Jack T. Lamplighter

We are aware of several forced connection exploits. Using this exploit will have your access to the game suspended. Repeat violations will result in a permanent ban. A fix for this will be in Release 38.

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We hope that all of you have had a most joyous and festive holiday season thus far! As 2016 draws to a close, we wish to share our most heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for your generous support, and even more so, for the profound sense of belongingness that this remarkable community fosters in us all. There is no greater value than being able to share this extraordinary journey with you.

The entire Shroud of the Avatar Development team wish you the Happiest of New Years!

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Vote For Shroud of the Avatar as Best Crowdfunded Game of 2016!

MMOGames has nominated us in their poll as one of the Best Crowfunded Online Games of 2016! Voting is open for one more day (through December 31, 2016), so please head over to the MMOGames site and vote for Shroud of the Avatar as the Best Crowdfunded Online Game of 2016!  (No account registration is required).

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Only 3 Days Left to Get Your 10% Holiday Bonus!

This is the final weekend to get your 10% Holiday Bonus! For all new purchases (including bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, player owned town upgrades, and Make a Difference items) between 10:30 am CST December 15, 2016 (16:30 UTC, December 15, 2016) and Midnight CST, January 2, 2017 (6:00 UTC, January 3, 2017), we will add an additional 10% bonus to your Store Credit!

You can use your Store Credit toward additional purchases (which includes bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, and player owned town upgrades).

[NOTE: The 10% bonus is calculated every day at 1:00 pm CT for any purchases within the previous 24 hours and added to your Store Credit account; Store Credit cannot be applied toward the purchase of Make a Difference items]

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• Q1 2017 Schedule Update
• The Making of Brookside
• Perennial Coast Improvements (Solania Polish)
• The Making of Blood Bay
• Release 37.5: Water Houses, Shogun Houses, Shogun Wearables, New Emotes, etc.
• MMORPG Column: A New Hope (Q4 Review, Q1 Preview)
• MMOGames: Shroud Nominated for Best Crowdfunded Online Game of 2016
• Floral Meadow POT Template (aka Grasslands 01a)
• Testing Incentives Program Update
• Starr Long: History & Methods Lecture
• Community of the Avatar Livestream – Heatmaps and Vyrin & Womby’s Bookstore
• Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 37 Postmortem Results
• The New Britannia Carolers
• Upcoming Events
• Community Holiday Party at Portalarium!
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Only 10 Days Left for 10% Holiday Bonus!
• Recommended Projects to Back

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[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Q1 2017 Schedule Update

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, we intend to publish quarterly schedule updates for our monthly releases. Even though the goals outlined in these schedules are likely to change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to periodically provide you with an updated roadmap.

Our priority continues to be to deliver new content to our backers each and every month so that you can give us feedback that will help us iteratively improve Shroud of the Avatar. This collaborative process continues to benefit the game, and often results in sweeping changes such as the switch over to use-based advancement. As you have seen in previous releases, the flexibility inherent to this process means that we sometimes push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

For the first quarter of 2017 we will be putting the finishing touches on the Path of Love while moving on to the Paths of Courage and Truth. We will continue to expand Crafting with the additions of molds for visual variations as well as polishing Agriculture and Fishing. Combat will continue to be balanced and will be expanded to include cover as well as a refactor of ammunition. The user interface will get several polish passes including refactoring of the conversation system and tutorial as well as an overall improvement to visuals and usability. We will also continue to give each region a visually distinct appearance, from the Shogunate beauty of the Perennial Coast to the Viking starkness of Norgard and Verdantis.

We believe that we have reached the final 20% of development before Commercial Release, at which point we will transition out of Early Access. The next two quarters will be the most exciting and challenging times for the project so far. This will be when we get the final features and content in the game and make the last important balance changes. The changes will be fast and furious, and they may occasionally be hard to understand when you become accustomed to the way things were before. Please trust that we firmly believe that every change we make is best for the long term health of the project.

As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers.

RELEASE 38, January 26, 2017

• Story: The Path of Love will get some final polish passes including the propagation of the Asian influenced assets we created for Ardoris across all of the Perennial Coast, as well as adding Brookside and Graff Island to the plot. Brookside will be getting uncloned during this process. We will be polishing the other starting scenes for the other two paths: Blood River and Highvale. We will begin polish on the entire Path of Courage. Vauban Pass will be uncloned, thereby making all the Control Points unique scenes. Finally, the all-new polished version of Xenos will be going live, in all its Greco-Roman influenced splendor, and the volcanic PVP violence of Blood Bay will debut.
• Traps and Locks: We are going to greatly enhance the interactivity of our dungeons and other play spaces with more traps including flame jets, pressure plates, and arrow shooters. We are also refactoring our key, lock, and door system to make it easier for our developers to add locked doors and keys to their maps.
• New NPC Conversation Interface: We will be doing a polish and refactor pass of the NPC Conversation System to make it both more immersive and easier to use.
• Chat Windows: Chat tabs will be able to be pulled off and placed within the game window as separate chat windows.
• Crafting: Enchanting and Masterworking level will now have much greater influence on the outcomes of item creation. The higher your skill level, the greater the power of the effect added to the item and the greater number of choices you will have. At Grandmaster level, you will even have the chance to sometimes add maximum durability back to the item. Additionally, the power of the effect is directly proportional to how many levels of masterworking/enchanting have been applied, to better balance risk versus reward. We also hope to greatly increase the number of possible Enchantment and Masterwork effects.
• Character: Clockwork Dragons will make their appearance in the game in several versions, including the Summer Telethon pet as well as a full-size behemoth! Citizens of Ardoris and the Perennial Coast will now be adorned in Asian-influenced clothing and we will also be updating the Guards in all Perennial Coast scenes with the Ardoris City Guard outfits. Work on other Telethon reward items will also continue including Clockwork Armor, Ice Wings, and Ice Bagpipes. Finally, rumors of a yet-unnamed and unseen stealthy clockwork beast loose in the Kobold areas have been shocking to hear.
• Player Towns & Player Housing: We will continue to expand our housing with a focus on water based housing and houses in our Shogun line. We will also be adding a water decoration surface layer, so players will be able to add decorations to the water around their water homes. Additionally, we will be doing some expansions to the Player-Owned Town toolset including the ability to clear foliage and view lot boundaries at all times. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
• Combat: We will expand the number of decks players can build and save. We will also be adding more combos, more skills, and more spells. Additionally we will begin a major polish pass on all the visual effects related to combat.

RELEASE 39, February 23, 2017

• Story: We will continue polishing the Path of Courage with emphasis on moving the player smoothly through this part of the story. We will also be adding another Siege Encounter map and un-cloning the Rhun Ruins.
• Player Housing: The ability to rent rooms in a player home will start to become available to homeowners. Additionally, the Shogun bundles will come online as we continue to expand our water place-able houses and our Shogun line of houses. We will also begin the work necessary to make player equipment place-able as decorations. Also containers will begin to have limits on how many items can be placed inside them. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
  
• Combat: The cover system will be introduced and will modify attack and defense values when you (or your target) are behind cover. We will also be refactoring how ammunition works for ranged weapons so that we can have a greater variety of ranged weapons and introduce different types of ammunition, including the ability to craft those ammunition types.
• Character: We will begin work polishing the Kobolds and updating them to better reflect their lore which attributes much of the technology in Novia to them. We will also begin introducing the first of the Obsidian Cabalists. Lastly, ducks will be winging their way into the hearts, minds, and yes, bellies of Novians.
• Crafting: We will be expanding the crafting system to include molds that can be used to create visual variants for weapons and armor (Elven, Norgard, Obsidian, Kobold). We will also be refactoring the Agriculture interface and expanding functionality to include new skills like batch planting.

RELEASE 40, March 30, 2017

• Story: We will be doing some final polish passes on the Path of Courage and beginning to polish the Path of Truth. Additionally, a vast dungeon will be opening underneath Blood Bay. We will also be un-cloning the Kas Ruins, Elysium Mines, and a few adventure scenes. We will also be refactoring the tutorial system to improve the new user experience.
• Character: We will begin creating Viking-inspired clothing for the NPCs in the Norgard and Verdantis areas of Novia to better define that region, including outfits for Royalty, Guards, Citizens, and Merchants. We will also be polishing the Troll visuals and creating more visual variations for our children NPCs.
• Crafting: Fishing will be polished and expanded and Alcohol recipes will be added to the game.
• Guild Alliances: Guilds will now be able to form alliances with each other.
• Offline Combat Balance and Economy: A pass will be made through the game to adjust combat balance for play in offline mode with companions. Additionally, the economy in offline mode will be tuned to be better balanced for single-player. For instance, NPC merchants will buy player-crafted items at a profit to the player. Also, pledge and Add-On Store items will be available from NPC merchants for purchase with in-game gold.
• User Interface: A polish pass will be made to the user interface to improve general usability and visuals.

