They were Pebbles during early access, which worked. Flight Rising, a site that's very similar in mechanics to us, uses lair expansions as its main source of treasure sinking and reserves gems for special items and exchanges with other players. There's no reason for a basic gameplay feature to be locked behind premium currency, especially since Moonstones are difficult to obtain in any sizable quantity without either buying them or selling something to someone who has.

Right now, getting Moonstones at all quickly relies heavily on having gotten low-digit or pretty wild wolves, which is pure RNG, having things to trade from other petsites, or offering commissions/custom apparel that other users like, all of which are outside of gameplay, so shouldn't be functionally required for standard gameplay updates.

Fully support honestly, it’s exhausting to calculate how many moonstones basic gameplay needs and not to mention how much that means in a real world currency.

Pebbles also basically have no function without a sink for them as right now there simply isn’t enough to spend them on or a reason to earn them. Patterns are all very similar right now and apparel is mostly resold for moonstones. The sites basic currency deserves an actual place in gameplay.

Nothing more to add to this, just you have my full support.

support! Pebbles need more use.

I'm just going to add my support to these suggestions each time they come up. Despite one of the devs having said that the expansions are for convenience, profession expansions are core game-play features, especially mining. You will not get much past the second mining area without being able to expand your mine cart.

expansions need to be pebbles. moonstones are so prohibitively difficult to get, even if you're grinding for them. support.

100%

I'd even settle for later upgrades to cost MS but absolutely the early ones need to be pebbles.

For the “expansions for convenience” comment, the food one, at least for me, seems to be for more convenience while the mining one seems more required as you level or if you want to get the “get 15 mining ore” activity in one go.

But even so, I support both those being pebbles, at least for the first expansion (speaking as someone who immediately dropped moonstones on a mining expansion). I'd love it if the first den you can buy could also be pebbles while the rest are moonstone, meanwhile apparel slots can stay moonstone tbh since that's not really something needed to play the game.

Either way, we do need more pebble sinks in the long run.

Support, especially for mining. 15 slots for mining is really rough and honestly even 20 is still kinda rough.

You worded it perfectly, so I just want to add my support. It was a nonsensical change to me.

Once again, a complete support from me.