The birthday event is going to probably become a real drag unless some other elements are brought in.

Here’s the current deal. You have a special map filled with monsters and one type of plant. Smack the monsters and they drop dream fragments- which are used to buy hat and wands from the party master; gifts- which are turned in for donation points (the gifts come mainly from the PartyPig); and, rarely, the Red Gems that are used to “upgrade” your wand. The plants drop leaves mainly although I’ve gotten fireworks a couple of times and a caterpillar once (which was listed as a “junk” item. I’m not sure if it really is, so I’m keeping it anyway.)

In a nice, repetitive cycle all of the monsters will become unhappy at once. When most of them are smacked down you get the “good job” message. A little while later, the mega-pig gets unhappy and it’s time to whack him. Repeat every 5 minutes or so.

The gifts can either be turned in as is or wrapped to get more points. You can pick leaves from the snowcharm plants to make a natural wrapping paper or you can buy the (expensive) wrapping paper from a merchant.

The hats from the party master are purely decorative. The wands are the special “sparklers” which you need to hit the event monsters. Fireworks are just pretty sparkles.

There’s a couple of items for free in the IM: an enhanced wand and some snowflake fireworks. There’s a couple of other low cost items (including some one use shoes that make you able to sneak past a monster for 20 seconds). All of those can be found under the “functional items” section. I’m not sure if it’s a part of the event, but there’s also some hand accessories on sale in the IM for cash.

As promised, here’s some more birthday event pictures.

Star Sparkler

This is the best of the wands. It’s going to take a lot of crystals to get… but it’s the Red Gems that are the real kicker. The Blue Gems it mentions are most likely going to show up in the IM….

Ultimate Hat

This is the final hat. It looks like it might be cute, but I haven’t seen one in game yet. Believe it or not, that 2k fragments may not be that hard to get. I got 250 in a few hours of half paying attention. You can get a regular hat in orange, yellow or pink really quickly.

Birthday Snowcharms

These are the special plants. They’re kinda odd. Unlike other plants they only have two harvests (instead of 5) but the pop back much quicker. I guess that’s to try and prevent fights over resources.

Ultimate Fireworks

Pretty… they don’t do anything else that I’ve found.

Uninvited Troublemakers

Beware the Death Piggies. No, seriously. I’m level 31and have the best armor under my pretty dress and I got 1 hit KO’d. Unless you’ve payed the 100 LP to get a pair of sneakers, avoid the red pigs at all costs.

Mega PartyPig

Lets face it. He’s the event’s pinata. He’s cute and moves around some but never too close to the death piggies.

“Pet” monsters

Along with the boxpigs that only get unhappy during the special event times, there are other monsters that pretty much stay unhappy. Including…

MC Mole Mayhem

Once again… the moles are out to get us.

That seems to be all for now. :/

or I shall continue to hit you with a stick.

More birthday pics to come…

Yup, that’s right.  We’ve had another cat show up on our doorstep.  He’s really young (as in “having trouble eating dry food” young) and we’re not sure where he came from.  It also looks like he has a mild infection in his right eye :(  We’ve scooped him up and will be keeping him safe, of course.  He’s doing fine, save for sneezing everywhere.

The funny thing  is, he’s so young (and can’t see too well right now) he hasn’t caught on that our black tom cat isn’t his new mommy.  Said tom was a little unhappy the first few times the new kitten tried to nurse. Luckily for his sake the kitten caught on pretty quickly.

As can be expected of a random cat on the doorstep, he’s really shy of people still.  That’s slowly changing and from the looks of it, he’s going to turn out to be very affectionate.  We didn’t really need another cat, mind you… but he’s here now, so he can be added to the group of cats that hang out on our porch.

As evident by my last post, I hate storms.  Our house is in a little valley in a hill (imagine a hill with a little dip in one side), so most storms/severe weather will bounce right over us.  But it doesn’t stop the noise (which is really what gets me).

This morning I’m woken by an absolute howling wind.  According to the weather, there’s been gust up to 45 miles per hour.  Then I realize “Oh, it was a nice night out… so we left the cats out.”  I scrambled out of bed and stood out in the wind and rain calling my kitties inside.  Luckily, I used the same “kitty call” I use when it’s time to feed them so they came running.  Including the random sick kitten that showed up on our porch a couple of days ago (which I didn’t mention yesterday- I’ll post about him next).

Some people who know me know that I have really bad nightmares.  As in “nearly nightly”.   So this morning I’m in a dream that’s on the border between “really unpleasant” and “nightmare” when the local tornado sirens went off. So I snapped out of the dream I was in, panicking.

