🌼 Mantis Shop + Guelta + Wallowing Pit 🌼
Mantis Shop
The Mantis Shop, Guelta, and Wallowing Pity all have a Tier 1, 2, and 3. As the tiers unlock, better rewards are available. Tiers unlock not through exploration, but through pooping and gifting.

In the Mantis Shop, you can exchange Scarab Beetles obtained through explore for decors, backgrounds, base apps, mane apps, and markings apps. All of the applicators unlock with Tier 3. Many of the bases are very popular as they're commonly used in combos. If you're looking for something to stock up on, base apps are phenomenal choice. Here's a couple big hitters

Arctic Circle

applies the Arctic base, a factor for the July-exclusive combo Pulsar

Frostbitten Skin

applies the Frostbitten base, a factor for Snowflake, Hoarfrost, and Rime

Aufeis Sheet

applies the Aufeis base, a factor for Snowflake, Hoarfrost, and Rime

Glacial Facial

applies the Glacial base, a factor for Snowflake, Hoarfrost, Qahir, and Rime

Spicy Ice

applies the Ice base, one of the most popular bases in game, a factor for Cairngorm, Elysian, Snowflake, Hoarfrost, and Rime

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Guelta


The Guelta is unlocked through gifting. Once per hour, you can drink from the Guelta for an energy boost. The amount of energy increases for each tier

Tier One of the Guelta grants +5% energy
Tier Two of the Guelta grants +10% energy
Tier Three of the Guelta grants +15% energy

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Wallowing Pit


The Wallowing Pit is unlocked through pooping. By digging at that Wallowing Pit, you can receive a random item. Higher tiers unlock better items, but none of the Walling Pity items are particularly valuable. The best tier is Tier 3, where you can receive a number of exclusive backgrounds

🌼 Albino Cub Challenge 🌼
Breeding Albinos
Here's the big headliner for the month! There are two aspects the Albino breeding challenge. A community goal, which I'll talk more about later, and a personal goal. For the personal goal, you need to breed just 3 Albinos. Cubs bred before the challenge begins and born after will still count towards the challenge. So how should you go about breeding Albinos? Well, if you've read the genetics groups section of The NCL Agenda's breeding mechanics guide, you should already have a good idea of the direction we're going. Albino is a Black Light Solid common. Now, this is actually really helpful, because it is super easy to restrict our breedings to only produce cubs that are Black Light Solid common. Here are all the bases in that genetics group



By breeding any of two of these bases together, we will only produce cubs that are Black Light Solid common. Now, you might have heard that your best chance at producing Albinos is pairing Albino x Albino. While Albino x Albino is an optimal pairing, you may have taken a look at Albino prices on TC and winced a little. Any Black Light Solid x Black Light Solid pairing will be just as effective at producing Albino as an Albino x Albino pairing. This is because special bases are the only bases capable of passing. All other bases, such as a common like Albino, simply control the genetics groups of the cubs. There are benefits to using Albinos, but they don't have to do with this aspect of the challenge. We'll get into that later

Now, if we do Black Light Solid common x Black Light Solid common (using only commons to remove the uncommons, rares, and specials from the pool), here's what we can get:



By restricting our bases so heavily, we've left ourselves only 5 options for bases. Assuming each base has an equal chance at appearing, that's a 20% chance of Albino per cub. You only have to hit that 3 times in a whole month, which is plenty doable with casual breeding

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Rewards
Yay! You now understand genetics groups better than the average Lioden player and are able to complete your challenge lickity split. So what do you get? I'll show you with pretty pictures


a background depending on your king's karma, shown in order of evil, neutral, good


hoarfrost marking app, rime marking app, and mistletoe marking app


sculpted ice armor set

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Community Rewards
Community rewards unlock once 2000 Albinos are bred site-wide. And what do we get? Combo madness! Several combos have their restrictions completely lifted and can be bred when a specific factor is bred to any other base, even if that base is not a factor. They also each have a boosted rate of 5% as opposed to the normal 2%. Here's each one:


Snowflake can bred from a pairing of Albino x any base. When I talked about the advantage of using Albinos earlier, this is it. If you breed your Albinos right at the beginning of December for the challenge, they will be back in heat in time to try for Snowflake as well


Hoarfrost can bred from a pairing of Interstellar x any base


Rime can bred from a pairing of Orchid x any base

Now, if you're a thinker, you may be wondering what happens if you breed say Albino to Orchid. Do they stack? Indeed they do! The game will roll both the 5% Snowflake and 5% Rime chance, giving you effectively a 10% chance at a combo. This is by far the best combo odds you can have anywhere ever, so I highly recommend breeding Albino, Interstellar, and Orchid together. Note that the boost additionally removes time restrictions, so don't worry about having to choose between day and night for Rime and Hoarfrost

🌼 Seasonal Specials 🌼
Snuhlions
Snuhlions are little creatures you can build on other players' dens. They offer no rewards or bonuses they're just fun little guys. Look how cute!



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Advent Calendar
Starting December 22nd, each day you login you can receive one item from the advent calendar. These are all decors and backgrounds exclusive the the calendar. You will have access to the calendar until the end of the month, but if you miss too many days, you may not be able to collect all the rewards. Here are this this year's rewards:



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Mistletoe
Had enough of combo breeding? Hopefully this answer is no because we've got another combo coming your way. Mistletoe is a December-locked combo that can only be bred from its factors in December. It is available to breed as soon as December starts and can be bred from these factors:

Citron/Moss Agate/Murk/Bushveld/Green
x
Cream/Cream Lighter/Cream Darker/Fawn

🌼 Gifting and Pooping 🌼
Gifting
Yay! Free things. During this month, you will have the option to gift other players SB, GB, or items. This can be done anonymously or non-anonymously. Gifts will be "buried" during the month until December 25th when they'll all be dug up for players to enjoy. Each gift you leave will award you +1 karma. If you manage to give 888 gifts during the month, you will receive a Festive base applicator. Note that you can only gift to a specific player twice a week, so you can't just send all those gifts to your side account. If you need to find players to gift, clicking this link will take you to a random player's den. This is also my formal warning that 888 gifts is a lot, which means players are going to be gifting common items like gems and stones and explore decor. Do not expect all the gifts you receive to be filled with MODs and crunchies. If I see any hemming and hawing about how you didn't get anything good I will spray you with my spray bottle. Remember that everything you are getting is completely free

Festive

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Pooping
Haha. Poop. If gifting isn't your strong suit, you can also poop in peoples' dens. Pooping doesn't give you anything, but it is necessary for unlocking tiers, and when gifts are opened on December 25th, you have a chance for a Stink Bug for every poop left in your den. Much like gifting, you can only poop on each players' den twice a week, and you will receive -1 karma for each poop