Masquerade 2026!
Things are a little different this year. Before we get to the details, just know that the Masquerade will last until July 15.
Dance Floor
💃 The dance rooms are back on the Masquerade Forums! Join a dance room where you can step onto the floor and the Auto Dancing Machine will pair you with another dancer every few minutes. Each pairing will earn you 2-5 trinkets (lounge or steelworks) with up to 80 per day across ALL dancing booths. You will always have a partner, whether it is another user or one of the gossips!
💃 You can only be in 3 dance rooms at a time.
💃 At the bottom of the page, you'll see active Masquerade achievements to help you keep track of things! There are a few new achievements for you to work towards.
💃 Don't forget, you can also use the Mystery Dance feature!
Foods and Drinks!
🍸 Why should I feed or provide drinks to NPCs? You will be rewarded for your help! Instead of new items to the Steamworks Menagerie, we've added the small pool of items to the various NPCs on the floor. If you provide 3 items to an NPC, you will get to pick your prize out of that NPC's pool.
🍸 This is an excellent year to catch up on past Steamworks Menagerie and Libertine Lounge items. There are 17 years worth of items, after all!
Olivette's Shop
🎭 Olivette is in the ballroom this year building masks instead of opening Migrating Masks. She has a higher chance to create a new mask for you but you could potentially get an old mask too! These older masks include masks that once restocked in the Holiday Shop, like the Mardi Gras Face Mask, or from other holidays like the Orange Wreathed Red Rreign Mask. Make sure you CLICK/Select each item when crafting for a mask for the 'craft' button to work.
Note: We've moved everything back to legacy this year (dance rooms were on kumos!), so there may be a bug or two. You can report any you come across here. Thanks everyone!
Note #2: This is just the first day, there will be more to come! Perhaps a robot or two may challenge you.
Posted by Amber
Load this on Kumos site
Caterpillar
I think the changes rock, I've been having fun feeding the NPCs and crafting masks
I've already gotten some Wishlist treasures and old expensive pretties that were way outta my price range!! :DDD
Amber
STAFF
Hi everyone!
I'm trying to address everything since I was last on.
:star: "Why change things that aren't broken" - it's tiring for us and users to do the same things for over a decade. We've put out multiple times (see daily goal page) that we have a very limited art team on very low hours. So we have a very limited amount of new items. We had to balance that out.
:star: We want you all to do more activities to get things, so crafting masks is something introduced.
:star: Steamwork trinkets are not useless. There are a lot of people that need older items, so getting them is still important.
:star: I will take a look at the numbers for the new masks to increase their output some
:star: For NPC prizes, you'll see on their lists there are not a lot of new items. There are easily more retired items; I will likely be adding more retired items later in the holiday!
:star: We made it so you could CHOOSE prizes from the NPCs so you can prioritize the newer items over retired. I've also included some achievement based retired items.
:star: This isn't all that is going to happen during the holiday. We have challengers coming!
:star: I will add the various links to the sidebar soon. If y'all look back in the comments, I ended up stopping working around 1pm PST.
I'm trying to address everything since I was last on.
:star: "Why change things that aren't broken" - it's tiring for us and users to do the same things for over a decade. We've put out multiple times (see daily goal page) that we have a very limited art team on very low hours. So we have a very limited amount of new items. We had to balance that out.
:star: We want you all to do more activities to get things, so crafting masks is something introduced.
:star: Steamwork trinkets are not useless. There are a lot of people that need older items, so getting them is still important.
:star: I will take a look at the numbers for the new masks to increase their output some
:star: For NPC prizes, you'll see on their lists there are not a lot of new items. There are easily more retired items; I will likely be adding more retired items later in the holiday!
:star: We made it so you could CHOOSE prizes from the NPCs so you can prioritize the newer items over retired. I've also included some achievement based retired items.
:star: This isn't all that is going to happen during the holiday. We have challengers coming!
:star: I will add the various links to the sidebar soon. If y'all look back in the comments, I ended up stopping working around 1pm PST.
I finally saw a new NPC on the sidelines - Anthony, so that answered my question about additional NPCs. I'm almost done collecting the new items.
Do the automatic dance room dances don't tell us what we received for the dance? If they do I'm missing it. They should tell us.
Most of the NPCs want food and drink, 1 only wants food. But you have to give 3 to the same NPC to get the prize list to choose from.
@GirlWhoPlaysGuitar
If you gave 3 items to 1 NPC a link will come up for your to click to choose from a list of prizes
If you gave 3 items to 1 NPC a link will come up for your to click to choose from a list of prizes
You have to feed 3 items to each NPC to get a prize selection. And not all dances give trinkets, some give other things like SPs, items or CSC. However it's kinda annoying that some of the auto dances don't say what you got for it.
