You're right, BeastEon will be quite different, though it will be close to BeastKeeper meant to be initially :)

Yes, there will be a visual tutorial. And, of course, we will answer all the questions and compile a FAQ basing on those questions.

There won't be Kami, at least as playable pets. They don't quite fit into the new concept because there's no pet collectible aspect. But there will be different kind of events and quests besides the community eon quest. Maybe some of them will involve special pets. There are no designed events yet, we're still working on the game engine.

Yes, deviant gryphons will be released this year. No, we do not plan to make an exhibition for them, but there will be a way to get a few starter deviants.

Everything sounds so interesting and I love the new artwork for the game, especially the dragons. I can't wait to see what the finished game looks like :)

It's a shame that this game will no longer have kami events and creature updates. As a breeder and collector of deviants and kami's, I will miss that. However, this is the best online game I have ever played and from the sounds of it, beasteon is going to be even better. 

Are there only going to be 8 different hopper colours or will there be more?

I do have a couple more questions about beasteon though; what will player interaction involve? A lot of interaction on beastkeeper is through breeding, trading, selling, etc. 

And assuming there is a currency, how will players get it and what could it be used for?

Sorry for the bombardment of questions and thanks again :)

Came up with a bunch of new questions; hope I'm not being too pesky.

Will there be a crowdfunding phase, like a Kickstarter (i.e., a way for me to throw money at this project and possibly get exclusive goodies in return)? 

Since the three factions were mentioned as part of the lore, will a player's political alignment have any impact on the gameplay?

Roughly how long is it expected to take for a player to arrange a marriage between two beasts, from the moment the beasts first meet each other to the point where they are able to have children? 

Earlier you mentioned rare beasts being able to "become legendary". How would this occur, and what benefits would a beast gain by achieving this?

Are beasts able to be sold or traded between players? (I realize this was confirmed as "yes" a few pages back, but I sort of wonder how this fits into the idea of beasts being sentient and having free will and all.)

Will players be able to sell items to each other through an Auction House feature like that currently implemented in Beastkeeper, or will all sales go through the shops run by the beasts? (A related question, do beast-run stores actually provide a service, or are they just establishments for other beasts to visit?)

How will adventuring parties be dropped into the explorable world? What I mean is, if the world is infinitely large, there seems to be very little chance of two parties ever encountering each other.

Not a question, but really hoping for there to be a detailed post about the genetics system in the near future, because I'm curious to know how that will work, and what kinds of skills, perks, and characteristics will be available. 

I do have a couple more questions about beasteon though; what will player interaction involve? A lot of interaction on beastkeeper is through breeding, trading, selling, etc.

The player interactions will be mostly based on the trading and competitions.

BeastKeeper experience showed us that players don't like direct confrontation, and it causes a lot of negativity. So PvP layer will be built on private challenges and public competitions (kind of like exhibitions here worked) where each of the competitors tries to prove that they can perform a certain task better.

Trading is kind of self-explanatory and involves selling and buying all types of things.

And assuming there is a currency, how will players get it and what could it be used for?

The income will come from the dynamic trade quests in the explorable world and beast stores (NPCs will buy items there too). You can also get a one-time payment when you dismiss a beast from your retinue and send it to serve in your manor as a commoner.

The expenses include beast upkeep (pocket money that you give your beasts so they can go somewhere and buy food, items, and services that they want) and costs for crafting materials and consumable items sold by NPC.

Of course, there also will be a regular money exchange between players through trading.

Will there be a crowdfunding phase, like a Kickstarter (i.e., a way for me to throw money at this project and possibly get exclusive goodies in return)? 

Unfortunately, this is impossible from the legal point of view in our country. 

Since the three factions were mentioned as part of the lore, will a player's political alignment have any impact on the gameplay?

Yes. Right now we can't tell if the political system will be developed at the moment of the first launch, but if not then it will be one of the first major updates. We plan to have a dynamic quest system, and some of those dynamic quests will be based on the political preferences.

