Summer 2k13 guide


 * This is a event guide for Summer 2k13: What the Fluff?!. All the text here is copied verbatim from Gaia Online.

Purpose
Welcome to our What the Fluff event! This is our annual Summer event and a test run of our in-progress Pet system. Your goal for this event is to raise your own pet fluffs back to their happy and healthy states. To learn how best to care for your pet, keep reading for a full explanation of how things work.

Location
Towns 2

Hit the spoiler for a map of the event area and where everything can be found


 * Shortcut Links


 * - Getting a Fluff
 * - Buying Fluff Items
 * - Fluff Activities
 * - Game - Fluff Tac Toe
 * - Game - Fluff Dance
 * - Game - Fluff Run
 * - Forum Game - Fluff Treats
 * - Event Items & Achievements

How to Get a Fluff
To start taking care of a fluff you need to get one first. Since the gameplay occurs within Towns 2 and your home in Towns 2 Housing, you'll need to have your house set up in a neighborhood there before you get a fluff. For help setting up your home in Towns, check out this convenient user-made how-to.

After you've set up a house, it's time to get a fluff. You'll need to find Blaze in the West Market of Towns 2 and talk to her in order to start the dialog for getting a fluff. If you have the Soul of Fluff item, you'll first be asked if you'd like to redeem it for a Pegacorn fluff. If you choose to redeem it, your Soul of Fluff item will be removed from your inventory and the Pegacorn fluff will be given to you. If you choose not to redeem it or if you don't have a Soul of Fluff, you'll be offered the chance to get one of the other 5 fluffs (Honey, Cupcake, Radioactive, Wyvern, or Citrus).

Fluff Stats
Expand spoiler for a view of the fluff stats menu in Towns 2

Represented by the plus sign in the menu, health measures how healthy your fluff currently is. A fluff's health will degrade naturally and slowly over time so you'll need to care for it to keep its health up. Currently, there are two ways to increase your health. The first is to use items purchased from Blaze (more on item use later later) and the second is to give your fluff a bath. The healthier your fluff is, the better it will do in games and activities you use it for. Be careful though, if your fluff's health gets too low it will go back to your house until you can raise its health again.
 * Health

Represented by the lightning bolt, energy determines whether your fluff wants to play a game or activity. Playing games and walking around Towns 2 with your fluff will use up its energy as you go along. Once the energy is low enough, your fluff won't want to play with you anymore and will go back to your home. To replenish your fluff's energy, you need to let it sleep. You can also purchase energy boosts from Blaze, just like food for health.
 * Energy

Represented by the smiley face, your fluff's happiness is a representation of all of the games and activities you play with your fluff. Each time you play a game or do an activity with your fluff, it will gain a bit of happiness so the more you play with your fluff, the happier it will get. Additionally, the healthier your fluff is, the happier it will be when you play with it. So if your fluff has full health, it will actually become happier than if it was low on health. A fluff's happiness is a rolling 24-hour window though so if you don't play with it often enough, its happiness will eventually start to go down.
 * Happiness

Represented by the heart, your fluff's loyalty is basically a cumulative measure of your fluff's happiness. Each day, your fluff's happiness is converted and added into a loyalty counter. This means that for each day your fluff is happy, it will become a bit more loyal to you. The loyalty won't go down though so just keep coming back to make it happy and it will always be loyal to you.
 * Loyalty

Fluff Raising Goal
The goal for raising your fluff is to bring its loyalty all the way up so you can turn it back into Blaze. Once you turn it in, talk to Blaze again to get another fluff to raise (same process as the first time around). The fluff you just raised will be replaced with the new one and you'll need to do the same things to raise it back up to maximum loyalty as well. You will not get to keep the fluffs you raise during the event but if you redeem a fully loyal Pegacorn Fluff with Blaze, you will get a Pegacorn Pet item that will be used as an actual pet in the full Pet system launch.

Buying Items for your Fluff
In order to help counteract health degradation and to speed up energy recovery, Blaze has several items available for purchase once you get your fluff from her. To purchase one of these items you just have to go up and talk to her again with your fluff in tow. The items she has for sale are below.

User Image
 * Name: Fluff Food: Regular Marshmallows
 * Cost: 250 Gold
 * Effect: Recovers 50% of your fluff's total base health
 * Marketplace link

User Image
 * Name: Fluff Food: Chocolate Marshmallows
 * Cost: 25 Gaia Cash
 * Effect: Recovers 100% of your fluff's total base health
 * Marketplace link

User Image
 * Name: Fluff Food: ZAP Energy Bar
 * Cost: 25 Gaia Cash
 * Effect: Recovers 100% of your fluff's total base energy
 * Marketplace link

Daily Free Item
Thanks to our sponsor, Virtual Piggy, you can get a free item every day of the event to help your fluff out some more. The details for where to get it and what it does are below.

