We hope you all have a happy New Year and that 2020 will be the beginning of a new decade full of serenity and positive changes.

The January event launches on January 1st at 00:00am LDT, and will end on January 31st at 11:59pm LDT. All unused event currency will be stored on your account until next year.

January Event - Great Hunger

Horrible rumours have been circulating for a few days, and sadly, they appear to be true - prey is scarce due to the snow-induced migrations, and the carnivores within the surrounding African lands are suffering from Great Hunger. With this month's event, you must all work together to create a great food resource for the hungriest lions to ensure your species will survive! Other animals are suffering too...! Maybe you can "help" them die out to have more food for yourself? Or you may prefer to save them...?

Event Areas
Food Pile: add all food that you can to the pile and unlock free hunger boosts for the rest of the month! You can consume food from the pile once per day per lion. Added in 2019, a "Feed All" option will appear within the Food Pile if you have the "Feed All, Play All" tool active on your account.

How can you help? You can deposit a carcass to the pile straight from your hoard or the food stack!

Note: This only affects your choices on what to do with your food and how you work as a community. It does not affect hunting, etc.

Carrion Shop: the second bar is boosted by killing event-exclusive scavengers, which unlocks a special shop that uses Silver Beetles as currency! Both bars have three tiers, however the Carrion Shop has four tiers in total.

Carrion Eaters and Carrion Shop
The "Carrion Eaters defeated" bar will raise based on your actions in Explore with all event-related explore encounters. As the tiers raise, more things will happen in Explore! Tiers 1, 2, and 3 will unlock more and more encounters.

Vultures, starving animals, and scavengers will be pesky annoyances, so you can decide if you're going to be evil and kill them, or be nice and rid them from these lands. Yes - some encounters do affect karma!

The Carrion Shop will open when you unlock this bar. Due to everyone having free food from the Food Pit, we realise you guys will be mostly donating and selling your food to earn SB.

This shop is different from other events - the prices are in Silver Beetles (SB). This is a great SB sink that will help deflate food prices, while not being mandatory to buy from. It contains more than just decors, including Lion Meat in Tier 3! Yay!

Remember - you can tear some carcasses into meat chunks!

Leather Beetles?
You will gain a Leather Beetle for almost every battle won from creatures during the Great Hunger event. As tiers open, there will be many new encounters in Explore that will let you collect Leather Beetles!

* Leather Beetles can be spent in a special shop called the Boneyard.
* The Boneyard will unlock when both bars reach Tier 1, and it will unlock further as both bars progress.
* The Boneyard is a little different from normal shops. It will let you Dig for 2% energy to find wares, or you can Donate bones and skulls (amusement items) to do the same! Every Dig/Donate will show you a few items that you can purchase for Leather Beetles.
* Items that you find will stay in the Boneyard so long as you do not Dig/Donate again. When you do, new items will replace the previous ones.
* Boneyard donating will take any bones and skulls from your hoard. If you want to save some for crafting, playing, trading, etc., we recommend to bury them, put them in trades, or use them up.
* Some items are exclusive to Digging or Donating - you can get different results from each!

2020 Changes
* Abyssinian Tawny Eagle was added last year but never appeared in the shop - this is now fixed!
* The Hyena Spots and Hyena Stripes applicators have been UPDATED with a "Noctis" recolour of their respective markings - these are available right away!
* The Carrion Shop will feature many new backgrounds and decors, as well as one new marking applicator.
* The Boneyard will feature a 2019 themed decor - Fox Skull & Squirrel Tail Headband.
* The Boneyard will feature at least 10 new backgrounds/decors.
* There are 3 new general event encounters.
* There are 4 new event encounters featuring our storyline NPC, Laharu. These will start to appear once you begin the novels! Thank you for voting for these to appear!

An extra 2020 update - due to new encounters with vultures, we've decided to update the Vulture Pack battle art!

Remember: the Boneyard has small chances of producing rare items, such as Giant Tortoise, Lion Meat, and Mutie On Demand: Primal!

January's Daily Quest and Story
This is a small addition to the event that focuses on daily quests in order to help you farm currency and fun rewards.

Launching on January 5th, a special NPC will appear in the EVENT tab to give you daily quests. We've decided to give January a tiny novel, similar to what Wenet had, with a few steps requiring a rollover in order to progress. If you join in the last days of January, you might not be able to finish the novel.

The story is separated into 3 stages, with each novel unlocking on specific dates: January 5th is the beginning, January 10th has a tiny expansion to dailies, and January 20th is the finale with a player's choice! We will try to make it so they unlock at rollover and not midnight, so there isn't any timezone discrimination. :D

The final choice will only affect the achievement, karma, and one reward you receive. If you're not sure what to do, please visit the official Wiki to find out what the best choice for you is!

The final choice will not stop daily quests!

Be sure to utilise our official Wiki to the fullest during this month!

2020 Changes
There will be a new reward at the end of the novel. Along with the usual Hyena Spots and Hyena Stripes applicators, you will get two additional applicators: Hyena Blots Heavy and Hyena Blots Scarce, inspired by the Spotted Hyena, but with a thicker pattern. They should blend well with Hyena Spots designs!

Once you finish the novel, you will also be rewarded with a new applicator entirely - The Hyena, which is a base applicator! Thank you Czzen for the suggestion!

The new Carrion Shop applicator this year contains Hyena Unders. This is a theme started by Mottled Vents. It's an inverted bottom marking of Hyena Spots.

Decors will slowly appear in the Item Catalogue and Lion Wardrobe as we add them to the game - let us rest a little in the New Year! The markings aren't available in the Lion Wardrobe yet - they will be uploaded a short time before the areas they appear in are ready. However, the base can be found in the Lion Wardrobe right away, and we want you to look closely at it, because...

A new POLL is out! It's an EXTRA poll, as we really want to see what your feedback is. We were unsure which colour category the Hyena base should be within. We've made the base, we compared the genetic charts, and we just couldn't make a decision. It looks so much like Red, but the overall feeling is very Cream... then again, it does have that dark Golden shade to it. So... maybe you guys can judge it better? You will have time to vote until January 10th!

By the way, we've updated the Boneyard art too! Be sure to clear your cache if you cannot see the new art.