Customs

Customs are pets that are created to the buyer's specifications by an artist of their choice, or they can draw it themselves if they so choose. The type of custom is determined by the custom-making item used to create it. Some custom-making items are available all or most of the time as they are sold in NPC Shops, the Blue Custom Crystal for example. Some of these items are only available for certain amounts of time, but most can be bought through user shops or trades most of the time. Customs range widely in color, lineart and design, and numerous effects like glowing and body-transparency can be added. Custom creation is one of the largest features of Aywas, and it is where a great amount of its revenue comes from. While custom creation items let you create a custom Aywas any way you'd like, there also is another option for creating custom pets, though you do not have as much control of how the custom turns out. The Breeding feature also gives custom pets, though it consists of breeding two pets together, and getting colors/markings from the parents.

Be sure not to confuse custom pet creation items with the custom item creation item. To make Aywas even more customizable, the Custom Item Package was released to allow users to create items to their specifications. Unlike custom pets, users do not submit the art for custom items, they simply give a description to Slash and a site artist will draw it. So, if you want to make a custom item of your custom pet, you're able to!

Custom Pet Creation Items
Custom-creation items differ greatly, and are often very expensive, but many do sell for relatively inexpensive amounts. Many will go for large amounts of GP, while others can be bought for BP on the item auctions page or through privately owned user shops. Others can also be gotten through various events and contests. Custom pet creation items have constantly been added to Aywas over its life, as it is one of the largest features of Aywas and many users have at least one custom. A great number of customs fall into the range of Blue, meaning the species is edited around 50% or less, as Blue customs are still relatively easy to get while still being something to work for. However, as more and more users have joined Aywas and more custom pet creation items have been released, the range of custom pets has grown and it is very easy to find custom pets of all species.

Custom Crystals
Often considered the "basic" custom creation items, the Custom Crystals allow the user to create a custom pet of the Ay species. The Crystals are much more highly prized than their Orb counterparts, and usually cost more money. The custom can have an "edit percentage" of between 0% (no lineart change, simply different coloring) and 100% (draw your own pet species). In order to determine what color crystal is needed, one needs to either attempt to make the determination his or herself, or they need to ask the custom crystal admin, Skitty, to give the color or percentage.

The most popular custom crystal, and overall most popular custom pet creation item, is the Blue Custom Crystal. It is also one of the most recognizable items on Aywas, because the BCC is part of the Aywas Logo. Most customs fall into the category of "BCC", and most designs are made for BCCs. On a large scale, the Melo is the most popular species to be created with a BCC. This has been true since the start of Aywas, and on a whole Melos are the most popular species. The Oske is a relatively new Ay custom, but is also one of the most popular BCC customs. Following these two, Reves, Solis, and Lacers are also very popular, with the other Ay species following behind.

On November 29, 2009, about two months after Aywas' opening, the staff took information about the existing 1,000 customs and better defined the rules of the Blue, Gold, and Silver Custom Crystals (as many users were pushing the limits of the edits these crystals allowed), and these rules are still in effect to this day.

A while later, more custom crystals were released to follow a demand for more customs. The Metal Custom Crystal was released, making many users happy about not having to spend so much money on a BCC. The Flame Custom Crystal was released when Uncommon species joined Aywas. The Candy Cane and Orange Custom Crystals were released as part of holiday events. The Bronze Custom Crystal came over a year later, allowing users to create a custom in between the limits of a MCC and a BCC.

While not bearing the name "Custom Crystal", the Silver Potion acts like a miniature Silver Custom Crystal, allowing users to create a custom species. SCC is both used to describe the crystal, and the type of pet it creates. The crystals allow users to heavily edit a regular base (besides the Hybrids), but the more popular route is for users to create their own species. You can choose to either draw the species yourself (note that no food, anthromorphic creatures, or anthromorphic food are allowed), you can commission an artist to do it, or you can ask an SCC Site Artist to do it for you (which will cost nothing outside of the crystal cost). The Silver Potion allows you to create more pets of your SCC species, but you must have already made two customs of the species from Silver Custom Crystals to be able to use a Silver Potion.

