Today, there are two celebrations in life for our admins. Happy birthday and happy anniversary to them, and happy update day to our players!

Optimisation Updates!

Today's update brings another installment of the interface improvement initiative we started earlier this year. Several areas of the site have received face lifts to boost responsiveness as well as create a more mobile friendly experience.

The majority of the update is a move to more streamlined lion and item selection. Trade Creation, Trade Offers, Raffle Creation, and Transfers now offer searchable, more informative selection boxes. They are designed to render faster on mobile (and desktop) devices, as well as making the job of selecting multiple things at once easier. No more accidentally resetting your raffle ticket item prices! And hopefully no more waiting minutes for your Trade Offer page to load!

Below are some sample screenshots of the various pages:

Trade Creation

You can quickly choose a friend from the dropdown list if you're trying to create a private trade for them. The "Buyout Options" fields are now also smarter and will let you know if you forgot to set a buyout price, and only require you to set a "Buyout Price" type if you enter both currencies.

Along with the smarter fields, creating a trade with a buyout price will now prompt you to confirm your choice. If you set a buyout price in SB that is lower than the GB buyout price, you will get an extra notice in the prompt.

Raffle Creation

When choosing items for tickets, you can now hide "Custom Decors" from the list.

SB and GB prize bundles are now shown along with their total value, making it easier to see what you're raffling off at a quick glance.

This page too will prompt you to confirm that you wish to create the raffle.

Transfers

Transferring assets also features the friends list dropdown to make transferring to your closest allies quick and easy. You'll also notice the currency fields have shiny icons now, and will try to keep you from entering extra characters and letters.

Marking Censor

Finally, the marking censor page has received an updated marking selection box. It gives you the ability to quickly see which markings you have blocked, which you have unblocked, and a single button to update your settings in one click.

As always, we'll be keeping an eye out for any browser issues that may crop up and try to take care of those as quickly as possible to ensure a smooth transition.

New Battle Beetles!

There's a small enrichment for both event shops for Battle Beetles stuff!

In the Preservers shop, you can buy a Namibian dew-collecting beetle: Stenocara gracilipes.



In the Destroyers shop, you can buy the Giant Deathstalker scorpion: beetle nemesis Parabuthus transvaalicus.



But, that's not all! There's also a new uncommon beetle species you can find in Explore: Prosopocoilus savagei! This fiesty stag beetle displays sexual dimorphism.

More Reptile Roundup Rewards!

We promised to update the older Reptile Roundup levels with new rewards. Here we are with a new batch!

The default level Rocky Wetlands has received some new rewards.

Greenhouse Slug 30 points	Knob-Billed Duck 35 points	Pond Water-Crowfoot 40 points	Nangawo 60 points
Water Chevrotain 80 points

The Swamp level, unlocked by reaching a total of 2000 points earned in Reptile Roundup, has also been fluffed up with new stuff!

African Banana Slug 30 points	Robust Marsh Orchid 35 points	African Pygmy Goose 40 points	Nile Trumpet 60 points
African Darter 80 points

Craftable Things!

We have some fancy recipes for craftable applicators. Thank you for your recent poll votes!

Mane Applicator: Bloodbath 100x Bloodbath

Mane Applicator: Hyena 100x Hyena Lands

Eye Applicator: Arid 30x Dry Palm Leaf, 50x Locust Wing, 20x Dream Root

The Arid eye colour is inspired by the current August event and next month's September event, as well as the current real-time heatwave (if you can call it an inspiration...). It can be crafted year-round!
Eye Genetics: 40% Arid, 20% Earth, 20% Sandy, 5% Brown, 5% Tan, 5% Bronze, 5% Yellow.

We also have new recipes for new decors!

Eurasian Spoonbill 30x Spoonbill Feathers

Croaking Branches 30x Common Raven [1]

New Base!

We have decided to implement a new combo base called Smog, from the highly upvoted suggestion here. Thank you, 🌾 honey | g1 fringe (#32043)!

As per the suggestion, it's a recolour of Cloudburst, with a dry season breeding requirement! What a perfect time to try it out.

Smog's genetics follow Cloudburst's trend: Cream Medium Countershaded Common. Its factors are as follows.
Factor 1: Albino
Factor 2: Vanilla, Dark Vanilla, Blonde

Art and Coding Fixes and Updates

* The [GE - Andalusia] Mouflon decor now displays on Teen Female stage.
* The Water Chevrotain decor was uploaded with the incorrect image and has been fixed for all stages.
* Male Primal (Ferus) lions were missing their mane lineart. This has been fixed.
* Creating a trade now provides you with a link to the trade within its success message.
* Buried items can no longer be used as raffle prizes.
* Players can no longer enter their own raffles through their linked accounts.
* The markings system received a major overhaul in the backend to alleviate some of the issues that had been cropping up as of late. The issue of some lions having their markings temporarily displaced has been fixed. In addition, the issue of freezing a lion causing their markings to disappear has also been fixed.
* Fixed an issue where browser translators would cause an error when tempting a lion from the Giving Tree.

Raffle Lioness

Congrats Ocean (#211451)! You have won last week's Pearl lady, woo!
A new Olive lady with Feline 9 Black, Dim Black, and the FIRST EVER Lake Tanganyika background is up for impressing in the Special Lioness area linked here!

Tags!
Shad has added 21 new tags this month in the August, Breeding, July, and Miscellaneous ➜ Landscapes categories! It may not be July anymore, but they couldn't resist giving the Vredefort Crater quest a little love in the tag department.

Poll Results - Everyone is hot, the heat sucks, someone please extinguish the sun thank you very much.

NEW POLL - You guys know about the existing combo mane colours, right? Cairngorm, Citrine, Elysian, Madagascar, and Qahir? Well, how do you feel about even more of them? Let us know your thoughts in this week's poll!

Next Update: Community Update - August 21st!
Next Development Update: September 11th!!