Roughly how long is it expected to take for a player to arrange a marriage between two beasts, from the moment the beasts first meet each other to the point where they are able to have children?

This depends on both beasts and may vary from "almost instantly" to "never". A beast can be unsociable or, on the contrary, gregarious and sympathetic. Beasts may have or may have not same interests and preferences. The may or may not like each other in terms of appearance. Every little thing plays its role.

Earlier you mentioned rare beasts being able to "become legendary". How would this occur, and what benefits would a beast gain by achieving this?

Legendary beasts are extraordinary and extremely rare, and their deeds are such as well. There won't be some type of quest line or instructions how to achieve a legendary status. A beast must do something that will get in the history books. For example, that may be the first in the world history destruction of a very dangerous and powerful monster, creation of a new artistic genre and a picture similar to Mona Lisa, finding a cure for plague and stopping the epidemic, or something like that. The system will check how big was the impact of the beast's deeds on the world and decide if a particular deed or a chain of deeds are enough for a legendary status.

The benefits would be a unique perk and a possibility to assign a completely custom art that doesn't use the game bases.

Are beasts able to be sold or traded between players? (I realize this was confirmed as "yes" a few pages back, but I sort of wonder how this fits into the idea of beasts being sentient and having free will and all.)

Yes, the beasts can be traded between players, and yes, they are sentient. So don't expect that your beast will be excited when you sell it. Beast trading is a heritage of the times when they were not so intelligent. You still can arrange a trade with another Beastlord, but your beast will be offended and its attitude to you will drop significantly. So if you decide to buy it back, you'll have to do a lot of hard work to restore the trust and become an authority for it again. 

Will players be able to sell items to each other through an Auction House feature like that currently implemented in Beastkeeper, or will all sales go through the shops run by the beasts? (A related question, do beast-run stores actually provide a service, or are they just establishments for other beasts to visit?)

There will be an auction house as well, and it will be possible to sell all types of items there including those that beasts can't produce and sell in their shops. But in general the auction house will be an aggregator with a search engine for beast shops, similar to our real-life Amazon or Ebay where a lot of independent sellers sell their goods. It's hard to find a certain item or service and compare the prices if you need to search through hundreds of the beast shops, but having all the offers in one place make it a lot easier. At the same time, beast stores will be establishments that other beasts visit to satisfy their needs and that generate a certain income if managed properly.

How will adventuring parties be dropped into the explorable world? What I mean is, if the world is infinitely large, there seems to be very little chance of two parties ever encountering each other.

There will be fixed spawning points. Obviously, the further you go from the start the less is the chance to meet another party. But except rare specific cases, meeting someone doesn't result in anything except the knowledge that you're not alone here. 

Not a question, but really hoping for there to be a detailed post about the genetics system in the near future, because I'm curious to know how that will work, and what kinds of skills, perks, and characteristics will be available.

There are a few other articles that need to be written before that. Just listing the personal features of a beast won't shed any light on the gameplay until we can show what that "one free concetration per challenge" or "passes the creativity stages faster" mean.

Darn, BeastEon sounds so intriguing, and I'm not even a gamer. x) Only joined BK out of curiosity, but found it to be surprisingly creative. Clearly you have a different idea of building a fantasy world than the usual generic "gritty medieval kingdom, swords, castles, elves, dragons, blood, WAR!" stuff which has been done a million times already. So I'm following BE's development with interest.

I don't have accounts on Tumblr or Youtube, and don't want to bombard you with too many questions on DA (it's BronzeHalo here) so will comment here instead.

1. The procedural world from the video looks amazing! The tile artist did a great job with quality and variety of objects scattered around. It's far superior to many iso games which repeat the same bland grass and trees infinitely. Now they look like cardboard compared to this.

2. Quick question about beasts. Will they be immortal? It's a funny idea, an ancient beast walking around with their great-great... (insert 60 generations here) grand-child. Beastopia might get crowded too, unless it magically expands in size.

