Eli, your post almost makes me feel guilty for doing so well in the new area. I'm taking things baby steps at a time. I went into the Sand Dunes and the Lost City with 60 pieces of Dewthief, and that turned into 60 pieces of Duskshade, which turned into 40 pieces of Graveblossom, which has turned thus far into 4 pieces of Lunaria.

I'm really sorry you're having a tough time

I'm having another go at Twisted Carmine sometime tomorrow. No idea how this is going to go, but as I just said, I've got at least 4 pieces of Lunaria guaranteed, with a good chance of getting 4 more (I use the SB to get more).

Essence-wise, I'm pretty stocked up as well: 223 Aleth, 135 Ber, 77 Cynd, 11 Dol, 0 Est, 2 Fel, 2 Gur, 0 Hix, 0 Icuri.

If I turned ALL of those essences into the highest possible essence, I'd be left with 1 Hix and some change

You guys are all doing better than me at least, im not even gonna bother looking at how much essence i have, all i know is not much
I'm skipping out on LG for a while to mop up monster mouse for my treasure map since no one's going for it, i already spent like 2 days at cats geting the vamp now in lab

I guess i'll be back in LG soon, maybe christmas will come first?

I decided to crack open a map scroll, not thinking about whether we might have Christmas maps (which I hope we do). I got a common Elaborate map that seems to be more time consuming than difficult. Only one SB+ only mouse, and I already nabbed it. Gymfan and LadyArwen are already helping me out. If we get on a roll, maybe we'll be able to finish it off before the Christmas event begins.

I have two spots left, if anyone is interested.

I got annoyed at the living garden and the various other sections, so I've gone back to the warpath for a bit. It's been awhile since I've been in there. No trap loot drop on the warmonger. Going to try and make it through wave 1 hopefully before the christmas event kicks off. I'm staying put I think until then.

I'm doing ok in the new sections. I just got annoyed at a run of bad luck I was having and decided to go for a change of scenery. I've gotten 3 Twisted Carmines already. I think I could probably craft the base, but I figured I'd wait and see what I got going towards traps.

I reached the threshold for being able to craft 2 Hix essences. . . . just one more to go *sigh*

I'm collecting Dewthief petals again. Yay.

I finally went back to the Gauntlet, and I was clipping along at quite a good pace. Trying to determine if I want to try for silver crowns right now, or just blast through it.

...and then Eli got the map, and so I'm doing a tower run right now. I'm doing so well that I kind of regret not making this a double run (one of my favorite things to do! ). 1 King and 1 Chessmaster to go!

I've been harvesting gold in the Catacombs - sometimes doing something else for a change of scenery, like getting the Ship Blueprints in the Lagoon, and hunting a couple of horn soundings in Town of Gnawnia when I went there for more Brie.

I'm running out of RB potions, so I decided to go back to the Laboratory for more, and saw a suggestion of using RB as bait, and arming with as much luck as possible. So I'm hunting with the Acronym and the Dehydration Base (but for such long time hunting I won't spend any Luck charms). It's slower work gold-wise than the Cats, but occasionally I get the Monster Mouse with 9,100 gold, which makes up for a few 500's. And the catch rate with that set-up is better than what I had (with the Fan Base) in the Cats.

The RB potions drops aren't as frequent as I was hoping, but I think there's a net gain even so. And perhaps the next Moster mouse might drop me the Greater RB Potion ...

Double runs are always fun but risky, the thing with ZT is it's hard to fail, actually its more like as long as you don't care about wasting money you generally can't fail cause you can stay in tower with 20% amp and still catch the queen, yes it'll take some time but it's possible
UmMM...back in LG, at 200 dew petals if that's what it's called
I guess I'll farm till 500, i guess I'm doing the mini game for fun since really, you're still profiting, one thirsty gives 1 B and 1 C
b is 3 A, C is 3 B which is 9 A, which means 1 thirsty gives 12 A so as long as in the 35 hunts you get at least 2 thirsty mouse(which you can for sure) you profit, slightly but still profiting
I guess I dunno what to do right now, LOL Varn, I have too much RBcheese I dunno what to do with it, all those drops from unstable curds, i have like 800+, i really should go do a run at cats but it'll be boring

I guess I'll farm till 500, i guess I'm doing the mini game for fun since really, you're still profiting, one thirsty gives 1 B and 1 C

Yeah, the Living Garden and Twisted Garden are the two areas I've not gotten a profit of essences. I had one run of 35 hunts in LG where I didn't get a single Thirsty Mouse and I've had a couple runs where I only got one.
My last run of 35 hunts in TG got me one Dehydrated Mouse. At least in the TG the bonus of collecting dewdrops increases your catch rate so it still helps, but for the LG, I just do it for crowing in the Thirsty Mouse.

Speaking of TG, I'm down to my last few pieces of cheese, I'll finish up in there today. Current sitting at 196 Graveblossom Petals.
65A 26B 32C 2D 1F 2H

Who thinks the Christmas event will start today? Or sometime this week?

Is anybody else's camp page looking different? Mine looks really messed up, and I have no idea how to fix it

I'm farming Dewthief petals. Wanna go for 200 of them, but the Christmas event is BOUND to start up before I get there. Currently have 49.

Essence count:
246A 155B 81C 11D 0E 2F 3G

NVM, a cache clearing worked

Nothing seems out of the ordinary to me, Digs... I'm using the backup site... What's "messed up" about it?

Looks like the Christmas event has kicked off. From what I can tell you have to catch a Curious Courier Mouse to enter and they can be caught pretty much anywhere. Doesn't look like a special cheese is required.

These are the only spoilers I plan on posting.

LoL
I'm slightly depressed that we'll have to keep waiting even though the event is out :O
Well, it's actually like this every year, the event doesn't really start(finish starting?) until a few days before Christmas

Well, I'm working on my first piece, it is annoying since it doesn't give you much time to farm the festive feta's up, I only have like 44

Well, a temp break from LG, always a good thing

Well, I wrapped up the TG run and ended up with 226 Graveblossom Petals. I'm pretty pleased with that. And as I have 2 Hix Essence, I only need 3 more Twisted Carmine to craft the first trap. Good to know the amount of farming essences I've done counts for about a third of the trap components.

Anyways, after I finished up last night, I went and snagged my Courier who dropped Al's Age 12 letter to Santa. Moved to the MegaBuy Mart and spent the night farming Festive Feta cheese. (Must have spent all of mine from last year. Oops! )
Snagged my second Courier this morning with Al's Age 6 letter to Santa and now I need 10 Moon Mobile Parts. We'll see if I can snag those before tomorrow and the release of the next mouse.

I'm seeing if I can snag the last two of my laser cannon part with only 5 cheese, doesn't seem likely...or not, I changed to Gouda and will be farming FF for a while I guess until tomorrow?

I'm guessing the trap this year isn't going to be anything really powerful, although from the descriptions of a "whole new unique trap" after catching Al I'm not extremely sure. I hope I don't get disappointed if something really boring comes up I'm just like...

Well, it's super hard to get those elf mouse, I remember GWH2010 when elves like pop up every day
Oh, the presents from elf drops are really nice, I only got one so far and had received a Warpath Commander Charm not bad