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I find that beastmoon events, Monster Mayhem in particular, can be incredibly frustrating for a lot of players. I constantly hear griping from others about "this stupid beastmoon" and about how difficult it can be to get through an event. I have a number of proposals to make. I will provide a list, and then expand upon each individual implementation in more detail below. If you disagree with an idea on the list, please make sure to check the implementation before dismissing it outright! After giving the blurb a read, do feel free to give feedback! I'd love to refine these ideas with the constructive criticism of other players.

Without further ado, the list of proposals:

• Allow crafting of golden beastmoon idols
• Increase lunari output from monster mayhem matches
• Separate standard beastmoon and MM chat options; heavily refine chat options
• Decrease individual animation times
• MM battle stops immediately upon boss defeat

Quite a bit! It may seem like a heavy task, but each idea has a rationale behind it.

Allow Crafting of Golden Idols

One of the major side activities related to Beastmoon is gardening BM blossoms. The most valued byproduct of this activity are our idols, which are primarily used to upgrade tiers... a task which cannot be undertaken without a golden idol. Golden idols are ridiculously hard to come by, and this leaves most players fruitlessly upgrading form levels and spending the paltry amounts of lunari gained from matches on something that will disappear at the end of the week.

I believe that golden idols should be craftable. Not easily craftable, mind you, but such an option should be allowed. Recipes for golden idols should cost 100 lunari to unlock, but consume 100 idols to craft. This takes a bit of a burden off of lunari, an already incredibly thinly stretched resource, and gives players a long-term goal to strive for in unlocking their favorite beast form. My favorite beast form is likely not going to be the same as someone else's, so this gives players choice instead of relying on the one golden idol sometimes found on weekly scrolls and praying it's the one they want.

Increase Lunari Output from MM Matches

Due to how hard it is to communicate with non-text chat players, MM as-is is a frustrating exercise in hoping that your teammates know what they're doing. I'd say that I make it past the first boss a third of the time. And in that third of a time, I get a whopping... eight lunari. Winning the entire event, which has only happened to me a handful of times, rewards you with twenty-something lunari. It's paltry. Lunari shouldn't be this hard to come by when it's responsible for buying literally everything, from levels to tiers to crafting recipes. Output from MM should be increased in one of two ways. Either double the reward output from winning, (making triumphs feel even more rewarding) or use the standard beastmoon form of giving players lunari, win or lose, upon the game ending, and not touching the amount gained through a win. If you beat the third boss, you should get the twenty-something from a win, and eight or so more just from seeing the game through to the end. This also makes the sting of a loss significantly less frustrating to players.

Fix Chat.

The amount of griping that text-chat players do because they can't properly communicate with their teammates is both understandable and widespread. I'm guilty of a groan or two as well when I see that we have multiple non-text chat players within a group, because strategy will go out the window. And strategy is the only way to win MM. I'd say that the chat options currently available are passable for standard play. Not great, but they work. For MM? Nada.

We need a separate chat category for "Monster Mayhem" that includes a number of unique options. Some examples of sorely needed options are below.

• "Please choose quickly!"
• "2v2 this round."
• "3v2 this round."
  
• "Do not join us."
• "Do not join eye/sun/moon/star/spiral."
• "Can spiral/gem/key/sword flee, please?"
• "Flee and join eye/sun/moon/etc."
• "We need blades from top left/armor from middle left/etc"
• "Have we found time clam?"
• "Look for time clam."
• "Wanderer, can you help at eye/star/etc?"

I'm sure there are others we need, and I'm aware that there is a thread for this. I wanted to include these in my beastmoon proposals anyway, solely to demonstrate the issue with non-text chat folks knowing what to even do in this event.

Decrease Individual Animation Times

Oh boy. If there's one thing that is infuriating when you're against the clock, it's a boss or even a fellow player casting a spell with a long animation. I'm not saying that animations should be cut entirely, but instead that certain animations need to be fixed.

• AoE animations should play once. I believe this happens with the fire bats spell, so it's not impossible. Play the animation directed at the first monster or player, and then damage the whole line of monsters/players at once. We see this happen with the ratatoskr's spin animation in the base game.
• DoTs should all damage at the same time. Watching the clock tick down while each individual animation plays is ridiculous. Instead, each DoT should blink at the same time and apply damage together. It's truly awful to wait for five animations to play when you know that you're going to be defeated by the end of it.
• Same as above should go for HoTs. The damage/heals should be applied to the player in the order that they were placed, but the animation should occur instantaneously.
• Only play the attacking animation for drain spells. Display green numbers over the receiver's head, of course, but it's pretty clear from the initial animation that an enemy is being drained.

I'm sure there are others that could really use some tightening, but this would be an amazing start.

The Defeat of a Boss's Lineup Should Stop the Battle

The base is full of healing orbs. Losing the entire game because someone decided to cast a charm/ward/heal after a boss died, or because a DoT animation needs to play, is a recipe for players to never want to touch this game mode again.

This may be updated as time passes, but I think that what I have is a fairly complete listing of ideas that could help monster mayhem move forward as a more beloved, and significantly less frustrating event.