Gifting

Note - the Secret Society game was released in November 2012, however the friend sections were not added until version 1.3 in April 2013. As a result the friends section is still a work in progress, and integration into the game is not perfect. Please see Known Problems With Gifting section for details of current issues with sending gifts.

Gifting Limits
Currently the SS has a gifting limit in place:

Each day you may send up to 10 collection items (e.g. coins, rings etc.), which are items you won investigating pictures and puzzles. These items come out of your inventory (so only send them if you know you do not need them). You can send up to 10 collection items to one friend or send one collection item to each of 10 friends. But once you have sent a total of 10 collection items you must wait until the following day to send more.

In addition to 10 collection items you may also send up to 50 ‘free gifts’ a day. The free gifts are elements to combine collections (e.g. winding keys, springs gears etc.) as well as Special Items (e.g. Fireflies; Ladybugs; Carrots; Cupid's Arrows and Tokens). Free gifts DO NOT come out of your inventory, but you may have to reach certain levels to be allowed send some items. You may only send 1 free gift to each friend a day, up to a maximum of 50 friends. You may not send additional elements needed to combine collections to your friends, even if you have many of them in your inventory, as currently the only way to send these items is through the free gift system. Special items needed to play certain rooms (e.g. fireflies for Night Garden; ladybugs for The Mill; carrots for Illusionist’s Room; cupid arrows for Tree of Dates) can be sent as free gifts to your friends, and are a good option to send if you do not have any items on their wish list and you know they have those pictures unlocked (which you can find out by visiting that friend). Unfortunately, these special items cannot be added to your wishlist even though they can be sent through the free gift system.

Sending Gifts
 To send gifts to your friends open the Friends section of the game by pressing the ‘Friends’ icon on the bottom right hand side of your home desktop.

 Once in the Friends section of the game open the Friends tab (this is usually the default open tab). This is the list of your current friends. Choose a friend you wish to send a gift to and find their info box in the Friends tab. The green ‘send a gift’ button on the bottom left hand of the friends box brings up the gifting screen for that friend. The gifting screen has three sections to it.

Friend's Wishlist
 Across the top of the screen is your friend’s current wishlist. These are either collection items or elements to combine collections that you friend needs. You can send these items directly by pressing the item in the friends wishlist (but in the case of collection items you must have the item in your inventory to send*). The items in your friends wishlist will have numbers in yellow boxes above them. In the case of collection items, the number tells you how many you have in your inventory. That number will go down by 1 after you send this item to your friends. In the case of elements for combining collections the number will always be one regardless of how many you have in your inventory, as that is the maximum amount of free gifts you may send to each friend a day. After sending any element to combine collections to your friend from either their wishlist or from the ‘send a gift’ tab the number 1 will disappear from all elements to combine collections in their wishlist, not just the one you sent. Again, this is because you have reached your maximum allowance of free gifts for that friend that day.

Send a Gift Tab
There are two tabs underneath your friends wish list. The tab that is automatically open is ‘send a gift’ – this shows you the list of free gifts you can send to the friend. Items sent from this tab DO NOT come out of your inventory.

This section shows all the elements to combine collections as well as special items available to send through the game. Some of these items require you to be at a certain level to unlock. In the case of these items, if you are not at high enough level in the game, the top left corner of the picture will be folded over and the level you need to be at is listed above the word ‘needed’ (e.g. Level 75 for unicorn blood). You can unlock this item before reaching the specified level by paying with crystals. To do this press the turquoise ‘open for x crystals’ button that is in the place of the ‘give’ button on items you can send. Typically the number of crystals needed to unlock an element is the same as the level needed to unlock it (e.g. 75 crystals will unlock the unicorn blood, regardless of what level you are on).

Pressing the green ‘give’ button under an item will send it to your friend. You may only send 1 item from the ‘send a gift’ tab to each friend a day. The elements to combine a collection sent directly from your friends wishlist count towards this limit, so if you have already sent an element by pressing the symbol on your friends wishlist, you may not send another from the ‘send a gift’ tab.

Send a Collection Item Tab
You can switch from the ‘Send a gift’ tab to the ‘Send a collection item’ tab underneath your friends wishlist. The items you have won investigating pictures are listed in this section – and any item you send from here WILL come out of your inventory. For each item, there is a number next to the picture that tells you how many you have in your inventory. This number will go down by one after you send the item to your friend. Press the green ‘give’ button to send an item to your friend.

