An idea to help recirculate older books - How about a "bookshelf". You 'use' one, and get a random retired book. We already have a bunch of unusable furniture, it would be nice to see something that helps generate any of nearly 1 thousand books filed under Retired, Free Gift, Artifact, Melody, or Holidays that is really only restocked through manual means on behalf of the staff (Crystal shop, etc).

It's pretty much the same logic as the food tubby suggestion I made almost 2 full years ago (how does time fly!) - Convert Food Tubbies into random gift boxes of retired food (Get it? It's food saved for later!).

Just two more ways to keep older consumable items flowing for newer players.

I agree there needs to be ways to get these things back in circulation. However, do you want to flood the market, or still make them rare? What type of cost would there be to this "bookshelf"? Are we talking thousands of sP, millions? Or CSC?

Right now we have "Gifts of Fashion Past" and "Chance" machines that spit out retired items, both are CSC based.

I don't see a reason why a "Bookshelf" type scenario couldn't be a new Chance Machine dedicated to books. Heck, that would probably be the most optimal way to implement it. Books are a consumable collection object, so any books that the chance machine spits out is most likely going to be removed from the marketplace after being generated. Even if the book does get put into a shop - the user who ends up buying for the actual use will still end up permanently removing it from the economy as well.

On the other hand, if such a thing was created as a 'normal' item to be restocked - I'm not convinced it would be a detriment to the market. The closest example I can think of a restockable item creating randomized collection-based items are probably the trading card boosters. It's still a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, since once you have all 250 trading cards - you are done for your entire account. There hasn't been a new card added in years and all of the cards possible in the boosters ARE restockable on their own via the Trading Card Center. Yet those boosters are still pulling a respectable resale value after years of being on the market and despite the lack of updates to that particular collection.

Comparatively, a book-based version would be pulling from a much larger pool of possibilities, one in which none of the items would be restockable on their own and the pool itself would be constantly growing due to the constant addition (and retirement) of new books to the site. A single user could end up chasing multiple copies of the same book, since the reading-based Collections are based on the individual pet, unlike the trading cards. Even if the staff dropped one of these types of books once a week in the token shop for the entire year, they'd only hit maybe 1/3rd of the backlog of unobtainable books.

I wouldn't be against an easier re-release method, but I also think I read somewhere that staff tend to stick with certain methods for releasing specific books depending on where they came from originally. If I'm remembering that correctly, I'd be curious to know how many books are actually even eligible for a chance machine-type release that don't have something in place for them already.

For example, according to Subetalodge, there are 271 R105 books. Not including BHH or TS books, ~158 of those are currently available elsewhere to buy. If you exclude BHH and TS books and the Universal Remote (since I don't personally agree with releasing those elsewhere, whether they're actively available in those locations or not), there are only ~24 completely unavailable R105 books. Depending on where staff wants to keep the rarity of those books and if they don't want to keep their releases to a specific location, I wouldn't be against tossing those 24 in a chance machine of some sort

Less relevant to my point, but since I have the numbers, I counted ~273 books between Melody, Free Gift, and Retired rarities (and some that were coming up retired are Freyalise items, so likely to be brought back through there or Carl's quests during Keel Hauliday/other events). I didn't dig through the Holiday rarity though since it's a lot to go through, but quite a few of those are currently available as well

Its a good thought but think things are find as is with a little more attention to the actual few outliers that become unobtainable that shouldnt be, but this has been better in recent months with taking over the crystal shop.

I started trying to read every book to my pet only about a 1.5 years ago and ive been able to get every book at a reasonable price. All thats left are like 25 cash shop ones ill slowly get each month and 4 or 5 unbuyables. The majority of the books are obtainable....just a handful of outliers

The easy way should be to keep them as bonuses for Library Quests - Weekend Special Edition. That would be way less of a coding hassle than a chance machine.

Same with retired foods, use them for Pete Quests - Weekend Special Edition.

All valid points!

I tallied up using 101, 105, 115, 175, and 195 books, so everyone can understand where I was pulling my numbers from. I'm more thinking of non-seasonal books like the Hastily Written Notes or Fantine's cookbook. I'm not saying that restocking them via the crystal or token shops should go away - Amber has really turned both around compared to previous years, but having alternate ways for the site to generate some extra copies of books, even if it's gate-kept by CSC, without staff having to devote time away from other projects to set up a manual restock of those two shops, could be beneficial.