Surely this means they are ridiculously cheap? I mean, one companion, which as of now costs several hundred passes in the sales, can now be bought for 1 pass or 1/100th of an old pass? Or am I missing something?

The cost is undetermined at the moment. We are paying 1 pass, but that is for preprod use only. I expect it will be about 100 passes. Also this will not be a permanent BM but somewhat like the TC or GF.

There would be the option to “watch videos to receive passes and gifts” in the passes page. So basically promotional videos in exchange for items, I assume it is something similar to the Fyber offers and watching videos in exchange for equus that we have already.

It looks like we'll be able to watch the video to win a random prize, with the prizes sorted into different levels by divine (passes), precious (equus), rare (coloured tack) and common (things like carrots and apples etc I'm assuming). It's not there for me on preprod any more but it was yesterday.

The Japanese Ruins


The concept is the same as the Ice Palace event from last year. The player can explore Japanese ruins by breaking through doors. This time, it is Namazu who helps the player to progress from room to room. The jackpot of this event, the Namazu companion, can be found in the last room.


PLEASE NOTE: The divine is NOT the jackpot for this event, the companion is. The divine can be won in the Golden Fleece during the event.

How does it work?


Players find themselves in a room with 4 doors. Namazu helps by breaking the doors the players clicks on, to advance to the next room. The number of hits needed to open the door is indicated at the bottom of the door.

There are several kinds of doors:

Doors with a gift: sometimes a gift is behind the door. Once the player has opened the door, the gift is won!

Doors with Nue Monsters: Just like Wargs in the last edition, Nue is an obstacle. Players have to wait the indicated time or complete the proposed objective to go further.

Doors with Samurai divine fragments

Doors with special offers: multiplies the number of Samurai fragments in Golden Fleece

Doors obstructed by rocks: they cannot be opened.


PLEASE NOTE: It is possible for the player to break all the doors of the room in order to win all of the gifts, for example. The player must click the arrow to advance to the next room and there is no way to go back, click with caution!


If the player finishes the contest it is possible to go back and win prizes not already collected HOWEVER... PRIZES CAN ONLY BE WON ONCE IN THIS EVENT. (This includes the companion).



The Namazu


The Namazu is the creature that helps the player get through all of the rooms. He uses energy when digging through doors, but he often needs time to rest! Once his energy gauge is empty, the player can either wait for the energy bar to refill over time or pay for a refill of 6 charges for 95 passes. Namazu's energy refills one every 3 hours and can be upgraded to refill 1 every hour.


The Improvements

The Namazu can be improved at any time by clicking on the 'improve' button (on the energy bar). On the improvements page, every upgrade can be seen along with the requirements to unlock them.

There are 3 types of improvements, depending on the player's strategy/preferred play-style. The player can choose from:


Charging Time - accelerates the battery regeneration

"Drilling Power" - increases the power of each drill (clicks)

Battery Capacity - increases the battery's capacity (convenient if the player logs in less often)

The Namazu can be improved 6 times using tools or passes: 2 improvements possible on each upgrade type. Players have to upgrade the Namazu progressively.



Jackpot

At the end of the contest, in the last room, players will win the Namazu Companion once the last door is broken. The jackpot IS NOT THE DIVINE

The Japanese Horses are divine horses. Each horse is inspired by an element from Japanese tradition.

Every day, choose one of the Omikujis they offer and discover your prize.

Samurai is the first Japanese Divine of the series. He will give you Omikujis every day when he wakes up.

Choose one of them and win a prize from among:

1 x Chronos' Timer
Another surprise
This horse cannot be sold.
You can increase his skills by using your Passes.

Is it bad I find Namazu creepy looking?

First the good news. The divine can be bought from the GF even while the promo is ongoing. Also the divine dust unlike before will be part of the random prizes so you will not have to choose the divine dust OR a prize.

The not so good news. The divine perk when you go to its page each day will come up with random "cards" very much like the "stars" we get that fly over our page during special events and you just have to try and click of one of these flying UFOs. So it is luck as to what you get. Top prize is the C. Timer and goes down to mash and carrots.

The bad news. Even though you can get the divine in the GF the amount of divine dust per GF ranges from 9 to 18 and to go from zero to 1000 takes 71/72 GFs. Now you can earn divine dust in the promo itself but in total that will only be about 665 and you will need to open GFs to get the rest.

Random thoughts. The companion is the actual prize but no info on what points it brings. So you really need to decide early if you want the divine ( need to open doors that have this as a prize) or the prizes.

The companion brings a +10 bonus to jumping

Divine Fragments


Divines fragments now replace the Divine Dust:


- We want to simplify and improve the system for unlucky players.

- When a special horse is hiding in a luck item, he brings divine fragments with him. If a player doesn’t have the chance to win the special horse on his first try, he gets divine fragments of this special horse.

- Players have to obtain 1000 divine fragments of a special horse to win this special horse. Each special horse have his own fragments. When a special horse is in a luck item, players win fragments of this special horse only.


NEW: The fragments stay!



- Players progression through their fragments gauge is not lost anymore. They keep they special horses fragments, even if the horse they wanted is not in the luck item anymore. Players will be able to continue their progression, with the gauge untouched, when the special horse is in a luck item again (any luck item).

- The special horses fragments go into a gauge that players can see under the special horse’s name on the Special Horse page.

NEW: Players can complete their gauges as much as they want

- From now on, players can complete this gauge over and over again. Even if they win the special horse associated in the luck item.

- When a player obtain 1000 special horse fragments, he obtains the divine associated and the gauge goes back to the beginning (never 0, a few fragments always stay).

- When a player obtain the divine in the luck item, the gauge also goes back to the beginning (still, never 0, there is always a few fragments left).

The gauge not disappearing when you get the divine before completely filling it is nice and all. But that fragmets stay afterwards seems rather pointless to me. Sure if the divine is offered a second time the "old" progress is nice to have but when does that happen? If they offer Thor this weekend he will probably not be available for the next few years again and until then it isn't unlikely the whole system changed again.

What I have learned in the 7 years I have been with Howrse is what may seem pointless at one point in time becomes important later. For all we know they may be listening to many of our requests to bring back some of the older divines that we either missed or as a new player never had the opportunity to get. We all complained about not being able to carry over divine dust. We also complained about not having a second opportunity once we got the divine as the divine dust option was removed, well now it will remain.

Considering some of the negative aspects of the recent changes, we at least should be happy that this is a positive change that hurts no one and can benefit many.

I never said it's a bad change. I am simply saying that the carrying over of dust/fragments the next time the divine is offered won't come into play often. Sure they're getting back the older divines sooner or later. But when they do they won't offer them in the near future again. And most people would try to get it "now" rather than hoping it may be offered again eventually, making that part of the change almost non-existent.
Unless of course they plan on releasing more than 2/3 divines each weekend which could upset quite a few people I'd imagine.

Super excited for a new divine series! Praying this means no more pastry divines, getting 2 each time is such a pain And I think the divine fragments are a great idea, although I agree they won't be much use unless the divines get offered more often.

Glad you agree with me.

when is the next mini game going to come and what will it be

or is that a secret for you to know and me to find out

the next promo should start on Thursday, not 100% guaranteed but it's usually the Thursday after the last promo ended. It'll be an egg decorating contest for easter, if you go back to page 422 of the thread about halfway down, you'll find more details on it