Hello, Deer

Happy 2024! Our snowless stretch has continued here, and we're even getting a bit of sunshine on the first day of this new year. Hopefully, it's a sign of a good things ahead!

In case we needed any more reminders of which season it really is, we've been seeing plenty of virtual snow on Star Stable. The winter festival quest line had us searching for yetis with Scott Buttergood. It all started when a yeti showed up in the background of a photograph Clara snapped of an arctic fox. We did eventually find a small yeti and proceeded to pelt each other with snowballs. 

Later on, Clara entered this ominous dark cave alone to save some arctic fox kits.

It looked like a yeti lair, but no yetis inside. She picked up the little foxes and got out of there.

The dramatic confrontation with the big yeti came outside.

Fortunately, once everybody calmed down, they could talk things out.

...and that's what they did. The arctic fox kits were relocated to a cave in the Winter Village, where Clara built nests for them. 

We love the little fox! <3

We've been calling her Icy.

Star Stable made restoring the winter magic easier partway through by making each gathered snowflake worth several points rather than just one. With that tweak, we had no trouble reaching the 18,000 goal. The gifts did get better the closer we got to the goal, too: increasing amounts of Jorvik shillings, increasing amounts of experience points for Artie, and an entire matching set of tack and clothing. 

We're still gathering snowflakes, and the counter keeps counting up, but there doesn't seem to be any further rewards. 

On Friday, after we had claimed the free 300 star coins Star Stable offered as a year end gift (thank you!) we logged on to a deserted Moorland Stable area - very strange. When we arrived at the Winter Village and it was totally deserted as well, then we were sure something was up.

We spent about 2 hours playing, teleporting several times, and no other players ever showed up. I think they were there but just invisible/inaccessible to us, because all the chats were silent, but we did get a notification of a buddy logging in/out.

Coincidentally, when we approached our first light beacon, we were given the option of having a deer follow us around. We agreed, of course, and the deer stuck doggedly to Artie for the rest of our session. Hence, nobody got lonely!

He stayed with us while performing all our tasks in the winter village, like rounding up and guiding the gingerbread followers:

slipping and sliding our way through the races:

and saving the fox kits from the elves:

We thought he would disappear when we left the Winter Village, so we said our goodbyes here:

But no, he came with us back to Moorland! Here we are in the stable, complete with decorations and new NPC horses.

He accompanied us as we competed:

as we surveyed the eerily empty stable grounds:

and as we watched to see what would happen when the countdown clock reached zero (absolutely nothing. It just started over at 60:00):

You can't see the deer here, but he was still around. I had to include this screenshot because our Christmas gift from Star Stable, a mini yeti named Betty, was randomly levitating like the many lanterns we had just sent up.

Here we are spending the bulk of the winter tokens we had amassed, while Artie communed with the deer. We didn't have nearly enough to redeem everything we would've liked, but we carefully picked our favorites.  

And here's Clara hugging one of the wild Brinicles, which roam the area like the other magical winter horses. We're so glad we will have one of our own after the winter festival ends. <3

It was fun to have the world "all to ourselves" for a bit, but we would find it lonely long-term. So, we were glad when everything was back to normal on our next log in!