New Arrival's Guide to Ostlea

[Gryffi]

Navigation

Post 1: Getting Started! How to Obtain, Raise and Manage Creatures

Post 2: Money, Items and Notable Locations

Post 3: Special Creatures, Holidays and More

Post 4: F.A.Q.

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Obtaining Creatures

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Welcome to Ostlea! I'm sure there's a few things you're probably wondering about, to get you started I'll explain to you how to obtain and raise your creatures.

* First things first, we need to explain the limits on how many critters you can have, worry not, you CAN have has many adult creatures as you'd like, however hatchlings and eggs are another story. At any given time you can have 10 eggs and up to 100 growing creatures. Your eggs do count towards the 100 growing creature limit, so for example you coud have 10 eggs and 90 hatclings or 100 hatchlings, but you'll never be able to have 10 eggs AND 100 hatchlings.

* Ostlea offers a variety of ways to gather and collect creatures, the easiest and most common place to start is the  explore page where you're presented with a map leading to six different biomes. After choosing a biome to explore you'll be presented with a pool of three eggs which will constantly replenish with a new egg (possibly of a new species) whenever one is claimed. Fret not, if nothing catches your eye in the first biome you choose there's five others with their own unique creatures to choose from.

* The castle ruins is also a great place to nabb an egg, hatchling or even adult! Any creature abandoned by a user ends up here where they remain until another comes along to claim it.

* After you've spent some time on the site, learned the basics and earned some Silver you might want to take a look at the Bazaar. The Bazaar is home to a variety of shops, one being the Market Place where your fellow users can sell their unwanted creatures or the Menagerie where you can purchase rare eggs not obtainable through other means.

* The final area in which you can a creature is in the Sintera Tombs. If you think you have the nerve you can visit this mysterious grave yard every day and dig up to 20 times in an attempt to find various bones and items, once you've collected enough you'll be able to rebuild and animate a skeleton creature of your choice.

Managing Creatures and Lair

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Once you obtain an egg you'll find that it's been automatically placed into your lair, this is the area where every creature you own in stored, from this page you'll be able to view and manage all of your creatures. To start I'll explain the links at the top of the page.

* Sorting Options: This menu will allow you to change the way creatures are displayed to you, it's fairly self-explanatory: Breed will group creatures by their breed, clicks will show adopts from most clicks to lowest, alphabetical orders them by their code and generation date will display your oldest creature first and newest last.

* Manage Lairs: On this page you'll be able t create, delete and edit sub-lairs. Sub-lairs are simply additions you can make to your main lair to sort creatures into, for example if you'd like to keep your salamanders separate from everything else you can create a new page just for them. In addition to being able to edit your lairs you'll also have the option to "lock" a lair, this will keep it from showing up on teh drop down menu when you're sorting.

* Move Creatures: After you've created your sub-lairs you can use this page to sort your creatures into their proper places. 

* Get Forum Codes: This page will to grab all the codes of your eggs, hatchlings, gendered hatchlings or all growing creatures at once for posting on the forum.

From your main lair page you'll also be able to view your creature along with it's breed information, parents and children by clicking on it's image or manage it by simply click the word "Manage" all the way to the right of the creature you'd like to make changes to. From this page you have a variety of options:

* Rename: Pretty self-explanatory, this option will allow you to name or rename your creature. A warning: we're a PG-13 site, inappropriate names may result in a warning or loss of use of this feature. Please just use your best judgement.

* Freeze: Clicking this button will stop your egg or hatchling from growing or gaining clicks (Please note if you're using this on an egg from breeding, the bazaar or a biome there is a 30 minute wait time before you may use this feature). This IS for reversible for hatchlings by using a Dispel Freeze Potion found in the Apothecary.

* Abandon: By choosing abandon your adopt, be it adult, hatchling, or egg will be sent to the Castle Ruins where anyone may adopt it.

* Finalize: This function will prevent your creature from being altered in any way, this includes the use of potions and other items. It is NOT reversible.

Scrolling down you'll see there's  forum codes just for that creature as well as another list of links , these will allow you to sort individual creatures into sub-lairs, put your creature up for sale or go back to it's page.

Raising Creatures

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After you've obtained your eggs it's time to hatch and raise them, on this site creatures grow based on how many clicks they have and will never die no matter how long it may take you to hatch them.

