New Supply Officer: Strings!

For many months now, Strings has been helping us out with maintaining the harvest spreadsheet and updating the information in game to tell everyone what we need to harvest.  This is an indepth process that does take some time to update, and it was a huge weight off of our shoulders.

After some recent discussion we determined that Strings has been stepping up to the plate to handle a lot of guild administration, even if just to tell an officer that something is going on. This has been instrumental in keeping things running smoothly.

To recognize all of her hard work, we've promoted Lutestrings (and Hamstrings) to the rank of Technical Director.  She'll still be in charge of the same things she always was: maintaining the harvest depots and letting us know if things are going wrong there.  As time goes by she may wish to expand her portfolio, but for now that's it.  This does not mean she deserves any less respect than other officers; just that she does not choose to handle some of the more stressful bits of guild management.

Please continue to direct questions regarding the running of the guild itself (questions about the hall, or about points, etc) to Rosaphina in Jazabelle's absence. If I'm not on Rosaphina, I'm usually in the /hat channel on any of my alts. Strings and Meeba are also able to contact me through FB.

While the guild may be in a lull right now, this happens and is common.  As the mood and certain in game holidays strike, attendance will sweep back up and things will seem to progress faster. For now, enjoy the easy pace and laid-back atmosphere that makes Homes and Tomes such a great place to play.

Guild Updates

Hello friendlies. It's been a while.

GUILD POINTS UPDATE

Many moons ago, there were requests by some members to be able to see their points histories or have access to the spreadsheet we used to track points.  For many reasons, we were unable to allow that sort of access.  At the time we were using a spreadsheet on Google Drive, and while we thought we'd finally achieved a method that would allow privacy for members while showing the necessary information to officers - it just wouldn't work.

According to our guild window, we have 229 accounts in the guild.  Imagine how big the spreadsheet has grown to be with a tab for every main character.  It was starting to take ten minutes just to load the thing.

Jazabelle and Rosaphina talked, Rosaphina pulled some strings, and Rosaphina's husband Xakane created a database on his personal website for points tracking.  It took some time to transfer all of the information over - and historical data has not been pulled in.  That said, the page is now ready for people to take a look at it.

Please note: This is nothing important to most people, nor was it designed with aesthetics in mind.  This is simply the way to answer some people's concerns that they need to see the points they've been assigned in the past, as well as allowing the entire points process to be much more streamlined.

You can get there by going to the top of the Homes and Tomes webpage, choosing Links, and clicking on Character Points. Or, you can just click here. If you have any questions, please see Rosaphina (not Xakane!) and she'll do her best to help you.

MEMBER OF THE MONTH

Now through February 2, we're accepting nominations for the Homes and Tomes Member of the Month. Please send a mail to Rosaphina with any nominations you have and a brief explanation of why you feel the member deserves that honor.  The winning member will receive a spotlight on the front page and a personalized book.

GUILD HALL

The guild hall is still being updated, slowly.  This particular hall is a beast in both its size and its propensity to eat tiles.  With Jazabelle on break, and Rosaphina involved in other things that are taking her time, it'll be a while before it's finished.  If anyone has any requests or suggestions, please talk to Rosaphina and we'll do our best to see what we can do.

Secret Santug Update

Greetings, Decorators!

The usual plan for the SSHHS is for the organizers to go through the various houses and check to make sure that everything has been completed.

Unfortunately, I’ve come down with a horrible case of food poisoning, and haven’t been able to log in and check. While I hope that everyone receives a completed home, sometimes emergencies happen and a Santug isn’t able to complete their home or let us know that they won’t be able to.

If this is the case on your home, please REPLY to the email you received. Homes and Tomes will complete your home as soon as possible. Everyone deserves to have a lovely home for the holidays.

Feel free to enter your home on the 24th.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday,

Jazabelle

Secret Santug Holiday House Swap 2015: 5 More Days To Decorate!

Secret Santug Holiday House Swap Reminder

Greetings, Secret Santug Holiday House Swap decorators!

This is a reminder that you have 5 more days after today to finish up your Secret Santug Holiday House Swap house. December 23rd is the last day to decorate.

If you wish to save a layout of the home you built or to take screenshots of what you’ve done, do so before the 23rd, as some homeowners like to remove trustee shortly after the event.

DO NOT tell the homeowner when the home is done. The home reveal is on the 24th of December, no sooner. Don’t ruin the surprise!

