Hi, just a quick note to mention that I’ll be talking to Community for F# on the 14th May at 11AM PDT about our experience of building an MMORPG, some of the challenges we face along the way and how F# helps us solve some of these problems.
You can register for the event here.
Hope to see you there!
p.s. here is some of the things that have been happening in Here Be Monsters so far, feel free to come join us in the game 
It’s been 2 weeks since we released any new content into the world of Here Be Monsters and for our trappers that no doubt feels like an eternity! So with great pride, I’d like to tell you that the wait is over and that you have plenty to look forward to!!
A series of new quests are now available, come speak to mystics Jessica and Miranda at the Stonehenge to kick off a chain of quests which leads to your encounter of a fearsome and powerful ruby dragon by the name of Spyrion who reveals to you the whereabouts of the missing trapper captain Bashak and that she is in urgent need for assistance from you!
Norris, the gnome who helped you out at the start of your journey, also needs some help to fend off Spyrion’s army of Goblins who are causing havoc in the gnomish homeland. And surprise surprise, the Pixies are up to no good again, seriously, those guys…
Along the line you will also receive two powerful new traps – the Ring of Runes and the Thunderdome which you need to reassemble in order to capture the great Chimera.
By popular demand from our players, you can now change the appearance of your ‘folk’ (your avatar in the game) at a small price by bringing up the change profile dialogue and choosing ‘the ‘Change Appearance’ option:
We have a new chat system which allows for easier Spot and Buddy chat, and a global chat feature is also in the pipeline for the near future!
We have also revamped the crafting UI which now has a unified interface for working with any building that can be used for crafting — workshops, laboratories, windmills, etc.
Also, when you click the ‘Add Success Potions’ button you no longer have to add success potions manually, instead we’ll intelligently apply as many success rate potions as necessary from (both your backpack and barns) to raise the success rate of your crafting task to 100%:
You and your buddies’ actual homes are now shown on the map, so if you have a nice and big mansion in your homestead it’ll be immediately visible and on the map, not a bad way to show off the prowess of your homestead to your friends!
Several new achievements that are tied to the new quests have also been added, such as the Guardian of Stonehenge achievement below,
Wow, that’s it! Quite a big change this week, and we have even more exciting improvements lined up for you for the next week or so too, keep your eyes peeled and watch this space!!
To celebrate the arrival of a new year, we have launched a number of new years in Here Be Monsters.
First off, we have introduced a new Trophy system into the game which gives you milestones to aim for as you’re freely exploring the game, not to mention a tidy bit of bonus (gold, notes, or in some cases, rare items). You can access the achievements screen via the player profile screen and you’ll see a high-level overview of your current progress.
Trophies are organized into a number of categories, each covers an area of gameplay, e.g. trapping, cooking, and so on. Some trophies, such as ‘Pretty in Pink’ , requires you to collect a number of items, whilst others might require you to catch a number of monsters or journey a certain distance as you travel around the world.
The trophies also vary greatly in difficulty too, there are trophies that require you to catch thousands of fish or travel around the world multiple times to complete!
It’s normally a rather painful exercise to build fences to decorate your homestead because you have to build them one at a time and make sure they’re aligned correctly and facing the right way.
To make life easier for our dedicated decorators we have introduced new ‘automatic’ fences which lets you use click and drag to build perfectly aligned fences that will also bend around the corners.
We have added new decorations so that you have even more options when it comes to customizing your homestead to your liking, here’s just some of the new floral decorations:
And that’s it, plenty of new things to do in the game to keep you busy!
For anyone who’s interested in working in a fast-paced but relaxed environment, we’re actively looking for talented backend (C# and/or F#) and frontend (Flash or iOS) developers to join our team, feel free to get in touch with me and drop me your CV at theburningmonk@gmail.com.
It’s that time of the year again and here in the world of Here Be Monsters things are getting interesting too.
From 17th December to new years day, as you come into the game every day you’ll get a +15 luck (which significantly boosts your chance of catching tough monsters) as well as limited editions of Frost Faye wishing coin which you can throw into the wishing well in towns for special items.
For the next fortnight only, you will be able to visit Santa’s Grotto, home of Santa Claus and his trusted Elves!
A number of new items and quests are available in the game, without giving away too much spoilers, the spread of corruption has continued and even some of Santa’s little helpers have fallen prey to the corruption, causing major disruption to the work to ensure everyone gets their Xmas gift on time!
As a member of the Ministry of Monsters, you’ll help trap and cure as many Santa’s Gnomes as you can and return them back to work. Elvis, Santa’s right-hand Elf, also has a number of errands for you too, so expect to be busy over the next two weeks!
So what are you waiting for? Come and join in on the fun!
Another Thursday had gone by and yet another slot has been added to JackpotJoy Slots, this time it’s a grizzly themed 50-line slot called Bear Cubs!
The main slots game is pretty straight forward, albeit being 50-lines instead of the typical 25, where things really become interesting is the bonus feature. When you land 3, 4 or 5 bonus symbols on the reels you’ll trigger the Golden Cub Spins bonus game with 5, 8 or 12 free spins respectively.
At the start of the bonus game the player has to choose one of the three grizzlies as his golden cub, and over the course of the bonus game any time a Wild symbol or the golden cub’s symbol lands on the reels they’ll be locked in place for the reminder of the bonus game and act as Wilds.
The video below will hopefully give you a pretty good idea of how the bonus game works and as you can see, it’s possible to amass a massive win from the bonus game, even on a small wager!
