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!

Homes and Tomes News and Guild Hall Update

PARDON OUR DUST

Homes and Tomes is redecorating the Guild Hall. Well, more specifically, Jazabelle and Iosabella got to talking and one idea lead to another, and now we've got a massive backlog of ideas that we'll be working on implementing.  In general, you can expect the hall to feel a lot less industrial, and have much more usable wall space for offices, portals, and the like.

What does this mean for Homes and Tomes members?

DOUBLE DONATION POINTS for anyone donating (square) Black Marble Tiles thru 10/4/15.

That's right.  We're woefully short-stocked on black marble tiles, and the Freeport City Fest isn't until November.  From now until Sunday, October 4th at Midnight PST, anyone who donates Black Marble Tiles can get 2 points per 5 black marble tiles donated. (That's 0.4 points per tile, for you non-math people.)  This counts for both the DBC (Daybreak Cash) tiles, and the ones normally obtained through the city festival.  If you need to donate DBC tiles, please note that these are heirloom and you'll need someone with trustee status on the hall to help you drop them for use. Check with any officer for that. This is for the tiles only, if we end up needing other black marble blocks we'll let people know.

Be sure you make your post detailing your donation on the Homes and Tomes forums under the Guild Donations section, or you will not get points credit. We cannot reiterate this enough. Having an officer help you does not mean they'll give you credit for it, as they'll assume you are making a post.

Speaking of points, we apologize for the backlog of crediting points and getting promotions handed out.  That has been taken care of and everyone should be up to date.  Iosabella also responded to all emails that she still had in her inbox regarding missing promotion books.

If you're missing a book, that means your email poofed. Bug Iosabella again.

In other points news, we have changed the amount of points that people will get for donating DBC items.  This is going forward only.  We will not be retroactively rewarding extra points for previously donated DBC items.  Now, each DBC item donated is going to be rewarded at 1 point per every 50 DBC worth of item. (0.2 points per 10 DBC, for the non-math people again.)  This brings it in line with the credit received for donating treasured items.

Be sure to indicate in your donations post if an item you donate is treasured/mastercrafted, or a DBC item.  We will not look items up for you, and you will get basic credit if you don't let us know.

We've now opened a THIRD item warehouse, Warehouse C in Athema's Skyblade Skiff, thanks to all of the donations we've been receiving.  Don't forget, these Warehouses are for anyone to use in decorating their houses.  If you're a foreman or higher, you should have trustee access to the warehouses. If you do not, please talk to any officer and they will give you access.  All you construction workers, you're allowed to get items from the warehouse too - just ask a foreman+ for help.

Thanks to everyone for holding the guild together during this past month. All of your efforts are truly appreciated, and we are constantly amazed by the generosity and friendliness of each and every Homes and Tomes member.  You guys rock!

Seeking Volunteers For Monthly Crafting Faire

Homes and Tomes is planning to start hosting a monthly crafting faire on Antonia Bayle on our very own Carnival Cruise ship! We are currently seeking a variety of volunteers to help get this up and going and make this a monthly event!

Volunteers Needed:

• Crafters to man the various booths within our Fairgrounds. 
• Roleplay inclined actors to go out and about within designated zones and offer "quests" that can be done to obtain items from our Faire.

We also have several booths at our Faire that are available to be rented! Fee (in status for the guild hall, platinum for future events, or harvests) to be determined on a case by case basis. These extra booths can be for pure roleplay, quests, crafting, or anything else that one might come up with that fit with the theme of a "Faire" or "Carnival." 

For more information or to sign up to volunteer please visit the Crafting Faire planning thread found here. If you wish to volunteer and are not a current member of the guild please register to the site and post to the thread with the name of the character you'd like to help with and what you'd like to sign up for! All questions, thoughts, and ideas are also welcome!

Norrathian Punkocalypse Challenge Extended!

The deadline for the Norrathian Punkocalypse Challenge, hosted by Niboota Bloodyeyes (the lady behind the Evertour Entries) has been extended!

Quoted from Niboota on the Homeshow forums:

So a few people have told me they are having trouble completing their home, so I'm extending the deadline for this contest to 11:59pm CST Sept 30th. I hope that helps!

This gives anyone who wishes to participate more time to sign up, or those who didn't think they'd have time to get it done more time to finish up! All homes muse be completed and published to the leaderboards by the new deadline in order to maintain eligibility for the contest. Find out more about the decorating challenge here.

New August Commission!

Hellos again! It is I, Meeba, bringing you another August commission!
This time it's a creative challenge to turn a New Halas home into a speakeasy!  There's a story to go along with it too, and it pays well!  If you're interested, please go to page two of http://bit.ly/hat-commissions and check it out!

As always, please CONTACT MEEBA about the commissions, NOT the homeowner. This is to ensure that multiple people don't contact the homeowner, AND to allow me to keep track of which commissions are still open. Once I has informed you that you are the decorator on a commission project, THEN feel free to contact the homeowner. Remember, just because you have talked to the client and toured the home DOES NOT mean that you are obligated to take on the request! If you feel this is not a match for you then go ahead and decline, just make sure to let mes know that the job is still open and also let the client know that Meeba will still be looking for someone to match them with.

As of late, the horrible end boss called REAL LIFE has proven a bit difficult for this maus to handle, and my raid party (i.e. family) is needing my constant attentions. If you don't see me sticking my nose in game, feel free to contact me via the facebooks or attach a note to a guild officer or the Jazabelles and throw them at mes. :)


I'm almost as excited as the homeowner to see what you come up with! Thanks again for all your time and creativity! :)

~ Meeba