I had hoped to get this post up sooner, but I haven’t been doing too great and also expected the teased Treasure Hunt Event to happen a lot earlier than it actually did which I had been waiting for and well… At this point, it was best to just wait even with how late it took to get here. Despite the delay of this post, I did actually play the update right away.
So, July 9th, we finally got the second part of the Storybook Vale and I’m still not entirely sure if I liked it or not. The story itself was fun, and I liked the puzzles– I think the overall pacing just felt weird to me, but I feel like I had a similar issue with the first expansion as well.
The second part kicked off with the three expansion-specific Villagers still around starting to “fade out” like Maleficent… Except Maleficent didn’t start fading out– she just kind of poofed away and disappeared. To fix this, we needed to find pillars of story pages that had a major missing part of that character’s story. There isn’t any explanation about why this was missing (and if you finished their friendship quests, some of these feel especially odd to suddenly be doing so), but it becomes even stranger when you follow through to the Unwritten Realms where a faded Maleficent is stuck waiting as she is apparently scheduled to be erased which is why these important memories were taken.
But why did nobody else go here? Why did they just start fading outside? I’m probably thinking too much into this, but I feel like this is a large part of why it felt a bit rushed to me. Especially considering the Culprit of Maleficent’s situation is who outright invited us to fix the issue with everyone else:
Anyway, we had to deal with some Magic Quills and extremely tiring paperwork rules that lead to us finding ways to get around the system to save Maleficent, despite the Lorekeeper’s concerns.
With that done, it was time to figure out how to rescue Aurora. Heading through a portal, we were given trials by Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. The trials were actually pretty neat, though, I don’t think the instructions were always explained the best. I also kind of hated the outfit we needed to wear. I really wish we could be given a few different options.
With the trials done, it’s time to finally rescue Aurora… Alas, the Lorekeeper used us to get to her and we have a few more puzzles before the day is finally truly saved. The Lorekeeper is very much not a fan of crossovers, AUs, or anything non-canon.
Like the last expansion, this ended with a preview of what’s to come (I’m guessing yet another expansion) with Maximus, the horse from Tangled because why not put yet ANOTHER Tangled character in an expansion exclusive environment and just let the only free character be Mother Gothel :| Tangled is one of my favorite Disney movies and it’s just… so disappointing to see this. I really don’t like characters being exclusively tied to specific expansions. I feel like it cheapens things a lot. Adding more interactions, the biomes, and new quests and things is plenty, and I say this as someone who’d buy those expansions regardless, but I genuinely don’t think having characters exclusive to expansions is a good choice.
I’m guessing Pascal will either also be through that expansion or be another character pet regulated to the Premium Shop to further eliminate the chance of quests and other neat interactions (or maybe they will do what they did with Flynn where he had a bonus quest to reunite with Rapunzel if you had both).
Regardless, with that done and now all of my favorite Disney Princesses in the Valley, it was time for friendship quests! I started with Aurora’s, because, well, she’s one of my favorite characters. The first friendship quest involved us helping celebrate everything essentially being okay now while the second was making up a story to cheer up the Lorekeeper.
The third was a “Princess Tour” where Aurora gathered up nearly all the princesses to see how everything was going. Unfortunately, and this is part of why I do not like characters being exclusive to expansions, Rapunzel doesn’t get to be a part of this. I wish there could have at least been an optional thing if you happened to have both expansions.
Alas, Aurora’s final friendship quest was locked as we needed to get further in Maleficent’s questline first. Her first quest was simple enough– setting things up for her Raven and even getting to keep it as a new companion.
Unfortunately, the rest of her quests were regulated back to hers and Hades’ feud between them fighting up until they decided to work together to try and take over the Valley. And I just… I thought this was essentially solved in the first part? It felt like such a bit of redundancy to go back to all that.
Thanks to the Power of friendship and a magical typewriter that was about to run out of ink and we didn’t just… get more ink for it and/or bring it with us, the day was saved and Maleficent and Hades finally get along and go about their business peacefully like all the other Villains usually are.
Aurora’s final friendship quest was essentially tied into all of that, and I don’t know, it just wasn’t particularly fun and everything just felt kind of rushed.
I’m also bummed because I LOVE the dress we get from Aurora’s final quest, but the cape ruins it for me. I wish the cape/cloak was its own separate piece.
Going past the Storybook Vale stuff, let’s talk about some of the non-expansion stuff. Firstly, Nana was added to the Premium Shop. Even though the whole Existing Companion Characters being added to the Premium Shop thing doesn’t surprise me anymore, it still disappoints me every time.
We also got a nice thank you letter from our Shadow self:
And as July came to an end, the Treasure Hunt event finally happened and if I had to discuss it in one sentence: Fun idea, terrible execution.
I’ve mentioned before how I really wish we had a designated event area or just an area for when a spawnable thing happens. It could be a place in the Castle (like how we have the Expansion hub), a Floating Island, a new special event biome… There are many possibilities, it could even be decorated to some extent, so it won’t feel weird when all the Villagers are talking about how nicely things are decorated for an event and most importantly: it won’t ruin your decorating.
In general, with events where there are spawns, I’ve had the issue of trying to find things with my Valley pretty packed. Like the Cheshire Cat event, this is another “find the special crack” type thing, though, these definitely have a larger glow. Frustratingly though, there are a few very annoying issues with how this all works:
1. In general, any kind of spawn-related event always has issues and can even bug for people who have their Valley pretty decorated.
2. You can only find one a day.
3. If you don’t find the crack and solve the “riddle” by 9AM the next day, you will miss out as it will disappear to be replaced with the next day’s crack and riddle.
And the biggest issue at all:
4. The “riddle” spawns a bunch of a breakable item in a specific biome to the point of even destroying paths. As it is, it’s random which one will have the special chest for your memory, so you’ll have to break everything and it means I even had to break some I had purposely wanted to keep around because there was nothing to help differentiate which were force spawned for this event, and which weren’t.
It’s destructive, frustrating, and honestly, not particularly satisfying. There is nothing fun with these riddles. The way they are walled off sucks, and as someone who REALLY loves Scavenger Hunts and riddles, I was beyond disappointed.
Getting two gets you a new motif while getting all four finishes the special memory to let you find the dig spot in the area you probably guessed it was in immediately to get a Pirate Mast furniture item:
Anyway, that’s pretty much what I’ve been up to. Next update seems to be Inside Out themed which I haven’t seen so I don’t feel any particular way about it, but I always enjoy new realms and quests. Just… really hope they rethink how they do events in the future.
To finish this off, my Dreamsnap entries lately:
I hope my next post will be a lot sooner…