The Custom Crystals are by far the most desired custom pet creation items, and are often prizes of contests and events.

Custom Orbs
Custom Orbs were released several months after the start of Aywas, in January of 2010, when it was announced that there was "another side of Ay". A month later in February, it was released that the new side of Ay was called Ara. All Orbs only allow customs to be made from Ara species. Ara is still not open, but all of the linearts of the pets from the region are released, and customs are able to be made from them. The Orimi appears to be the most popular Ara species to make customs out of, but for the most part, all Ara species seem to be on an equal level in terms of popularity. Ara species are much less popular than Ay species, and Orbs are considered to be worth much less than Crystals.

There have been a few issues with the price of Orbs, however, and their prices has been fluctuating often. Blue Custom Orbs have been given out widely twice; once being when all active users in the past two days were given a BCO (which was thousands of users), and then a second time for the Scavenger Hunt (which was a couple hundred users). This has caused the price of BCOs to fall terribly, meaning they used to be worth about the same as a BCC, 20 GP, and then they fell to around 14 GP, and recently have sold for around 8-11 GP, and sometimes less. BCOs are very hard to trade and are a very excess item, especially as it is also readily available in the BP Shop.

Gold Custom Orbs on the other hand are expensive and hard to get. A few were given away for the Scavenger Hunt, but usually the only way to get them is through the BP Shop for several million BP. There are very few GCO customs on Aywas for this reason.

Metal Custom Orbs were later released, and for a long while there was a big issue with the prices of BCOs vs MCOs. MCOs can only be gotten from the Metalsmithing Shop for Silver Pieces, and Silver Pieces for a while were very expensive and hard to find. Though it offered less edits (0%), the MCO cost more than the BCO, which led several users to create Metals with BCO's so they would be able to pay less.

Scav Paint
The Gold Scav Paint, originally called Scav Paint, is a Custom Creator item which allows users to submit a silver Custom using any of a collection of linearts created by teams for the Aywas Scavenger Hunt. The Gold Scav Paint is the highest tier of the Scav Paint items, allowing up to 75% edits on a submitted custom, while the items Blue Scav Paint and Metal Scav Paint items allow up to 50% edits and up to 0% edits respectively. Like crystals or orbs, a higher level Paint can always be used to submit a less edited pet design.

The Gold Scav Paint was originally named 'Scav Paint' and did not allow edits to the Scavenger Hunt SCCs. However, on July 7, 2011, a news post announced that "some edits have been made to the Scav Paint prize. It is now the Gold Scav Paint, meaning 75% edits or less toward Scav Silver Customs. There is also a Blue Scav Paint and a Metal Scav Paint." All original 'Scav Paint' items owned by players were turned into Gold Scav Paints after this news post though there were no retroactive refunds for those who had already made Scav Paint customs without edits.

Custom Tokens
Custom Tokens were introduced on March 25, 2011 via the Trash for Treasure shop where they can be bought with Trash Points. At present, they can be used to create five species, the Simii, the Itoa, the Corra, the Chorlu, the Opterix, and the Garu. Custom Tokens are the only means of obtaining customs for these species, and any future ones added for tokens. To celebrate their introduction, everyone online within 24 hours of the release date was granted a free Metal Custom Token. These were previously called "Coins", but they were changed to "Tokens", likely to avoid players mistaking them for Coins used for Breeding. The name change also makes for less confusing abbreviations; MCT for example, instead of MCC like before--which overlapped with the MCC/Metal Custom Crystal.

Hybrid Crystals
Hybrid Crystals allow users to create customs of Hybrid species. These items are usually highly sought after, as they are the only ways to get a custom Hybrid (besides the Hybrid Stone, which is near the bottom of this page). The Hybrid Custom Crystal is especially sought after, as they can only be won from events and contests. For NaNoWriMo, the HCC was given away as a prize to those who completed 50,000 words of their story within a month, and it has also been given away as a top Scavenger Hunt prize. They are hard to find even when they are given through contests, and cost upwards of 120 GP for one.

