It's time to kick off our 1 year anniversary celebration with our first round of game updates and celebration goodies! Check back here often because at least once per week throughout February I will be adding new stuff to the game to ratchet up the celebration until it culminates in a big blow out on February 24th.

The goodies listed below may be permanent for the game or last only for the month of February... check them out!

Permanent game modifications

• Professional Associations added (continue reading or click the link for the full instructions)
• Modification to contract brewing
• More than 100 new and hot celebrities on the pub floor

Anniversary specials

• All brewery upgrades are 10% cheaper for the rest of the month
• Drink any new label (new for your collection) and receive a raffle ticket
• Throw a keg party and automatically get 20 raffle tickets instead of 10
• Throw a garage sale for $15 per junk item instead of $10

Professional Associations

So here I think is a very cool new addition to the game. Brewers learn from each other all the time, this website and other sites dedicated to brewing are proof enough of that. The game now rewards players for working together and collaborating by creating formal 'Associations' between players. Associations give a quality boost to your beer. There are three ways to create an 'Association' between yourself and a fellow player/brewer:

• Execute a contract (see contract brewing)
• Drink 10 consecutive beers at a player's keg party
• Share a purple heart together in the pub

If you are contract brewing then you are clearly collaborating, if you go to a brewer's keg party and stay awhile then there is little doubt that you will talk shop together, and lastly if you get blitzoid drunk together... well, you might not remember much but you are likely to become friends for life thereafter. Why? ...well to prevent either of you from blackmailing the other about what you actually did that night of course!

The other important bit about become professional associates is that newer brewers will learn more from more experienced brewers but everyone gets something out of the deal. New brewers try stuff, sometimes stupid stuff perhaps, but experimentation can result in new information for everybody. In the game the value of your Association to other brewers is expressed as a number from 0-10, 0 if you have not brewed anything yet, and 10 if your average label quality score is currently above 950. Click the image below to see where you can find Associations on the game tab.

Here's an example... Let's say that I have an average label quality of 500 and you have an average label quality of 685. My 'Advice score' will be +5 and yours will be +7. When we become Associates I will get up to a +7 quality increase to every batch that I brew while the Association is active and you will get +5. Quality never goes down in this system so even collaborating with a +1 player gives you something.

You can enter into a professional association with as many players as you like but there is a cap on the quality gain, also if your batch quality score is already very high then the association benefit will fall back in magnitude accordingly. Beer quality cannot exceed 1000 in this game no matter what. Associations last 24 hours from the point they are earned and the quality score is granted at the time that you move your beer to the fermenter. So even if an Association expires during the 24 hour fermentation period you will still retain the benefit.

Lastly, with this new system in place I have modified the contract brewing algorithm so that the full brewer no longer has a choice to improve the buyer's beer quality, instead an association is automatically granted when the contract is complete and both players get a quality increase on all batches for 24 hours. There is no longer any cost to the full brewer for this bump.

Well, that's it for the first week's stuff! I have lots more to come all month so enjoy!

-Robc