We continue to be incredibly thankful for the support we receive from this amazing community. While the funding you provide makes all of this possible, it pales in comparison with the faith you have in us, the feedback you provide us, and the content you are making for everyone to enjoy. We are humbly grateful, and we cannot wait to see you again in New Britannia!

Before I go, I wanted to include an excerpt from my original post about our Early Release Schedule that is important to set the framework for our ongoing schedule:

As a crowd funded and crowd sourced project, we feel it is incredibly important that we provide our backers with information and access well before game studios would normally do so in a traditional development model. Traditionally, the players are given information and access only after the development team has already decided exactly how things will be done, and at times, even after it has already been implemented. By the time the public normally has access to the product, there is usually no time to meaningfully react to the public feedback.

Shroud of the Avatar is different than the traditional model, as we intend to offer our backers extremely early access to information and even the game itself. With that said, we also want to be very careful that we only provide access to portions of the game when they are ready for a wider range of feedback. If we can play it internally and we know it is not ready, then there is nothing to be gained by having a wider audience come to the same conclusion. In fact, it could be quite damaging to do so.

Our strategy over the next few months is to provide you with focused and iterative releases of content. Your feedback during these releases will be critical to making the final product the best it can be, and we appreciate that you are all so willing to devote your time to helping us…After each release we will review the results and reevaluate the plan including the duration of availability of each release.

It is important to note that all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
Executive Producer
Shroud of the Avatar

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The Making of Brookside

Brookside is located in the Drachvald region in the northwest of Novia directly south of Spite. It is the hometown of Samael and was overrun by the Undead armies of Anapa not long ago. Players will encounter this town when following their quests along the Path of Love. Brookside started as a cloned scene using one of our PRT / POT templates based off of the Forest 02 POT template (a forested variation of the Grasslands POT template). In Release 38 it is being rebuilt with new flora, new atmospheric settings like permanent fog, a graveyard, and other unique features. Note that when we un-clone these scenes, we do NOT change lot placements. We only make cosmetic changes of building styles, terrain, and foliage.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Esteben “SorcerousSteve” Zaldivar]

Hey guys SorcerousSteve here once again to give you the latest scoop on my most recent map!

The town of Brookside is a village located in Drachvald between Spite and Rhun. It is the site where Samael lost his family. The village has a history of being overrun by the undead, it is a dark foggy town nestled in pine forest filled with wary town folks and decrepit buildings.

Inspiration shot after chatting with Art Lead Michael Hutchison.

I took a lot of inspiration for this scene from New England towns, “Sleepy Hollow”.
A church tower and graveyard just south of Brookside.

A steeple can be seen amidst the fog as you approach the town NPC Center.

Ruined buildings on the outskirts of town are a reminder of the undead overrun.

Deadman’s Pond

Samael’s Farm, the place where the graves of his wife Muriel and sons Michael and Tobin were laid to rest.

See you next time!
Happy Holidays!

Esteben Zaldivar
Level Designer

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Perennial Coast Improvements (Solania Polish)

The small town of Solania is located in the Perennial Coast region in the southeast of Novia. It is the sole means for accessing the mysterious lake island town of Celestis. Solania is located on a high point in the Celestial Swamp that lines the southern shore of Celestial Lake, so getting there can be quite dangerous. In Release 38 we are going to be moving through the Perennial Coast and updating the flora and architecture to match the new Asian influence we first showed in Ardoris in Release 37. For Solania we are updating all of the NPC buildings with new rooflines (blue tiles) and wall textures, putting in a new perimeter wall, updating the foliage, and adding in various other details. As with all polish and un-clone passes we make on maps we do NOT change lot placements. We only make cosmetic changes of building styles, terrain, and foliage.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf]

Hey folks, I have a few new screenshots to share today of updates for release 38 being made throughout the Perennial Coast. This is a follow up to Sorcerer Steve’s implementation of the new Asian themed assets in Ardoris. I am giving several scenes in that area the same treatment, including new architecture and vegetation. Below I have some previews of the changes being made to Solania. More updates will come as progress is made in new areas!

The Bamboo Tunnel at night

The Entrance

The Statue of Sequanna

The Garden Gate

The Garden Pagoda

As always, feel free to leave feedback! If you live in this area, I would like to know what you think!

Chris Wolf
Level Designer

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The Making of Blood Bay (cont.)

Blood Bay is going to be an Open PVP area with two NPC towns, player housing, adventuring areas, and entrances to underground adventure areas. It is going to be a testing ground for several systems that will, in turn, propagate to other parts of the game if successful. We hope to have a first iteration of this map live in Release 38. We showed the scene during the Telethon and talked more about how we hope to have certain systems working. This is the third update we have posted so far on this map.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]

AAAaand a few more shots as world building on Blood Bay gets wrapped up!

Southside falls

Exploring the falls (if you can make my character out)

Virtuous side of town

Scoundrel side of town, having a drink with the Pirate King

Dragon Island

Thanks for following the thread and Happy Holidays!

 

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Release 37.5: Water Houses, Shogun Houses, Shogun Wearables, New Emotes, etc.

Just in time for the holidays we released a major content patch yesterday that included new homes that can be placed on water lots, new wearables and houses from our upcoming Shogun Bundles, and new emotes players can learn in the  game.

• Shogun Wearables: These outfits were originally developed for the city of Ardoris and will be featured in the upcoming Shogun bundles. You can purchase these in the Add On Store and when molds launch in Q1 you will even be able to craft limited numbers after purchase.
  • Ardoris Guard Armor: This samurai inspired armor consists of 5 pieces including chest, helmet, gauntlets, boots, and legs.
  • Ardoris Shogun Armor: Shogun Siranto who co-rules Ardoris from the Palace of the Mountain wears a version of this armor that players can now also wear. It comes in 4 pieces including chest, helmet, gloves, boots and legs.
  • Ardoris Priestess Robes: Priestess Khasi who co-rules Ardoris from the Palace of Winds wears these elegant robes and elaborate headpiece that players can also now wear. It consists of two pieces including robes and a headpiece.
• Housing: In Release 37 we added POT Water Lot Deeds and we are now starting to add water versions of some of our existing homes. Over time we will continue to add more water versions of existing homes as well as create entirely original water based homes like Pirate Galleons, Water Mills, etc. The first few water homes went live this week and several more will go live in Release 38. We are also going to be introducing a new line of homes inspired by our work on Ardoris and the Perennial Coast. These will be part of the new Shogun Bundles that will go live in Q1. The first two homes and a new decoration went live this week and more will follow in Release 38. All of the following homes and decorations are available in the Add On Store except the Elven Globe home which is on the Elven Crown Merchant only.
  • Elven 3-Story with Dual Cabanas Town Water Home: This water based variation of the Elven Town home is a series of wooden platforms over the water that consists of 3-stories, and 8-rooms. This unique design includes 2 stand-alone, 1-room cabana’s on the rear, and an open air raised platform comprising the whole first floor.
  • Rustic 3-Story Village Water Home: This water based variation of the Rustic 3-Story Village home, is a spacious, 4-room home, including a side deck just perfect for fishing!
  • Obsidian Tower Village Water Home: This water based variation of the Obsidian Tower Village home is four stories tall with ample living space, including rooms on the first three floors, a roof-top deck, and wrap around balcony on the upper floor!
  • Obsidian Tower Town Water Home: This water based variation of the Obsidian Tower Town home is five stories tall with ample living space, including rooms on the first four floors, a roof-top deck, and wrap around balcony on the upper floor!
  • Viking Village Water Home: This water based variation of our very first Viking Village home is a two-story dwelling, with a single large room downstairs and a wrap-around loft on the second floor.
  • Shogun Lighthouse Village Water Home: The lighthouse that guides ships into the harbor of Ardoris has been converted into a village sized player home for water lots. This 3-story water home provides single rooms on the first two floors and a roof-top balcony encircling the beacon.
    
