Agent Insights Ep 68: Bot Raids

 Hello, everyone. Flint here to cover a topic that you've likely heard about if you've played Animal Jam recently.

Lately, there have been bot raids occurring, mostly on AJPC. What happens is, mass amounts of AI-controlled accounts appear in Jamaa, spamming certain text phrases and doing things they aren't supposed to be doing. For instance, they'll teleport, flash colors, constantly change their handheld item icons, and be flying without a flying animal. They aren't on AJ all the time, but bot raids happen frequently.

These bots fill up servers and cause large amounts of lag. For some players, they can't even log in during a raid due to the lag and the servers being full. Even if you can get in, you'll see these bots everywhere in public areas and will likely still experience lag.

Another thing these bots are known for is spamming. Besides spamming certain phrases in chat, they also spam buddy requests, JAGs, and game invites. If they're spamming you in these ways, it's very hard to get out of the situation long enough to disable your buddy requests/JAGs/etc. The best thing to do if you're being spammed is just to log off or sit there until the bot raid is over. If you aren't currently being spammed, I'd recommend turning off JAGs, buddy requests, and game requests for the time being.

As far as I know, the bots aren't hacking people's accounts. Some of them might be cracked accounts, but as of now the only thing that's coming of the raids is a lot of lag and annoyed players. Be cautious, but don't worry unnecessarily.

One other thing to note is that a way AJ has tried to combat these bots is by banning anyone who says the phrases they spam. The bots get around this by saying other things, but you shouldn't try to say phrases that the bots are spamming.

That's all for now. If anything major changes regarding the bot raids, we'll likely post again, but for now, that's all we have to say on the matter.

Random Saturday Ep. 87: AJPC Carnival Cotton Candy

 

Hey jammers! This is Clover here with another episode of Random Saturdays! This week, we will be talking about the cotton candy machine in Animal Jam Classic's Summer Carnival.

At the cotton candy machine, there are a total of 8 "special" cotton candies you can create. Each of them have a specific cone and 3 color combination in order to create them!

The first one we will be talking about is the standard phantom cotton candy. You can make this one by using any cone (with the exception of the star cone), and the color combination "black-white-black." The final product is shown below with a plain white cone.

The second cotton candy you can create is known as the "phantom king" cotton candy. This one has similar instructions to the standard phantom cotton candy, however you use the star cone with the "black-white-black" color combination.

The next cotton candy we will be talking about is what I like to call the "paw" cotton candy. For this one, you use the plain white cone and the color combination "white-orange-yellow." 

The next one is the "heart" cotton candy. To make this one, all you have to do is use the pink heart cone and the pink color one time, and you'll make it!

Similarly to the "heart" cotton candy, the "star" cotton candy requires only 2 steps. Dip the star cone in the yellow cotton candy one time and you have it!

Returning back to more complex cotton candies, we have the rainbow cotton candy next. To make this one, you have to use the lighting cone, then the "blue-yellow-pink" combination.

Next up we have the "moon" cotton candy! To make this one, you use the lightning cone and the "white-blue-white" combination.

Last, but certainly not least, we have the "sun" cotton candy! To make this one, you use the star cone and the "yellow-orange" color combination (you may add a second orange, however it makes no difference either way).

That concludes this Random Saturday post! Thank you for reading the newest edition of Random Saturdays, and be sure to enjoy the Summer Carnival!

-Clover

Random Saturday Ep. 86: Epic Plushie Scavenger Hunt

Hai jammers, Blossom here with our blog's 86th Random Saturday post! Today I will be reviewing the recent challenge that Animal Jam advertised known as the "Epic Plushie Scavenger Hunt."

Animal Jam hid 8 Epic Plushies around the 5 lands (excluding the 3 ocean lands) that jammer's could look for and purchase. If you successfully found one of the 8 plushies, a pop-up screen like this would appear: 

You have the choice to purchase the plushies for 1,000 gems each. Below is a guide to where all of the plushies are located throughout Jamaa. If you would like to challenge yourself, I recommend you skip this part!

Agent Insights Ep 67: Epic Plushies

Howdy everybody, Danny here with a new Agent Insights. If you're an AJPC player, you have probably heard about the Epic Plushie Scavenger hunt. There are 8 different plushies hidden around Jamaa, and when you find one, you can click on it to open a shop where you can buy that plushie for 1,000 Gems. When placed in a den, the plushies can be clicked on, which will play an animation showing them turning into a little plush ball. Fun!

However, the Epic Plushies are not new to this update, though this is the first time they have been available for gems. A quick history lesson for newer players: from late 2012 until sometime in 2013 or 2014, a series of plushies known as Sidekix were available for purchase from the AJ Outfitters website. The series consisted of 8 plush toys designed after animals from AJPC. The plushies featured a zipper on the torso that could be unzipped to fold the toy inside-out, turning it into a plush ball, just like their in-game equivalents.

Each individual plush came with a code that could be redeemed to get an in-game version of that plush in the form of an Epic Plushie. The Epic Plushies are quite valuable since they have not been available for many years, and because they could only be obtained with purchase of a physical Sidekix toy.

Confusingly enough, though, the Epic Plushies purchasable from the scavenger hunt event are not the same items as the plushies obtained from the Sidekix line. They are identical in terms of appearance and item name, but can be differentiated by the fact that the original Sidekix Epic Plushies now have a rare tag, while the 2021 versions do not. The Rare Tag appears when the item is viewed in an inventory, trade list, or in a player's My Shop.

Pictured below is a comparison of the Epic Fox Plushie for reference.

Since this distinction is not made clear anywhere, it is unfortunately likely that this will cause some initial confusion regarding the value of the original Sidekix Epic Plushies.

 

If you or your friend have any of the original Epic Plushies, don't trade them away! I anticipate that some players may try to scam by attempting to conflate the two items, so be cautious. This information is also posted on our Rare Item Guide page for future reference.

That's all for now. Stay safe and trade fairly!

Monthly Update - May

Hey all, Jade here with your newest Monthly Update! Happy Pride Month to you all- now, let's get into the changes from May.

First of all, we'd like to welcome two new Gammas, Grave and Galaxy, to the team! You've already seen some posts from Grave, and you can expect to see some from Galaxy in the near future.

Last month, we mentioned a new system where staff are not included in the schedule, and instead are warned by the choice of agents through the usage of the Staff Activity Form. We've continued to use this system throughout this month and it has gone quite well! As staff, we hope to be able to maintain and help the society grow more effectively through this system.

Our most major change this month was opening game nights to the public on our Discord server. Game nights are hosted every Saturday at 6 PM Pacific Time. The games we play include skribbl.io, Drawful 2, Board Game Arena, and Quiplash. So far, game nights have been a super fun experience and a great way for us to get more involved with the non-agent members of our server! If you want to participate in our game nights, feel free to join our server through the link above or the widget on the sidebar!

We are also continuing our event rotation on the server- we played Egg Hunt throughout May and it went very well. This month, we're playing Race Through Jamaa! For event rules and sign-ups, you can join our server and check out the Events category.

Finally, we would like to remind you all that applications to join the society are open and available on our Joining page! If you have applied and were rejected before, you are welcome to reapply, but please remember the 3 month waiting period between applications. Additionally, if you aren't interested in joining the society, you are still free to join our Discord server or submit any scammers you find through our Scammer Report Form!

That's all for this post- thank you all for reading! Stay safe out there, and Jam On.