3. Question about lore/culture. What kind of power does a beastlord have over beasts? It sounds like humans can "sell" beasts, and dictate whether they can marry, or raise their own offspring. What's preventing an angry beast from ignoring or even fighting the human? Some kind of magic hold, or law, or...

4. How much control might we have over the design (coat) of a beast? For example we begin and are randomly assigned a dark brown gryphon with black leopard spots, but we would prefer something that looks a bit more colourful... not sure if a beast would be happy about a human dragging it into a pool of dye and forcibly changing its coat to match their preferences. x)

5. Do you have an idea yet of the range of colours and markings of beasts? For example rocs, will they only be natural colours, or have the possibility of deviant-like appearances from BK? (I'm looking forward to seeing the deviant gryphon designs here, because they look so good already... if they can be more rainbow-y that will be awesome.)

6. It was mentioned on the blog some time ago that players could add new appearance things, like fire to give a bird the "phoenix" look. That would have to be a kind of wearable, right?

Finally, maybe it's not the time/place/a good idea, but I'll suggest some new species anyway :)

- Adarna (another name for Fenghuang), it's like the western phoenix but solid. If there's fire, or other elemental stuff, it would be some kind of trail outside the body. I imagine this bird would be shaped like a swan or peacock, with many long ribbon-like feathers, and covered in striking rainbow colours. Some illustrations also give it 4 wings. It might be sufficiently different from the roc?

- Hippocampus, it could have colourful fish markings even on the horse parts. Haven't seen that before. Though I don't know if aquatic creatures are possible. It could perhaps move on land, using forelegs and large wing-like fins to float along...

- was going to suggest a pegasus, but can't think how its markings or qualities would be distinct from the unicorn, so nevermind.

Marans, thank you so much for the great feedback! We’re glad to answer your questions anywhere :)

1. The procedural world from the video looks amazing! The tile artist did a great job with quality and variety of objects scattered around. It's far superior to many iso games which repeat the same bland grass and trees infinitely. Now they look like cardboard compared to this.

Thank you so much for the feedback! Our tile artist is indeed talented and superb, and we are amazed by her work as well :) She doesn’t read our forums, but I make sure to pass your words to her, and I’m sure that she will be super pleased :)

2. Quick question about beasts. Will they be immortal? It's a funny idea, an ancient beast walking around with their great-great... (insert 60 generations here) grand-child. Beastopia might get crowded too, unless it magically expands in size.

Yes, they are immortal but treat that as a game convention only. From the lore point of view, the beasts are born, then age, live and die as usual. Even though some of them can live for several centuries, they are not immortal. From the gameplay point of view, making the beasts mortal would solve a ton of game balance problems, but we can’t do this and just destroy all the time and efforts that players will dedicate to breed, train, and customize their beasts. Usually games with mortal customizable pets have a cash item that provides immortality, but we don’t want to put an artificial limit on the longevity and then charge the players who don’t want to lose their beasts.

3. Question about lore/culture. What kind of power does a beastlord have over beasts? It sounds like humans can "sell" beasts, and dictate whether they can marry, or raise their own offspring. What's preventing an angry beast from ignoring or even fighting the human? Some kind of magic hold, or law, or…

The power of a beastlord is similar to the power of a head of the family in patriarchal societies of Central Asia (the territory of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other “‘stans”). A patriarch could decide who would his daughter marry, and often such marriage had an economical or political background. Of course, a girl may be offended by her father’s choice and disobey, but her decision would be highly disapproved by society. The same is with beasts. There are no laws or supernatural forces that make them obey their lord. This society structure is based solely on the traditions. A beast can be offended and disobey but decisions of a beast lord are considered to have enough authority and wisdom to make them the first priority. Be sure that if you sell a beast to another beast lord and then decide to buy it back, it will be extremely disappointed and will think that you betrayed it, so you'll have to put some work into recovering the trust.

