Halloween draws near...

It's the spooky season and your characters may want to pick up one of these halloween themed companions~ Check them all out on the companion index!

Bats and Pumpkins

These two all-new companions, Vespi and Pumpel, are now available at Freaque Antique and the Greenhouse!

A mean look

Starbi, Bozzard and Caragoo unlocked new elemental variants befitting of october...

First of, a thank you!

The comments and DMs from members and mods I have received have been so helpful and kind. Even my silly brain that's hard to get through to has to admit that I must have done something right so far, judging from your words <3 I can't thank you enough for this, and all the patience and trust you have in my silly worlds. If you are unsure what I mean you may want to read this post first.

The path forward

To preface this, no final decision has been made yet, but I want to let you in on the current state of our brainstorming! I am currently in contact with a small group of mods and members where we are sharing ideas and discussing ways to change up RA to make it more managable mentally and work load related. This and feedback from the last post has lead me to come up with a plan to ease my mind for now:

October 2024

Throughout october, we will be laying out the plan, down to the nitty gritty tiny details. This will hopefully reduce the initial information overload for new members, and also allow me to refocus on fewer things. I can already tell you some small things that are currently being heavily considered:

At the end of october, I hope that we can come to a decision on whether the plan thought out in october will be coming to fruition, or if it's better to stick with what we have / something else. Regardless of what happens, we will be thinking of ways to compensate for things + might ask around when the course is more clear in November.

If it does happen, the event schedule of RA will have to be adjusted a bit in the following months:

November/December 2024

Events would have to be shifted around a bit:

• November's species release (Ravorbis) will need to be pushed back, because it would be better to release them under the new plan.
• Around the start of November I want to post more information on our plans, so that you all are aware of them beforehand.
• In exchange, there should be a different event that gives me the space to work on the changes for the rework. This event will ideally lead into January with some lore related to the planned changes.

January 2025

If the changes are mostly done, we would go and put RA into maintenance so that me and mods who'd like to help out can start getting the changes on site. I would like to take a full month for this simply because I imagine there would be a lot to change and edit/move around. I also would like a couple people look around for spots that I may have missed without any pressure. During this month we might host some event via discord, which will also probably see some slight changes, Or take a break for a month, let's see :D

I really hope whatever we chose to do, that RA will still be enjoyable to everyone! o7

Preface

First it is important to note that i don't plan to just throw everything away and discontinue my work here at the drop of a hat. Rather, I would like to share this to see if maybe anyone has some thoughts that may help, and frankly, just to be transparent/get it off my chest.

Me & the Adopt Community

I have been around this community and doing adoptables for a long time, since around 2017 with Gleamstic/Nektanine as my first attempts on CS, with a discord or dA group respectively. I grew disillusioned with the community for years because I don't agree with many practices within it, but eventually decided I was not going to let that take away my personal fun of creating species. This saw the creation of Lopilu in late 2021 (I think). I wanted to make something that fixed the issues I had with my previous attempts, and try something new. They had a toyhou.se world, and were posted on my discord as well. Eventually, I randomly decided to build a website for my stuff because I work as a programmer. I did this from scratch initially. As such the page was unique and became Realms Away V1. It had many species, daily activities, very heavy neopets influence. But it also had many issues such as proper Masterlist management, currency management and many many tiny things. This is why, when learning about Lorekeeper, I decided to move to it and start Realms Away V2 from scratch. This solved many default tasks I previously had painstakingly tried to build by myself, and opened new possibilities. I was stoked. RA V2 is what you are on right now, and it is runnin since July 2023.

Motivation

Initially i was very motivated to work on stuff, and sometimes I still am especially when it comes to new code to do, and new thoughts I want to add. I tend to be the type that can't stick to one thing forever and likes to jump between many different species and designs as I love variety. As such making something to house all my favorite species and designs seemed like a fun idea at first. I have always loved designing adopts, and giving them all a home without excluding any seemed like the way to go. I like to see people play, engage and enjoy their characters on here. Overall, I think it was a cool project and I don't regret that I started it even now.

My Grievances

I have finally decided to write this up because I find myself bouncing back to these every now and then, and I really wish I would not. I also want to make clear that no single or specific person or communities are to blame for any of these. Rather, it is just things that were not meant to be, and time changing the way I see my older ideas.

Feeling alone

While I have had a couple good mods over the course of 7 years, overall it has always been incredibly hard to find them. Through most of the time I worked on group stuff, I worked on almost everything by myself: code, assets, lore, adopts, approvals, general management. Im in a fortunate position now where I have a small group of people that really help out with approvals, general site help and the discord, bless you all. But I still do a lot, all of it beside my day job. And I still lack one thing that I have always been missing: a small, active group of friends that works together to create something and bounce ideas, rather than me doing all the event/lore/thinking work alone. Over the past months, observing other groups, I have found myself craving this more and more, losing the drive to really do stuff for Realms because I want to - where I just end up forcing it because it is planned, and I tend to stick to my plans.