If you wish to leave a note for your homeowner, feel free to pick up a notebook and to leave a little something for them to read when they come home. You can do anything from tell them what you were thinking when you built, to explaining various features of the home, to giving them a book walk-through of the house--whatever catches your fancy! However a book is NOT required.

The house swap isn’t anonymous (unlike a “real” Secret Santa exchange), due to the fact that your names will be on every piece of furniture you crafted if you’re a carpenter. There’s no need to remain anonymous after the fact--in fact, revealing yourself is encouraged, as that way if the homeowner decides to publish their home, they can do so and give you credit for the decoration.

HOMEOWNERS: when you enter your home for the first time on the 24th, please DO NOT remove Jazabelle’s trustee IF YOU WANT YOUR HOME SCREENSHOTTED BY JAZABELLE/VIDEO TOURED!

You have two options for screenshots. Screenshot THE HOME YOU OWN yourself, and then email them to the HomesAndTomes Gmail address in a .zip file. Make sure that your graphics settings are turned up to HIGH QUALITY at least, or your screenshots won’t turn out well.

Instead of taking the screenshots yourself, you have the option of having Jazabelle do it. However, because there may be quite a few people asking for screenshots, this can take quite a bit of time. If you want Jazabelle to screenshot your home, please REPLY to the HomesAndTomes email, stating that you wish her to do so. Screenshots will be taken in the order she receives the requests.

If you want Jazabelle to do a video tour of your home, please REPLY to the HomesAndTomes email stating that you wish her to do so. As with the screenshots, this will take some time, as each home takes a minimum of half an hour, even if the end recording is much shorter. Videos will be recorded in the order she receives the requests.

Please REPLY to the HomesAndTomes email when you’ve completed the home you’re decorating.

Thank you!

Secret Santug Holiday House Swap 2015

Homes and Tomes proudly presents:

Secret Santug Holiday House Swap 2015

It’s that time of year again as the holidays slowly creep up on us… that time of year to make someone else’s year-ending incredible and exciting.

The Secret Santug Holiday House Swap is a fun exchange meant to bring smiles to decorators of all skill levels. Simply put, this is a name-drawn-from-a-hat “Secret Santa” style gift exchange of a decorated home. We will assign each of you (the Santug) a home to decorate (your Santee). In turn, someone else will decorate a home for YOU!

WHO: Anyone who wants to join in.

If you aren’t an incredible decorator, that’s fine. People love to receive houses, no matter the skill level. This is about fun and the spirit of giving! You’re giving someone a smile, no matter what you do. After all, you’re building a house for THEM! All for them! It makes people feel SPECIAL to get a house like that! So stock up on house items, because we don’t care what your skill level is. If you want to spread a little holiday cheer, and receive some in return, while having fun decorating, this is for YOU!

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, or what have you, that’s OKAY! We’re not celebrating them. We’re celebrating FROSTFELL, Norrath’s winter festival. Remember, we’re in EQ2. We’re celebrating a holiday that we can ALL enjoy together. Merry Happy Cheerful Exciting Special Frostfell to you!

WHAT: Secret Santug Holiday House Swap

WHEN: Signups are open NOW until November 29th, at 3 PM Pacific.

You will receive your home signups ON or BEFORE December 1st.

Decorating will run from December 1st to December 23rd.

PLEASE DO NOT PROCRASTINATE! We don’t want anyone panicking the days before That Holiday With A Tree In Real Life With All Those Evil Songs On The Radio because they haven’t finished the house yet. You have 23 days to work on this house. Use them wisely!

WHERE: ALL SERVERS can participate! The bulk of the event will be happening on Antonia Bayle, since that’s Homes and Tomes’ home server. However, in prior years--and this year--we’ve arranged it so that other servers can participate on their home servers, too!

WHY: Because we like to spread holiday cheer! We’ve found that quite a few people don’t get a chance to give or receive gifts. This holiday isn’t all about gifts, it’s about caring for yourself and others. However, nothing says “I care” quite so much as a personalized home in a game where you spend a lot of time. This is a gift that doesn’t cost any real world money, so even the least wealthy of EQ2ers can both give and receive this gift.