The click stages are as followed:

Un-cracked Egg: 0 clicks

Crack Stage 1: 10 clicks

Crack Stage 2: 20 clicks

Crack Stage 3: 30 clicks

Crack Stage 4: 35 clicks

Hatchling: 40 clicks

Gendered/Mature Hatchling: 65 clicks

Adult: 100 clicks

Once a creature has grown to adulthood it will no longer count towards your limits, so you'll most likely want to hatch them as quickly as possible, here's a couple of ways that will help you reach that goal:

* Any creature with less than 100 clicks is automatically added to Ostlea's Nursery for everyone to see and care for.

* Yarolds is probably the most common way to gain clicks, it's a fairly straightforward click exchange but if you find yourself lost you can find a guide on how to use it here. If you're still having trouble even after reading the guide feel free to use that thread to ask questions as well!

* We offer a couple of places here on our own forum where you can gain clicks as well: Ostlea's Offical Click Thread where you can post once a day or have a little fun and join in the Click the creatures above you game.

* If you're in a hurry you could instead head over to the Farmer's Market and purchase food for your growing creatures which can be used form your inventory to give some extra clicks to the creature of your choice, yes, these even work on eggs. The only time you won't be able to use these items is if it's a newly released creature that is still mass dropping in it's biome.

Breeding Your Creatures

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Once you've obtained a few adult creatures you might want to head over to the Breeding Room. Quite obviously this is the area where you'll be able to try your hand at breeding, the page is very simple to use; simply start by selecting the lair in which the adopt you'd like to start with is from the drop down menu, choose if it's a male or female, and you'll be taken to a page to do the same for the opposite gender. After you've done this you'll be able to apply breeding enhancing potions that you can purchase from the Apothecary.

Though breeding is fairly simple there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

* There is a ONE WEEK waiting period between breedings of a creature regardless if the pair produced an eggs or not.

* Though a pair might not produce an egg this time around it does not mean they never will, you can try them again next week.

* Each pair has a chance of producing 0-4 eggs, the higher the rarity of the creature the lower the chance of getting a egg/multiples.

* Donation/Crystal creatures bought from the Menagerie will NOT breed true unless you use a Love potion, the potion will guarantee you one egg of it's breed,

There is one last thing you'll have to keep in mind when attempting to breed: Breeding classes.

Currently there are four breeding classes: Large, medium, micro and enchanted. The egg the creature hatches of and it's sprite size are a good indication of what breeding class it belongs to, however if you're still finding yourself lost you can check find out it's breeding class by clicking on the desired creature from your lair page.

Managing Your Account

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Your account management page can be found on the left side menu under the first section. On this page you have the standard password and email change, friend management and profile view as well as the ability to check and change a few other options.

* Account Statistics: Here you'll be able to view more details about you account, from total adults to frozen eggs or hatchlings. You'll even be able to see how many adopts you raised from an egg.

* Change Public Profile: Here's where you can choose a creature to spotlight on your profile, change your avatar, bio, and even nickname, just keep in mind that everyone can see what you write here.

* Theme Settings: Don't like the site colors? Here you can select another theme that's easier on your eyes.

[Gryffi]

Navigation

Post 1: Getting Started! How to Obtain, Raise and Manage Creatures

Post 2: Money, Items and Notable Locations

Post 3: Special Creatures, Holidays and More

Post 4: F.A.Q.

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Currencies and How to Get Them

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Here in Ostlea we have two types of currency, each is obtained in a different way.

First we have silver , silver can be earned by clicking any creature on site, be it in the nursery or even in your own lair or by selling your unwanted creatures in the Market Place.

The second of the currencies is crystals . Crystals cannot be earned by playing on site, this is the site's donation currency and can be bought at the rate of $1 = 1 crystal through the donation page. This currency can be used to purchase special eggs and sometimes items in the bazaar, however should you not be able to donate you can purchase them from other users, the easiest way is to post in the Crystal Trading HQ thread.

The Bazaar

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The bazaar is home to a variety of shops offering anything from eggs to food to potions. Below I've detailed explained each one's purpose and what you'll find there.

* The Menagerie: This shop houses some of the rarest creatures found in Ostlea, some of which can only be purchased with crystals while others can be bought with silver.

* Farmer's Market: At this stall you can buy food to feed to your creatures to raise their total clicks, currently there are 10 different food options available each adding a different amount of clicks ranging from 1 to 10.

* Apothecary: The Apothecary has a little bit of everything, you can find potions and transformation items which can be used to change a creature into it's alternate form, gender influencing and changing items, potions to reset clicks on eggs or unfreeze hatchlings and more.

* Market Place: Very simply this is the location where all creatures put up for sale by users go. 