  • Shogun 1-Room Village Home: Carved wooden window frames, paper walls, blue-tiled roof are all the hallmarks of our Shogun line of homes. This cozy one room Village home is the first in the Shogun line.
  • Shogun 3-Story Keep: This towering 3-story home features an open plan with wrap around balconies on the second and third floors. It features the signature features of the Shogun line of homes including carved wooden window frames, paper walls, and blue-tiled roof.
  • Shogun Street Lamps: These lamps were originally built to light pathways in Ardoris but can now be used by players to light their homes and towns.
  • Obsidian Floor Lamp: For the Obsidian bundles we took the Obsidian lamp used in the Obsidian dungeon kit and made a streetlamp scaled size version of it. This is a smaller version that can be used in homes as a floor lamp.
  • Elven 2-Story Globe Home (COTO Exclusive): This Gold Crown exclusive is a 2-Story variation of the Elven Globe Home. With the addition of the second floor you have almost double the amount of square footage that has the greenhouse growth bonus. You can purchase this home from the Elven Crown merchant in Vertas.
• Emotes: All of these emotes can be learned in the game from NPCs.
  • /shiver and /warmhands: To celebrate the coldness of the winter months we created these two emotes. You can learn them from Drog in Brightbone Pass.
  • /burp: For those who wish for a more reserved release of gas than /belch you can learn how to relieve yourself in a more refined way from Karl Rognoff in Braemar when you ask him about beer.
  • /golfclap: When your appreciation needs to be more circumspect than a hearty clapping of hands then you need /golfclap. Aaron Denbo in Etceter teaches this when you ask him about Artifice.
  • /batontwirl, /batonthrow and recipe for baton: Darcy of Paxlair in Ardoris will teach you how to throw and twirl a baton if you ask her about troubador. In order to use these emotes you will need a baton which can be crafted.
• Replenishing 250-Piece Mystery Fireworks Box: Celebrate the the holidays with a bang with this Add On Store 250-piece Replenishing Mystery Fireworks box that regenerates periodically. Includes a random assortment of white, red, green, blue, and yellow rockets as well as red, yellow, white, blue, and red/white/blue ground missile packs.
  

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MMORPG Column: A New Hope (Q4 Review, Q1 Preview)

Red Thomas returned to our offices after a long hiatus and wrote a Q4 review and Q1 preview entitled “A New Home” for MMORPG.com.

Shroud of the Avatar has been in development for just over three years with a team only slightly smaller than their comparative budget, and they’ve been incredibly successful thanks to a solid leadership team, a small team of fantastic developers, and one of the best communities I’ve ever seen.  Shroud has been an exercise in complete contradiction of the established industry norms from their start.

…

The next few months should be the beginning of a very fast-paced year for Shroud of the Avatar, though I don’t doubt there’ll be a few growing pains yet left. I suspect the hardest part will be players used to systems that haven’t changed much since they were implemented who must now adapt to new balance updates. Damage types and resistances completely change the way magic is used in combat, for instance.

There are a host of reasons for why the project might not have gotten this far, and the team really stepped out to define a new paradigm for development. Very few projects have subjected themselves to working in a glass room the way these folks have, and certainly no MMOs of this size.

There are a few detractors, and certainly not all unjustified. There’s no such thing as being right for everyone unless you make the product so generic as to be meaningless. One thing the team has done undeniably well, and that’s their policy of keeping their blinds open to their backers and developing in the open. The amount of control you give to feedback is up to the individual company, but I’d submit that the open development method is critical to a successful crowdfunded project of this level.

Transparency is how backers know their money is being used responsibly, and Portalarium has done a good job of keeping their community aware of what precisely they’ve been working on every step of the way.  Even for those of us who tend to have better access to these projects, it’s been far more open than most, and I’ve certainly learned a lot from covering them.  Hopefully you have too, and are as excited to see what they do next as I am.

You can read the entire article here.

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MMOGames: Shroud Nominated for Best Crowdfunded Online Game of 2016

MMOGames has nominated us in their poll as one of the Best Crowfunded Online Games of 2016! Voting is open for another week.

Many online games these days go down the crowdfunding route with the likes of Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. While we do sometimes hear horror stories of how the devs took the money and ran, thankfully, these instances are rare and we have plenty of games from the crowdfunded sector to look forward to! But which is the best crowdfunded online game of 2016?

These are the games that show continuous progress towards being a complete game, that we see enter into public testing phases and moving forward, and maintain communities of passionate fans. Their crowdfunding campaigns don’t necessarily have to have occurred this year, so long as they have been crowdfunded.

So which title deserves to win Best Crowdfunded Online Game 2016? Vote now, and don’t forget to vote on our other Top MMO polls too, listed below.

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Floral Meadow POT Template (aka Grasslands 01a)

Earlier this week we updated the Player Owned Town Templates page and the POT Submission form with images and information about the newest POT Template: Grasslands 01a aka the Floral Meadow. POT owners can now select this template from the submission form (viewable from thier account page) and we will start switching them over as soon as Release 38.

As a reminder you can view the new template in the game right now by visiting Hometown and taking one of the teleporters to the linked templates. We also updated the overlay image for the original Grasslands POT template since in R37 we increased the amount of flat space for home placement along the river near the center of the map.

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Testing Incentives Program Update

Last Friday we updated the Testing Incentives Program Forum post and Web Post with more detailed information about the Ranks and requirements for the rewards.

The Testing Incentives Program includes exclusives that can only be earned on the QA Server,  but there are lots of awards that can be earned on the live servers as well. Each Release, exceptional contributors selected through quality bug reports, document edits, etc. will be eligible for rewards.

Players will rank up through these after demonstrating a solid record of reproducible bugs with detailed information (ex. coordinates and screenshots) as a minimum. In addition to total number of bugs player rank is also determined through other items like working on the Bug Brigade, providing editing feedback on release documents, etc. (these additional subjective measurements are noted as the * below)

 

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Starr Long: History & Methods Lecture

Earlier this year Starr Long gave a lecture at the University of Texas to the AET 304 Foundations of Arts and Entertainment Technologies class in the the CAET Program. The lecture was about his life and his history in the video game business with a focus on his work on Shroud of the Avatar. This particular class is a multi-discipline foundation class for students pursuing a wide range of degrees ranging from computer programming to theatre.

You can follow along with the lecture using the slides for the presentation from Starr Long’s slideshare account here.

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Community of the Avatar Livestream – Heat Maps and Vyrin & Womby’s Bookstore tour

In last week’s Community of the Avatar Live stream we were joined by the team’s newest programmer, Bobby “Undone” Thompson, to talk about how he designs ‘Heat Maps’, which are critical analytical maps of events occurring in the game. We then jumped in the game to tour Vyrin & Womby’s Bookstore.

If you missed the stream, you can see it below or on the Shroud of the Avatar YouTube channel.

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Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 37 Postmortem Results

Our R37 Postmortem this past Tuesday, December 20th on Twitch was a great success. The team chatted about how Release 37 went, the recent holiday events, and what everyone could look forward to in the next year. We also gave out tons of prizes including a Darkstarr Shield, a Lord British Shield, a Silver Clockwork Monkey, a 2016 Winter Holiday Pack, and a host of other goodies!

If you missed the hangout, you can see it on Twitch or on our YouTube channel. After the hangout Starr “Darkstarr” Long answered any questions that we did not have time to answer during the hangout and posted those answers in the forums here.

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Community Contest:  The New Britannia Carolers

Sing along with us! The contest is simple and fun – for the next two weeks, from December 20, 2016 to January 3, 2017, we want to see what songs, poems, and other holiday stories you can come up with that are related to Shroud of the Avatar. Can include videos too if you like!

When you have something you wish to submit to the contest, post it in This Thread! You are allowed to edit your submission up until the end of the contest on January 3, 2017.

THEMES

Similar to the house decorating contest, we will be judging entries based on the following themes:

• Most inventive…
• Romantic theme
• Holiday theme
• Adventure theme
• Character/NPC theme
• PvP/Combat theme
• Town/Scene theme
• Funny TIP (see below for details)
• A surprising theme! (please keep it clean and to the Community R&G)

Also like the house decorating contest, if a theme doesn’t get any entries, we will remove that theme and add a second winner to a theme that has multiple entries up for consideration.

Do not copy from existing copyrighted works! These must be original writings or video works. Please limit entries to no more than 800 words and 3 pages with up to 4 images (if you need imagery), or 3 minute videos or less. Shorter is usually better, so don’t feel you need to max out these limits!

YOUR FUNNY TIPS!

Thank you community for submitting over 400 loading screen tips so far! We need more though! This time we want your funny and witty tips. They should still be useful, accurate, and factual, but with a funny or witty twist added to them.

