Confibula is a big place and there's plenty of places to explore! You can send your phonies out into the world and see what they discover.
To do this, you'll need to create a piece of art of your phony foraging in a distinct biome in the world. It's important that it reflects a specific place, because the loot you'll earn and the phonies you'll meet will be different in each biome.
The requirements for a foraging piece are:
- Fullbody
- Colored
- Featuring a background in one of Confibula's biomes (See World for more info) and not featuring any organisms that don't live on Confibula
- Including all participating phonies (for phonies in schools)
- Including all foraging aid items and buddies (if used)
Foraging art can be double dipped with foraging and one other activity, should the piece meet the requirements for both activities. You could submit art for breeding and if it takes place in a specific biome it could also count for foraging, though if you wanted to use that piece of art to school with as well, you wouldn't be able to do that.
A piece of art is only valid for one foraging roll, unless items which add additional rolls are included in the art piece.
The loot for foraging goes directly to the person who owns the phony depicted, regardless of who drew the piece. If you want to use someone else's phony to forage and get the loot, you could ask them to send you the loot gained after the forage.
Some examples of foraging pieces:
After you've got that piece of art, head to the journal on the DA group to fill in this form to make it official. After a little while, one of our staff will get back to you and roll what loot your phony found, and if they've encountered another phony.
- ML Entry:
- Supporting ML Entries:
- Biome:
- Art:
- Items/Buddies:
Foraging Center
However, foraging sessions aren't always safe. You may find items that might poison your phony, or meet a phony that isn't too keen on making buddies. You might get hurt exploring, or catch an illness going around the phony community.
So, what happens if you do meet a phony? This is where your phony's stats come into play. The first stat used is the Perception stat which determines who notices who first. Phonies with poor vision will have lower perception, so be careful about what traits your phony has. If your phony's perception stat is higher, your phony will get to decide what to do. If the other phony's perception stat is higher, the other phony will spot your phony first. What happens next is determined by the other stats.
- Strength is used in physical altercations. Winning a fight will result in a handsome reward of pebbles, while losing one will get your phony injured. Regardless of who wins, you might have a chance at winning a scarring voucher for your phony after a battle.
- Charisma is used in courtship displays. If your phony puts on an interesting show, you'll be able to mate with the phony you encounter, or vice versa. If not, you don't lose much except for the opportunity to breed.
- Speed is used for hightailing it out of there! You may run into a phony with much higher stats than yours which could injure your phony, or you might bump into a phony carrying a nasty illness. Succeeding at an escape will end the encounter, while losing will pass the turn over to the opposing phony, and they'll get to choose what to do.
Encounters are rolled by rolling a 20-sided die and adding the respective stat number to the value rolled. This is then done with the other phony's stats, and whoever achieved the highest number will win the encounter.
While foraging can be dangerous, there's strength in numbers. Phonies who school together will get as many chances at winning an encounter as there are members. If one phony loses the encounter, the next member will give it a shot, and so on.
Buffs and Debuffs
You can get injured while foraging, and you can also forage while injured. When foraging as a school, if your school is coordinated well, you'll get higher quality loot! You can get up to 2 buffs for foraging, by sharing 2 or more genes, color or breed with the other school members.
Injuries, illnesses or other ailments obtained while foraging will significantly impair the quality of loot your phony will get in the future, so it's important to treat them when they happen. You can get a maximum of 2 injuries, 2 poisons and one infectious debuff all at once, but the loot quality bottoms out after 2 of any of these debuffs.
So, this is the range of roll types you can get.
There are also items which give you extra rolls. The only one we have is the "Living Snowflake" which gives you an extra roll one time (with the same buff/debuff level the phony has), but we have plans to add more in the future with other parameters.
Specifics on schooling
What happens when a school goes foraging? (This list is available on the schooling page as well) This list is not exhaustive. There's a lot of possible situations at play with schools and we may run into new problems as people play the game, which will require more of these guidelines to be set.
- The party leader (whoever is the first ML linked) and their owner is the one who receives the loot.
- If a breeding slot is won, it goes to the party leader.
- If the party leader loses an encounter, they will get injured and there will be as many rerolls as there are school members. If the supporting members lose the encounter too, only the leader will sustain injuries.
- If the school encounters an infectious phony, any phony who was required to roll against the NPC will also become infectious. (This may be subject to change, especially depending on the outcome of the vote above is since they're both about debuffs.)