Too much going on

As much as I love the idea of giving all sorts of designs I make a "home" on Realms Away, I find myself not enjoying it at all times. If i look at groups i want to join as a member, it tends to be focused on a single species (or their sister species at most), Theming something around one species only seems much more coherent, fun and less overwhelming to me. With bimonthly events, some species just wait forever to get their time to shine! When trying to include everything, I already feel bad because it's not quite everything I do. For example, some of my personal concepts will never make it here because they do not fit. This is inconsistent, and my brain hates inconsistencies. I feel like i would enjoy a smaller focus ARPG a lot more, and I'd like to work on it, but at the same time RA holds me back from doing so.

Traits that are overarching are so difficult to do for this many species as well. I can't trait cool stuff like wings because it doesn't make sense for angels or demons or dragons, for example. While i generally like what we have (I spent a long time thinking about it after all), it's just another layer of "god I wish it wasn't so complicated". Of course, this is also a huge load on mods and GA who have to understand all these different species and their silly little limits. This leads to more inconsistencies.

Species regrets

Gleamstic unfortunatly are something that I would never have created anymore today, and a species I don't see myself ever using again. As you can imagine, it's not fun to keep something up that I have no love for anymore because by design, they are a bad species to me right now. Yet the things I don't like about them is not something I think is fixable or worth fixing 7 years later, since it concerns one of their main design points. I also wish I did a bit more with beastling, they are quite basic, even if I definitely want a lil guy species of my own still. And as much as i love Arma Caeli myself, I know they are difficult to use for most, and as such I have to question if it's worth having them around. I wanted the ARPG to have ways to enter without CS labels through generic species, but I wonder if they just add uneccessary bloat and if it could be handled in a better way. 

Is there any good solution?

This is honestly difficult and the reason I am publishing this in the first place. I genuinely feel stuck, both with RA as is and my feelings towards it. I keep thinking this is fine, but days later I feel all these grievances so strongly again. This could be related to my mental state in general (I am trying to find help on this front, but I don't forsee an easy fix). For this reason, I don't want to jump to fast actions or a badly executed shutdown of RA  - but at the same time, I can't just keep at it without a course of action that might spell betterment.

On one hand, the idea of a dedicated thing for only one or two species is exciting to me and I can feel that I'd love to plan and set it up.

On the other, if I end up doing it all alone again who's to say it won't eventually get stuck in the same spot as RA? Who's to say I will keep enjoying it? Who's to say it will be worth giving up RA for? And that I won't miss RA?

I post this in hopes that maybe anyone has any idea on what I could do in this situation, preferably something that doesn't destroy one thing completely in favor of a risky new thing, but I also know I won't be able to keep things up forever as is. And i really want to keep doing things that you can enjoy. Unfortunately, to do this, I must enjoy it consistently myself.

If anyone has thoughts on this, please feel free to DM me on discord. I would really appreciate it.

Thank you for reading my novel. /vent over.

Say Hi to Lorekeeper 3.0

First things first, not much should change for you...but getting this update done was a struggle. 319 merge conflicts to resolve within ~10 hours of work, then hours of fixes because most sites broke from complex merges...but I prevailed!

Still, I expect there to be many nooks and crannies I did not cover with my trying to find all bugs. So I will need your help! Please send reports on discord in the #bug-report channel, so I can compile a list of things to fix that got past me, or that only occur because of the data on our host (and not locally). Every first submission of a bug will earn 10 coins! 

Please help catch the pesky critters, and I ask for your patience as always because I am so exhausted now ;U;7

It's Mushroom Season

Belated, but not forgotten - I am happy to announce we will have an additional seasonal trait for all upcoming seasons! Autumn starts us off with the Fungal trait, earned by obtaining the Savory Mushroom Soup. And where do you get it? Well! A new shop: Mystery Treats! I have wanted to add a place where I can add food item designs, and this just worked out perfectly. The new shop will be filled with more items as Realms Away progresses, but may be a bit more barren for now - please excuse that! Whether you should trust everything that Soup and Cream cook up, though...that's for you to decide.

Minor Trait Changes

In the same vein due to more seasonal traits being planned, some existing traits were edited slightly - some for clarity, others to be coherent with planned traits:

• Melting was renamed to Goopy to better reflect that it allows for jelly/goo like addons on top of just melty details. The item art and name has been changed to reflect this change as well: Enchanted Candle turns into Gooey Candle!
• Floral does no longer cover Mushrooms or Coral, however, if you already have a design planned with these elements and got the Soul Bloom for it, you will be able to exchange the Soul Bloom for one of the new trait items in future by sending in a claim!
• Mechanical now only covers metallic materials, but you will be getting more with a trait in future. Same as above, you will be able to exchange this trait once the new ones release!