I just brought two Cassandra and Jules items and didn’t receive anything in return. Is that supposed to be like that?
Also I’m not sure I got the automatic dances thing - do we get trinkets whenever we’re paired? Because there’s nothing that’s saying that
Also I’m not sure I got the automatic dances thing - do we get trinkets whenever we’re paired? Because there’s nothing that’s saying that
Is anyone else having a problem with dance invites? I've sent multiple invites to friends who I can see are online but not 1 has answered. Are the personal invites going through?
@Keith Will you confirm which NPCs are supposed to be in there? A few new items are unaccounted for, so I thought Jo would be giving them out.
Do we get our trinkets or food/drink back since Jo wasn't supposed to be apart of it @Keith ?
What happened to the duels? Been dancing all day and not 1. They were few last year and I was hoping to have a better chance this year to duel.
@Shinko I thought it was just me! I was looking all over to see if maybe I'm just a dunce and did something wrong. I'm like uh, the pool has to stock?
Jo doesn't seem to have any item prizes, I just get a "Your prize pick is saved until the pool is stocked" notification.
I'm sorry but i kinda hate the new way to get items? like why change what's not's broken? buying from the Menagerie the Lounge and Olivette's shop is way more straightforward and i'm pretty bummed i can't just do that and instead have to do fetch quests for rando npcs.
It's kinda fun getting prizes from NPCs but I would also like to be able to buy new items from shops. I always look forward to new steam items. Maybe next year have the shops with some new items but also some special items from prizes. That would be better.
Well, seeing as I completely caught up on both the Menagerie & Lounge thanks to my contest during last year's Masquerade... there's not much for me to look forward to this year. A chance that maybe I'll get somethng new. Ehhh.
I'm really enjoying the ballrooms! However, my ballrooms have been stuck on the same partners for over 23 minutes...I can message no problem thankfully but it isn't switching them out at this point.
I'm personally enjoying the way this works this year. It's different, but not unmanageable. I had gotten a little bored of Masquerade, so this is fun.
wait... why don't we have new items in Steamworks Menagerie and Libertine Lounge?? We have to pay to MAYBE get "from a small pool" of something? And nothing new for the Libertine Lounge food/drinks? I feel quite disappointed. That was my favourite part. :( maybe I can figure things out..
I hate to be mean but why on earth would you guys implement this? are the steamworks trinkets completely worthless now? i have been on this site for 13 years and i have never once visited the dance room before. i really do not have time to get on and play with all these convoluted things, very frustrating . i agree with memoria, if something worked fine why change everything up? and this stuff always gets rolled out and there are nothing but errors and things that dont work on top of it. so much has been switched up that i feel constantly confused and irritated. the fact i cant just hop on and get what i want quickly inbetween things going on in my life is annoying, i have thousands of steamworks trinkets that i save up just so i can get on and get what i want every year even if im super busy
Yes subetalodge is caught up and now has the new items. Thanks. Also still hoping for news page buttons for mystery dance, lounge, steam shop, etc so we don't have to search the news post for them especially when it gets pushed down below other new posts.
I am old and arsey and annoyed with Subeta. What is the bloody point of the trinkets this year? Why do I have to interact with a bloody NPC to get something new? Why is everything so convoluted? I have zero catch up to do, and to get anything I have to hope some rando NPC gives me stuff??? I always buy all the foods for my pet and the plushies, beanbags, and stickers, but now it's like Morostide but not in the slightest bit fun. And everything will be at stupidly inflated prices like numerous other items these days.
AND it's just hope for the best if the idiot NPC wants what you have?
You guys just keep making it harder and harder for me to enjoy my time on here after 18 years. I don't even know what the point of dancing is now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't much care if I sound ridiculous, I've been coming here for 18 years and change for enjoyment and I just am getting increasingly annoyed by changes that I highly doubt are helping Subeta.
AND it's just hope for the best if the idiot NPC wants what you have?
You guys just keep making it harder and harder for me to enjoy my time on here after 18 years. I don't even know what the point of dancing is now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't much care if I sound ridiculous, I've been coming here for 18 years and change for enjoyment and I just am getting increasingly annoyed by changes that I highly doubt are helping Subeta.
Sorry for the double comment - is there like a "Dance rooms for dummies" sort of guide anywhere? I didn't use them last year on Kumos and now I'm confused... is there no way to dance with one specific person any more? usually I try and return dances but it doesn't look like that's a thing any more?
Seconding(?) the request for the ability to set an alert for Mystery Dance please! I usually exclusively use the mystery ___ features in the holidays (I'm shyyyy) so it'd be super helpful.