Learn about the tips initiative and how to submit yours here.

PRIZES

Each theme winner will be awarded $20 worth of in-game credit, as well as the 2016 Winter Holiday Soundtrack – Wax Cylinders (digital) store reward! Perfect for replaying those holiday tunes well into the 2017 new year.

Have fun being a creative writer, Avatars!

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Upcoming Events

Jan 26, 2017 – Release 38
Feb 23, 2017 – Release 39
Feb 25, 2017 – Ultima Dragons 25th Anniversary Event
Feb 28, 2017 – GDC: Community Management Summit
Mar 17, 2017 – SXSW Gaming
Mar 30, 2017 – Release 40
April 2017 – Spring Telethon
Apr 27, 2017 – Release 41
May 25, 2017 – Release 42
June 29, 2017 – Release 43

Visit the official Community Calendar to see the great lineup of activities our amazing community has planned for this weekend! And be sure to check out this month’s Release Events thread in the SotA forums for additional events.

Event of the Week: Shadow’s Rest 2016 Secret Santa Event – Now-Dec. 24th in Shadow’s Rest

Shadow’s Rest would like to welcome all new and returning players to their 2016 Secret Santa event! Feel free to message Aidenolm Rosemourne and choose a gift box. On the 24th, those gifts will be filled by avatars all over Novia and, as rumour has it, even Santa himself!

So if you’re looking for some support this holiday, contact Rosemourne and choose a gift box! If you’re in the giving mood, find a named present and put your gift in! Contact Aidenolm Rosemourne for details.

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Community Holiday Party at Portalarium!

Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known far and wide that a Grand Holiday Party will be held at the Portalarium Studios and in Shroud of the Avatar on:

Wednesday, January 11, 2016
5:00 PM to 10:00 PM Central Standard Time (US)
(2300 UTC to 0400 UTC)The Grand Holiday Party is completely planned, hosted, and paid for by the player community! The Portalarium team thanks you so much here – this means a GREAT deal to them, and they are very excited to be celebrating with you during this event!

To attend either on-site at Portalarium, or celebrate with us online, please RSVP!

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Community Resources – Players Helping Players

• The official SotA New Player Welcome Forum and the Player Created Resources Forum have the best player created resources for Shroud of the Avatar, whether it’s a Player Written Guide, a Video Walk-through, or a Wiki-type Website.

Visit the official Community Resources page for a complete listing of all things community.

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Only 10 Days Left for 10% Holiday Bonus!

Just in time for the holidays, we are announcing our 10% Holiday Bonus! For all new purchases (including bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, player owned town upgrades, and Make a Difference items) between 10:30 am CST December 15, 2016 (16:30 UTC, December 15, 2016) and Midnight CST, January 2, 2017 (6:00 UTC, January 3, 2017), we will add an additional 10% bonus to your Store Credit!

You can use your Store Credit toward additional purchases (which includes bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, and player owned town upgrades).

[NOTE: The 10% bonus is calculated every day at 1:00 pm CT for any purchases within the previous 24 hours and added to your Store Credit account; Store Credit cannot be applied toward the purchase of Make a Difference items]

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Recommended Projects to Back

Don’t Just Back Crowfall… Invest!

Why just back Crowfall for rewards, when you can invest in the company — and potentially see a financial return!

ArtCraft Entertainment (creators of Crowfall) and Indiegogo.com are partnering to offer this unique crowdfunding investment opportunity. Check out the offering at: https://equity.indiegogo.com/offerings/artcraft-entertainment/

Crowfall is ArtCraft’s flagship title. It is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), a persistent virtual world that can be shared by hundreds of thousands (or millions) of online players. It is unique in that it has been designed as a “Throne War Simulator,” offering gamers a very different in-game experience compared to traditional MMO titles. Crowfall combines the persistence of an MMO with the ability for players to change the virtual world, allowing teams to win (or lose), as in a strategy game. Thousands of players are vying for control of a virtual throne, where the only options are to win or to die.

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Brightlocker

Here’s the latest from BrightLocker, the first crowd publishing platform for games. BrightLocker was launched by fellow ex-Originites Mark Rizzo and Ruben Cortez, members of the original Ultima Online Network Ops team from back in the day.

On Dec. 13th it was an exciting day in history for the BrightLocker community, marking the end of the Season 2 Finals and a wrap to the second official season of voting. The batch of seven winning game ideas will go on to be evaluated by BrightLocker for one ultimate winner to be pushed into Funding and Development.

The qualifying winners include several RPGs, action games, a narrative, a simulation, and a strategy title. The ultimate winner that will go on to production is set to be announced on Jan. 23rd. Also, starting Dec. 17th through Jan. 2nd, BrightLocker will be hosting a winter-themed, game submission round where participants will be competing for cash prizes, BrightLocker votes, and more.

Our very own community member Amberraine, founder of Avatar’s Radio, is one of the Season 2 finalists with her game Wanna be a DJ?

You can check out all the BrightLocker finalists currently being evaluated here.

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Backer Shipping Addresses

In preparation for shipping backers’ physical pledge rewards later this year, we have added Shipping Address fields to your Account Profile page. To enter your shipping address, log in to the SotA website, select “Account” in top right corner, then select “Edit Profile” located in top left corner, beneath your Avatar image.

A reminder to be sure that support@portalarium.com is unblocked from your e-mail account!

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Hello Everyone,

As we have described previously we want Shroud of the Avatar to be a classless system that allows players to define and play any role they choose. We also want a clear path for growth and specialization while also maintaining opportunities for competition and cooperation. This is our current thinking on how to accomplish those goals. Remember this is just current thinking and we will probably change many of these details. Note that we use the term “skill” to cover all...

Magic, Combat, and Crafting Skills

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We have officially run out of room inside the walls of Hometown for unexpired content so I need to take over the entire island.

For now inside the walls is Bundles, Crowns, and Add On Store. Outside the Walls is Craftable Homes, Water Homes and POT placeable buildings.

All expired content is now on the Tropical 01a Template that you can visit from the boat on the docks of Hometown.

View the full article

We have officially run out of room inside the walls of Hometown for unexpired content so I need to take over the entire island. This means today and tomorrow I am going to be deleting all the expired homes and doing some rearranging to make room for the new Shogun homes and water homes.

Some time later when I get time I will put those expired homes in the Tropical Island POT template linked to hometown but until then those homes will not be viewable. Sorry for the inconvenience.

View the full article

With the latest patch (529) we fixed a bug where certain parts of gear (leather straps, fur, trim, etc.) were getting dyed that were not supposed to.

This means that now certain parts of gear (e.g., trim, fur, leather) may not be dyeable or may appear different on already dyed gear. If you are seeing pieces of your gear appearing pure white or black, then please write us a bug with the name of the item and a screenshot. Otherwise, color changes are by design.

View the full article

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, we intend to publish quarterly schedule updates for our monthly releases. Even though the goals outlined in these schedules are likely to change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to periodically provide you with an updated roadmap.

Our priority continues to be to deliver new content to our backers each and every month so that you can give us feedback that will help us iteratively improve Shroud of the Avatar. This...

Q1 2017 Schedule Update

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Hello everyone, this is Asclepius, with the thrilling conclusion of this story from Olthadir, entitled

The Darkness in the Forest

Background music by Smartsound

Chapter 2, “The Darkness”

It was a joke, a jibe, meant to lighten the atmosphere and the tension my companions felt. There was a short, silent chuckle. I was a scholar and not a warrior. The did not truly expect I would speak to them. I once mentioned that we should try to speak to the kobolds that jealously guard the ore my allies often mine in the Elysium Mines. Perhaps the kobolds would prefer to create a trade agreement instead of being slaughtered and slaughtering humans. The laugh from that time was heartfelt, strong and stinging.

My companions’ nervous laugh here in the woods was soft, half-hearted. I looked into the sky at the same time the bespectacled kobold did. We saw the stars themselves had given up trying to communicate their desire for us to run and were beginning to melt in the sky. The sky seemed to be a viscous liquid and the very stars making trails in them as they slowly slid off the sky.

No one spoke. The kobold and I were mesmerized and confused by what we saw above. The others, were caught by what they saw on earth.

