FAQs

Q: Why do their wings sometime not seem to be moving?
A: It has to do with SL's level of detail. Smaller objects lose their texture animation and detail as you zoom out. The larger butterflies will always seem to be active; smaller butterflies will become 'still' as you zoom away.

Q: Why aren't my butterflies mating?
A: Butterflies need to be at full health in order to breed, have a 0.0 mating timer, be well fed (over 90%), and they need to have a decent social value. Every 'tick', which varies based on their current morale and loyalty scores, they compare their social value to a strait percentage check; if it passes, then they look for a mate. If it doesn't, then they go about other business. Unless they're specifically told who to mate with, it could take a while before they pick one that they like…especially if there's a lot of choice fluttering around.

Q: Why aren't my butterflies eating?
A: The don't really get 'hungry' until they get to around 90%. After that they start looking for valid food sources. Did you place them too far from the food? Does the food have resources remaining? If you have a lot of 'dead' plants around them that no longer have resources, they'll constantly try to nibble on worthless foliage, and fail to find anything yummy.

Q: How many times can the butterflies mate?
A: Each butterfly begins with a dozen (12) mating cycles. The relatively low count was implemented to prevent over-breeding and to further increase the rarity of actually rare qualities. HOWEVER, Longevity Pools (accessories) occasionally grant a butterfly an additional mating cycle. This is a very rare case, and will not occur unless the butterfly is already below 5 mating cycles; it can be expected that a butterfly may receive a single additional mating cycle in its lifetime for every longevity pool that is able to affect it, however as with all rare things, it is not guaranteed.

Q: What are spiders and what do they do?
A: The more butterflies you have, the greater the chances that your plants acquire a spider. Spiders spin a web to try to catch your butterflies, and can harm your butterfly's wings if they land on such a plant to feed. The damage done is only temporary and can be healed by time, priest/priestesses, bards, and hollow logs. For the most part, a spider is unlikely to actually 'kill' your butterflies…especially if you have a healer-class or hollow logs. They can be scared away by bee-hives (repeatedly clicking the hive pisses it off and causes them to take their anger out on spiders, too), soldier butterflies, and the use of a gardening rake. Worker butterflies will also clip away spiderwebs as they tend the plants. In the event that your butterfly is killed by a spider it simply enters toy-mode, and can be returned to pet-mode with a click.

Q: OMG do I have to wear all of these huds?
A: No! They just make things a little easier for breeders in particular. Casual users can manually click butterflies and see most of the important information without using any of the HUDs. However, some information is only viewable using the magnifying glass. The adventuring huds and scoreboard huds are completely options and simply included to bolster competition.

Q: Oh god, all of the text! Can we turn that off?
A: Yes! The new ones have a 'quiet' mode that removes almost all of that noisy text flooding your screen. There's also a 'whisper' option so that people nearby can see the information as well, when you click them. I HIGHLY recommend setting them to QUIET mode on the HUD, and using the magnifying glass to see attributes.

Q: Do the classes (Soldier, Priest, Princess, etc) matter at all?
A: Yes and no…while class doesn't directly affect breeding, some of the classes are far rarer than others, giving the breeding an additional dimension of depth in attempting to breed towards Prince/Princess/King/Queens. Also, the butterfly's class affects the adventuring minigame's attributes.

Q: What happens when they die? How long will they live?
A: They never 'die', so much as simply decide to stop helping out the others. Once their lifespan runs its course, the butterflies forcefully enter 'toy' mode and continue their cute fluttering around. If a butterfly forcefully enters toy-mode due to starvation they lose a tier of job-experience. They no longer eat, breed, or boost the butterflies around them. The butterflies will have a randomized productive lifespan of 5-10 months, with the possibility of living as much as 50% longer with the use of longevity pools.

Q: Are the colors and types completely random, or is it based on genetics?
A: All of your offspring's values are based on the genes of the parents, and carry over into the next generation. If the parents are a soldier and a priestess, chances are the offspring will be a soldier or priestess (barring rare mutation or evolution). Likewise, wing coloration is based off of the parent's wing combinations, modified slightly based on their mutation percent chance. Two butterflies that are very red will almost certainly make a very red offspring.

Q: Are there mutations or other rare qualities?
A: Yes. It's possible to get a number of mutations (some of which haven't been activated in the code yet, requiring more texturing and such). There are a handful of particle mutations already activated, the Eternal mutation, and a few others that affect the butterfly more directly. We're expecting to add in several body and/or antenna mutations in particular, and more than likely a few wing mutations (tattered, flaming, who knows).

Q: Just how rare ARE the rarer types, classes, and other genetics?
A: Some of the genetic qualities can NOT be gained through starters; they have to be bred/inbred, using mutation. The rarest of the rare types and classes are are about a 1 in 50,000 base chance of acquiring on a single starter activation…it'll happen, I'm sure, but I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you. Someone'll eventually get lucky enough to start with a King, but that may very well be the only King starter to pop up in a year. The chances of getting a completely pure-colored starter are roughly one in a billion, but your chances of getting a partially-pure (at least one value at 1.0 or 0.0) is roughly one in a thousand.

Q: How long are food sources going to last? Are there 'special breeding foods'?
A: It'll vary based on what size of plant you buy, but the short answer is: one plant will last one butterfly at least a month. Given proper motivation (several food sources, morale/loyalty boosts, etc), a generic food source may last almost 50% longer. There are NO special breeding foods! We're not trying to milk people of their precious L$ for an extra % chance of something. The butterflies are VERY happy if they have several different sources of food available, which serves the same purpose, but the additional food sources cost no more than any other genetic plant…and still extends your food reserves just as far.

Q: What happens if I 'break' one by accident?
A: Stop trying to break it or cheat! But in the event that lag somehow DOES interfere and break your precious little pet, all of the butterfly values are stored externally on a server, and are able to be accessed and duplicated to replace your favorite butterfly -AS LONG AS YOU KNOW THE ID NUMBER-. Do -not- delete your butterfly, we'll more than likely need your 'broken' one in order to replace it.

Q: Do they need to move around to do whatever they're doing?
A: No. The movement is completely cosmetic. They continue to do all of their duties even if their movement is turned off. If you live in a particularly laggy sim, it might be to your benefit to deny their movement, or at the very least change the frequency.

Q: What do these bonuses actually DO?
A: The big two are morale, and loyalty. Morale affects how well your butterflies do whatever they do; it makes soldiers kill spiders better, priests heal faster, workers work harder, etc etc. Loyalty affects how much your butterflies eat, and how naughty they tend to be with each other. Those two bonuses are modified by how many sources of food they have, and various accessories. For example, psychedelic mushrooms apply their bonuses towards loyalty when it comes to mating. Your butterflies essentially have six possible bonuses; morale, loyalty, prince/princess-bonus, king/queen bonus, food-bonus, and shroom-bonus. Those six apply directly to mating-related activities, and can give up to a 20% increase in mutation/evolution chance if the bonus-givers are high enough tier.