Jack T. Lamplighter

Hello everyone! Here is the news of the week! Hope you are enjoying release 36!

• Play R36 Now!
• The Making of Blood Bay
• Xenos Polish
• Game Systems Posts
• Gift Boxes
• R35 Lot Deed Winners
• 2016 Winter Holiday and Assorted Add-On Goodies
• 10-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon (now with schedule & prizes)
• Upcoming Events
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Recommended Projects to Back

The post Echoes From the Caverns 11-18-16 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 R36 Now!
• The Making of Blood Bay
• Xenos Polish
• Game Systems Posts
• Gift Boxes
• R35 Lot Deed Winners
• 2016 Winter Holiday and Assorted Add-On Goodies
• 10-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon (now with schedule & prizes)
• Upcoming Events
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Recommended Projects to Back

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Play R36 Now!

Release 36 successfully launched yesterday, November 17, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

• Midras Ruins Rebuilt
• Graff Island Rebuilt
• Elad’s Lighthouse Rebuilt
• Malice and Spite Polish
• Magic Damage Types & Resistances
• Teachable Recipes
• Over 15 New Recipes
• POT Oveworld Population Indicators
• New Custom NPCs: Shogun Siranto and High Priestess Khasi
• Winter Holiday Content
• R35 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

…and much more

Check out the Release 36 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 36!

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 36 Player Instructions

Release 36 Known Issue

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The Making of Blood Bay

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 will be talking about more of those new systems and revealing more about the map during the Fall into Winter Telethon, so be sure to tune in.

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

Here’s some early shots of Blood Bay.

Blood Bay is an open PVP map located on an atoll. At the ends of the arms of the atoll is a town founded by brigands and buccaneers. However, one side hosts more virtuous adventurers, while the other hosts adventurers with slightly more colorful pasts, (there’s going to be a lot of fighting on this bridge).

Approaching the town from the less virtuous side of the island.

The view from the more virtuous side of the town.

Thanks for taking the time to see how Blood Bay is shaping up. There’s lots of unique features to this map that I’ll be unveiling as they reach completion!

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Xenos Polish

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]

Having had the chance to return to labors in Xenos, I’ve begun to flesh out areas of primary interest to me, which I hope will set the tone I want to achieve with the entire scene! Starting at one of the entrances, I wanted to ensure that one of the first things visitors understand is the fact that the culture of Xenos is ancient, predating the cataclysm, and that many of Xenos’ structures are actually built atop the foundations of the ruins beneath. In many cases, the most glorious of these were incorporated into the more modern architecture. Like the Rome of our world, there will be few places you can gaze that won’t hold details of the old world, both small and large. Here at the very entrance is no exception, for across the old road from the caravans of merchants lay a ruined courtyard surrounded by columns, its original use long forgotten.

Further along the path into the city proper, past tall and imposing aqueducts, grand roads lead up steep hills that wind their way through several of the richer neighborhoods, whose fantastic views are now graced with sculptured foliage, stone arches, and pillars topped with braziers. Where before there had been very little in the way of decorative finishing, I wanted to make sure that such steep roads and the leveled-off areas for player houses felt very “intentional” in their craftsmanship…

Though I have no idea which players have already claimed these lots, or which houses they have chosen for themselves, I have placed (for my own reference) houses there that remind me of old Roman villas, to help me capture the inspirational feel of the areas as I create the sights around me. Where before were only dirt paths or a sprinkling of cobbles, there now springs forth old stone retaining walls, granite stairs, and evenly-paved roads like those of ancient Pompeii. Added to that are publicly-maintained decorative flower pots, shrubs, and trees, which I’m hoping the proud owners of those houses will now enjoy gazing upon as they frame their view of the sparkling sea beyond, with the masts of tall ships rising from the harbor.All of the decorations pictured are, of course, outside the boundaries of the lots themselves, so the beauty you see here will merely accent whatever decorations you choose to place yourself! At the top of this grand avenue, a partial circle of arches gloriously frames various angles of observation across the sprawling city itself. A fitting view, indeed, for those of such wealth and extravagance that can afford to live in the wondrous city of Xenos, gateway to the pleasures of distant Artifice!I hope you’re enjoying these sneak peeks! Stay tuned for more to come!

Scottie ^_^

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Game Systems Posts

As part of our continued commitment to provide more information about the reasoning behind why we make certain changes, Chris Spears made a series of posts this week. The first was a broad list of the Major System Changes we made in Release 36 and a brief description of why each change was made:

We managed to cram a LOT of changes into release 36 despite it only being 3 weeks long! While I strongly believe all the changes are good for the game, I’m also well aware that many of the changes will upset some individuals. Without a doubt the changes will disrupt some of the play styles that have been the most optimal way to play up until now.

