Just dove last night with the plan to continually resurface until I had a Sand Dollar Sea Bar. I only had to dive once and it was right in front of me. So I quickly nabbed my Sand Dollar Diver, which is the last mouse I needed and I now have all of the Sunken City mice. (Just need the Mutated Behemoth and High Dollar Roller mice. )

Dove with 1559 o2. That should keep me going for a while.

Trying a Mega Toxic Spill tourny this morning, but uh... we're not off to a good start. (Idiot me armed the wrong cheese...)
ETA: Woohoo! Top 25%. One Mega token down, two more to go.

I've been going back and forth a lot - a Riftwalking Mega tourney, then back to Sunken City for another tourney, and now I'm in LG (Sand Crypts) before the next tourney hunting Dojo Sensei.

We managed to reach 50% in the first tourney, but not in the second - so I'm hoping for the third one to do alright. I'd like some of those Mega tokens, and even more I'd like lots and lots of ordinary tokens. I only need 36 more to get my Gold Base!

I had backed off of tournaments because I didn't want to hog spots in case I had to make several trips to the hospital (which is exactly what has happened for two of the tournaments), but somehow I've managed to place in three of them. So I snagged the new theme last night. Oooohhhh so shiny!
Varna, Ara, my husband, and I are in a Sensei tourny today. Should be interesting as the catch rate is so blasted low. Unfortunately Ara went to bed last night leaving Rumble armed so we're worried she's gonna sign in and either hit the horn herself or we're gonna accidentally take her on a hunt and end up with that -100 points. Hopefully not. ETA: She got it, we're good. LOL

Doing pretty well in the Sunken City. Already got an oxygen stream, but because I went through it before and after a tournament, I didn't count how much o2 I racked up.

*watches the tumbleweeds of Claw Shot City roll on by*

Time for an update. Now that the Mega tournaments are over, I'm back in the Sunken City making a push for my Shark trap. I am only 103 Sand Dollars away from snagging it so yay!
I also just caught two Tritus mice back to back, one of which dropped my second predatory processor. Feeling the love today.
I don't know how feasible this will be, but I would love to be done with the Sunken City before the next area rolls out. But that's an additional 800 Sand Dollars and one more Predatory Processor I need (the latter shouldn't be a problem, I can just buy it if necessary) and I anticipate that taking a while.

ETA: 8/28/14 @ 4:41pm CDT

Congratulations to me, at exactly 12:01am, I leveled to ARCHDUCHESS!!! Woooooo!!!

And I just hit .5% of the way into Archduchess.

Congratulations, Archduchess fantasia!

The Mega tourneys finally got me the Gold Tournament Base

I'm going back and forth between Sunken City and Cursed City. Sunken City for trap checks, Cursed City when I can monitor my cheeses. I got the GAT a few days ago I crafted it from all my essences and ended up with having 1 - one - Aleth left

Clockwork Portal Blueprints are next. Currently I'm running out of one LG cheese after the other, and may soon have to go back to my stock of 120 Dewthief Camembert. I was hoping for Plumpearl Herbs, but the drop rate is rather low ...

I'm up to 160 Sand Dollars. A long way to go to get enough for anything useful - but with only just over 2 mil gold, there's time for a long way.

Congratulations on the Gold Tournament Base Varna. Paired with Ultimate Power Charms, it's still the most powerful setup you can get in the game and therefore still worth having from time to time.

Well, I am now the proud new owner of the Rune Shark Trap. *takes a bow* More power and more attraction than the C-POWN, but less power bonus and less luck. It's not a super duper upgrade, in fact it may be on par with the other trap... BUT, it's one step closer to the School of Sharks, which is what I'm interested in.

I had to laugh, I thought I was doing pretty well, but I couldn't help but notice a guy on the Scoreboards just ahead of me already has the School of Sharks. Don't know how he pulled that one off unless he just got exceedingly lucky with his drops.

ETA: Posting this here so I can keep track of it. Supplies I need until I can get the School of Sharks...
6.5mil gold (approx)
1 Predatory Processor
781 Sand Dollars
Currently at 22,090m with 1063o2 to go.

I have a new-to-me area coming up on my dive. It's a Magma Flow. I knew of its existence since I stumbled across it on accident on the Wiki, but I know nothing about what kind of fish mice are in there. Should be interesting.

And I hope my streak of DHU ends today as I had very little besides Murky Depths and Coral Castles yesterday with a handful of Shipwrecks. No Lost Cities or Sunken Treasures. My FF crafting materials were almost evened out there for a bit, but now I have over 500 more coral than scales. I guess if necessary I can buy that basket thingy, but I'd rather not.

ETA: The Magma Flow is interesting. The mice are rather random...

The grilled cheese art is pretty cool. I'm glad they did a small update for new/low level hunters.

I'm periodically going back to the SC and farming o2. I've topped 1000 again and I still have just under 200 pieces of FF left.

I'm sorry. . . I share the sentiments of other people on the forums. A new introduction to an area I'd completed YEARS ago. . . not fun.