User Image
 * Name: Fluff Food: Virtual Piggy Strawberry Marshmallows
 * Effect: Recovers 66% of your fluff's total base health
 * Where to get it: Available on the event landing page (link)

Expand for visual guide of where to get it

Activities
To recover your fluff's health, you can feed it food that you purchase from Blaze. To do this simply click on the apple icon in your fluff's stats menu and then select the food you'd like to use.
 * Feeding

Expand to see the visuals

Giving your fluff a bath every now and then also helps to recover its health. To bathe it, just click the soap icon in your fluff's stats menu.
 * Bathing

Expand to see the visual

If you spend a lot of time playing with your fluff, its energy will run out. In order to recover that energy, you just need to let it take nap and sleep a bit. The longer you let it sleep, the more energy it will recover.
 * Sleeping

Expand to see the visual

Walking around with your fluff will allow it to gain happiness as it uses up energy. Any time your fluff is sleeping, in your home, or playing a game it isn't walking.
 * Walking

Your fluff comes prenamed but you can change its name at any time. To do this, just double click on its name in the fluff stats menu. Keep in mind that the same naming restrictions apply to fluffs as they do to usernames, aside from the need to have a unique name. This means no naughty names. We /will/ rename your fluff or take it away if you decide to make your fluff break these rules.
 * Naming

Expand to see the visual

Fluff-Tac-Toe
The age-old game of Tic-Tac-Toe is back with a fluffy twist. In this game, you challenge another user to a game and make your moves in an attempt to get 3 in a row using your fluffs. To challenge someone, just click on their fluff and click the little Tic-Tac-Toe board icon in their stats menu. Finishing a game of Fluff-Tac-Toe will take a small amount of your fluff's energy and will reward you with happiness. Winning gives you the most happiness, losing gives you the least, and drawing gives both player an equal median amount.

Click for graphics

Fluff Dance
Back by popular demand, our take on the popular rhythm dancing game is here, now featuring your fluffs! To play, just click the dancing icon in the West Beach area of Towns 2. Songs start every 3 minutes so you'll have to wait for the next song if you join the game halfway through. The game controls are simple, just hit the corresponding arrow key as it flashes across the middle of the bar at the bottom of the screen. Your goal is to hit as many arrows as possible. Once the song is finished, energy is deducted from your fluff and it is awarded happiness based on the percentage of notes that you hit (higher percentages give more happiness).

Expand for visuals

Fluff Run
Our last game is the Fluff Run and to play it, just head over near Gambino Mansion and click on the racing icon. Your fluff is on the run and it's up to you to keep him from getting caught. As your fluff moves from flag to flag, you need to follow it and make sure that no police fluffs run into it by feeding the police fluffs a doughnut. Careful though, you only have a limited number of doughnuts at the start so be sure to use them conservatively and keep your eyes open for more just sitting around the track to help you out. If you fail to protect your fluff, it will lose a bit of health each time one of the police fluffs runs into it. Lose all of your fluff's health and it'll be sent back to your home and the race will be over. If you manage to finish the race though, your fluff will be rewarded with the happiness that comes from successfully evading police! (Note: We don't actually encourage evading police. If they're coming after you then it's probably for a good reason and you should just suck it up and take what's coming to you.)

Expand to see the visuals

Give Treats - Forum Event
In order to help your fellow users care for their fluffs, you can visit the What the Fluff event forum (hint, it's the forum you're reading this in) and click the little "Give Treat" button underneath a user's avatar. Doing this will give the receiving user either a little health or a little energy (or both!) depending on which their fluff needs the most currently. If the user's button is grayed out and unable to be clicked then you can hover your mouse over the button to see the reason why they can't receive more treats. You can give out unlimited numbers of treats but you can only receive 25 treats yourself each day so be sure to maximize the use of this free boost!

Expand for visuals

Items
Item 1 User Image
 * Name: What the Fluff Balloon
 * How to get it: Redeem your first fluff with Blaze
 * Marketplace Link

Item 2 User Image
 * Name: What the Fluff Participation Shirt
 * How to get: Play 5 games with your fluff
 * Marketplace Link

Item 3 User Image
 * Name: What the Fluff Pet
 * How to get: Raise and redeem 3 fluffs with Blaze
 * Marketplace Link

Item 4 User Image
 * Name: Pegacorn Fluff Pet*
 * How to get: Redeem a Pegacorn fluff with Blaze
 * Marketplace Link


 * This item will function as an actual pet in the full launch of the Gaia Pets system

Achievements
Achievement 1 User Image
 * Name: Pet Lover
 * How to get: Raise a fluff's happiness to 100%
 * Titles: Animal, Lover

Achievement 2 User Image
 * Name: Pet Trainer
 * How to get: Play 15 games with your fluff
 * Titles: Playful, Trainer

Achievement 3 User Image
 * Name: Fluff Rehab
 * How to get: Raise and turn in 5 fluffs to Blaze
 * Titles: Fluffy, Vet

Wing Sticker
Grab your free wing sticker each day on the event landing page right above the "Play Now" button.

Expand for visual

Tree House Items
User Image
 * Name: What the Fluff Feed
 * Cost: 5 Wing Stickers
 * Link to Treehouse Store

User Image
 * Name: What the Fluff Bike
 * Cost: 40 Wing Stickers
 * Link to Treehouse Store