First major change is one we have discussed for quite a while; the resistance system! Up until now, casters had the advantage of always being able to affect almost all creatures fully. There were only a few creatures that were resistant to anything. While this is great for mages, it is bad for the game. It means that players don’t have to adjust their play style based on what they are fighting. Many times I would peek in on what a party was doing and the party was all fire mage archers, stacking fire dots on enemies and stacking haste effects on themselves.

While this still might be a good strategy for some things, it will not work on everything. I tried to make the resistance changes as realistic as possible. For example, elementals are highly magic resistant overall, almost immune to their element and vulnerable to the opposite element. Thus, Fire elementals are immune to fire and vulnerable to water and somewhat resistant to everything else. Another example of a common resistance setup is being highly immune to all elemental magic while vulnerable to magic or vice versa. I’ll leave it to players to try and figure out the resistances of various things.

The resistances themselves are implemented through the attunement system and are effectively just a type of attunement that helps with defense vs magic but does not make your own magic more powerful. For R36, there will be some resistances available in crafting but I also hope to add skills with some resistances in upcoming release.

Next up, Defensive Stance is no longer a flat damage resistance buff and instead is a bonus to what armor gives you. Players wearing heavy armor might actually see a small uptick in how much this protects, but players in cloth or leather could see a drastic reduction. This is part of the ongoing attempt to help define roles based on armor. For a while, we have had a problem that the best tanks in the game wore cloth and just stacked a ton of defensive skills and spells. That was never intended but rather grew out of enhancements to magic systems and itemization.

Party Experience will now only be granted to people within 40m of the person dealing the killing blow. This is primarily for realism, but also to make power leveling other players a bit less convenient.

Fizzle for armor on Air, Fire, and Death schools increased slightly. The multiplier for armor penalty in most spells in those schools went up by either 0.1 or 0.2. This means that your armor has a base 30% fizzle, your fizzle chance for those schools went up by 3% or 6%. This was done to help differentiate light and heavy armor a bit more.

Interruption is working again in R36! During all of R35, spells couldn’t be interrupted at all; except by stuns and knock downs. That was actually a bug that has now been fixed. Additionally, while spell “Lock” times have remained the same, many spells now have a “Cast” time. For those unclear, lock time is how long from start of execution until you can do something else, like start casting another spell. Cast time is the time during which you can be interrupted and also when it shows the bar at the bottom of the screen. This has always been the intended design, that most spells would have cast times and be interruptible by attacks. Again, this is another change in trying to make sure that casters are not the best tanks in the game and also to give non-casters a way to be competitive with casters in PVP as well.

Ok casters, ready for some good news? For spells that are damaging or have negative effects, the targets resistance is now equal half their attunement plus their resistance instead of their full attunement! This means that players with no resistance gear will almost certainly be easier to damage with magic. This will primarily only affect PVP and the difference should be noticeable.

The max amount of decay accumulation has been upped to 12 hours. This means that if you have 1 million xps spent on skills and you die for the first time in a week, you’ll lose 1250 xps. If you die again 30 minutes later, you’ll lose 52 xps. Again, sounds trivial for most people and it is. Decay is not intended to slow the casual or new players down. It’s purpose is to create a soft cap for progression for the absolute most hard core. This will continue to increase slightly each release.

Several targeting issues resolved! First, the tab target system that I thought was just bad math was truly picking the very worst target on first use. That has now been resolved and I also changed up the math so it gives more value to closer targets than targets in front of you. Additionally, casting a beneficial spell with no hard locked target will now default to casting the spell on yourself. If you want to cast a heal on a party member you will need to select them by clicking on them or using the F1-F8 keys.

Spell effect stacking (not to be confused with glyph stacking) now has a system in place to limit the max number of the same effects on a target. The players who will probably feel this the most are the fire mages and blade users who stack rend. For most effects, no more than three any specific type effect will stack. So players can still have three fire bolt dots, three fire ball dots, and three rend dots all at once but more than that will overwrite the older ones.

Immolation has had its radius reduced by 20%. This spell was always intended to be a fire shield that does damage to things that hit you. Unfortunately, it was setup wrong and people got used to it be a massive AOE fire effect that was perfect for kiting. My plan is to reduce it each release for a few releases and then switch it to be a damage shield that only hits those in melee range but does more damage per hit.

For R36, we also have refactored our channel system. This is the system that controls which spells and effects can be active at the same time. With the update, we are now able to properly block certain spells and skills from playing at the same time based on channels. For R37, the two major changes are that Shield of Air will no longer stack with other shield spells and that Reckless Stance and Berserker Stance will no longer stack with Flurry.

We’re also trying out a few changes we’re just referring to as “Experimental”. These are changes we expect to tweak and are just looking to see how they impact some of our metrics. The first is that players who are flagged PVP and playing in multiplayer mode will receive a 25% experience bonus. The goal is to reward the extra risk that PVP players take since we still do not have systems in place for other measurable rewards in PVP. We’ll be looking to see how this impacts players playing in PVP and also multiplayer mode. My guess is this will change into something like a 10% bonus for players in multiplayer mode and 10% bonus for being PVP in future releases.