Note: some items won in the game cannot be added to your wishlist (they do not have green plus signs next to them in the collections tab). These items will not show up in the ‘Send a Collection item’ tab even if you have many of them. This is because they cannot be sent as a gift.

List of Free Gifts
Below is a list of all the Free Gifts currently available in the game. Free Gifts do not come out of your Inventory when you send them to Friends, however you are restricted to how many free gifts you can send each day.

The complete list of free gifts can be seen in the 'Send a Gift' tab of the gifting window, but you can also send free gifts directly from your Friend's Wishlists.

When you first start a new game, the only item that you can send as a Free gift to your friends is the Winding Key. As you increase your Game Level you will unlock more and more items in the 'Send a Gift' tab that you can send as Free Gifts to your Friends. You can unlock items earlier than the stated level by paying a once-off price with Crystals, after which the items will become available for you to send as Free Gifts.

You are restricted to one Free Gift per Friend up to a maximum of 50 Friends each day, which means you are limited to sending only 50 Free gifts each day. You cannot send free gift items out of your inventory to increase the number of these items that you can send to your Friends each day (these items can only be sent through the free gift system).

Important: None of these items come out of your Inventory when you send them as Gifts to your Friends.

List of Inventory Gifts
All other gifts you can send in the game are Inventory gifts, in that they will come out of your Inventory when you send them to Friends.

All the items you can send from your Inventory are listed in the 'Send a Collection item' tab of the Gifting window. This is because all Inventory gifts are collection items (however, not all collection items are inventory gifts since not all collection items are giftable).

To see a full list of available Collection items in the game then see the following pages:


 * List of Collection Items
 * List of Collection Item Locations

Any Collections in these lists that cannot be sent to your Friends (cannot be added to your Wishlist and will not appear in the 'Send a Collection Item' tab) are highlighted with blue background in these lists.

All other items in the lists (white backgrounds) can be sent as Inventory gifts to your Friends. You can only send this items if you have at least one of the item in your Inventory. If you do not have any of a particular item in your inventory, you will not see it in the 'Send a Collection Item' tab.

Known Problems With Gifting
There are currently no major problems with the Gifting interface, as the previous problems have been fixed by recent updates to the game. For a list of previous problems with Gifting, and what versions of the game they apply to, see the the Information Graveyard. If you are using the most recent versions of the game (Spring 2015 Update; Travel Time Update; or Social Events Update) then these problems will not affect your game. It is only older versions of the game that may have problems.

Failed to Connect to Server Error Messages
During periods of high server use (typically while a new update is being rolled out on the different platforms), it is possible to get a "failed to connect to the server" error when trying to send a gift to a Friend. If this happens, the item will not be sent to that Friend, however it will count towards you daily gifting limits. It is best to attempt to visit a Friend if servers are behaving slowly on your device, if the connection to the Friends game board can be made successfully, then it should be okay to attempt to gift your Friends. If you cannot visit the Friend (get the server error message) then do not attempt to send gifts until you are able to get a more stable connection as you may risk seeing this error and losing the gift.

Player has not Visited the Game in a Long Time Error Message
You may occasionally encounter a "Your Friend has not visited the game in a long time. Try to send your Friend a present later" error message when trying to gift a Friend.

This message does not relate to the Friend's activity levels (they could be playing that very minute). The message actually means that the players Gift Box is full. There is a limit to how many unaccepted gifts a player can have in their gift box, after which no new gifts can arrive. This limit is usually around 301 gifts. Once a player reaches this limit, then their Gift box is full and no new gifts can arrive until they accept some of their waiting gifts.

Anyone who tries to send the player a gift when their gift box is full will receive this error message. The gift will not be sent to that friend, but it will count towards your daily gifting limits (1 free gift out of 50 allowed or 1 collection item out of 10 allowed).

If you do see this message frequently for a particular friend, then it is better to try and send them a Free Gift first each day. Although the Collection item will not come out of your inventory if it fails to send, it will count towards the 10 Collection items you can send that day, so it is better to send the free gift as a tester to see if their gift box can receive new gifts, rather than lose the opportunity to send a collection item to a different friend.

Related

 * SS Home
 * Friends
 * Adding Friends
 * Hiring Friends
 * Visiting friends
 * Wishlists
 * Collections