4. How much control might we have over the design (coat) of a beast? For example we begin and are randomly assigned a dark brown gryphon with black leopard spots, but we would prefer something that looks a bit more colourful... not sure if a beast would be happy about a human dragging it into a pool of dye and forcibly changing its coat to match their preferences. x)

One more game convention here. Think of allies in RPGs: they go with you everywhere, support you, fight with you, sometimes argue with you or even make love with you. But at any moment you can open their inventory and change their armor and weapon, and they won’t pay any attention or will be excited about that. We could introduce the beast’s preferences about its own appearance just like the preferences for food, professions, friends and all other things. Although this wouldn’t add anything exciting to the gameplay and, on the contrary, will take away the possibility to create custom characters that players want to see providing them with an assortment of unpredictable beast tastes instead. Also this may add unwanted limits on wearable augments and bonuses. So customization won’t cause a lot of emotions in the beasts, and they won’t voice over any desires that are more specific than “I want to change something in my look” or “I want to try something new”.

5. Do you have an idea yet of the range of colours and markings of beasts? For example rocs, will they only be natural colours, or have the possibility of deviant-like appearances from BK? (I'm looking forward to seeing the deviant gryphon designs here, because they look so good already... if they can be more rainbow-y that will be awesome.)

There will be all kinds of colors, though some of them will be considerably more rare than others and depend on additional genes.

6. It was mentioned on the blog some time ago that players could add new appearance things, like fire to give a bird the "phoenix" look. That would have to be a kind of wearable, right?

Yes, most likely wearables with environmental and elemental effects will be created and crafted by alchemists.

Finally, maybe it's not the time/place/a good idea, but I'll suggest some new species anyway :)

A pegasus can be made by attaching the wings to a unicorn through customization.

The following is just a piece of development information, but we actually have concept arts for a 4-winged bird, a hippocampus, and an avian / equine hybrid close to a hippogriff. In case if the game becomes successful enough and we will be able to hire a few more people, these species will become live. We have a lot of plans how to extend the games both in terms of content and gameplay aspects, but we have limited resources and are trying to finish and run the core right now. It’s too early to talk about content updates like new species or biotopes at this moments.

That all sounds good!

1. I'm a bit curious, just from technical point of view, how many different tiles there are, in total. It's hard to tell what's repeated or distinct, because some rocks and bushes/trees are bundled together, but it looks like a lot of variation... are there dozens, or maybe over a hundred tile-images used so far? Either way it looks like a huge task to arrange them all properly - it's scary to imagine how complex your scripts are!

2. Ah yes, I forgot, there was a mention of "sending beasts to live in the manor" or something like that earlier. Sounds like a permanent version of the Reserve mechanic here? A way to quietly get rid of unneeded beasts and free up space.

3. That makes sense. I wondered about the idea of a rebellious beast (or group) deciding they didn't like their lives being ruled by humans, and flying away to the wilderness, making themselves exiles from the main society. Of course this couldn't happen during the game, though. Maybe an event that could have happened in history?

4. I'm not familiar with many games, so RPG allies are a mystery, but your answer explains it well (at least from the development perspective), so thank you.

And yes, I know it's silly to think about extra species and things like that at this early stage. x) Sorry, but thanks for the answer anyway.

No more questions to ask now, so will be quiet and wait. :)

Oh, and whoever's drawing/designing/writing the new monster concepts (Reducenta etc) is doing a great job with those, too.

1. I'm a bit curious, just from technical point of view, how many different tiles there are, in total. It's hard to tell what's repeated or distinct, because some rocks and bushes/trees are bundled together, but it looks like a lot of variation... are there dozens, or maybe over a hundred tile-images used so far? Either way it looks like a huge task to arrange them all properly - it's scary to imagine how complex your scripts are!