The kicker is that there seems to be nothing wrong.  No storms (it’s a beautiful early morning), no fires that are being sounded for, no zombie uprising, no creepy fog, no impending doom of any kind. Just the sirens randomly going off.

As a scary note: our town is so small that there’s not a publicly owned siren.  The nearest disaster siren (the only one you can hear out here) is a privately owned one.  That freaks me out because if that particular family isn’t home at the time of some sort of OMG-disaster there won’t be any warning.

It’s going to be a morning filled with coffee today.

Here’s a brief look at Taci helping Jansen make his new Candy Cottage: Home Sweet Home.

First he gathered all of the needed ingredients.  The candy fruit and crystal petal took the longest just because they required so many action points to gather.  They were good experience though.

After saying goodbye to his old Straw Hut, he was left with a sad, lonely bare space.

He used his certificate so his spot was ready

and he could add in his materials.

After playing the minigame (which, sad but true, took me two tries), all of his materials were ready

for the scary “hand-dozer” to come in.

Knowing he would need help, he asked Taci to join his group,

which she was happy to do,

and they got to work.  Of course, house building is a pretty tiring event.  Here you can see that Jansen has already used up all of his AP and is taking a break.

As a tip- make sure your pet is out.  You’ll have to keep them happy, but they will give you a little more AP (which means you’ll have to rest often).  Just make sure your pet is compatible (mean/nice) with the pet(s) of anyone helping out!

I’m really liking this trend of putting out opportunities to get small bursts of LP.  It takes away the sting of having to buy farms with LP or coins.

Take this survey: http://bit.ly/aZrazY 

Yes it’s an official survey; no it’s not a rickroll; no it’s not going to install a virus.  It’s a quick 10 questions asking about the new Hello Kitty games for the DS and the Wii.

And it’s not the full 500 (it’s 300), but everyone who took part in the chocolate event will receive LP just for being there (that’s on top of any points your guild may have won).

Please note: This entry has been made with my alternate account. I hope this still counts as an entry for my main account (this one).

—-

Having met no luck with my quest to defeat the Star Moles yet, I decided to make a costume for someone else: the poor, unwitting Jansen.

As all regular readers of this blog (that’s probably just one or two people…) you know the Confusing Cthulhu Comments of Dr. Moose. It’s a long story. So as a tribute to him, I decided to transform Jansen in to Dr. Moose!

First I needed Jansen to step behind a bush and change to bright yellow pants. 

Most important to this outfit is the antlers. However, they didn’t fit right with Jansen’s poofy hair. , so I needed to give him a hair cut 

I dyed his hair pink . Why pink? Why not!

He needed shoes that are safer in a lab  and his lab coat of course .

We cant forget his goggles and his brilliant plans. 

Now with his antlers in place, Jansen has morphed in to:

————–(This is my official entry)—————

Doctor Moose!

—————————

Of course, he wondered if he looks a little silly dressed like this…

The moles, yes the Star Moles. All of the recent problems- the sever crashes, the item mall problems, even the snags with the charity event- all are the fault of the Star Moles.

It began at the Mole Mayhem event. We infiltrated the Star Mole lair by cleverly disguising ourselves in Mole Hats. But eventually the Star Moles caught on and closed the entrance to their farm for good. They learned from our trick though.

They made their own disguise: the Programmer Hat. With this equipped, the Star Moles are able to pass themselves off as one of the HKO programmers. So now they are able to sabotage HKO from inside the very offices of SanrioDigital.

I thought at first I could just scare the Star Moles away  but that skeleton is just too cute (besides, that’s what I wore last year).

Maybe I could go in as a housewife, there to do their laundry . No, Star Moles don’t normally wear clothes except for their Programmer Hats.

Perhaps I could go in as a bride and- 

Oh, never mind that.

With my trusty Bramtail, Fiesta, at my side I began to work on my disguise. First I had to take off my striking clothes. 

I needed to fix my hair so that it matched their brown fur. 

Next I donned clothes in similar shades. 

With the addition of glasses to cover my blue eyes and Mole Hat  Fiesta and I were ready to go.

So I grabbed my net and set out as:

—————(here’s my official entry)————-

Tacitala, the Star Mole Hunter!

 ————————

Let’s see them get away now!

I wanted to put this post as a notice so that HKO players who still need to upgrade their farm (starting in London) will make sure not to miss a chance to make the 500 (for a level 4 farm) or 1000 (for a level 8 farm- although we don’t need one yet) LP to get a farm without buying coins.

If you haven’t already, read about the HKO Spooky Makeover.   Each entry (and you can do two) will net you 500 LP.  So get creative, and enjoy your free new farm (when the points are awarded… you can ask other players to borrow their farm until then.  Most players are happy to do so, just remember to ask nicely <3 )