The last big controversial big change that went in for R36 is that subsequent COTO repairs on equipment will repair less and less max durability. Despite the numerous rage threads that will surely erupt on this topic, this was not about SOTA trying to extract more money from players. Repairs are not, and likely never will be, a significant revenue stream. This is a change that has been requested by those concerned about the economy and crafting to make sure that items are never really permanent. This does not mean that you shouldn’t invest tons of time and resources to build a +15 sword. It does mean that you should not use your +15 sword to kill bears and instead save it for the dragons and trolls or the PVP tournaments.

That’s it for the big ticket items! My expectation is that after reading this, some people are cheering and others only made it halfway through before starting their “How will I solo dragons and daemons now!” rage post. The overall goal for these changes was to make the end game more challenging without negatively impacting the low to mid game. It was also to help define roles a bit more so that caster types are more glass cannons. I think the changes made this release go a long ways towards achieving those goals and moving away from single optimal build.

The second post was an explanation on how Gold Crowns of the Obsidians work (aka COTOs) and why we believe they are ultimately good for the game:

If you don’t like wall of text types posts, feel free to skip to the end for the TL;DR version.

It has been a while since I put in writing why we made certain decisions on the economy and our “premium currency” or COTOs. I’ve seen a number of people in the forums getting worked up about a few topic with a common rage element of “I REFUSE TO PAY MONEY TO DO X!”

Most games use a premium currency that can’t be traded in any way. I would say all games, but there are a few that have some limited trading. This means, you give the company money, they give you a premium currency that you can spend on stuff in games like unique content, large boosts to experience, or in some cases, even buying unique powerful items . Many of them also let you turn that premium currency directly into the in game currency.

Long ago, we made clear what our definition of “Pay 2 Win” was. It can be argued (and has extensively by a few players) that if you take ANY money in any way, you are pay 2 win. Even games that are subscription based are pay to win because there are benefits to having multiple accounts. I think the only way a game could qualify as not pay 2 win to those people is if it cost nothing to buy, nothing to play, and you just had an anonymous pledge donate button somewhere in game. We don’t believe an anonymous donation game was viable for ours or pretty much any large scale game.

Our definition of not being pay 2 win is if two players with equal skill and equal gear fight, it should come down to skill, strategy, and possibly a tiny bit of luck. Paying money might shorten the time it takes one player to get to that level, but it won’t make him better once he gets there.

So, back to the topic of COTOs and why we decided to make them work the way that they do… Just like Ultima Online, we wanted our economy to be completely open. We want it to be completely player driven and have players set the prices and determine the value of things. This is part of why vendors don’t pay much for things. We never want players to be crafting things purely to sell to merchants. As soon as we introduce a crafting loop that generates money, we are just begging for massive botting.

So, just like gear, we wanted players to set the in game value of COTOs. Currently I think vendors will buy a COTO for something like 50 or 100 gold if at all. That is intentionally to make sure players never feel like they should buy COTOs to sell to vendors. While that is what many games do, it creates a massive inflation problem. As soon as you can turn real dollars into in-game gold at even a modest conversion rate, you are inviting players to destroy the economy.

Our solution to let players buy gold with real money without causing inflation was to allow COTOs to be traded. This way, players who have more money than time can buy COTOs and put them up for sale on vendors. Then players who have more time or are better at making gold in game can buy those.

So instead of it being a $ to gold conversion that inflates the economy the system looks more like this. Players give us $ for a COTO, players sell COTOs to other players. Subtle difference, BUT it means that players set the price, not us AND most importantly, instead of it resulting in gold being dumped into the economy, the result is gold going from one player’s pocket to the other and no inflation in the economy. Since I know it will come up, technically COTOs can inflate the economy some because allow players to spend less money on new items or rent. We know, but we believe these are fairly small inputs into the system that are acceptable and not driving forces in market inflation.

Also, for those who were curious about the trends on COTOs in game I’m attaching a graph. We started the players with a fair number of COTOs and not much to spend them on so it has taken a while for the market value of COTOs to rise. We recently added in more COTO items in game in the form of some store items and houses and the price has finally started to rise as the excess COTOs drain out of the market. My belief is they will rise to around 3-4k value in the not too distant future.

So the TL;DR version:

• COTOs, our premium currency, are tradeable.
• Players set the price not us, as it should be in an open, player driven economy
• If a player has more money than time or just want to support the development of the game, they can buy COTOs from us, sell them to other players for gold.
• If a player has more money than time or is good at making gold, they can buy COTOs from players in game and never spend a dime but still get plenty of COTOs.
• COTOs do not inflate the economy because it is gold moving from one player’s pocket to another instead of us printing new gold every time someone gives us money
• COTOs can’t buy power, but they can save time and buy visual enhancements.
• The game can be played completely without spending a single COTO and most players play this way.
• COTOs drop in game and we will increase the drop rate as the vendor prices for them increase. Right now they are pretty rare, but we expect the drop rate to increase as we approach the end of the year and COTO prices approach 2k

Thanks for the read!

