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Hey everyone! We're trying something new with the Pet Spotlight, and we need your help to test it.

The Problem

The spotlight queue has gotten really long, with some of you have been waiting years for your pet to be reviewed. That's not fair to anyone, and it's not sustainable. I want to fix that!

The Idea

Instead of staff being the only ones who review pets, we're opening it up to the community. You can sign up as a Spotlight Judge and help review nominated pets. Esmerelda — yes, that Esmerelda — is running the show.

How It Works

For Judges

• Visit the Pet Spotlight and click "Review Pets"
• Click "Become a Spotlight Judge" to opt in
• You'll be shown pets to review — up to 5 per day
• For each pet, you check off criteria:
  • Visual Design
  • Story / Character
  • Treasure Chest (does it fit the vibe?)
  • Minion (does it fit the theme?)
  • Name
  • Completeness
• Give an overall star rating (1-5)
• Leave optional written feedback for the owner
• Earn 50,000 sP per review
• Work toward four new Spotlight Judge achievements

For Pet Owners

• Your pet gets reviewed by multiple community members
• You'll receive detailed feedback on what's working and what could be improved — delivered personally by Esmerelda (she has opinions)
• Pets that pass community review go straight into the winner queue

The Rules

• You can't review your own pets
• You can't review your friends' pets
• Your reviews build a reputation score over time — reviewers whose scores align with the consensus gain more influence
• Pets need agreement from multiple reviewers to pass or fail (no one person decides)

This Is a Pilot

I'm starting with just 5 pets from the existing queue. This is a test run to make sure the system works and feels fair before we open it up to everyone.

We will honor the results. Whatever the community decides for these 5 pets, that's what happens.

We Want Your Feedback

After you've tried it — whether as a judge or a pet owner — please reply to this thread and tell me:

• Was the review process clear and easy to follow?
• Did the criteria make sense?
• Did the feedback feel useful (for owners)?
• Was the sP reward fair?
• What would you change?

Your feedback will directly shape the final version of this feature.

What's Next

If the pilot goes well, I'm planning some improvements and changes to the system:

• Seasonal themed spotlight competitions tied to holidays (Morostide, Luminaire, etc.)
• Top 3 seasonal winners with special trophies
• More rewards for active judges (reactions, avatar borders)
• Opening the full queue to community review
• Potentially moving back to more winners being drawn more frequently (we've got over 300 pets waiting to be judged!)

Head over to the Pet Spotlight to check it out!

hey everyone — sorry for the quiet week. here are some updates:

• lag on both sites. we hit another AI crawler situation, which is becoming a recurring theme honestly. the good news is i've gotten faster at identifying and blocking these — you should already be noticing both sites feeling snappier now that that traffic is cut off.
• broken cron jobs. a bunch of the timed features that folks have been bringing up: the recycle beast, the potion lottery, pet spotlight, these all run on a scheduler, and something's been off with that scheduler. some things aren't firing at all, others are running at the wrong time. i'm tracking down what's going wrong and getting those back on their normal schedule.
• 404s: this was an issue for a few minutes due to the bot blocking. should be resolved now!

more updates as things shake out. thanks for your patience!

It's been ages since we had a proper chaotic Token Shop restock! Get your wizard tokens together and keep an eye on the shop. Each restock will stock different items, so you've got some hard decisions to make. 👀

I will be restocking the shop over the next 24 hours or so. The time limit between purchases will not be changed.

The Seasonal Quest Shop now has spring items in it! Thanks to various users pointing out that the Millionaire Center currently doesn't have a season set, which is ruining the pricing of items outside the current season, I've held off on adding new items until we get it fixed in the next week! Sorry about the delay.

We will be switching the Millionaire Center and Seasonal Quest Shop to spring tomorrow, March 21.

For those who are asking about snowballs, we will open the shop and allow you to throw again next week! I always forget that snowballs can interrupt Survival's strains. I want to make sure there is no chance of this happening. <3