I have no doubt that it was a creation or abomination of the Obsidians, or perhaps it predated them, or perhaps even it created them: being the very thing that gave power to the Obsidian Eye. It wasn’t black, black is tangible. We could make things black. This was darker, deeper, more cold than any black that you could imagine. It drained the light from the dripping, sliding stars, made the torches the kobolds had set alight seem like small dying embers. It even drained the light from our very souls.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye, slithering and flowing up from the uncovered idol. It had a form, but was formless, flowing as much as simply being there. It was like a mass of slithering snakes, or a vertical pool of nothingness. I wanted to see it, I wanted to look deep within it, I wanted to use my sight and will to make meaning of it, but I was so utterly afraid that I turned away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my friends move, being dragged towards it as if pulled by their bellies.

There were screams. Those I will never forget. I still hear them. In the wind as it blows around me here in Ardoris. I hear it in the canals, in the trees, in the grass and in the creak of the houses. The screams were like the screams we hear in our dreams, the screams from ages past that have had their volume lost as they travel countless ages to our sleeping ears. All that is left of these screams is the tremor that tenses our skin and chills us from within.

The kobold workers were all gone. I then looked at the thing, enveloped in my own fear and wishing to escape. It looked as it I was peering in a pond as I lay on the shore, but I was standing. Its edges moved like the oceans tide lapping at the shore. It slowly grew, filling the clearing with its unfathomable darkness. I watched in speechless horror as companions were slowly dragged into it, sending an unnerving black-on-black ripple to it’s undefined edge as they passed the surface. Timeless screams were filling the clearing and my mind.

The learned kobold, the only other living thing in the clearing began screaming, fanatically. It must have been its native tongue or I simply had no ear for terrestrial words. I did not know what she said. I only heard the soundless screams that came out of time.

Something hit me hard in the chest. I was hit by the kobold as she ran past, demanding that I run, “Runz Human! To stay iz worst than def!”

I don’t remember running. Perhaps I didn’t run. I awoke to a cool rain and sunlight. I was laying on my back at the end of a long rain. I was soaked. The final raindrops fell as I awoke, blinking as I watched the sun begin descending in the west. I sat up aching from laying on the ground for a long time – days I soon calculated. I was no longer in the Savrenoc Timberlands or whatever forest I found myself in, but outside in the plains near the ruins of Midras. The Spectral Peaks rose to my right.

I returned to the Timberlands as soon as I could walk. I scoured the area to find evidence of the dig site, but found no evidence whatsoever. What I did find, however, was the bespectacled kobold. This is why I believe it is the Savrenoc Timberlands that this occurred in. The learned kobold was in the northeastern ruins, huddled in a corner clutching a book. A copy of a book I read in the bookstore in Aerie about ancient and powerful magics and artefacts of the Obsidians. She was dead, and had been for days. The colour was drained from her, her eyes, still open and now glossy, looked upwards towards the sky. I remembered the melting stars, the cold darkness that devoured light and fell to my knees.

I must have run from the dig site. I must have run further than anyone and in the correct direction. I was the only survivor. I looked at the book the kobold had. It was old, older than the one in the bookstore. It was made with an odd black leather I have never seen before. I reached for it – it was a book after all – but was reminded of the darkness I ran from. I remembered the panicked shrieks from the kobold to dig faster to reveal whatever was in the ground. I left the book there. I wanted nothing more of it. I had enough.

I witnessed something utterly terrifying and beyond thought that night Whatever it was existed outside our imagination. My cowardice saved me from whatever fate my friends and the kobolds encountered.

I am in what I call my home: The gardens of Ardoris. I am writing down my experiences in the hopes that no one will experience what I have. I have done what I can to obscure the details to protect you from the darkness beyond dark.

If you somehow find the kobolds book and if you somehow locate the object the kobold and I found that night, I urge you to destroy them to further obfuscate the knowledge. I could not destroy either, it is not in my nature. And the obsidian idol weighs down my bag every day, waiting for the stellar alignment that will allow its inhabitant to emerge into our world again.

The post The Darkness in the Forest – Ch 2 – by Olthadir – narrated by Asclepius appeared first on Echoes from the Caverns.

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Here are the questions that we did not have time to get to. I tried my best to answer these but some we just don't have details yet to provide. I will try my best to follow up but please understand I probably won't have time to do any follow ups to these.

Arc: Q1: When will we have new ranks and options for guilds permissions?
Q2 2017 but hopefully sooner

Arc: Q2: When are bard skills coming?
Not currently planned for Episode 1...

R37 Post Mortem Missed Questions (mostly)

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Sing along with us! The contest is simple and fun - for the next two weeks, from December 20, 2016 to January 3, 2017, we want to see what songs, poems, and other holiday stories you can come up with that are related to Shroud of the Avatar. Can include videos too if you like!

When you have something you wish to submit to the contest, post it in...

The New Britannia Carolers - Creative Writing Contest!

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Sing along with us! The contest is simple and fun – for the next two weeks, from December 20, 2016 to January 3, 2017, we want to see what songs, poems, and other holiday stories you can come up with that are related to Shroud of the Avatar. Can include videos too if you like!

When you have something you wish to submit to the contest, post it in This Thread! You are allowed to edit your submission up until the end of the contest on January 3, 2017.

THEMES

Similar to the house decorating contest, we will be judging entries based on the following themes:

• Most inventive…
• Romantic theme
• Holiday theme
• Adventure theme
• Character/NPC theme
• PvP/Combat theme
• Town/Scene theme
• Funny TIP (see below for details)
• A surprising theme! (please keep it clean and to the Community R&G)

Also like the house decorating contest, if a theme doesn’t get any entries, we will remove that theme and add a second winner to a theme that has multiple entries up for consideration.

Do not copy from existing copyrighted works! These must be original writings or video works. Please limit entries to no more than 800 words and 3 pages with up to 4 images (if you need imagery), or 3 minute videos or less. Shorter is usually better, so don’t feel you need to max out these limits!

YOUR FUNNY TIPS!

Thank you community for submitting over 400 loading screen tips so far! We need more though! This time we want your funny and witty tips. They should still be useful, accurate, and factual, but with a funny or witty twist added to them.

Learn about the tips initiative and how to submit yours here.

PRIZES

Each theme winner will be awarded $20 worth of in-game credit, as well as the 2016 Winter Holiday Soundtrack – Wax Cylinders (digital) store reward! Perfect for replaying those holiday tunes well into the 2017 new year.

Have fun being a creative writer, Avatars!

RULES & GUIDELINES

Since this is a value based contest, a committee of judges will be formed at Portalarium, and any tie breakers will be resolved by the committee. Any disputes or disagreements in the community on who ultimately won will NOT be tolerated as an open discussion in the forums. Please PM Berek in the forums instead.

Anyone attempting to subvert the contest in any way is subject to an immediate suspension and disqualification from the contest. Inappropriate/Vulgar submissions are prohibited and will also result in immediate disqualification.

• Submissions containing any of the following are considered inappropriate:
• Sexual content or references
• Disparaging race/gender/group of people
• Drug/alcohol abuse
• Death/suicide of persons real or fake
• Graphical bugs
• Depicting the state of the game in a negative manner

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON, PLEASE SEE COMPLETE RULES FOR OTHER RESTRICTIONS. THIS IS A SKILL-BASED CONTEST. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. AFFIDAVIT OF ELIGIBILITY / RELEASE OF LIABILITY / PRIZE ACCEPTANCE AGREEMENT MAY BE REQUIRED.

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Sing along with us! The contest is simple and fun - for the next two weeks, from December 20, 2016 to January 3, 2017, we want to see what songs, poems, and other holiday stories you can come up with that are related to Shroud of the Avatar.

When you have something you wish to submit to the contest, post it below! For the complete announcement with submission requirements,...

The New Britannia Carolers - Submission Thread

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I've updated the POT submission form and templates page with the Grasslands 01a template so POT owners can now select that template for their POT if they wish.

I also updated the overlay images for the original Grasslands template since we increased the flat areas.

As a reminder you can see the new template by visiting Hometown.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=59140

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This will be the Fifth Lot Deed Raffle. For this raffle, we dropped the numbers lower to better match current demand and pace remaining stock.

There will be no free raffle tickets with this Raffle. Tickets can be purchased with in game gold. As with R36, each person can only win a single deed of each type (maximum of one place anywhere and one POT). The drawing and winners will be in R38.

There are two raffles, one for each lot type:

• Place Anywhere Deeds (10):...

Tickets for Release 37 Lot Deed Raffle

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We are so very sorry about the messiness of this release. The performance changes we made introduced a lot of unfortunate side effects that did not manifest themselves during internal testing that we are slowly working through.

We had a build failure but we are back on track.

This build has fixes for player position errors, stability problems, offline rewards and a host of other minor issues.