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Gift Boxes

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

Now with the 2016 Yule Stocking all good and happy, of course the next bit of action will be devoted to some wrapped gift boxes/presents for folks to give to each other during the various holidays people will no doubt be celebrating in-game together. Unlike the stockings, which I made with the specific Yuletide season in mind (in all its various forms among our many cultures), for the gifts I wanted a more general approach to looks so that they could be used for a wider variety of holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays. As such, I’m not going with any specific color themes or decorations (with, perhaps, the exception of the use of general in-game symbology, such as the various virtues and such), and instead will create designs for the paper, bows, and ornamentation that will make them pleasing for almost any occasion! Of course they will all be quite festive, even the basic craft-able one for 2016, which you can see below!

These will behave like containers in the same way the stockings will, and you’ll be able to pile them on the floor and all over tables and such. And like the stockings, I’ll create a “family” of small, medium, and large gift boxes for this year as well, which will all have a similar “theme” to them. This year, at the suggestion of a visiting supporter of our game, I’ll be wrapping them in paper decorated with the symbols of Chaos, Spirituality, and Virtue. I’ll post more images of them as I create them, and place them in the game for you to see them all as well. I’ll just put together a fun little scene of them piled around one of our Yule Trees near a roaring fire!

Look for new images of them posted in this thread soon!

Scottie ^_^

<imagine some back and forth in the thread and an internal discussion>

Oh hey,…and as something extra,…just before I left on Friday I spoke with Starr and Dallas about how the presents I’m making have been designed so as not to be limited exclusively to ‘Yuletide-themed” gift giving, and could be used for many other occasions throughout the year… They then realized that it might be a good idea, then, to have BOTH a general set AS WELL AS a set that was nicely Yule-themed for cool visual variety exclusively for 2016… That way, when these specific-holiday-themed versions were discontinued for that year, there would still be the multi-use ones available too! I’m sure they’ll be thinking more about how they want to approach the rest of the holidays, but at least for this pass I’ll be creating SEVEN different-looking gifts; three 2016-exclusive generic-themed gift boxes, three specifically Yule-themed boxes for 2016, and then one craft-able box (which you’ve already seen)… Cool, eh?

<imagine more back and forth in the thread and a few days of development>

And so, here we have the remainder of the gift boxes for this season, and for the year 2016!!! Within the limitations of time and number I could make, I’ve taken as many of the suggestions as I could for this year, and incorporated them in the final set. Below you can see the entire set in Max, and for the “general use” sub-set on the upper left, I figured I’d start with gift boxes decorated with the primary symbols of our game; Spirituality, Chaos, and the icon of Virtue itself! Spirituality is the largest box in warm yellow with multi-colored ankhs adorning it, the middle-sized box hosts a ribbon with the symbol of Virtue and swirling, joyful patterns on purple paper with a large pink bow (as requested by one of the fine folks on this thread), and the smallest box, with a shape hinting at bottles of the finest beverages, is appropriately adorned with the Chaos symbol, and has a color scheme that makes it perfect for also filling with coal, as requested by another! On the right is our Yuletide set of gift boxes for this year, each with a different Yuletide color and geometric pattern on the paper, and ribbons of varying configurations and hues, but all of them adorned as a single “family” with snowflakes! And, of course, the craft-able version for this year for comparison.

Once they were finished (as far as models and textures went) it was time to bring them all into the Unity Editor to apply and prepare their final materials to work well in-game. Of course, as with the stockings, the first step was to lay them out in a brightly-lit scene like a photo-shoot to make sure the material qualities could be properly tweaked, while simultaneously comparing them to other objects that would most likely be seen with them, to make sure brightness and contrast blended them well together.

Having gotten the materials settled, it was time to set up a real scene on a player lot to test them as decorations, and to see them under more “normal” lighting circumstances. While I was at it, I painted a bit of snowy landscape for the background, set up the sky to snow for me, and laid out a host of other Yuletide and holiday props made this year to help create a cheery little portrait of the perfect gift-giving scene!

Here are all the general use presents by themselves beneath our new tree, courtesy of our wonderful Reid.

And here’s all the specific Yuletide presents! I love Reid’s new snow-people peeking in the windows. The little snow-girl looks so happy!!!

Hopefully these will be as fun for you to use and give to others as they were for me to create!!!

Cheers!

Scottie ^_^

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Release 35 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.

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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2016 Winter Holiday and Assorted Add-On Goodies

A little of something for everyone has been added to the Add-On Store recently, including homes, Ice building blocks, emotes, and a plethora of 2016 Winter Holiday goodies!