HOW: To sign up, please send an email to HomesAndTomes@gmail.com IN THIS FORMAT

SUBJECT: SSHHS2015 ServerName.CharacterName

Server Name:

Character Name:

Character Race:

Character Gender:

The city the house you want decorated is located in:

The home address:

Home theme; if you do not have any ideas, please write “Decorator’s Choice”:

Do you want any Frostfell decorations put up in your home?:

WHAT TO DO AFTER YOU SIGN UP:

• Choose the home you wish to have decorated. Try to keep it to a 4 room house or smaller, although you can choose a bigger house if you have an awesome idea. Keep in mind that this awesome idea needs to be decorated in 23 days or less, though!
• If you are on AB, give JAZABELLE trustee on the home you choose to have decorated.
• If you are NOT on AB, please give JAZABELLE trustee.
• Change the name of the home to SSHHS2015 ← VERY IMPORTANT! Do not modify this at all. Even if you have multiple houses you’d like to have your Secret Santug pick out of to decorate, name them all SSHHS2015. No spaces! All capital letters!
• Make sure the home’s public access is set to “None.”
• Map out what you want to have done. In a player written book placed in your SSHHS2015 home, please list character name, character race, character gender, home address (just in case your Santug decides to leave the house with the book, and can’t remember where it is), and home theme. If you do not have any ideas, please still place a book with your character name, character race, character gender, home address, and “DECORATOR’S CHOICE.”
• Please make sure that you have at least 60 days paid upkeep if your home is not a prestige home.
• Once all of that is done, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, enter the home after December 1st, until it is announced as completed on the 23rd!

DETAILS:

• Please DO NOT sign up if you think you won’t be able to finish a house in this amount of time. If you do that, the organizers have to scramble to finish the home that you left partially done.
• Please DO let us know if you sign up, and a real world emergency happens that causes you to be unable to participate. We will happily take over the home for you, as long as we know that we need to!
• There is NO maximum and NO minimum on the amount you can spend/have to spend on a house. We’ve seen gorgeous homes of elm. However, we would like you to try and keep it under 100 platinum. If you choose to go over that, that’s your choice.

Who to contact if you have questions:

Jazabelle

Happy Merry Cheerful Festive Fun Sparkly Frostfell!

EQ2 thread

Remember our Crafting Depot?

Yes, that says 'remember', as in past tense.

The Homes & Tomes crafting depot was hit yet again by someone who cleared it out.  Now, the good news is that we do not lose everything.

Last time we were hit, we lost approximately 3.5 million resources.  After that, we set up a tiered depot system where deposits go into a large depot, and then Strings in one of her many incarnations works to keep a smaller depot updated with 5k of each resource.

As a result, Homes and Tomes is only down about 900,000 resources.  While that is a huge amount, we still did not lose everything and as such we are grateful.

However; we will not be reopening our depots immediately for server crafting use.  Both crafting depots are currently set to Trustee access, while we discuss and assess when we should reopen the hall.  Guild members, please talk to an officer if you have an immediate crafting need.

Please understand that we are NOT looking for people to replenish our depots.  As stated above, with our tiered system we did not lose everything.  At the same time, we do not wish to reopen immediately just to watch another 900k resources go pouring into someone else's pockets.

We do not know who did this. Based on the fact that imbuing materials and things such as milk were left behind, we can assume that someone did this through crafting.  Likely Raffik's amalgamations, as those require a huge quantity of resources.

If anybody hears anything, please do talk to Rosaphina or Jazabelle immediately so that we can talk to a GM and get this little matter handled.

In the meantime, Jazabelle is on the road to recovery - thank you to everyone who sent your good wishes to her.  Enjoy the Heroes' Festival and hold onto your britches for the new expansion!

Speaking of Terrors of Thalumbra - if you have not done any heritage quests please prepare to do them after the expansion drops.  Guild level max increases to 150, and after level 101 writs will not increase guild level! We'll need all the status possible pouring into the guild to level it.  You can do as much of the HQs as you want before it drops, just hold off on actually completing them.

Important News Regarding Jazabelle and Guild Points

It is my unpleasant duty to inform you all that Jazabelle's player is currently undergoing a bout of Shingles. She will, as a result, be out of game for a week or two while she deals with the unpleasant illness as well as the side effects of being on prednisone.  Please keep her in mind, but never fear! Our awesome leader will be back as soon as she can.

In officer notes, Iosabella's player (that's me) is pulling Iosabella out of Homes and Tomes shortly for roleplay reasons. Her main character will be replaced with Rosaphina, who has long been Jazabelle's harried secretary.  I apologize for any confusion this may create, but I am still an officer and still in charge of points, just under a different name to you all.

Speaking of points, Xakane has created a database system for us officers to use in handling point management.  The first good news is that this will take hours off each week of the time it takes me to update points. The second good news is that each and every one of you will be able to view your (and others') current points in real time, simply by going to a webpage and searching for the name of a main character.

