FAQs - Hunt Prizes and Awards - Skyhaven Hunt Field Guide - Hunt Updates - Linking Graphics - Credits and Links
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Q: What is the Skyhaven Hunt?
A: The Skyhaven Hunt is an offshoot of Skyhaven Adoptions, a click-and-take fantasy cyberpet site. Here, you actually work to earn your adoptables as you explore parts of Tirialle beyond Skyhaven Keep.
Q: Where is Tirialle, and what's all this "Skyhaven" stuff?
A: Tirialle is the magical world in which Skyhaven Adoptions exists. If you don't know anything about Skyhaven, it is strongly suggested that you go to Skyhaven Adoptions. The Hunt is an offshoot of the adoption site, and much of the Hunt depends on knowing this.
Q: What can I find or do here?
A: The only way to really answer this is to explore. Check the Hunt Prizes and Awards page to see what awards and prizes are available. The Skyhaven Hunt Field Guide has information on all the adoptable beings and creatures, including how many of each are currently hidden here. These are subject to rotation.
Q: How do I get started?
A: As stated, you start by picking a place to explore on the main graphic on the front page. From there, it should be pretty straightforward. Read all the text that you see. Search every graphic. Take notes and make maps. You never know what's going to be important later on, and things you find in one part of the Hunt may well help you in another area.
Q: What are the Ratings, and what do they mean?
A: In the past, people sometimes complained that parts of the Skyhaven Hunt were "too hard." The Ratings will tell you just how hard an area is. No part of the Skyhaven Adoption Hunt would exceed a PG-13 rating (too intense for children under 13), but anything past Green might qualify as PG (too intense or complicated for young children.) Each part of the Hunt is rated on the main entry page by its highest difficulty level; Blue areas might have a few Green-level sections.
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Hunt Rating |
What It Means |
| Green | Very easy. No traps, no puzzles, no mazes, almost no reading required - simple seek-and-click. Anyone can do this. |
| Blue | Mildly challenging. Mazes, basic puzzles, possible hidden areas. Most anyone can do this, though it may take more time and patience. |
| Red* | Troublesome. Difficult mazes, multi-stage puzzles, longer stretches of text. Do not attempt if anything rated Blue was too difficult for you. * - Red level Hunt sections coming soon! |
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Q: May I use one of your poems, riddles, or puzzles on my site?
A: So long as you do not claim you wrote it yourself, go ahead. All puzzles were created specifically for the Skyhaven Hunt by the Bright Dreamer; she got sick of seeing everyone use the same tired riddles from The Hobbit.
Q: May I readopt Hunt creatures or beings, as in use one of your adoptables in my own cyberpet adoption site?
A: No, the Rules of Skyhaven (which can be reviewed at Skyhaven Adoptions) do not allow you to readopt or modify these graphics in any way. If you are found stealing and readopting graphics, you will be asked to remove them from your site. If not, you will be reported to your site host; art theft is a Very Bad Thing.
Q: I want to recolor your graphics! Can I?
A: Are you just recoloring them for your own practice, and keeping them on your own computer? Okay. Are you going to redistribute them in any way (adoptables, web sets, skins, avatars, etc.)? No, you can't.
Q: I don't know how to save my own graphics. Can't I just remote-link (or hotlink) them from here?
A: As stated in the Rules of Skyhaven, hotlinking from this domain no longer works. It was disabled because of bandwidth thieves who thought they could break the Rules because they were in some way superior to the law-abiding masses. Saving, uploading, and posting graphics on your own site is very simple. With your mouse, right-click on an image and select "Save Picture As..." from the little menu that appears. Save it to your own hard drive - remember where you save it! Then upload it to your own site as you would any other file. Need a free image host? The Bright Dreamer has good luck with Photobucket.
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Q: Help! I'm lost!
A: At the bottom of each page (with few exceptions) should be two pictures: a brown "book" with the letters SA and some sort of icon (a map, a palace, etc.) Clicking on the book will take you to the Field Guide. Clicking on the icon will take you back to the start of whatever section you're in.
Q: Help! I'm stuck on a puzzle or maze!
A: Try exploring another part of the Hunt for a while;
clues may be found in the most unlikely of places. You may even need to go back to Skyhaven Adoptions
to do some research. If all else fails, send an e-mail to the Bright Dreamer
at one of the addresses at the bottom of the page. She never gives away
direct answers, but she can check what you have and give out clues that should
point you in the right direction.
As for mazes, pay attention to special
directions given when you enter a maze (if there are any), and try making a map
of your progress. Just because a place looks familiar doesn't mean you've
been there before...
Q: Help! I have the right answer, but the answer prompt won't accept it!