2016 Winter Holiday Gift Pack

2016 Winter Holiday Decoration Pack

2016 Winter Holiday Pack

Ice Building Blocks 110-Pack

Fire Dance Spin and Wheel Emotes

Ornate Greenhouse 4-Story Row House

Pristine Gothic Mansion

Resurrection Ankh and Chaos

These are fully functional resurrection locations that can be placed on lots and in POTs. There is one in the traditional Ankh shape and a new one that has a Chaos symbol that will resurrect the player in a random location.

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10-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon (now with schedule & prizes)

We’re counting down the days until our Fall into Winter Telethon and your last chance to purchase a bunch of items that are expiring, as well as receive your 15% Black Friday Bonus! Note that we’ve added the schedule for the telethon and the list of prizes we will be giving away!

At 11:59 PM CDT (4:59 UTC) on November 28, 2016, we are expiring the following content / features:

• House Stacking in Bundles (only 1 House per Bundle going forward)
• Adobe 2-Story with Upper Deck Village Home
• Adobe 2-Story with Patio & Balcony Village Home
• Adobe 2-Story Village Home
• Adobe Brick 2-Story with Roof Access Village Home
• All Kobold Masks (some will still be exclusively available in Kobold Bundles)
• All Prosperity Tool Packs (will still be available as part of Bundles)
• Wax Cylinder Soundtrack Vol 1
• Battle Banner
• 2016 Jack O Lanterns
• 2016 Jack O Lantern Mask
• 2016 Jack O Lantern Mask with Glow
• 2016 Grim Reaper Statue
• 2016 Grim Reaper Mask
• 2016 Rotten Armor
• 2016 Rotten Flesh Cloak
• /juggleseveredheads
• /jugglezombieheads
• /jugglejackolanterns
• 2016 Spooky Soundtrack

At noon on that same day, we are starting a 12-hour telethon that will include an array of fun activities and engaging content, many of which you can directly participate in with us in-game! We are also giving away a ton of fabulous prizes*, and as always we will be having stretch goals that based on how much players spend during the telethon (see below).

As usual, your questions will be answered throughout the event. You can pre-post your questions in the article’s comments section (linked here), or post questions during the telethon in Discord chat.*

As a special bonus, we are offering Telethon Funding Stretch Goal Rewards to any backer that pledges a minimum of $5 from the start of the telethon, until Midnight (Spending Store Credit to make $5 minimum purchase does not apply). The Fall Into Winter Telethon of the Avatar Funding Stretch Goal Rewards are:

• $10K: /rainautumnleaves
• $25K: Autumn Leaf Crown (increases length of /rainautumnleaves emote)
• $35K: Autumn Fairy Leaf Dress + Autumn Leaf Wings
• $50K: Pet Squirrel
• $65K and beyond: Secret Winter items!

Did you see what was unlocked in the last telethon? This one is going to be even bigger!

Cheer on the Devs!

For every $2,500 donated, all developers on camera have to either dance, sing, or drink a shot of alcohol.

Additionally, we will be spinning the Wheel of Fortune & Doom! The wheel will have 14 items at any given time, but dozens of total prizes ultimately will be given away! This includes developers that, if selected, have to either dance, sing, or drink a shot of alcohol.

As the wheel is spun, what is selected will be replaced by something else. Details list of wheel items coming soon. Items already selected will be removed for a time (some may not come back onto the wheel for the rest of the telethon. Keep in mind that some of these may never come up, so cross your fingers for your preferred item!

Telethon Schedule

• 12:00 PM: Welcome to the Fall into Winter Telethon!
• 12:30 PM: R36 Postmortem Q&A and review
• 2:00 PM: Homes of New Britannia Tour
• 3:00 PM: New Scenes/Builders Deep Dive
• 4:00 PM: Story & T/L/C/Offline Deep Dive
• 5:00 PM: Player Housing & Towns
• 6:00 PM: Community Hour
• 7:00 PM: Crafting & Economy Deep Dive
• 8:30 PM: Combat & PVP Deep Dive (with tour of Blood Bay)
• 10:00 PM: Tour of Xenos changes with Scottie
• 11:00 PM: Adventure Tour!

Win These Great Prizes!