Must have read a different forum thread than you did DiGs. The one I glanced through, everybody I saw agreed that the beginning areas need some sprucing up because, lets face it, they're boring. This is the devs trying to get new players hooked on the game and I totally support that. I like that they have a goal for the specific area and I hope they add goals like this for the other beginning areas, just to give new players a taste of what's to come.
Sure, it's not for us, but I feel we have no business complaining because this year we've gotten 3 new areas + 1 library assignment with more on the way. (And it took me all of three hours to catch Mrs. Bread Mouse yesterday soooo.... )
I love the design of the mouse for the record. Made me think of Kansas and wheat and bread and such.

For my personal update, I'm making my way through my second Magma Flow and I've learned that you should definitely use EACs here because the mice drop enough of them in return that you get a profit... not to mention other (sort of) useful charms and orbs. I'll remember that for the future. After this I have a Shipwreck and then my first ever Lair of the Ancients. Can't wait to see what's in there.... My third predatory processor perhaps?

ETA: So the Lair of the Ancients only contains the Tritus and Ancient of the Deep.

ETA2: Annnnnddd.... a Tritus Mouse just dropped an Ultimate Charm. Holy cow...

So here are my plans:

1. Finish this dive. Currently sitting with 670 oxygen canisters remaining at a depth of 22,230 kilometers. I've collected 300 sand dollars on this run thus far. . . I'd LOVE to be able to get the new trap, but that would require some serious DLU

2. Get the new bread mouse

3. Farm rift stuff.

I read the same forum thread that DiGs did - people suggested it might have been better with a new low level area for beginners (but presumably in the same region as Windmill and Meadow). As easy for the beginners as the current solution, and a little more interesting for veteran players to go to.

But I also read the threads where other people were quite pleased with the new addition

I liked the graphics too - fun mouse, and a quite tasty looking cheese I'll probably go back from time to time to catch enough of Mrs. Bread Mouse to bronze her. Last time I looked, the HUD for computer browsers wasn't up yet, the mobiles got theirs first - I'll be interested to see what it looks like.

Currently I'm working with Eric on a Hard treasure map. I got the Realm Ripper, and I don't want to leave the Acolyte Realm without a Mysterious Box, so I'm hunting Acolytes. Slow work, but better than Assassins.

Eventually I'll go back to alternating between Twisted Garden and Sunken City - unless there's some new Rift work to be done soon ...

Well I'm thinking the new Rift area will be released Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Strange clouds appear above Gnawnia, could it be a return of the rift?

BREAKING: Lightning strikes the Lab, strange tremors ensue!

And the Gnawnian Rift mice are now dropping Mist Canisters of which you can collect 15.

My immediate goal is to collect at least 5 canisters a day, and if I do, I'll head back to the Sunken City because I prefer to hunt there right now rather than the Rift.
My long-term goal will depend on the two things.... When my baby arrives and which area will take less time to complete.
If they open up the new Rift area and it's a short and sweet location like the Toxic Spill or Gnawnian Rift, I'll stick around and finish that up first. If it's going to be a longer area meant to last throughout the winter, I'll finish up the Sunken City first. I should be done with SC within a month.
On the other hand, if my daughter arrives and the Burroughs Rift is much more passive, I'll probably focus on that area instead, even if it's longer.

The Acolyte took more than a day - but I still think that's easier than Assassins.
I did some Rift work as well - I got 3 Raw Rift Crystals and 7 Mist Canisters

Now I'm back at finishing up that map - in Cats at the moment, but might go to the Lagoon as well. Or the Ship.

First FBF in a while... missed those the past couple weeks. I'm doing this by memory so hopefully I don't forget anything major. And if I do, Dave will post a summary on the MH forums sometime.

~The Mist Canisters that are dropping in the Gnawnian Rift... the cap of 15 will be lifted on those once the scientists figure out whether or not they're safe. But only 15 for now.
~Spoiler pics for the new area. Clicky. A couple new ones there.
~The Burroughs Rift will be Duke/Duchess level and up. (I was wondering if they were going to do a Duke level area this year.)

~They talked about the Windmill update a good deal, and they confirmed what I suspected based on the news post they made. Basically, when they first put the mobile app up, they had a lot of people try the game and immediately uninstall it, until they did some slight tweaking to the Meadow and Town of Gnawnia, which greatly increased the new players coming on board. But then the new players kind of quit when they got to the Windmill, so the new mouse is basically a new mechanic for the new players and if all goes well, they plan to do the same thing for the Harbour and Mountain and any area after that. That's why they didn't just add a new area.

~The devs that are not finishing up the new Rift area are working on the Haunted Territories at the moment. I believe it's going to be the same general concept that we know and love, but with a bit more tweaking this year.

~And finally, because they've increased their staff production, those that are not working on the Haunted Territories are already working on new content for next year, so it sounds like the upcoming Rift will be the last new big area for the year then.

That's all the major stuff I remember. There were a few more small things, but I don't remember them.

I currently have 11 Mist Canisters. I assume I have the rest of the weekend to collect the last four. As soon as this tournament is over, I'm going to go finish up the Treasure Map that I'm on and get that out of the way, help Varna and eric finish up their treasure map, and then it's back to the Sunken City.