I'm at the top of W1 so I probably can get to it first, lol.

The event is here! From the news post, it seems to be a pretty fun combination of Cozy Carl's Cruise and the Olympics event. I won't be there for a while as I'm still on a train, but I'm excited to get going with this event.

Yay! The event looks great!

AND I TOLD YOU ALL THE HORSE JADE BASE WOULD EXIST AND BE AMAZING

Er, I mean...

I cannot wait to acquire the Horse Jade Base.

~Riella

Ithil. I'm glad you're excited. I'm guessing it'll either be the second or third best base in the game behind the Rift and GTB. I do like the attraction on it, something the Rift Base lacks.

I stuck around to finish up a train before moving to the event. That ended up being a massive waste of time as I didn't get a single Magmatic Charm. So I'm starting off a little behind everybody else, but that's ok. I did get the first collectible right away, so yay. I am having rotten luck getting Nitropop Potions though. My hubs has gotten several and I've gotten one.

I'm a whopping 85km in. Yeah!

So how is everybody doing on the cruise? I've noticed at least one person (Varna) if not more have completed their first run through. Congrats to all who have! I'm taking my sweet time trying to get as many collectibles as possible so I don't have to buy them with Cruise Bux. I'm only just now in the Tribal Isles, but with a tournament start soon where the points are worth more for the mice attracted with bigger charms, I'll probably speed up to catch those mice.
I know I'm behind on this, but I only figured out this morning that you don't need Runny cheese for this event. So if you see this, please send me Valentine's Charms instead. Or Party Crackers if they come up as the gift of the day.

I'm hoping once this event is over, polluted spills will occur with more frequency. I'm ready for another one.

I had between one and two hundred Firecracker charms left over from last year, and have been using them liberally. I've found that I'm more interested in the Cruise Bux than in the mice at this event, so I don't mind skipping the mice and fast-forwarding through the sections (I allowed myself enough time in each section to pick up all the Miniatures, though). I convert the charms as soon as I get the potions.

The only mice I'm interested in, are those that drop envelopes and potions - and the sports mice. I hadn't joined yet at the previous Olympics, so I didn't have any of them, but I've caught them all now. All the other event mice I have already either bronzed or silvered.

I want to bronze the sports mice, so I need the Runny cheese - but I'd prefer doing it in those tournies where the sports mice give high points. I won't be online much early in the day tomorrow, but later I'll look for another tourney - I'm halfway to the GTB now

I have bought (for Cruise Bux) the Entranced Love Bot Skin for the Enraged Rhino. It's cute

And I have bought the Horse Jade Base and am using it now

I completed my first cruise last night. I still need the S.S. Huntington III, Z's Island, and Gnawnian Express collectibles. They never dropped for me, but hopefully I'll get them this time around and if not I'll snag them from the shops.

Question. How do you go about attracting the Totally Not Bitter mouse? I've seen him come up on several treasure maps and someone else has caught him, but I haven't even seen how to attract him.

This time around, I'm going for cruise bux. I've only gotten two of the collectibles to drop so far. I'm hoping to finish round one of the cruise today or by early tomorrow. Next time around, I'm going to slow down and go for the collectibles.

At least I have something that I'm interested in buying this time around, unlike Christmas... Flawed Orbs!! And I'll probably get a few Flawless Orbs too in case they become important later.

I'm camping out in Furoma for a bit to farm some gold now that I've finished 1 run through the event. I'll probably go back in once we've caught the Puddlemancer for our map on Wednesday. At that point, I'll try for more event maps/tourneys (or trains if none of those are available).

My new pre-Ronza gold goal is 12 million or more. I'll probably end up going for something like 13-15 mil before it's all over, but I like smaller goals that are easy to work toward.

Question. How do you go about attracting the Totally Not Bitter mouse? I've seen him come up on several treasure maps and someone else has caught him, but I haven't even seen how to attract him.

I've answered this elsewhere, but for others who were wondering, you need Valentine's Charms armed to attract this mouse.