A: Double-check your spelling; the Javascript answer prompts are cAsE sEnSiTiVe, so "flower" isn't the same as "FLOWER," "Flower," or even "fLOWER." Read the instructions carefully, because some want ALL CAPS, some want lowercase, and some want Capitalized answers. If you're sure you have it right, and it won't go through after a few tries, e-mail the Bright Dreamer and she'll check the code; she is, after all, only human, and has been known to make a mistake now and again.
Q: Help! I can't find (a creature, an award, etc.)!
A: If you're looking for something you found in the old Hunt, you probably won't find it; this is a brand-new version, and while a few of the creatures may be reused, most of this is new material. Other items will be rotated through on a random basis - wait too long to come back, and it may not be there to find anymore. Otherwise, finding things is just a matter of persistence. When it says to investigate everything, it means investigate everything. Even the smallest of details could be a big clue to hidden rewards. If it's on the Hunt lists, it can be found, earned, or stumbled across within the Skyhaven Hunt.
Q: Help! I found something, but I don't know what it is!
A: The Skyhaven Hunt Field Guide should be able to help you identify anything you find here. To preserve the element of surprise, the images are only headshots or silhouettes (if they are given at all), but that should help narrow things down. If you don't agree with what the Field Guide says, feel free to make up your own rules on your own website.
Q: Help! I found something, but I don't like it!
A: You aren't required to keep anything you find. If you were looking for dragons and can only find griffins, feel free to not take any griffins. If you think a particular award or prize is ugly or pointless, you don't have to take it with you. (If you think everything here is ugly and pointless, perhaps you should find another website to occupy your time.)
Q: Help! I found a broken link!
A: E-mail the Bright Dreamer and tell her about it, and she'll fix it as soon as possible.
Q: Help! I just spent way too much time here!
A: Sorry, can't help you there... If it helps, consider that the Bright Dreamer spends far more time creating the content for any given page than the average visitor does viewing it. Just think of how many midnights she has seen compiling this, and maybe you won't feel so bad about your own wasted night. Or buy an alarm clock so you don't spend more than an hour or two surfing the internet.
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Q: I don't like fantasy. Why aren't there any real animals here?
A: Skyhaven Adoptions is a fantasy-based site. The
world of Tirialle is a fantasy-based world. Therefore, the creatures and
beings inhabiting it will tend to be fantastic. Terran (Earth) animals
would only be here if there were some magical explanation for their presence,
which would push things right back into the fantasy category. Yes, there
are ordinary humans in Tirialle. There are also ordinary cats and dogs and several other
"mundane" (nonmagical) animals. But most tourists don't care
about such things. If you go to Africa, you aren't usually there to see
cats and dogs - you're there to see the zebras and lions and giraffes, things
you can't see in the wild anywhere else. The same is true of Tirialle; the
Hunt presumes that, like a tourist, you are here to explore the unique and
unusual sights and wonders of the land, not to see the familiar and mundane.
You wouldn't buy a hamburger if you were a vegetarian, would you? You
wouldn't read a mystery novel and complain because there aren't any aliens,
would you? You wouldn't watch a football movie if you don't like sports,
would you? So why are you visiting a fantasy site if you don't like or
approve of fantasy? Try another adoption site. If you don't
like them, then try creating your own.
Q: Could you add... (species, puzzle, location)?
A: Suggestions are always welcome, but the Bright Dreamer cannot guarantee she will add any specific adoptable. For one thing, she's not so good at drawing that she can come up with a new design at the drop of a hat. For another, she just doesn't have the time. (In some cases, she can't for copyright reasons - Pernese dragons, for one, are off-limits, as are other proprietary beings and animals, and she can't very well expect people to respect her own intellectual property if she sneaks around stealing someone else's creations.) For the same reason, she cannot accomodate requests for custom colors; what you see is what you get.
Q: Why don't you do animated, interactive stuff like everyone else does these days?
A: The Bright Dreamer tries to keep her sites as low-tech and fast-loading as possible, to accommodate as many visitors as she can. She also has yet to master the rudiments of Flash or any other program which would allow for more dynamic content, but she does hope to someday offer something along those lines. (She also hopes to have a Real Life someday. She likes impossible dreams.) As for interactive pets, that requires more time and internet training to do properly than she has at the moment. It also tends to invite abuse and hackers, which she just plain doesn't want to deal with.
Q: I'm all done. Now what?
A: Now what? Well, you can wait for the next update, or you can double-check the lists to make sure you found everything. You can also go back to your home site and start designing a home for your newfound friends... maybe even create a Hunt of your own (though not with Skyhaven Hunt critters, naturally.)
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The Skyhaven Adoption Hunt and related text and
images were created by TBW 2007
Only the awards and the adoptable creatures/beings are to be taken
E-mail: tbweber (at) comcast (dot) net or tbweber (at)
brightdreamer (dot) com
(Remove spaces, replace (at) with @ and (dot) with . Please put Skyhaven
Hunt in the Subject line!)