@StarShadow I'm sure the Subetalodge guys will get their site updated soon, remember they're real ppl with real lives to deal with outside of Subeta :) In the meantime, you can see the new items on the Item Directory - the new items start at the bottom of this page (Search for "Masquerade Antlephore Mask" and go from there). That page is ALWAYS updated with new items the moment they're added to the site. I hope this helps!
@StarShadow I'm sure the Subetalodge guys will get their site updated soon, remember they're real ppl with real lives to deal with outside of Subeta :) In the meantime, you can see the new items on the Item Directory - the new items start at the bottom of this page (Search for "Masquerade Antlephore Mask" and go from there). That page is ALWAYS updated with new items the moment they're added to the site. I hope this helps!
omigosh omigosh omigosh, I just got off work and looking forward to trying all the new stuff out.... ut what I really want to know is.... IS JACK CARDALE ONE OF THE NPCS????
What new neon wearables? There is no list of new items, masks or wearables, that I can find. Subetalodge doesn't have anything so far.
How do I find out which ball rooms I'm in so I can step out of 1 to join a different room?
omg ;; tysm for having old food in the prize pool that's millions of sP. this is so helpful
it would be awesome to have an indicator of which dance booths i've joined at the top like we had for the kissing booths!!
Still waiting for a duel. Only had a few last year and was hoping the chance would be better this year. Also still hoping for buttons on the news page for mystery dance etc. Thanks.
The new neon wearables are AWESOME! I'm also enjoying the new gamification. Usually I just jump into a seasonal shop, buy what I want and i'm done with the entire holiday in less than five minutes. With the new gamification the items all seem to be quite obtainable but include additional activities to nab them which in my opinion makes obtaining the items more satisfying. The addition of retired foods and wearbles to the prize pool is also a rad bonus as i've picked up some very expensive foods that i've been needing.
I know that the site is struggling to make ends meet right now, and so probably doesn't have the resources to create a whole bunch of new items. But I worry that not adding at least some new Steamworks items will only make things worse. Masquerade is a big time for the site and presumably draws more inactive users and incentivizes more spending. Seems like toning things down too much might mean losing excitement and thus revenue.
so...if I already bought what I wantfrom other years, steamworks trinkets are useless to me and I need solely lounge trinkets to do any of this year's activities.
I just got the Skull Mardi Gras Mask from Olivette so my holiday has been made! Mask crafting might be my favorite new feature lol
I wish we could put an alert on the mystery dance and that buttons for mystery, etc., could be added to the news page.
I also miss the new tabs in the steam and lounge shops. I always look forward to new steam items but now I don't even know what they are. I wish subetalodge would catch up. There are no new items, masks, etc. listed yet. I joined 3 dance floors but so far only had a couple. And I still want a duel.
@BoaConstrictor Yeah - I think the timer was shorter on the kissing booths. I have only had 2 dances so far on my own dance floor - the very first one and one about 30mins ago (and my "dance booth" has been open for over three hours).
I miss having a tab for new items. having to give NPCs food seems like an unneeded extra step to me.
Just got challenged by Boudewijn!
@brokensafety Yes! They seem to have the very same items always, but there should be many more than the current 3 and they'll shift. I guess we now have the opportunity to get several of all the items we need. Of course, if you only want one of each (probably not even all, because some items are like 6 k and masses in User shops) it may be boring for you.
@Kat77 but the last booths on Kumos (I believe kissing?) worked fast and like a charm.
@brokensafety Yes! They seem to have the very same items always, but there should be many more than the current 3 and they'll shift. I guess we now have the opportunity to get several of all the items we need. Of course, if you only want one of each (probably not even all, because some items are like 6 k and masses in User shops) it may be boring for you.
@Kat77 but the last booths on Kumos (I believe kissing?) worked fast and like a charm.
Love when holidays get switched up and changed from previous years. Keeps things fresh.
Also, I was looking for a border like this
. It's perfect, thank you.
Also, I was looking for a border like this
The NPC Sidelines feature would be better if the NPCs cycled items from the entire pool. They keep offering me the same prizes. Is this happening for everyone?
@BoaConstrictor - for the auto dancing (bots) I think the more people in the group, the less likely you are to be "paired" for a dance....
even though this news post makes it sound like you will ALWAYS get a dance, every turn.
I do not know exactly how the pairing up works, I am assuming it is some random way of matching 2 of the people in that dance group and appears to be 1 dance pair every 5-10 minutes (from looking at my dance floor forum post).
even though this news post makes it sound like you will ALWAYS get a dance, every turn.
I do not know exactly how the pairing up works, I am assuming it is some random way of matching 2 of the people in that dance group and appears to be 1 dance pair every 5-10 minutes (from looking at my dance floor forum post).