There are about four hundreds of tiles right now. That’s 3 different land types plus water. Although we will be remaking them to generate the transitions between different biotopes dynamically by compiling each tile from 4 pieces and a shore line when needed. The number of transition tiles grows in geometrical progression with every new land type added, so we figured out that there’s a more efficient solution than just drawing all of them manually. I wish we knew that earlier, but for some reason no one ever mentioned this little know-how in web discussions and tutorials.

And you’re correct about map generator script, it’s kind of mind-blowing. It took about 3 months to code it, but we think that the result is worth that :)

2. Ah yes, I forgot, there was a mention of "sending beasts to live in the manor" or something like that earlier. Sounds like a permanent version of the Reserve mechanic here? A way to quietly get rid of unneeded beasts and free up space.

Yes, you’re right, it’s exactly like you described it plus the fact that the beasts in manor modify the genetic pool that generates you random babies. But the main designation of this mechanic is still the same - providea possibility to get rid of the unwanted beasts.

3. That makes sense. I wondered about the idea of a rebellious beast (or group) deciding they didn't like their lives being ruled by humans, and flying away to the wilderness, making themselves exiles from the main society. Of course this couldn't happen during the game, though. Maybe an event that could have happened in history?

Well, where do the wild tamable beasts come from if not from those who decided to live on their own? :) So yes, we suppose that this happens sometimes, just not with the beasts that a player has.

Those numbers are amazing! 400, wow. I'll be curious to see how the transition tiles work - never heard of this method either...

I have another question for the future. Will it be possible to customise beast profiles (assuming they'll have those) with backgrounds, perhaps some CSS and so on?

I've been collecting custom skins here, and lots of them are gorgeous, but it feels strange to have the same default background, after collecting thousands of coats on Howrse and using Helios Ray items to match them all. x) It's very pleasing.

Not expecting this feature to be added here, but maybe BeastEon could have it. Especially if we can freely change the beast's coat, and see their preferences change, altering backgrounds to fit them would be nice.

We'll have custom backgrounds for beast profiles for sure, but we don't plan to provide any control over CSS.

There won't be coats either. The customization will happen mostly through craftable items created by beasts and not through complete overlays that replace the initial image. Crafting will require game resources and raising professional skills associated with a certain type of item, so it won't be free.

Since form follows the function, will it be possible to change animal's capabilities by breeding with proper partners, or will the new skills be only acquired by learning? In other words, how much change there can be in a newly born offspring, except appearance?

Beasts aren't born equal. Each newborn has a unique genotype which defines its potential. Inborn traits and perks will significantly affect the result of the learning. Some professions  and skills can't be mastered at all if a beast doesn't have a proper inborn trait (for example, acid crafting or fire breathing). Others can be tried by any beast but without the genetic predisposition, a beast will be able to reach only novice mastery. A genetically strong beast will be a lot better in sports than others, while a beast without art aptitude won't be able to craft items of higher levels. 

I think Poe might have been referring to selective breeding to change characteristics? Such as creating a super-strong baby by crossing a long line of strong beasts, or enhancing some other stat.

Was going to ask if there'll be any status/bonus like Genetic Power. After your answer, now guessing that this current system would be much too simple for BE though. Will there even be a level system, or all stats are individually raised?

I think Poe might have been referring to selective breeding to change characteristics? Such as creating a super-strong baby by crossing a long line of strong beasts, or enhancing some other stat.

No, parents pass only those genes that they have themselves (except the rare occasional mutations).

Will there even be a level system, or all stats are individually raised?

There are no usual stats, only traits. Traits can be either genetic or acquired. For example, for a task that requires a strong beast, the following traits will be a plus: strong (genetic), circulation of Qi (learned) and augmented (acquired through crafting).

The level system is planned for mastering the professions.

Will your affiliation have consequences for your gaming options? Will you be stuck playing as Lawful Neutral, or Chaotic Neutral, or Chaotic Good, for example?

And will there be a lot of occult themes in this game, like your example of the qi or chi above? I can't say I'm fond of that...