PonyIsland

MOD Application
After a last addition made 2 years ago, applications are now open, to become a MOD.

Are you interested in joining the squad? Think strongly about it as there are undeniable bad aspects despite the good. There are also a couple of criteria that you must comply with. There is also a form to fill in and send by the 18th of July at 10:00 leaving users with a good reflection time.

To be eligible, the first thing is that the applicant must be at least 16 years of age at the time of the application. No exceptions will be made as contents dealt with can be inappropriate and offensive. The applicant must also have a decent written English and have had no serious bans (Art theft, scamming, etc) in their time on Pony Island. If you are unsure of bans you have had, you can open a support ticket. To be a good moderator you need to be polite, friendly and helpful. Along with the above, there is the necessity of an extensive knowledge on Pony Island rules.

The positive points to being a MOD include the ability to be helpful to others. You will be able to help fellow Piers in a better way. You will get responsibilities and will be able to be a part of Pony Island from behind the scenes. You also have a possibility of receiving, during your time as a MOD, a DVS for services rendered but under no circumstance this should be a reason to apply.

There are, however, negatives involved that users applying should be aware of and use when deciding on applying. The possible main is that it is a thankless job. It is possible that users, unhappy regarding your decisions, let you know their disapproval in unpleasant ways. You will also lose an aspect of your Pony Island gameplay as MOD work comes first. You will also have to be careful in your method of approach of forums as you are expected to act as a MOD.

The precise number of MODs that will be added is unknown but expected to be superior to one. The last additions found were made in 2010 in which 5 MODs were added. The numbers are expected to be influenced by quality of applications.

Good luck to all applicants! Please follow the following link for the official thread relating to MOD applications.

http://www.ponyisland.net/index.php?src=forum&sub=replies&forum=1&topic=2947869

POTW 3
Round Two over, batter up! Welcome Round Three of the Pony Of The Week!

Pony Of The Weeks are chosen by the POTW team in accordance to set themes. There are 4 Pony Of The Week rotations in any given year. These rotations allow other users to take part in Pony Island activities but from a new perspective.

This rotation three runs from the 1st of July to the 23rd of September 2012. The applications were opened for just under a week to 16 year olds minimum who have spent at least 6 months on Pony Island and not received a ban in the 6 months preceding their application. A few other conditions were also required.

The applications are closed and new members of the rotation have been chosen and notified on the 29th of June. The names of the users are not known for the moment but congratulations to them either way!

Reselling
Reselling ponies for profit can be a touchy subject. It traverses the line between savvy business practice and a shady action that can put you on the personal 'do not deal' list of many-a-user. And really, it all comes down to how you do it. For the purpose of this article, I will discuss both ends of the spectrum.

Since it's nice to start with the bad and end with the good, let's first consider what sort of actions might lead to people thinking it was a bad thing to resell for profit. The most common occurrence that tends to leave a bad taste is one's mouth is when a user is given a gift that they state they love and then immediately sell within a couple of days. This is exacerbated if they bragged in Show 'N' Tell about how much they adored said gift. There could easily be a good reason why someone would sell a gift. However, when no one knows that context, it can come off very bad.

Another common situation is when a user gives away a number of ponies for free (more so if done as a bid event). If you have to bid 0PG on the pony and could only really know to do so by having read their giveaway thread, it is very poor form to instantly resell for profit if the user doing the giveaway stated their intentions as giving forever homes to users who wanted to keep the ponies, or something of the like.

However, if a user does a giveaway for cheap or free ponies that are up for Buy instead of Bid, it is very hard to know if the buyer even saw the thread, or just saw the pony on the Search. In these instances, the seller may still feel a bit annoyed, and I've seen them rant about it, but without taking steps to ensure where the ponies go with Bid events, it's very hard to actually get sympathy or backing in these instances.

Now, let's look at some good instances! Reselling for profit is something than people have done for ages with all sorts of things, all over the world. It's smart, if you can do it, and there are a lot of instances where it can be looked on as a respectful business practice on PI.

Many a time a user will be generating ponies and not have the space to hold them for a higher sale price. This may mean they put them up for free, or it may mean they will simply put the pony up for a cheaper price. In these instances, the person who made the pony cared more about keeping space than getting a higher price for the pony. This is an ideal sort of situation to resell for profit. If the buyer puts in effort to advertise the pony, they could easily manage to sell it for more than they bought it at.

As an example, I happened to see the cutest little mountie on the Newborns page. He was very dark brown in the body and had black hair. I wasn't even sure he was a starter, but I clicked on him and he was. He was also for sale at 40k and his hair was not only 6 off pure black, but also a shade of pure grey. Needless to say, I hit the Buy button even before I took stock of his hexes in detail. If I wanted to, I believe I could easily sell that boy for 500k+. I won't, because he's amazing. But that instance is an example of something that is sold cheap and could be sold higher, much higher even, with a little work put in.

Another common instance of accepted reselling is by tattooing a pony or building up its undeployed levels. A pony with 20 levels undeployed is automatically worth around another 18k. Having a higher number of undeployed levels can also market the pony as a good quester, and add value to it in that was as well. Granted, this could easily be perceived only, as the pony will quest differently based on what ponies the new owner has.

All in all, there are a whole lot of situations that might allow for reselling a pony at a profit. All you can really do is do what feels right to you. If the pony is a gift, consider how you would feel if you'd given a pony to someone and then resold it instantly. If you get it from an event or giveaway, consider what your feelings would be if you were the one giving away that pony. And if it's just something you picked up cheap one night, with no strings attached, go for it! Everyone has different feelings about these things, so all you can do is what is right for you. If you are every worried about something of this nature, feel free to PM a friend and ask them about it.