Check out details on the patch page.

View the full article

If you are patching R37 for the first time you will be going from 0 > 522 due to overall size of R37. This is as designed and does not mean that you are starting entirely over in installing the game.

Apologies about the confusion and slow speed of our patcher! If you have Steam access, you can patch much faster. Here are a couple of alternate options for patching:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...downloading-slow-try-these-suggestions.74491/

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Hello everyone! Hope you are enjoying release 37:

 

• Play Release 37 Now!
• 17 Days Left for 10% Holiday Bonus!
• Xenos Polish
• The Making of Vauban Pass
• The Making of Blood Bay
• Richard Garriott on Exploding Dice
• R36 Lot Deed Raffle Winners
• Community of the Avatar Livestream – Clockwork Monkeys Strike!
• Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 37 Postmortem: Next Week
• More Obsidian Bundles and Add-On Store Goodies!
• Community Spotlight: Numinous Gleann – Player Owned Town
• Upcoming Events
• Community Holiday Party at Portalarium!
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Recommended Projects to Back

The post Echoes From the Caverns 12-16-16 appeared first on Echoes from the Caverns.

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• Play Release 37 Now!
• 17 Days Left for 10% Holiday Bonus!
• Xenos Polish
• The Making of Vauban Pass
• The Making of Blood Bay
• Richard Garriott on Exploding Dice
• R36 Lot Deed Raffle Winners
• Community of the Avatar Livestream – Clockwork Monkeys Strike!
• Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 37 Postmortem: Next Week
• More Obsidian Bundles and Add-On Store Goodies!
• Community Spotlight: Numinous Gleann – Player Owned Town
• Upcoming Events
• Community Holiday Party at Portalarium!
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Recommended Projects to Back

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Play Release 37 Now!

Release 37 successfully launched yesterday, December 15, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

• Superstition Canyon Rebuilt
• Ardoris Polish
• Tons of Performance Improvements
• Town Sieges
• Obsidian Bundles
• New Crown Merchants: Obsidian, Kobold, and Caretaker (aka Spooky)
• New Custom NPCs: Ardoris Guards
• Loading Screen Hints
• R36 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

…and much more

Check out the Release 37 Instructions update for detailed information about all the new content.

We need all your help with testing the new patches, putting more stress on our multiplayer servers, and testing the new game content, so please join us in playing Release 37!

If you have not backed the game, you will need to register and login at www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the “Get Early Access!” button in the right side-bar, and purchase one of our game access bundles. Game Early Access is also available on Steam Early Access.

Release 37 Player Instructions

Release 37 Known Issue

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17 Days Left for 10% Holiday Bonus!

Just in time for the holidays, we are announcing our 10% Holiday Bonus! For all new purchases (including bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, player owned town upgrades, and Make a Difference items) between 10:30 am CST December 15, 2016 (16:30 UTC, December 15, 2016) and Midnight CST, January 2, 2017 (6:00 UTC, January 3, 2017), we will add an additional 10% bonus to your Store Credit!

You can use your Store Credit toward additional purchases (which includes bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, and player owned town upgrades).

[NOTE: The 10% bonus is calculated every day at 1:00 pm CT for any purchases within the previous 24 hours and added to your Store Credit account; Store Credit cannot be applied toward the purchase of Make a Difference items]

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Xenos Polish (cont.)

Right before we went persistent, we uncloned Xenos and made some modifications to it for specific plot points. However, we were not satisfied with the level of polish so we are revisiting this scene and doing a polish pass this release. We hope to have this pass complete by Release 38. Xenos is on the island of Elysium, southwest of Novia, and is a critical juncture on the Path of Truth.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Scott “Scottie” Jones]

Hello my fine folks!

As I continue to develop the details of Xenos, my thoughts keep going back to the rocky entrance through the coastal hills from the Elysian Plains southwest of the city… Though many will choose to visit the land of Elysium by ship from the mainland of New Britannia, thus arriving at the port of Xenos, those adventuring out into wilderness and rolling hills of Elysium and returning again will enter from the south, passing through forested acres festooned with the tents of travelers unable to pay for richer housing within the city.

Since the draw of Xenos is the Lottery, and the laws of the land allow fair passage to all races, assuming they behave in a civilized fashion, the tents of the people of many lands can be found here, as well as the occasional encampment of friendly elves and kobolds. This will hopefully be a place where many different tales can be found and shared, and the hopes and dreams of supplicants awaiting their chance at the Lottery of Artifice can be wistfully imparted upon those who will listen.

Though I have not fully polished the encampments, here you can see my first pass at the variety of tents spread through the meadows and thickets.

This being one of the main roads leading into the city, it will eventually receive the same treatment I am giving to the other primary thoroughfares, namely the paving stones lining each edge of the cobbled pathway, as well as the upraised borders with dusty foot-trails etched along the grassy way to either side. The well-traveled road leads past the ancient caravanserai stationed near the edge of the Lagoon of Pleasures which I showcased in an earlier sub-post.

This building (one of the larger “desert” style homes, actually) I have adorned with various Greco-Roman features and details, and have reserved it as a place for the more quaint travelers to barter and trade. Within will eventually be found the same types of tented merchant stalls as can be discovered along the busy docks near the town center…

The idea with a caravanserai, however, is that the visiting merchants with their wagons and caravans would actually reside (at least temporarily) in one of the many different rooms available in this building, and pitch their wares in the stalls either within the inner courtyard (accessed straight through that little door you see below), or upon the second story roof balcony overlooking it from above…

Not far to the east of here several neighborhoods stretch away toward the plains and the bay, and if one were to gaze out over them from atop one of the many taller building found here, one could see the northeastern aqueducts stretching like a crooked stone snake from the taller heights into the residential areas below.

Though it may be interesting to see the placeholder houses I have chosen to display, these will eventually become the domiciles of whomever has purchased those plots, and the spaces in between will be dotted with little gardens and follies decorated with bits of ancient ruins and artful statuary of my choosing, while the coasts will have steps leading into the water, and platforms here and there bedecked in flowering plants and tall sculpted junipers.

Those who enter the city from the north, however, will enjoy the finely sculpted stone docks of Xenos, and its busy port full of market stalls, garden paths, and the Grand Gate leading into the Forum of the Lottery itself! Only the dazzling city of Ardoris, who shares with Xenos the need for aqueducts, has a similar flavor and mystique, with its paved streets and many alleys.

But it is the historical nature of Xenos’ very foundations which entice the traveler with thoughts of the cultures that thrived here long ago, ancient even before the rise of the Obsidian Empire,…older than the catastrophe that shattered the moon itself. In the images below you can see the work I’ve done re-creating the docks, making way for the colorful merchant stalls near the piers, and lining the streets and walkways leading into the city center with decorative plants and statuary.

Soon the barren areas you can see in front of the shore-side housing will be similarly accoutered!

Here we begin walking inward toward the Forum itself, through the Grand Gate, beneath the statue of Boreas, and between the guardian Shedu which gaze forward toward those who seek admittance. Beyond the Grand Gate is a domed rotunda held aloft by ancient pillars and surmounted with an oculus open to the sky. It rests within the inner courtyard between the gate and Forum, and is a place where those who wait for the ceremonies meander and greet one another.

Above the Grand Gate you can see the insignia of Xenos, its broken-shackled hands holding aloft the gear-work icon reminiscent of the wooden gears and cogs of the many waterwheels found within the city at various points, providing power to the aetheric generators that feed various buildings and services here and there.

Again, this courtyard, with the rotunda and its statue-adorned fountain, are still a work in progress, and will eventually be even more filled with decorative plants, pathways, and other things to please the eye,…as will the rest of this central area as a whole. And all of these details, as I design them, will spill out and inform the rest of the city, and will enrich even the outlying areas of rural estates and ruin-littered countryside. There’s so much more to come!

Thank you for your patience with this process, and hopefully your excitement for these additions is well rewarded! Yours in earnest endeavor…

Scottie ^_^

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The Making of Vauban Pass

Vauban Pass is one of the numerous Control Points that limits travel between regions in Novia. It is located between the Grunvald and Drachvald regions and is controlled by the Undead armies of Anapa. Vauban Pass started as a clone of Sanctus Spine but is being completely rebuilt for Release 38. When completed this will make all the Control Points unique scenes.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf]

Hey folks! I have a new un-cloned level to show you that I’m currently working on for release 38! The new look for Vauban Pass is inspired by the Hindu Kush mountains, and will include a small village, a spider’s den, a graveyard, and some catacombs.

