's only the Icerun specific consumed companions that are tied to the Icerun seasonal events?

Sorry, it's probably obvious given the way they're split up in the shop but I just wanted to make sure! It helps me prioritize which prizes to go for.

Closing the Discord is a rather puzzling move, and axing most of the channels within 48 hours of the announcement was definitely not the way to go. I'm honestly kind of astonished that anyone signed off on this. With such short notice, there's a pretty high likelihood that some players lost important information (sales/trade threads, proof of trade arrangements, entire conversations) that they would've wanted to preserve. If you all were struggling to manage it, why not just say it outright and assemble a more robust Discord staff team? At the very least, having a more reasonable notice window would've been appreciated.

I'm really happy to see a new seasonal event, and I love all the content that's been released for it, both the apparel/companions and the new arena mode, so I want to thank everyone involved for their hard work! However, I agree with the sentiment that seasonal voucher allocation relative to the cost of the event items is imbalanced and requires too much grinding to even be able to afford one of each item. I wanted to put forward some thoughts on ways this could be addressed because I think the event structure has a lot of potential and I'd love to see it balanced a bit better for both casual and more intensive players to enjoy, as someone who really enjoys doing a bit of grinding during limited events like these.

• As it stands currently, to buy one of everything in the shop (including returning items and the items you can get in the premium pass) costs 10,425 seasonal vouchers. Divided by 28 days for the event, this means you would need to earn 372.32 seasonal vouchers per day to afford one of everything. If you consider the average seasonal quest to reward five vouchers given they either award four or six vouchers upon completion, this means you would need to complete 2,085 seasonal quests/74.46 per day - just for one copy of everything.
• Considering just the soft-retiring stuff, you need 3,225 seasonal vouchers, which is 115.18 vouchers per day and 645 seasonal quests. This is a bit more obtainable, but it seems odd that the amount just for one copy of each of these things exceeds the total number of quests required for the level 10 seasonal reward, which is 550 quests and already seems fairly steep for many casual players. 645 seasonal quests in the course of the event is 23 per day, which by itself seems like a lot for a casual player or those who can't always play every day to keep up with. I know the seasonal reward tiers offer some vouchers as well, but the amount doesn't really off-set the amount of grinding needed just for one copy of the soft-retiring items in my opinion.
• Returning Icerun and general companions (+ Snowwoof and poinsettia set) cost 7,200 tickets, so a lot of the total amount listed above, but while I know you don't need to collect all the returning items/companions in this one event in Jan 2024, if each new seasonal event adds a similar amount of new soft-retiring content, it will remain quite difficult for the average casual player to save enough vouchers after buying the soft-retiring items to start buying these companions (especially as I imagine the lists of general and pack-specific companions will gradually grow over time).
• I think the 'sweet spot' in the cost/awarding of vouchers should be an amount where a casual player could get one of all the soft retiring items and save up for a few of the returning companions comfortably with each event by spending a bit more time on the site than they usually do. This allows for the players who like to grind to spend the extra time to get multiple copies of each set to keep or re-sell or to get more of the returning items compared with a casual player that may have to spend several seasonal events to collect everything in the returning pool. The exact quantities for the sweet spot however would depend on player usage data and the time cost to earn a given amount of vouchers through seasonal quests, which I can't really say as just one person on the site.

I think there are also some other ideas worth considering when thinking about ways to balance the event:

• Allow some of the soft-retiring sets (e.g. one or two of the Winter Hunter colour variants) and some of the returning companions to be purchased with pebbles rather than seasonal vouchers. This would offer another pebble sink for players and reduce the total amount of vouchers that need to be gathered, which might help balance out the voucher cost of other items.
• Increase the amount of vouchers offered by the seasonal reward tiers. 385 vouchers are offered in total across the 10 tiers combining both the free and premium tiers, but I don't think this is quite enough given how much things cost in the shop and the work it takes to unlock the tiers. The higher reward tiers also don't seem to offer as many vouchers relative to the amount of effort it takes to unlock those tiers when compared with the early tiers - I think adding more in terms of a voucher reward to the later tiers of the seasonal rewards would help balance the reward more with the work required to get it and make it feel fairer to players. (This is separate to the question of re-balancing the amount of quests needed to unlock each tier of the rewards, which I think could also be worth considering).
• Allow vouchers to be collected in a greater number of ways. The best I think would be to include vouchers as a reward for the first lot of daily activities in the same way that the profession vouchers of the week are. Other ideas could be to have a voucher reward up for grabs once per day in the regular gauntlet if you win, since the Icerun Trials aren't repeatable, or to include vouchers as a reward for bonding with companions, maybe just the Icerun companions if you want to stick to the theme. I think the main benefit of this is to expand the voucher-earning gameplay loop to give players some more varied ways to earn vouchers each day, even if not an overwhelming amount, and to encourage players interested in the event to engage more with various areas of the site on a regular basis over the course of the event.

I'm not sure that these would be the very best way to implement changes, but I do think it's important for the longevity of the events to balance the voucher earning and costs out a bit more, so I just wanted to contribute a few thoughts - apologies for the wall of text. Hopefully this feedback helps! I don't post too much but I'd like to reiterate that I really do appreciate the work that's gone into the site and this event, so thank you again to site staff for all your hard work. I'm very keen to see what the future holds for Lorwolf and seasonal events to come!

Just so you know, the plain bread is not showing up in the ingredients list to make buttered bread. Rye bread is showing up, but plain bread is not.

I have to say I'm not a fan of this Confuse mechanic. I don't enjoy being at the whim of RNG deciding whether I lose because my battle party decided to just attack each other at full damage. It's not exactly fair, especially because we can't inflict a similar mechanic on the enemy. I'm losing against otherwise easy enemies in Icerun because of this nonsense. Please get rid of it or nerf it.

Who thought this was a good idea?