Azuyan Space
Come one, Come all! There are new colours in Azuyan!

On the 18th on June Matchmaker announced that the Colour matcher was updated with the new fancy colours from Azuyan or should I say from space! Yes, this new lot of colours are designed to be from Azuyan space with very interesting and fairly strange names.

Overall there are 36 new colours released. This should hopefully provide a new fun goal for breeders and colour collectors. For a complete list of these colours with names and hexes, follow the link below. It will lead you straight to the appropriate post in Azuyan Showcase (Accessible by all).

http://108.166.6.205/index.php?src=forum&sub=replies&forum=172&topic=2941333

B and T
Many a user has attempted to determine which of the quests is really worth it; which really gives the biggest payout for the effort put into it. For this article, I will be referring to pangolin's guide, as the added detail given to testing and data collection is brilliant.

The first thing most people do when they try to determine where to put those undeployed levels is look at the basic rewards:
Easy: requires 5-10 levels. Rewards 4k.
Medium: requires 10-20 levels. Rewards 8k and 1bp.
Hard: requires 30-40 levels. Rewards 15k and 3bp.
Extremely Hard: requires 70-80 levels. Rewards 30k and 6bp.
Impossible: requires 120-140 levels. Rewards 70k and 10bp.

Realistically, it can be assumed that given enough testing, the average levels should play out, as 7/8, 15, 35, 75 and 130. Thanks to pangolin's testing of 100 Medium and 100 Hard quests, this has been proven. The tests do show a couple decimal points higher than 15 and 35. However, if the numbers were increased to 500 or 1000, we would see this come even closer to the average.

Once you have the basic data, you get to play with a little math. You divide the PG reward by the levels to get your initial profit margin:
Easy: 533.33 PG
Medium: 533.33 PG
Hard: 428.57 PG
Extremely Hard: 400 PG
Impossible: 538.46 PG

This easily knocks Easy and Extremely Hard off the table. They are, mathematically, not worth your efforts. Now, the BP comes into play. Several guides I have seen include the PG value of BP (at 10k = 1BP) in their profit margins. However, this ultimately means that you have to sell BP for PG, in order to get the full value in PG.

A Medium Quest only gives 1BP for about 15 levels, while a Hard quest gives 3BP for about 35 levels. If you can sell those 3BP for 30k, this makes the Hard quest more profitable than the Medium. But, you have to actually sell it. If you compare them with equal level use, you see something like this (simply using 15 x 35):
Medium: 280k + 35BP (630k if BP sold)
Hard: 225k + 45BP (675k if BP sold)

As you can see, the Hard quest is better, if you sell the BP for PG. If you want to use the BP for your own generating, but want to keep a higher PG profit, Medium quests are a better option for you. This is the main type of quest I personally do, as I prefer not to sell BP for PG.

Now, what about Impossible? It gave a nice chunk more PG per level than both Medium and Hard, and it comes with 10BP as well. Realistically, Impossible quests are the best option where possible, especially with the addition of the Impossible quest items. While this also requires selling to gain profit from it, it is another facet to consider.

The problem with Impossible quests is having the initial funds to dedicate towards banking 120-140 levels. This is no easy task. A pony can take up to 8 points of damage each contest. Average that at 4 points. Each point of vetting costs 40PG with the pixie Elaine. So you are looking at about 160PG, per contest, for 130 levels on average, per pony. If you are contesting a full accounts of 160 ponies, that's about 25.6k spent every hour. Take into account that not every pony will gain a level every hour, and many ponies will require many, many contests if they are placing near the bottom of the class, it's a massive investment.

If you like to sell BP for PG, Hard is probably the way to go, until you can manage to raise enough funds to finances Impossible questing. There's also nothing against setting only a few ponies on the road towards Impossible quests and letting the others do something a little less intensive. If you have any questions about contesting or questing check out the Quests and Strategy/Contesting forums.
-Eoko

Recipe
This month Chocolate Chip muffins with an Icing idea. Enjoy nom nom!

Ingredients
Coco Powder - To taste
150g Milk Cooking Chocolate
100g Flour
2 eggs
100g Caster Sugar
100g Butter

100g Butter
100g Icing Sugar
Mint Flavoring (Changeable for Coco Powder)
150g Dark Chocolate

Utensils
Bowl
Spoon
Cupcake mould

Method:
Cake
1. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until smooth
2. Add eggs and flour and mix until again smooth
3. Add in the coco powder and chunks of chocolate
4. Bake for 20 mins in cupcake cases in a 190 degree Celsius (374 Fahrenheit) oven

Topping
1. Mix butter and icing sugar in a bowl
2. Add mint flavoring and whisk until very light and creamy
3. Melt dark chocolate
4. Wrap a tray with cling film and dash the dark chocolate across, put in the fridge to harden
5. Pipe the Butter Sugar onto the cakes and place the dash across the top.

Game #

This month we have a little bit of a different game. The aim of this puzzle is to find the starting arrow. From then all the other arrows link. It's a fairly easy game but it's a little different.



The answer to the Queens game of last month.

This was a good read, thanks! ^^
My favourite articles were the ones on reselling and genning pairs.

Thank you both

We always try to find topics that are recent and new things that happen on PI. Of course some topics can go through our nets but we do our best especially with handy tricks

Bump

Up

I am enjoying the reading. It is very informative. I love being able to look-up older threads.

Bump

Relexas

I read the entire thread; I am please with the new things I have learned and can't wait for next months edition! ^o^