• 2016 Jack O Lantern Mask with Glow (Expiring)
• 2016 Grim Reaper Mask (Expiring)
• 2016 Spooky Soundtrack (Expiring)
• 2016 Rotten Flesh Cloak (Expiring)
• Adobe Brick 2-Story with Roof Access Village Home (Expiring)
• Adobe 2-Story with Patio & Balcony Village Home (Expiring)
• Adobe 2-Story with Upper Deck Village Home (Expiring)
• Kobold Mask 4-Pack (Expiring)
• Elven Village Tax Free Bundle!
• Pristine Gothic Mansion
• 2016 Snowman mask (w/hat)
• 2016 Winter Holiday Decoration Pack
• 2016 Winter Holiday Pack
• 2016 Yule Stockings 3-Pack
• 2016 Yule Gift Box set
• 2016 Regular Gift Box set
• Winter Holiday Gift Pack
• Winter Holiday Pack
• Tabletop Yule Tree
• Ornate Snow Family
• Ornate Umbrella
• Ornate Scarecrow
• Ice Nightmare Mask
• Speckled Turkey
• Breathe Emote 6-Pack (includes Breathe Snow Emote)
• Store Credit ($10)
• And several items courtesy of RelicsbyRild.com

We will be giving prizes away on an hourly basis with many being given away multiple times. If you wish to win prizes during the Telethon event, be in Discord chat!

Watch The Telethon on Twitch! The final recording will be archived on YouTube after the event as well. See you on the livestream chat at Noon this coming November 28th!

Get Your 15% Black Friday Bonus Now!

For the past two years we’ve extended our Black Friday Promotion to give you up to 8 weeks to take advantage of our 15% Black Friday Bonus, and we’re doing it again this year! For all new purchases (including bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, player owned town upgrades, and Make a Difference items) between Midnight CDT October 6, 2016 (5:00 UTC, October 7, 2016) and Midnight CST, November 28, 2016 (6:00 UTC, November 29, 2016), we will add an additional 15% bonus to your Store Credit!

[Read more…]

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Upcoming Events

Nov 21, 2016 – Courtesy Automatic Claiming of Rewards
Nov 28, 2016 – Fall into Winter Telethon and Expirations (House Stacking in Bundles, etc.)
Dec 9, 2016 – Community of the Avatar livestream
Dec 15, 2016 – Release 37
Dec 16, 2016 – Community of the Avatar livestream
Dec 20, 2016 – R37 Postmortem
Jan 26, 2017 – Release 38
Feb 23, 2017 – Release 39
Feb 25, 2017 – Ultima Dragons 25th Anniversary Event
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.

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Events of the Week

SotAGustball.com Pre-Season Gustball Tournament – Nov 20th | 3pm CT

Introducing SotAGustball.com! The purpose of SotAGustball.com is to have a centralized place where all the team and league info can be found, support player events, and further the great game of Gustball! We plan to host 3 month long Gustball Leagues where teams will compete twice a month for 3 months and the team with the best record will win fortune & glory (as well as Addon Store credit)!

Join us for a Pre-Season 3v3 Gustball Tournament where the best Team will walk away with $30 in Addon Store Credit & 30,000 gold! All levels & skill are encouraged to play.

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Grand Opening of Vyrin & Womby’s New Location in Estgard

Womby & Vyrin are pleased to announce the opening of our third bookstore! Please join us for an open house marking the occasion: Sunday, November 20, 1-3 PM NBT in Estgard. This event is a casual meet-and-greet for authors, bibliophiles, and friends. We are happy to answer any questions you may have about writing and publishing.

The first 20 in the door after 1 PM will receive a scarecrow and a copy of Womby’s controversial new book Scarecrow Maintenance

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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

Ultima Dragons 25th Anniversary Bash

As of February 27, 2017, the Ultima Dragons will have been in existence for 25 years! How many fan-created online organizations have been around that long? They are doing something really BIG and really FUN for their 25th anniversary in Disneyland, California and everyone is invited! Richard Garriott, Starr Long, Recap (aka Space Bards), Denis Loubet, Dr. Cat, and others will be participating. Current ticket prices are expiring on December 11th!

 

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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!

Save

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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.

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:

View the full article

Join us for another Community of the Avatar livestream! We will be touring Hometown, as well as bringing onto the show a special guest to talk about all the homes available in the game.

Head on over to Hometown after the Fire Lotus Dance Party if you want to meet us! Community manager Berek will be leading the tour. The fun begins live on Twitch at 4pm CT this Friday!

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We're kicking off another Community of the Avatar livestream this Friday! We will be touring Hometown, as well as bringing onto the show a special guest to talk about all the homes available in the game.

If you want to hangout with us in-game, we'll be departing from the dance party at 4pm CT, so head on over to Hometown by then if you want to meet us there!

View the full article

We have found the lost items and they will be returned by tomorrow. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

View the full article

For the Release 36 raffle, we are changing the rules so that each person can only win a single deed of each type (maximum of one place anywhere and one POT). This will significantly increase the chance for more players to win a lot deed that have not gotten one yet.

View the full article

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 36 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday,...

Release 36 Instructions

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

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 36 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, November 17, at 10:30 AM US Central Standard Time (16:30 UTC).

Short Release: Normally our release cycle lasts approximately four weeks, giving us 3 weeks of development time and 1 week of polish before the release goes live on the last Thursday of the month. However, November and December have the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays which requires us to do our release earlier in those months. That only gives us 2 weeks of development time and 1 week of polish before we release.