Your Inventory & Junk Items

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Your inventory is exactly what you'd think it'd be, a place to store, view, sell and use your items, be it applying potions and other items to your creatures or feeding your hatchlings and eggs. The majority of items can be used from this page, the exceptions being orbs and breeding enhancement potions, however there are also some items you may have come across while exploring the biomes that have no apparent use, these are called junk items. Junk items as stated have no current use, they're simply there to be sold or collected, they were intended to be a sort of gift for users when claiming an egg.

The Trading Post

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The first thing I'd like to address regarding the trading post is off site trading, copied directly from our terms of service:

Quote:Offsite Trading:

1. Accounts, adopts, items, or anything else that may be traded on this site may NOT be sold for "Real-Life" currencies.
   
2. You may trade Tales of Ostlea pets and items for pets and/or items on other sites that allow it but you do so at your own risk. Should your trade go bad and you have proof of it on this site, you may contact the Administrator for help, if you do not have proof on this site nothing can be done.
   
   

To keep yourself protected and ensure that I can help you should something go amiss discuss ALL off site trades on this site, should you not...Well, it's at your own risk.

With that out of the way let's discuss trading! The trading post is home to a couple of features, in addition to the standard private trades, we also offer public trades, promocodes and transfers.

* A public trade is something you can create to allow users to make an offer on your creature or if currency (most commonly this is used for crystals), all you need to do is select the adoptable(s) (limit of up to 10 creatures) you would like to trade or enter the amount of currency you'd like to trade and give out the link, anyone who has that link can then make any offer on your trade. Very simple.

* Private trades are exactly what they sound like, a trade that is strictly between you and one other person, only the person you send it to will ever be able to see or offer on it. Just like public trades you can only trade creatures (up to 10) and currencies.

* Promocodes are a code you can enter on this page to receive a special gift, typically these appear in announcements around the holidays, though we've also been known to give out a couple through our twitter feed as well! Usually these will be something like a free shop creature, steaks, or sometimes a potion.

*By using the Transfer page you can instantly send a gift of silver to the user of your choice.

Simple enough, eh? Though you may now be wondering what can be traded, the answer: any adopt or currency, yes including crystals. The only condition attached to this is in regards to freshly caught/bought/bred eggs, they'll need to wait 30 minutes before they can be traded.

Castle Library

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The Castle's Library functions as a sort of on-site wiki, it contains one book for each creature on site, detailing it's release date, creator(s), location/how to obtain it, statistics, sprites and descriptions for each stage. Creature Journals are added the day after a new release stops mass dropping.

In addition to creature journals you'll also find books displaying Ostlea's lore as well as two special book called Life of Pine and Gryffi's Fairy Tales created solely for user entertainment.

The Portal

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Located in the center of Ostlea just on the outskirts of civilization is a portal, taking the risk and stepping through this portal will take you to an old Temple guarded by the ancient spirit of a gryphon. When visiting this Temple the Gryphon, named Kirtin will explain to you about Zenith forms and how to obtain them.

A Zenith form is essentially a creature's ascended form, currently there are only 5 available and they can all be obtained in the same way, by gaining 200 clicks for your creature as well as obtaining it's elemental orb which is rarely found while clicking on creatures of it's element.

This feature WILL receive updates in the future.

Sintera Tombs

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The Sintera Tombs is a special location designed specifically to host Ostlea's first ever mini game: Grave Digging. Every day you can visit this mysterious grave yard and dig up to 20 times for a chance at finding various bones and items, after collecting these items you can then proceed to the next page to resurrect your very own skeleton creatures. These skeletons are quite a bit different from your typical creature, they do not have an egg of any sort and only require 10 clicks to reach adulthood.

[Gryffi]

Navigation

Post 1: Getting Started! How to Obtain, Raise and Manage Creatures

Post 2: Money, Items and Notable Locations

Post 3: Special Creatures, Holidays and More

Post 4: F.A.Q.

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New Releases

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New releases are usually planned 3 weeks apart unless a holiday falls within that month in which case adjustments are made, but not shown to the public.

When a new release begins it will be announced on the forum, Ostlea's facebook page and twitter. They typically begin at 12 AM by the site's time on a Friday when the new creature will mass drop in it's respective lair until 11:59 PM on that Sunday, during this time the new creatures will not be able to be fed.

Seasonal Creatures

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Amongst the variety of creatures found in Ostlea there are a few that only appear under certain conditions, these are called seasonal creatures as they only appear during certain seasons though you can breed them year round.

