Best Of

From: Starmaker Eukelade
Subject: See You, Space Cowboys.

Hi Starmourners,

It's me, here with a brief announcement to let you all know that as of today, I am resigning my position as Lead Producer for Starmourn. It has been my honor and pleasure to contribute so much of my creativity to this game world over the past five years. Even though it is time for me to move on, this is still a sad moment (for me at least)!

Going forward, Damiel, Neritus, and Zersiax will be in charge of creative direction, technical development, and customer support for Starmourn. You've all seen how hard they work and how much effort they've poured into the game recently. I've spent the better part of this month getting them ready to take over, and I have every confidence in their ability to shape Starmourn into an even greater universe than it is already!

The hardworking Storyteller team will also continue to be here, working on bringing the gameworld, and the goals of your characters, to life.

Starmourn has the best playerbase and game community on the internet. I'll miss it, but I know it's in the best and most capable of hands/claws/tentacles!

So long, everyone. And thanks for all the fish.

Eukelade

From: Storyteller Damiel, Pew Pew Pew
Subject: Regular RP events.

Hello again,

I thought the event, and this piece of news, deserved their own announcements...

The Voidseeker event also marks the start of a new regular schedule of storyteller-led roleplaying events.

There will be one every month from here on out, in the third week of each month, and will very vaguely roll through the factions - purely based on location, rather than participation. This is literally only to make it fair on the storytelling team.

This month is Song, as it's in Hororeon, but as I was approached to lead, I am going to be doing this with the help of Soren and Eukelade. We're all excited!

So far we have the following pencilled in:

June - Scatterhome
July - CA
August - Song
September - Scatterhome
October - CA

... and we will aim to follow this routine for the forseeable future.

We are happy to come up with our own events and to fully lead them, HOWEVER, player requests are our bread and butter - so if you have an idea or request for an event that you would like storyteller assistance with, contact your faction's storyteller! (HELP STORYTELLERS)

It is a flexible thing, and times/dates and everything, pretty much, can be adapted to suit.

We do not need (or want) them to be too grand or complicated (though if it's appropriate they can be!). Nor should they always involve new items or places.

If you want an event, you will need to put RP effort in in-character. They should be run by your characters as far as is possible, we are here for those things that go beyond what a player can do. So we can animate/create NPCs, make world-enhancing places and objects, etc etc. But if it's a thing you can do in-character, you should do so in-character. The best events we have had have been mainly developed by players, with us just giving approval and adding the aboves and the beyonds.

We will judge whether things are necessary or appropriate. But we welcome ideas from players wishing to deepen their own lore/homeworld - so long as it has a lasting and universal benefit to the world/other players.

(Basically what I'm saying is - you can't be like "Because of my backstory I need [Genny to come and live on my ship/my org to suddenly be the one that founded Scatterhome/to change historical lore/a thing that only benefits my character].)

Appropriate ideas (but please, be creative!) might be:
- A concert where you'd like an NPC band to play.
- A conflict with an NPC org or group.
- An invasion by some animal or other.
- A public celebration or something.
- Anything that can be open to other players, big or small. It might just be that Breena keeps getting bread stolen and wants people to help find the shoplifters and question them etc.

Examples of past player requested events:
- A photoshoot with Jins and Juice magazine to foreshadow a new junk item submitted by the player.
- A photoshoot contest in New Dikamazi.
- Song on the Verge/Winterfest/Scatterfest - music festivals.
- Ironbound interactions at the Fetek factory, involving conflict.
- Scientific experiments aboard the Event Horizon.
- Lots more... see the events section of NEWS for more info!

Obviously we can and will also come up with our own ideas for events, as necessary, but we very much want you the players to be able to ask for the stuff you feel would drive the storytelling too! We are here to make the game fun for you!

Happy Arepee Erryone!

Damiel and the Storytelling team <3

From: Starmaker Eukelade
Subject: More Tesseract Prizes, Credit Bonuses Added!

Hi, Starmourners!

Hope you're doing well. We saw that someone is planning a Rainbow Party next week so we thought now would be a good time to make our sale even better than it was before!!

First of all, we've added BONUS tesseracts to the sale of credits. You can still buy tesseracts on the website if you want to, BUT if you want to invest in credits, you'll receive one tesseract for every 25 credits you purchase. Furthermore, for the first 100 credits you buy while this sale is active, you'll get a tesseract every 10 credits. That means you'll get 14 tesseracts for your first 100 credits. Buy 125 credits and you'll have enough tesseracts for 3 rainbow tesseracts, or 3 gold tesseracts! (Or just have 15 blue ones to open up all by yourself in a mad spree).

That's not too shabby!