Major System Changes: We are making a lot of major changes to how the game works this release. Many of these changes are related to game balance, some are about making the game have a better pacing and reward cycle, while others are about making it so that greater effort and greater specialization will equal greater reward. In Combat, changes like the addition of Resistances aim to encourage players to vary the skills and spells that they use in order to maximize their effectiveness in various situations. In Crafting, changes to Discovery and the addition of Teachability is a first step towards making specialization in crafting more meaningful. Some of these changes are being tried as experiments (noted below). Through playtesting and feedback, we will determine whether we will keep them in the game and/or what tweaks we will make to these changes. We understand that some of these changes will be controversial, but we firmly believe they will make the game more healthy in the long term. A deeper dive into the reasons behind many of these changes can be found in a forum post made by Chris Spears.

Story and Scene Polish: Graff Island, Elad’s Lighthouse, and Midras Ruins were all rebuilt this release to have unique visuals. Midras Ruins was specifically rebuilt to be a more interesting space for PVP. The Path of Love continued to get polish and in R36, the focus was on the playability of Malice and Spite with continued attention on Ardoris.

Yet again, I want to express a huge amount of gratitude to our Dev+ backers who tested all of the items below on the QA server and uncovered lots of bugs. They also provided editorial feedback on this post. They are a big reason that this post actually matches what is in the game, and that it is easy to read.

While we are getting closer to launch, we are still in a constant state of change.  We do not yet have all of the in-game systems needed to inform players about these changes, and to help them to explore new content and systems. This means we rely mostly on this message, and the linked instructions and known issues to convey the current game state. We regularly have to answer questions or filter bug reports because some players elect not to read this valuable information.

By taking a few moments to read through this information, a great deal of our time and efforts can be redirected to focus on new “unanswered” questions, and addressing critical issues impacting each release. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to review this post, and for all the truly valuable feedback you continue to provide.

Also, remember that while we are providing new content with each release, our community is working overtime to make new events for you to enjoy. Be sure to check out a couple of the event calendars run by our community members (via in-game book or the player run websites: Avatars Circle and Events of the Avatars). You can also get the latest official events on the Main Website.

Without further ado, here is a list of what you can expect to see in Release 36.

Key:

• Plain Text: The original plan for the Release deliverables. We intentionally preserve the original text so that our backers can compare plan versus actual.
• Italics: Extra notes and new deliverables.
• Strikethrough: These are items that did not make the release (but are still planned).