To make a custom Hybrid for less, in December of 2010 Slash released a new item, the Metal Hybrid Crystal, which lets users create custom hybrids with no lineart edits. It was first given away as a prize for a 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway, and later became a prize of the Holiday Event, where users could buy one for 50 Candy Canes. Many got entered into the system from the event, and the item has steadily sold for around 50 GP. This item can also be gotten from a 2011 Ball, which a few lucky users got through a random giveaway on New Year's Day of 2011.

Another custom Hybrid creation item is the Hybrid Potion. This item allows users to create a custom Hybrid, but the Hybrid MUST be based off of an already-created custom, and must be re-uploaded onto that custom. For example, if you had a custom that was blue with yellow swirls, your Hybrid custom must have to have the exact same markings, and be blue with yellow swirls. The potion also works on site pets however, so if you wanted to take a Melo coloration and create a custom Hybrid from it, you would be able to. The potion is able to be bought in the SP Shop, and is not as sought after as the other crystals, as it requires either an existing custom of a different species or a custom to be made from a site pet.

Raw Crystals
On September 12, 2010, Slash unveiled a new feature to Aywas: Special Edition pets. These pets would be released every two months, and were able to be created cheaper than regular Aywas species for those two months. At the end of the two months, a new Special Edition pet is released, and the old SE pet is voted on by the Aywas public to either be an Ay (make with Crystals) or an Ara (make with Orbs) pet.

The Crystals to make SE pets are, to their promise, cheaper than regular custom crystals. The Crystals are called Raw Crystals, and you can ONLY create the CURRENT SE pet with them. For example, you cannot create an Oske with the Raw Crystal, as they are not the current SE pet. Once a pet is no longer an SE pet, Raw Crystals are unable to be used to create a custom of that species; you must use Crystals or Orbs, depending on if it is Ay or Ara.

Cracked/Shattered Crystals and Orbs
Cracked/Shattered Crystals and Orbs were released several months after the start of Aywas. There was much requesting from users to have a custom pet creation item that would allow them to make customs that were unbreedable, but also cheaper. Thus, the Shattered Crystals and Cracked Orbs (notice the difference) were released. These have the same guidelines and work the same as regular Custom Crystals and Custom Orbs, but the pet will be unbreedable. Unbreedable pets (with some exceptions) can be made breedable by using a Breedable Potion or by overlaying the pet. However as the potion is currently going for 80GP and overlaying would involve using a normal custom creating item anyway, it is strongly recommended that you use a non cracked/shattered custom creation item unless you are absolutely sure you will not want to breed the pet in the future.

Pet Cookies
In October of 2010, Aywas was celebrating its first anniversary. To reward users, Slash set up many events and contests. One of the events was a Trick-or-Treating Game where users were allowed to "knock on each others' door" (located on the Users Online page), and the user whose door was knocked on had the option of either "Treating" the user; meaning, it would give the user a piece of candy; or "Tricking" the user; meaning, it would give them nothing. A second event added to this was a "Random User Online Giveaway". If most users were choosing "Treat", then at a random time a random user online would win the item Chocolate Pet Cookie Package. If most users were choosing "Trick", then a random user at a random time would win the item BC Candy Necklace. Most users chose "Treat" all of the time, so there were no records of any user winning a BC Candy Necklace. The Chocolate Pet Cookie Package was handed out approximately 200 times, however.

It was not until a few months later in December of 2010 that users learned what the function of the Cookie Package was. Chocolate Pet Cookie Packages (usually shortened to Cookie Packages) give out three random Pet Cookies. These Pet Cookies are described as "chance custom pet creation items", as there is a percent chance that the cookie will not work. It is a risk, but there is a possibility of getting a custom for cheap, and also the possibility of getting a custom Quetzal!

The most important thing to remember about the Pet Cookies is to NOT FEED THEM TO YOUR PET. If you feed it to your pet, you lose it. You MUST go through the Custom Creation page to use the cookies.

Adoptee Awards
Donation awards from Conservation Week; a Slashbot user-event created by Pirate (#306). It went from November 30, 2011 to December 8, 2011. Users could send a donation to a conservation-focused charity and receive these Custom-creaton items to create pets with 30% edits from bases with a conservation theme designed by Pirate (#306). The tiered prizes were stackable, so if you donated $150 you'd get the full set.

