The Lost Grove, formerly known as the MegaZone, or MZ, is a massive new area of content for players to explore and conquer. Having been in development for the past year and half, it is finally nearing its imminent release!

The Lost Grove will provide players with extended content ranging from Level 60 through Level 75. A massive and beautiful new zone, it is full of new monsters, a new species, new Themed Pets, new gameplay, and all sorts of new challenges. If added up, it most definitely contains way more content than all of Sylestia's previous exploration content combined.

While there is an immense amount that could be written about The Lost Grove, I will instead refer to our previously posted announcement for a lot of the basic information regarding the new zone:

https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=48775


Instead, I would like to focus more so on its launch and how everything is going to work and what players can expect.

As has been mentioned before, The Lost Grove is broken down into four different sections:

Section 1: Level 60-65 content.
Section 2: Level 65-70 content.
Section 3: Level 70-75 content.
Section 4: Dungeon

However, it isn't quite as black and white as that. When a new section is opened, the previous sections will adapt and change as well for the appropriate players.

So, basically, The Lost Grove will release in 4 separate parts. The upcoming release will make Section 1 available and raise the Level Cap to 65. The community will then work together to progress through the content and story for the first section until it's eventually completed, which will then unlock Section 2, and so forth.

New players who may happen to join behind the curve will begin in their own instance of The Lost Grove and progress through the stages and sections at their own pace until they eventually catch up to where the community is at. This ensures everyone a chance to see all of the content provided and to prevent newer players being thrown into content that is way too hard for them.


The Release

Now, in regards to the release, we are all working very hard to get this prepared as quickly as we can. However, there is A LOT that we are trying to put together. While The Lost Grove's release is very imminent, we may be looking at adjusting the scheduling of everything over the next week or two - especially with Valentine's Day being thrown into the mix as well.

Unfortunately, some real life issues have also popped up causing further disruptions in getting all of this prepared for the initially announced launch date of February 10th.

While I can't for sure say at this point in time, it is looking like if we were to stick with a February 10th release date, we'd be releasing without the new Species ready, without Themed Pets finalized, without everything all polished up and fully tested, and it would overlap with any Week of Love games/events we release.

Therefore, assuming we can avert a site-wide riot =P, we are looking at delaying the launch of The Lost Grove by 1 week and pushing it back to February 17th. Instead, we will release Week of Love stuff for this weekend and through the following week while getting everything properly set up for The Lost Grove's release.

I think this will work out much better for everyone, even if it means we have to endure one extra week before official launch.


Why Aren't Things Ready?

After making a final review of the new species, we decided to make some last minute changes and improvements. We made adjustments to its lineart that we felt were necessary - which then required updating shading and genes and such.

Additionally, we are wanting to move some traits around and make some changes/adjustments to more match things we have done in the past couple of Revamps. Remember, this species was initially conceived 1.5 years ago. It's a little out of date on a few things.

Lastly, we've decided to do something different with one of their Gene Slots that we think players will really enjoy.

All in all, it's a bit of work that isn't quite finished yet and we don't want to release the new species without it being finished. And if it isn't ready by the 10th, which I don't think it will be, I think it'd be sad to release The Lost Grove w/o the new species along with it.

Due to some outside circumstances, the Themed Pets aren't finished yet either. And again, at this point in time, I am not confident they would be done by the 10th either.

There is also some polishing and stuff I haven't quite been able to squeeze in and with everything else going on, I probably can't squeeze it in by the 10th.

All in all, plus the fact that I am sure you guys don't want to be forced to decide between partaking in Week of Love games or playing in The Lost Grove, I think it makes the most sense to do the Week of Love this weekend/upcoming week and then release The Lost Grove next weekend on the 17th.


I know everyone has been extremely patient throughout this whole developmental process and I truly, truly hate to delay it any further. I really think it is in the best interest of everyone to do so and I think sloppily releasing it, especially after all of this time, would be a mistake.

It is coming, it will be released. We are almost there. =)


Please post any thoughts/comments/questions and I will be happy to address them as best as I can!

Woohoo! So excited!! Thanks Krin for your hard work ^^

Ty for updating.

I, personally, am all right with waiting another week. Having it polished and tested is important! I am very much looking forward to exploring the zone!

No, it's fine. It's better to be thorough than to just throw it out there half done. Take your time; there is no rush. Can't wait to see how this new species turns out!

Makes sense not to have it overlap with the Week of Love, especially with some of the features mentioned about the Lost grove.

Thank you for the update!

I think I speak for a lot of us when I say the moving of release date is much better. Having the new species released with the Lost Grove is a huge thing, and without it the MZ would be very different. Clashing with the Week Of Love would be a very distracting thing, and I believe many people would definitely choose The Lost Grove over Week Of Love.
Finally, we are all excited for this amazing update and we can wait a bit longer for a better result. Huge thanks to the admins, the development team, and any other people participating in the creation of this game!

So excited!!! Is the new species a new pet or one of those cool monster things we gotta fight!! It sounds so cool!!

Cool! Can't wait for the week event for Valentine's day! Just take it slow and don't hurry we can wait : )

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=57386&page=1#8 Author: Greatturtlejinx666 Time Posted: 2/7/2018 at 5:12 PM So excited!!! Is the new species a new pet or one of those cool monster things we gotta fight!! It sounds so cool!!

It was originally announced here:

https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=27135#1