-----------------

We've also spruced up the prizes available in the tesseracts. Starting now, the following artifacts are available to be won, in addition to the ones that are already there (see announcement 195):

Nanoboosted Adrenaline Generation (victoryrush)
Increases the duration of SKIRMISHING VICTORYRUSH by 5 seconds and its effect from 10% to 15%.

The H.E.T.E. SlimFat 9000 (custom_build)
Allows you to CLONE BUILD <body type> in order to set a custom body build for your next clone. Goodbye, exercise and food! Who needs ya!

Trading Net Downlink (tradenet_link)
Allows you to access a tradenet from anywhere!

We also have two insanely fancy new robots for the more performative-minded of you - you won't want to miss this brand new tech!

A spotlight drone - This drone changes colors, illuminates you on stage, and lights things up to the beat of your music, be it chill or intense. The ultimate in ambiance and perfect for both stage and home contexts. Shine a light. Shine many lights. Be awesome.

A swarm of choir drones - Ni Kissare of the Daughters of Ur made choir drones famous. Follow in her footsteps and craft an epic soundscape to enhance all your performances. Will sing on command, and can be programmed with up to ten unique actions, chosen by you! Amazing.

-------------

We hope you enjoy these changes as much as we do, spacers. See you at the party!

From: Starmaker Eukelade
Subject: Introducing Daily Streaks.

Hey Starmourners, if you like to play Starmourn every day, we have good news for you! If you WANT to play Starmourn every day, but needed more incentive to do so - we still have good news for you. (And if you don't care, the good news is things aren't going to change.)

Starmourn is now introducing Daily Streaks and Milestone Rewards as an enhancement to the daily credits system. Log in every day, play for at least an hour and earn at least one daily credit during that time, and you'll start streaking. Streaks will cause your daily credit limit to increase over time, and streak milestones will award you with unique honors, titles, and increasing amounts of bound credits. The more you play, the bigger your rewards! See HELP STREAKS for more - and have fun!

From: Zersiax
Subject: Some more space changes.

Hello everyone,

This week we have some more space changes for you all.
As announced, we've been trying to integrate a lot of the good ideas we've received since Starmourn first launched (into ...space?) and here's some of the fruits of our labor:

- When building a ship in the shipforge, you will now receive output about the new configuration's cycles and power needs of the new configuration as you add and remove modules and components. This is still something we're experimenting with, but this should already significantly reduce the need for a calculator, leaving you with more space (heh) on your desk for other things, at least while building ships that is.
- We've revamped the gas harvesting drones significantly. Superhaulers are still the only ships that do this natively, but a new small ship module will now allow you to enable other ship classes to use these as well, provided you have drones in storage and the required captaincy level of course.
- Speaking of captaincy level, the level required for harvest drones has been significantly decreased. This will make it easier for everyone to scoop gas, but in particular our screenreader users will have an easier way breaking into space. We are aware some of the space-based activities aren't the most accessible ever, it's being worked on.
- Finally, while I joke about the generic "bug fixes and performance improvements" changelogs a lot, we actually do have some performance improvements this week, particularly where the mapper is involved.

That'll be enough out of me for now. I'll go back to building cool things.
In any space, feel free to BUG it if something inadvertently blows up, and we'll take a look when we can. Enjoy the game. :-)

-Zersiax

From: Feracht Whisperer Soren
Subject: Howdy from Selubir!

Howdy, folks!

Damiel and I have been working on this for a long time, and it has finally come to fruition! There's a lot to see, so you're probably better off just giving it a visit, but Selubir has been given a lot more love, lore, and flavor.

A few specifics...

-Probably most importantly, the windmill drones have been made slightly less frustrating and Vasily now sends new players to his brother to learn how to interrupt them (and other creatures with windups!) Long overdue, I know!
-Selubir has both a tutor and a weapon shop now, so no need to head home quite as often. We have also added in an NPC to make it clear to newbies that they don't need to stay in Selubir to level up for the MQ, and that they're free to go whenever they want...
-...but hopefully they won't need to quite as urgently, as we have added 5 other new quests for the Selubir level range as well as a little newbie bashing area, Eotvos Lake, with a new mob. Remember the lake darters from the tutorial? They exist now!
-As do other, some more annoying, bugs and critters... all in all 5 new animals with xenozoo entries! Scan away!
-More fun lore stuff and fun things to explore, I won't give it all away. Go visit for yourself!

and...

-Given that more people will hopefully be wanting to hunt and quest and maybe even hang out there, Selubir now has a transport from the Scatterhome voidgate!

Have fun! Watch your moonshine consumption! Oh, wait, that's what wetwiring is for!

Your friendly neighborhood broncayo rustler,
Soren