There are four adopts that rotate in and out of the Menagerie as the seasons change:

Winter (December 21 - March 19): Mayura Enigmas

Spring (March 20 - June 19): Storm Heralds

Summer (June 20 - September 21): Solsynth Dragons

Fall (September 22 - December 20): Wendigos

As well as Frost Jackals that drop in the Sunanie Glacier during the winter and Magma Morays that can be found around Mt. Ekoh in the spring and summer.

Holiday Creatures

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Holiday Creatures are created and released for these holidays: Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas as well as a special Ostlean holiday called the Spring Festival that takes place between May 28th and June 10th.

Here's a few things that should be kept in mind about these creatures:

* They're only available from the biomes ONCE for one week starting on their holiday (EX: Christmas December 25th - 31st). After they stop dropping you will not be able to get them through these means again.

* While they are capable of breeding all year round they only breed true the week of their holiday.

*Even though they are only available once in the biomes, during the month of their holiday you can purchase them for 1 crystal from the menagerie.

In addition to holiday creatures there's also a small group of special pseudo-holidays, these adopts are typically sold in the menagerie during the month a holiday falls in or available through a potion found in the apothecary using the same time frame. However, these creatures differ from the typical holiday adopt in the fact that they're available yearly by their original means.

Oddities/Spriter's Alts

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Oddities, also known as Spriter's Alts are a special coloration unique to the spriters as a thank you for their hard work on special projects or earned by the staff for their dedication to helping the site grow and develop. These are available to non-staff artists as well through a "points" system detailed here. A unique feature for Spriter's Alts here on Ostlea is that they CAN breed true though there are conditions attached, they have a 30% chance to breed true and ONLY if the alt in a lair born one, second generations and up will only breed the normal variant of the creature.

Pinecones

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Pinecones are something you may have noticed in a few people's lairs, though they are not available to everyone they do actually have a really interesting backstory to them and a variant that everyone can get too.

Way back when Ostlea wasn't yet an official site and still just a little baby on a free host, long before any of the creatures you see now ever existed we had to test out some site mechanics... As you can guess not having creatures was a bit of an issue when that's what the site revolves around so LaHaine being the brilliant creature she is uploaded a couple of sprites we had for junk items and made them into adopts... I bet you can see where this is going. Everyone LOVED it and thought it'd be really cool if we could keep SOMETHING to remind us all of the time we spent developing the site, as a result I brought the pinecone adopts over as a thank you gift to those who made great contributions to Ostlea and helped us get it up and running. For this reason pinecones are not available in lair, HOWEVER  shortly after site opening we did add in something special: babycones, though still not available in lair they are bred very commonly from the original pinecones and other babycones. Should you have trouble obtaining one still, contact Gryffi for an unrelated pair of your own for free!

[Gryffi]

Navigation

Post 1: Getting Started! How to Obtain, Raise and Manage Creatures

Post 2: Money, Items and Notable Locations

Post 3: Special Creatures, Holidays and More

Post 4: F.A.Q.

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F.A.Q.: Mainsite

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Help! I'm trying to reset my password but it's not working! What should I do?

Double check that you're using the appropriate caps for your username (EX: My username is Gryffi, so if I reset using gryffi it will not work properly).
Are you using the code sent to you in your email as your password? If so visit this page..
Still having trouble? Contact Gryffi at one of these emails:
talesofostlea@gmail.com
gryffithewaffle@gmail.com

When do clicks reset?
12 AM by the site's clock.

I have fed my egg enough for it to hatch, but it hasn't yet. Why?
Try giving it just one more click, this is a known bug.
When feeding an egg steaks it forces an egg to grow two levels at once which the site currently won't allow, by clicking it once more after feeding it'll jump up the last level.

How many colors/alts exist of x creature?
There are too many to list in this post, however you can find full lists of what is available- including variations- both in the Creature Books in the library and on the ToO Wiki.

Is x  creature still available? I haven't seen one recently.
Unless it was a holiday or seasonal release, YES. We have no plans to retire a creature, if this changes in the future the userbase will be notified ahead of time.

If I use a gender nest or a potion on an egg and then trade/sell/abandon it, will the effect still be there or does it get removed if the egg leaves my lair?
The effects will remain on the egg.

Are all Enchanted Plushie colours equal chance or are some rarer than others? What about rats and Jewelvipers?
There is an equal chance of getting each plushie, however rats and jewelvipers are slightly different. Regal jewelvipers are more rare, while patched are much more common, the rest of the colors all have an equal chance.
Much like the jewelvipers, rats have a more rare alt. Each toxic rat has the same chance at appearing while mutated rats are much more rare.