There is, of course, always bad news. In this case, it means that points will not be updated for a week or two while I work on transferring all of the old data into the new system.

Guild Hall Portal Wall

PARDON OUR CONTINUED DUST!

Guild hall construction is chugging along as planned. Thanks to everyone for all of the black marble tile that has been donated thus far.  We seem to have a good amount of black marble tile on hand for finishing the hall. However, we are still counting double points on any black marble tile donations made before Midnight PST, Sunday, October 4, 2015. 

The Crafting area is almost complete. The walls have been constructed and all that's left now is some tweaking of the crafting circle and general room decoration/finalization.  The general depots are now located in 'drawers' along the northeast wall.  Harvesting depot locations have not been finalized, nor has the location of some of the NPCs such as the harvesters, banker, and broker.

The Portal Wall is Coming Down for Relocation!

In order to streamline the hall design and try to cut down on counted items, we will be renovating the portal wall.  This is the wall intended for portals to our members WIP (Work-In-Progress) projects only, in order to facilitate easy transportation.

As part of this process, we will be taking down every portal that is currently up on the wall. Note, this does not include the 'office' portals in use by Site Managers and up that are along the second floor of the main room.  Those will be redone at a future date.

Once the portals are down, we will only be replacing those requested.  Talk to an officer to get your portal replaced if you wish.  Again, this is only for WIP projects.  If there is enough demand, we will consider updating the guild's portal hub for use for finished projects.  If you do not ask for your portal to be replaced, it will not be replaced.

Please, let us know what you think of the hall redesign.  We love feedback and suggestions!

Reminder: Guild Points

  As we've had quite a few new members confused on how to advance in Homes and Tomes, a refresher course on how to earn points is in order. Advancing in Homes and Tomes is not difficult, and is tracked via guild points.

Note: reading the above linked post was required as part of your admission to Homes and Tomes.

  We are afraid that there are too many active members for us to make exceptions to the rules if you have problems with informing us what you have donated. Because there are so many individuals who play at disparate hours, and an officer is not always online, the only way you can be sure of being granted the points you have earned is by posting in the Guild Donation forum.

  There is a pinned post at the top of the forum with a comprehensive set of instructions on how to post. Do not deviate from the requested format--updating guild points is already a several hour long process, and the easier you make it on the officer updating points, the less time it will take them. Remember, our current Points Officer (Iosabella) is giving up her play time to do this for you.

  Include a summary of everything in a certain category that you have donated. If you have donated 2502 common harvests, let us know that you have donated 2502 harvests. We do not need to know that you donated 27 jumjum, 854 sumac lumber, and 22 roots. You're welcome to include that, but also include the summary so that we can easily look at your post and translate that into points.

  Construction Workers cannot donate directly to the Furniture Warehouses. Because access to the Warehouses is not granted until Foreman rank, a Construction Worker who wishes to donate furniture to one of the Warehouses will have to approach a Foreman or higher, and ask them for help. If a Foreman or higher is not available to help you immediately, please be patient--other people are involved in their own games, too!

  A reminder on how the post should be formatted:

Examples of point threads:

Example 1

Post Title: Jazabelle: Guild Dungeon Group

Post Content:

Palace of Ferzhul
Sarka
Froggen 

The Vigilant: Rescue
Sarka
Froggen
Iosabella
Blazewolf
Kasumie

Example 2

Post Title: Jazabelle: Multiple Locations

Post Content:

Food & Drink Depot
195 items total
98 Ambrosial Mead
97 Ambrosial Steak 

Poison, Potion, & Totem Depot
7 Redwood Patch Kit 

Lore & Legend Depot
82 various L&L items 

Harvest Depot
3205 common harvests total (A little over 16 stacks)
34 rares

Spell Depot
23 Adepts
3 Masters
1 Grandmaster 

Furniture Warehouse
37 mastercrafted items
2 plundered items
155 handcrafted items

Example 3

Post Title: Degaahr: Furniture Warehouse

Post Content:

162 handcrafted house items
7 mastercrafted house items

H&T's October Player of the Month: Zanzlily!

It's a few days early, but...

We love our new members and Zanzlily is a great example of why. Super active, super friendly, and super generous. Yes, that's three supers and it's probably not enough. If you haven't had the chance to meet Zanz, be sure to say hello and make her feel welcome.

If you have a recommendation for next month's Player of the Month, submit a nomination!