The Pass

The Mountains

The Village

The Spider’s Den

The Graveyard

The Catacombs

As always, feel free to leave feedback!
~ Chris Wolf
Level Designer

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The Making of Blood Bay (cont.)

Blood Bay is going to be an Open PVP area with two NPC towns, player housing, adventuring areas, and entrances to underground adventure areas. It is going to be a testing ground for several systems that will, in turn, propagate to other parts of the game if successful. We hope to have a first iteration of this map live in Release 38. We showed the scene during the Telethon and talked more about how we hope to have certain systems working. This is the third update we have posted so far on this map.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]

Backside of the island, upper trail

Upper Trail continued

Wide shot of the basin

Back side of the island, lower beach trail

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Richard Garriott on Exploding Dice

Our very own Richard “Lord British” Garriott was the featured guest on the D&D Twitch show Fuzzy Dice which is a weekly feature of the Exploding Dice D&D Twitch Channel. That evening Fuzzy Dice happened to also be the Table Top Featured Twitch stream on Twitch!

You can view the hour long interview here:

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R36 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

Yesterday we had the drawing for our latest Lot Deed Raffle and awarded 170 lot deeds to lucky winners whom are being announced today. There were two raffles, one for each lot type:

• Place Anywhere Deeds: 20 Total
  • Row: 10
  • Village: 6
  • Town: 3
  • City: 1
• Player Owned Town Deeds: 150 Total
  • Row: 80
  • Village: 40
  • Town: 20
  • City: 10

Raffle tickets grant the holder a chance to win deeds of any size (Row, Village, Town, or City). Raffles will be held monthly (total deed numbers will vary each month). Place-Anywhere Deed raffle tickets are more expensive but will have fewer deeds in each raffle than POT raffle tickets, which are more affordable and will have many more deeds in each raffle. This means your chances to win a POT deed are much greater.

This is the first raffle where we limited winners to one deed per raffle type. Click here for a complete list of the winners for this release’s raffle. Winners can claim their deed(s) simply by logging into the game and claiming rewards at any bank. A reminder that you may have received multiple deeds to claim if you received tickets for a guild or other group.

If you wish to review all of your account rewards outside of the game, you can do so by going to the Account menu on the main website and then selecting the ‘Special Rewards’ tab in the page menu.

 

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Community of the Avatar Livestream – Clockwork Monkeys Strike!

Last week’s Community of the Avatar Live stream kicked off with Matt Schmitz, our Lead Animator, showing the community in 3DS Max how the animations for the Clockwork Monkey were designed. This special pet reward was one of the stretch goals the community obtained during the Summer Telethon, and is now in the game as of Release 37! We also be toured Aldwater, a PRT town which was recently spotlighted.

If you missed the stream you can see it below or on the Shroud of the Avatar YouTube channel.

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Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 37 Postmortem: Next Week

Join us Tuesday, December 20th at 3:00 PM Central (21:00 UTC) on Twitch for our monthly Hangout of the Avatar! The team will be chatting about the upcoming Release 37, the recent holiday events, and looking ahead to what’s going on in the next year!

As always, we will be giving out rare Lord British artifacts of immense power and glory, and answering your latest questions. For a chance to win an artifact, or to speak your voice on the latest game changes, be in Discord chat during the livestream. There will be multiple chances to win throughout the broadcast!

Submit Your Questions!

Once you get a chance to check out Release 37, or have questions that apply regardless of release, post your questions in the comments section of the Postmortem web posting. Only one post submission allowed, and keep questions to 3 or less. This will allow us to get to as many individual players’ questions as possible.

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More Obsidian Bundles and Add-On Goodies!

Last week we introduced the new Obsidian Bundle Store with a few of the starting bundles, and this week we have completed all twelve of the Obsidian Bundles, all of which are being delivered in-game now with Release 37!

Add-On Store Goodies!

Check out all the new items in the Add-On Store, including pet Clockwork Monkey, Dragon Mask, new Battle Banner, Vases, Gustball Field, and more!

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Community Spotlight: Numinous Gleann – Player Owned Town

Today’s community spotlight explores the metropolis of Numinous Gleann. Adjoined to Ardoris, the city of Love in the South, you will discover that Numinous Glenn is but a nice weekend trip from many other nearby towns.

We are touring all kinds of towns and talking with guilds and other groups throughout this spotlight series, brought to you by Berek, your community wood elf druid.

Entering from the main bridge, I saw the prominent Statues of the Virtues guarding the town center. Just beyond the statues was a farm of greenhouses for as far as the eye could see. Already in awe of the great sights I was witnessing, I knew I was going to enjoy my time here.

As I walked across the main bridge, I was greeted by a Town Crier, who welcomed me to Numinous Gleann and quickly introduced me to govenor Frederick Glasgow.

Frederick escorted me to the the town’s common crafting area, located in the shadows of the Statues of the three Virtues. The members of the Numinous Gleann Merchant Society are just a few steps away under a row of awnings and ready to assist everyone that comes on by.

[Read More…]

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Upcoming Events

Dec 20, 2016 – R37 Postmortem
Jan 26, 2017 – Release 38
Feb 23, 2017 – Release 39
Feb 25, 2017 – Ultima Dragons 25th Anniversary Event
Feb 28, 2017 – GDC: Community Management Summit
Mar 17, 2017 – SXSW Gaming
Mar 30, 2017 – Release 40

Visit the official Community Calendar to see the great lineup of activities our amazing community has planned for this weekend! And be sure to check out this month’s Release Events thread in the SotA forums for additional events.

Event of the Week: PaxLair Annual Holiday Party – Dec. 17th from Noon-3pm CT

PaxLair invites all New Britannian’s, young and old, to our annual Holiday Festival. We will feature on-air music, live music, market place, pet race and more. Located at the mouth of the Briasch River, east of Britanny. Please send a message to Sean Silverfoot in game for any help.

Looking forward to seeing you all! Remember never leave home without your snowballs!!

Event of the Week: Shadow’s Rest 2016 Secret Santa Event – Now-Dec. 24th in Shadow’s Rest

Shadow’s Rest would like to welcome all new and returning players to their 2016 Secret Santa event! Feel free to message Aidenolm Rosemourne and choose a gift box. On the 24th, those gifts will be filled by avatars all over Novia and, as rumour has it, even Santa himself! So if you’re looking for some support this holiday, contact Rosemourne and choose a gift box! If you’re in the giving mood, find a named present and put your gift in! Contact Aidenolm Rosemourne for details.

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Community Holiday Party at Portalarium!

Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known far and wide that a Grand Holiday Party will be held at the Portalarium Studios and in Shroud of the Avatar on:

Wednesday, January 11, 2016
5:00 PM to 10:00 PM Central Standard Time (US)
(2300 UTC to 0400 UTC)The Grand Holiday Party is completely planned, hosted, and paid for by the player community! The Portalarium team thanks you so much here – this means a GREAT deal to them, and they are very excited to be celebrating with you during this event!

To attend either on-site at Portalarium, or celebrate with us online, please RSVP!

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Community Resources – Players Helping Players

• The official SotA New Player Welcome Forum and the Player Created Resources Forum have the best player created resources for Shroud of the Avatar, whether it’s a Player Written Guide, a Video Walk-through, or a Wiki-type Website.

Visit the official Community Resources page for a complete listing of all things community.

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Recommended Projects to Back

Brightlocker

Here’s the latest from BrightLocker, the first crowd publishing platform for games. BrightLocker was launched by fellow ex-Originites Mark Rizzo and Ruben Cortez, members of the original Ultima Online Network Ops team from back in the day.

On Dec. 13th it was an exciting day in history for the BrightLocker community, marking the end of the Season 2 Finals and a wrap to the second official season of voting. The batch of seven winning game ideas will go on to be evaluated by BrightLocker for one ultimate winner to be pushed into Funding and Development.

The qualifying winners include several RPGs, action games, a narrative, a simulation, and a strategy title. The ultimate winner that will go on to production is set to be announced on Jan. 23rd. Also, starting Dec. 17th through Jan. 2nd, BrightLocker will be hosting a winter-themed, game submission round where participants will be competing for cash prizes, BrightLocker votes, and more.

Our very own community member Amberraine, founder of Avatar’s Radio, is one of the Season 2 finalists with her game Wanna be a DJ?

You can check out all the BrightLocker finalists currently being evaluated here.