Other Custom Creation Items
Over the months Aywas has been around, often items have been released that are neither a crystal nor an orb, but are still custom pet creation items. Most of the items were created out of events and were given away as prizes. Almost all of these items are very expensive, as the only ways to get them usually is from contests or from other users selling them.

The first of these "Non-Crystal/Orb Custom Pet Creation" items was the Tendril Gem. This item was released for Aywas' first anniversary, and the Tendril Gem is only available around the first of October. However, the item is able to be used at any time, not just around October. It allows users to create a custom Ornaga, and unlike most custom creation items, it actually allows up to 70% edits, so many Ornaga customs are heavily edited. Though they allow a great number of edits, and are not easy to find, they have stayed relatively constant to about the price of a BCC. Many have speculated that it was because many users do not like the Ornaga as it is, and do not wish to make the big edits to get one they would like.

A few other items were slowly released following the Tendril Gem. The Holiday-Colored Coal and the Halloween Potion were released as holiday event prizes, as were the Pet Vouchers, Scav Paints and Bottled Starlights. The Tsunami Potion was released as more of a "teaser" to users, as the first ones were only available through being thrown one by Kaz and then the other ones by cloning those thrown ones. There are believed to be only around 10-15 on site, as only 10 were allowed to be gotten when they were first released, and not many have been gotten after that. They are very expensive though most users who have them have not sold them, and have simply sold off "slots" to the item, as it regenerates every 90 days and allows users to create a Selkie custom.

The Hybrid Stone and Genus Changing Amulet are newer items on Aywas, and they are very similar to the Hybrid Potion. The Hybrid Stone allows users to create a Hybrid custom based off of a different Hybrid. For example, you can take a Hydraulic Shisa and create a Hydraulic Nikko if you desired. For the Genus Changing Amulet, users are able to change a custom or site pet from one species to another (for example, Melo to Soli), but it is common rarity only, same region only. So, it can only be Ay Common to Ay Common, Ara Common to Ara Common. You must provide the art for all of these.

Dawn Crystal
Dawn Crystals are not a custom making item, but an item for modifying existing customs. These crystals allow users to update current customs that may have issues or you may desire changes to, but with limitations depending on generation (see below). It costs 5 GP in the GP Shop, and is inexpensive due to only being used for changes. Dawn Crystals are used in the same way other custom pet creation items; you must submit the update of the custom through the Custom Creation page, and it will be placed into queue for an admin to accept. You must provide your own art for the changes of your custom. If you are changing more than one feature at a time, extra Dawn Crystals can be sent directly to Skitty (#543). If radical changes are being made to a custom, it is often less costly to buy a new crystal/orb unless the pet was made with a very expensive custom creation item.

On March 22, 2011, it was voted by the Aywas public that all Alternate, Halfway, and Old Lineart customs could be submitted directly with custom crystals. Previously customs had to be submitted first with the new lines and then moved with the Dawn Crystal. Dawn Crystals can still be used to move existing customs to different lines.

In the Custom Tutorial, the rules for the Dawn Crystal are clarified. For Gen 1s, you can move a pet to older, newer, or (non Event) alt lineart for the species, change colors, remove markings, redraw edits, reshade the pet/add texture/edit the shading, and remove edits. No amount of Dawn Crystals can add an edit to a pet, for that you will need a Custom Crystal. Generally, one Dawn Crystal can change one part of the pet at a time. If you need to change multiple parts of a pet (ex: redrawing two edits, redrawing an edit and reshading the base, changing multiple colors) you will generally need to use one Dawn Crystal for each part being changed. Look for the "What Color Crystal do I use?" in this forum--if you post your pet there, Skitty can tell you how many crystals you'll need.

The only things you can use a Dawn Crystal to do with a Gen 2 are the following: switch it from old lineart to new lineart (or vice versa), and REMOVE an edit from the G2. You cannot use a dawn crystal to redraw anything (unless you're fully switching lineart in which case the edits and markings still need to match the original), add anything, fix anything, or otherwise alter the G2 in any way.