I'm like you, FK, in that I want another Toxic Spill soon. I enjoy going through new content so much and I'd like another crack at this one before the MH birthday event.

Thanks for answering my question stwin. That was the one charm I hadn't tried LOL.

I'm like you, FK, in that I want another Toxic Spill soon. I enjoy going through new content so much and I'd like another crack at this one before the MH birthday event.

At this point I'm pretty darn sure that they've got the spills setup to happen during events. After event season is over, they'll probably be random.

I'm currently in the Harbour trying to catch the blasted Pirate mouse for the map I'm on. I don't ever remember having this much trouble with this mouse before...

I'm working my way through the cruise for the second time. I've slowed way down. I'm down to needing the SS Huntington III miniature and the Gnawnian Express miniature. I'm in the Huntington section, but it hasn't dropped yet. I'm going to disarm charms for a bit and see if I can pick it up before finishing up the section. I may go through the cruise a third time with a goal on just picking up the cruise bux at the end of each section. Haven't made up my mind about that yet or about what to spend them on. I've been hunting mainly with brie. I haven't had to buy cheese yet this event as I had quite a bit of brie stashed. I've been trying to build a small stash of Runny for the future if we end up using it again (not much. Just like 20 - 40 pieces).

I bought the blueprints for the Rift base back when you posted that FBF note and crafted the base. I'm back up to just over 12 million in gold now. I'd like another toxic spill just because I made out quite well in gold with that. If I could daydream about gold goals, I'd like to pick up another 8 mil in gold before Ronza comes, but I doubt that'll happen.

I rewrote my FBF review post because it was jumbled and a complete mess. So if you saw a post that looks very different from this one, that's why.

Lots of news from today's FBF and I'm going to go ahead and post a few things in spoilers just in case there are one or two of you that would like to be surprised.

~Those aboard the Cruise ship have reported seeing some gunk in the ocean near the lab. Scientists have been dispatched to check on things (and are apparently plugging holes with gum ). News of the next toxic spill should be released on Sunday!

~Year of the Noble Part 2 -

Spoiler

For Count and Up, there will be a new assignment released in the Library to catch the new M400 mouse ("New" in the game that is. Most people probably won't remember this, but this mouse was the 400th mouse that Jacob drew which was... a while ago. ) This assignment will allow you to craft cheese to catch this mouse and will also give hints as to where in the Kingdom it can be found.

~Year of the Noble Part 3 -

That was the big news, here are some other bits and pieces that they covered....
~Spoiler Pics
~All spills will start from at least Count/Countess level and up
~The Scum Scrubber blueprint was available since the last spill
~It will take a "long time" to get all the things the Toxic Spill has to offer
~The cruise will be coming to an end on Feb 18th. The shoppe will be open in the Vacant Lot for an additional week.
~The birthday event will be new, but the Easter event will be similar to previous years.
~The birthday event will begin the first week of March.
~They hadn't decided yet if the cruise collectibles (Harbour, Shoreline, etc) would stick around in future years or not yet. They may make them LE, so be sure to collect them this year if you want them.

.......

Personal progress: I got all the collectibles (Yay!) so now I'm just here to work on maps and do tournaments. Otherwise I may return to the LG areas to work towards that Ultimate Charm I've never crafted. Plus it will put me in position to farm more Icuri essences in case I need them for the Easter hunt.

I'm surprised that they didn't say anything about Ronza. *sigh* Oh well.

I'd craft the rift base now if it were not going to be such a drain on my gold.

Ronza has turned into their big surprise over the past couple years so I consider it shocking if they do actually mention her. The ONLY warning we had last year was Jacob drew the Tarannasauras trap live. I will say this, people always ask in chat and the devs acknowledge the question and purposefully don't answer.

In other news...

Pollution levels near the Laboratory are rising! Scientists predict the spill will occur within 72 hours!

My hubby and I are doing a romantic couples tournament at the moment. We're currently in 6th place. I'd love to place in the top three but we'll see. Just depends on how lucky we are with our Romeo and Juliyes catches from here on out.