There was recently a new creature release and now I can't seem to find it! Are they gone?
Nope! You'll just have to keep looking, it may be a rare creature or in high demand. The only time a new creature will disappear after it's mass drop is if it's a holiday.

There aren't any eggs in the Castle Ruins area. How do can I get an egg from there?
The Castle Ruins page is our abandoned area, eggs will only appear there if someone abandons one, to claim it all you need to do is click.

Do abandoned creatures stay in the Castle Ruins until they're picked up or are they deleted after a certain amount of time?
They remain in the ruins until someone takes them... Which may or may not most of the time be Gryffi. O: She has a soft spot for the poor unwanted things.

Do the biomes have regular drops/resets?
Yes! A new set of eggs will appear every 30 minutes or whenever the lair empties out.

Should I actually be concerned about the warning on the gender change potions? Is there some kind of negative effect?
No, there's no real negative to using the potions and they will work 100% of the time, the warnings were written to make the player feel bad for doing that to the poor things or possibly just deter people from abusing this ability. ;)

Is there a limit on the number of sub-lairs I can have?
Nope, and as long as it's not abused we'll never add a limit.

How do I send a gift?
Simply use a private trade, the other user does not have to add anything to the other side.

Does a frozen egg/hatchling take up one of my slots?
Nope, the site will treat it as an adult when it comes to slots.

How can I unfreeze an egg?
You can't, sorry! The reason for this is it's far too easy to abuse, a person could freeze an infinite number of holiday eggs for later use and possibly break the site's economy.

How can I get rid of a frozen egg? It won't let me abandon it!
If you no longer want a frozen egg you'll have to sell or trade it away, currently there is no other way to get rid of it.

Does the Rejuvenating Fairy also work on frozen eggs?
Yes, but keep in mind this will reset the egg to 0 and you will not be able to feed it.

Can I delete a creature?
No, however if you don't want it for whatever reason you can either sell it or leave it in the Castle Ruins for someone else to take.

I noticed that I can't trade or abandon an egg right after I pick it up or breed it, why is that?
There is a 30 minute cool down period for eggs, you won't be able to get rid of it until this time is up. This cool down was added as a result of several users abusing the ability to freeze eggs in order to clear out lairs for rare eggs, while normally we wouldn't have minded, as new drops begin when the lair empties these users were flooding the market place with frozen eggs or in some cases making second accounts to store them causing problems for both the staff and the rest of the userbase.

I found a creature with an odd location! How do I get to this area?
Typically these creatures are something won from a forum contest, a test creature from Gryffi or a Spriter's Alt. There is no way to access these areas at the moment, though some may become actual places in the future. Fret not though, aside from the location there is nothing different about them from those found in the lairs.

F.A.Q.: Forum

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I tried to sign up for the forum but it won't let me. Why?
When you sign up for Tales of Ostlea on the mainsite your forum account is automatically created for you, go ahead and try using the user and password you signed up with, you should be able to log in with no problems.

What are the forum ranks? How many posts do I need to reach them?
Dragon Bait: 0+ posts

Friend, Not Food: 25+ posts
Creature Tamer: 50+ posts
Creature Whisperer: 100+ posts
Otter: 201+ posts
Ostlean: 400+

We're open to adding a rank or to to this so if you have a suggestion send Gryffi a private message!

How do I chance my password/email/avatar/signature?
Click the User CP at the top left of the page and look under the second section of the menu.

Is there a way to change the theme that we see the forums displayed in?
You can switch between the Default (light) and Ostlea Default (dark) themes. At the very bottom right of the page is a tab that says "Default" with a button that says "Go". Click on Default (there is a drop down arrow) and you can change there.

I misspelled something my poll, how can I fix this?
Send a message to either an admin or a mod and the can fix it for you, please be sure to include a link to the thread.

My join date is incorrect.
This is a known bug that occurs when bridging mysidia sites to the mybb forum, we're still looking for a fix for this.

What does (insert acronym) stand for?
CP: Control Panel. This is where you can edit your options here on the forum.
LB: Lair Born. This means the creature was procured directly from one of the six biomes, and therefore has no parents.
ToO: Tales of Ostlea. A common abbreviation for the name of this site.
SA: Spriter Alt. The images we think of as creatures are called sprites, and their creators are called spriters. Sometimes, when a spriter makes a creature for a site, they get their very own special color that only they will receive. These most rare of creatures are called Spriter Alts.
SB: Shop Born. This means the creature was purchased directly from one of the site's shop, and therefore has no parents. It's basically the same thing as LB, just procured from a different place within the site.

[Gryffi]

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[Gryffi]

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