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Backer Shipping Addresses

In preparation for shipping backers’ physical pledge rewards later this year, we have added Shipping Address fields to your Account Profile page. To enter your shipping address, log in to the SotA website, select “Account” in top right corner, then select “Edit Profile” located in top left corner, beneath your Avatar image.

A reminder to be sure that support@portalarium.com is unblocked from your e-mail account!

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Yesterday we had the drawing for our latest Lot Deed Raffle and awarded 170 lot deeds to lucky winners whom are being announced today. There were two raffles, one for each lot type:

• Place Anywhere Deeds: 20 Total
  • Row: 10
  • Village: 6
  • Town: 3
  • City: 1
• Player Owned Town Deeds: 150 Total
  • Row: 80
  • Village: 40
  • Town: 20
  • City: 10

Raffle tickets grant the holder a chance to win deeds of any size (Row, Village,...

Release 36 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

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Issue Notice: While some rewards are being delivered in Offline Mode, others are still missing.

We will update this post with details while we work to resolve the issue. Thanks for your patience while you expect your rewards to be delivered!

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Yesterday we had the drawing for our latest Lot Deed Raffle and awarded 170 lot deeds to lucky winners whom are being announced today. There were two raffles, one for each lot type:

• Place Anywhere Deeds: 20 Total
  • Row: 10
  • Village: 6
  • Town: 3
  • City: 1
• Player Owned Town Deeds: 150 Total
  • Row: 80
  • Village: 40
  • Town: 20
  • City: 10

Raffle tickets grant the holder a chance to win deeds of any size (Row, Village, Town, or City). Raffles will be held monthly (total deed numbers will vary each month). Place-Anywhere Deed raffle tickets are more expensive but will have fewer deeds in each raffle than POT raffle tickets, which are more affordable and will have many more deeds in each raffle. This means your chances to win a POT deed are much greater.

This is the first raffle where we limited winners to one deed per raffle type. Visit the forums to read more about this recent change.

Below is a complete list of the winners for this release’s raffle. Winners can claim their deed(s) simply by logging into the game and claiming rewards at any bank.  A reminder that you may have received multiple deeds to claim if you received tickets for a guild or other group.

If you wish to review all of your account rewards outside of the game, you can do so by going to the Account menu on the main website and then selecting the ‘Special Rewards’ tab in the page menu.

Listed below are the winners:

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Avatars,

Please read this entire message, as well as the linked instructions and known issues.

Thank you for being a loyal backer and follower of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 37 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, December 15, at 10:30 AM US...

Release 37 Instructions

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UPDATE: We resolved the previous issue, but unfortunately when towns are under siege you cannot access the Novia overworld from the town nor the siege encounter scene. Instead, exit the game to the Main Menu and select the 'Start on World Map' option if you wish to get back to the overworld.

Other options also exit, such as using teleport scrolls to other players.

If you attempt to enter a town under siege, you will be brought directly into the siege, NOT the town. Attempting to exit...

Bug Notice: Accessing a town under siege

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Hello everyone, this is Asclepius, with a wonderful story from Olthadir. It is entitled
The Darkness in the Forest
Background music “Ashes and Dust” by Holt Ironfell

Chapter 1, “The Forest”
What I am about to write down I do so only so that others do not find themselves in my position and having seen what I have seen. There are things in this world, perhaps all worlds, that should remain secret; hidden among the mists and dust of timeless ages.

It is no secret that I would rather read a book than engage in combat. I would stay in Ardoris my entire life if it were not for my need for coin and a foolish desire for exploration. I am afraid that it was my naive curiosity that caused me to be in the state I currently am. Again, let this be a warning to those who are as curious as I.

I have traveled far and wide. I’ve seen most of Novia, not its entirety – not yet, and maybe not ever, now with the weight I carry. I have walked among the dead of Necropolis and seen the bones of a dragon chained in the Epitaph along with the large troll within. This is not a boast, I know many Outlanders who have done the same and more. Instead it is a touch of my credentials, proof that I have seen some things. But none of them prepared me for what occurred in the woods.

It began in Aerie, in Vyrin and Womby’s Bookstore. I find myself there when I wish to read books that I have not read before. They have quite the book collection and I peruse the collection when I get a chance. I was reading some of the older books that Lord Vyrin had collected from a traveller. They were quite old and I was very excited, and careful, in reading them. They spoke of ancient relics of the Obsidians, things of power and wonder that would confound the minds of their enemies.

This was an idle interest of mine. I had no interest in power. This was curiosity at its best. The tome I held spoke of Midras at its height. It described its fall as if it was recent history. There was no mention of ruins as they were still used and full of life at the time of the writing it seemed. I read of the Avatar of old and the quests the Avatar went on. I read of the Obsidian Eye and the power he wielded. I read of the horrors the Obsidian Empire created, twisting humans into new forms and meddling in death magic. I read of the armies created, not raised, used to conquer the lands of Novia.

To me, they were stories. History, yes, but stories that I could read and close the cover to and return to my life. The life where Obsidian abominations were but a periphery to me.

This all began with a journey in mid Octobre. I find it difficult now, sitting in the gardens of Ardoris to recall the details of the journey. Even the sweet scent of flowers on the wind and the comfortable, familiar atmosphere is not healing me at this point. My mind returns to the forest and the darkness within.

I know that I was in Kiln at one point, and our next destination was North. The Outlanders I was with were leading me northward and rarely used the roads. We stopped in Kiln for a time to rest and replenish out stores. The journey was not long or particularly distant. We were simply being prudent. I look now at a map of Novia, trying to bend my mind to that night. In my shaking hand, I believe we ended in Savrenoc Timberland, but my memory is not very clear of the locations, only the events. I say this not to invite you to explore, but to warn you to stay away. Savrenoc Timberland may seem safe, if it is indeed the location of that horrendous discovery, but what was discovered is not.

My friends were looking for treasure, rare resources to sell to crafters or to craft with themselves. I accompanied them as someone who cared only for a few pelts to tan and perhaps some meat to save me some coin. They allowed me to come as I told good stories.

The woods, which could be the South Majestic Forest, perhaps, were kind to us at first. My companions gathered what they wished, and I gathered what I wished as well. We were pleased. I told them of my research which contained some mysterious and powerful artefacts that the Obsidians had, and used. They bantered and laughed, spoke of how they would use such tools to thwart their enemies, and reclaim dangerous areas for Novians. I shook my head at them, and now I feel like screaming at them through time, demanding they refrain from such wishes.

The time had pressed on and the sun set. We continued to wander the forests, cutting down choice trees and collecting flora, hunting wildlife and telling ancient tales, both from our Earth and Novia. We were tracking a wolf that ran off when we heard kobold voices in a clearing ahead. My allies chose to investigate. They were not friends of kobolds. Some of my allies were miners and they despised the kobolds nearly as much as they despised us. They wanted to sneak up on them and attack. I wanted no such thing. I feel sympathy and compassion for kobolds, even more so after the events I am about to describe. I should have left. I should have turned away and hoped my companions would follow me, but I was foolishly curious.

The kobolds were a small group that were digging in a clearing that they had seemingly made. There were a handful of them, enough that my group hesitated for an all-out attack. I wonder if the attack had happened and we emerged victorious: would things have ended differently?

They were working in what looked like a hurried archaeological dig; there were tools strewn about and areas roped off to mark them suitable for digging or already dug in. There was a bespectacled kobold that was clearly leading them, holding an ancient map and tome in her claws, a bag slung across her chest that – to my trained eye – carried additional books.

I felt an immediate kinship to the leader of this group. She was curious and had an adventurous streak in her. She had found something, tracking it to this location and was bent on discovering it. My curiosity grew and I wished I could go towards them and offer my help. I should have left, though. We all should have left. A much as I wanted to see what the fruits of their labour was going to be, my very bones called out to me to run away from this place. My allies felt it too as one of them suggested, only to have their suggestion waved away with a nervous, uncertain laugh by our leader.

“This might be one of those trinkets Olthadir spoke about,” He said. He wanted to see what they would find too, but there was uncertainty in the bottom of his voice.

The bespectacled kobold yelled to her workers to continue digging, then to dig faster. Her broken and hissed English sounding extraordinarily odd in the night. She was anxious too.

I wanted to leave. I looked up to the heavens and the shattered moon. The stars themselves screamed at me to leave the clearing. Leave my friends, leave everything if you must, but get out of there! I was just about to turn and flee when one of my companions said: “Olthadir, go and talk to them.”

The post The Darkness in the Forest – Ch 1 – by Olthadir – narrated by Asclepius appeared first on Echoes from the Caverns.

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