RELEASE 36, November 17, 2016

• Story: Path of Love polish will continue but primary focus will begin shifting to the Path of Courage with special attention on Estgard. We also hope to have the new PVP area begin coming online with the town area first.
  • Path of Courage & Estgard Polish Delayed: We chose to focus our efforts on continued work on the Path of Love before moving on to Courage.
  • Blood Bay (PvP) Delayed: We chose to give Graff Island more time for polish and while work has started on Blood Bay, this new scene won’t be ready for live until Release 37 at the earliest.
  • Graff Island: Graff Island is located in the Drachvald region in the Northeast region of Novia. Located across from Port Graff in the Spindrift Bay, this community is central to the gem trade of the region. It includes a factory that sculpts the gems for socketing into weapons, armor and other goods, as well as the home of the Graff family with their sprawling mansion. Originally a cloned scene based on our PRT/POT Forest 01 base template (aka “the PaxLair template”), it was rebuilt in Release 36 with completely different terrain and foliage types, along with adding the Graff family mansion and the Graff Gem Factory.
  • Elad’s Lighthouse: Elad’s Lighthouse is also located in Spindrift Bay directly across the water from Brittany. It is home to Elad, who retired to the island after an illustrious career as Lord British’s shipbuilder and lighthouse builder. As with many of our scenes, Elad’s Lighthouse started as a cloned scene based on our PRT/POT Forest 01 base template (aka “the PaxLair template”). It always had the unique feature of Elad’s Lighthouse, which will continue to be a prominent feature. However, it now also has unique terrain featuring dramatic cliffsides, a dockyard, lumber mill, and many other unique changes.
  • Midras Ruins: The Midras Ruins are one of the six ruined cities found in Novia that date back to the period in Novian history in which the Obsidian Order rose to power (as described in the Sword of Midras prequel novel by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott). The exact history of some of these cities has been lost to time, but it is rumored that some of them may have been abandoned before the rise of the Obsidians. Midras in particular is significant because it is the location of the Crypt of the Avatar. Note that all six of the ruins are Open-PvP zones. Midras started as a clone of the Opalis Ruins, but was completely rebuilt this release to have a unique layout and visuals. We especially focused on making sure the map had interesting setups for PvP conflict with plenty of space for hiding, escaping, ambushing, and skirmishing.
  • Malice and Spite Polish: These scenes got some playability polish for moving the player through the plot. Spite will be getting some additional polish to the city itself (propping, NPC behaviors, etc.) in a future release. Malice will also get some additional polish with unique NPCs (Samael and Sequanna) and some additional functionality for Sequanna’s prison.
  • Ardoris Polish: We continued polish work on the City of Love. We did additional decoration improvements across the scene, particularly around NPC buildings like the Tailor and Carpentry Shops. We also did continued polish on NPC conversations and behaviors, including more work on the diversity of the lovers.
  • East Perennial Trail: We tuned this map to be much more friendly to new players while also improving the general polish level of the map; including adding discoveries, propping, more storycraft, etc.
  • Brightbone Pass and Superstition Canyon: We modified the terrain in the center of these maps (Superstition Canyon is a clone of Brightbone Pass) to fix exploits related to players being able to attack enemies without being harmed themselves. Also, NPCs in all Control Point scenes should be be smarter about retaking their Control Points.
  • Aerie NPC Behaviors: We did another pass through Aerie adding additional schedules and behaviors.
  • Non-Tradeable & Quest Items Bankable: Items that are not tradeable (like Quest Items) can now be placed in your Bank. Note that they are still not able to be placed in other containers (chests on your lot for instance) to prevent exploitive workarounds to the no-trade flag.
• Combat: We plan to refactor how Damage Types and Resistances work to better balance different weapon types, spell schools, and creature types against each other. This will also improve the variety of crafted items.
  • Magic Damage Types & Resistances: Starting in R36, there is now a more formal resistance system in place for players and creatures. Currently players can mostly gain resistances through gear, but skills and spells will appear in future releases to allow players to expand their resistances. The simplest way to describe how resistances work is to say they are Defensive Attunement. So if you have 50 Death Magic Resistance, that will counter the extra damage that a caster would get from having 50 Attunement. Finally, players who don’t want to use magic can have a way to resist casters! Creatures now also have Resistances. For simple, natural creatures, like bears and spiders, they will have a small amount of Resistance to all magic but generally be fairly easy to affect. Many of the more magical creatures have some very high Magic Resistances to specific schools. This means that if you were a player that only used a very limited set of skills on everything, you are likely going to have to change your strategy when fighting some creature types. As an example, Fire Elementals are almost completely immune to fire, and moderately resistant to all other types of magic except for water magic, which they have no resistances to. There are also a few creatures that are just highly resistant to most magic and will be difficult to kill now without the help of a weapon. For those who rely heavily on magic, this will make the game more challenging. There will probably be things you used to be able to kill that you can no longer kill. This is expected and just know that all other casters will be facing the same challenges.
  • Control Point Behavior Fix: We fixed a bug that was preventing the NPCs from trying to retake the Control Points.
  • 40 Meter Requirement for XP Gain (Experiment): We have constrained Experience Point gain so that you must be within 40 meters of other members of your party. Previously, you just had to be in the same zone and this was being used as an exploit where low level characters would wait at the entrance of a zone while high-level players would farm the area to level the low-level character safely.
  • Breaking Attempts Roots/Stuns/etc. Use Focus: Attempting to break a Root/Stun/etc. by jumping now uses focus, even if not successful. Previously, it would only use focus upon success. This increases the importance of skills that resist these effects.
  • Stack Limits on Effects: Support was added to limit the number of effects on targets. Most effects like Firebolt, Fireball, Rend, and others will have a max of 3 concurrent effects. This means 3 per spell/skill; not total. So, a player could have 3 Rends and 3 Firebolt DOTs on a target at once. Repeat castings of spells will remove the oldest effect first.
  • Defensive Stance: This stance has been changed from a flat Damage Resist modifier to a percentage bonus to the effect of worn armor. Players in quality plate or chain will likely see a slightly larger effect than before but those in cloth and leather will be greatly diminished.
  • Fizzle Chance Increased: The amount of fizzle added by Armor when casting Air, Death, and Fire spells was increased slightly. The multiplier for armor penalty in most spells in those schools went up by either 0.1 or 0.2. This means that your armor has a base 30% fizzle, your fizzle chance for those schools went up by 3% or 6%. This was done to help differentiate light and heavy armor a bit more.
  • Spell Casting Interruption Increased: In R35, the only interruptions were from stuns and knock down effects. In R36, most spells have a casting window which is shown on screen. During that window, hits can interrupt spell casting. NOTE: This does NOT increase the time to execute a spell
  • Decay Increased: For the next few releases, we will be increasing the maximum accumulated decay incrementally. For R36, the max accumulated decay is 12 hours. For example, if a player has around a million total experience, a death after 12 or more hours of not dying will result in around a loss of 1250 xp. The lost xp will be deducted from skills not set to maintain or train. If skills are set to maintain or train, the lost xp will be deducted from their pooled experience first.
  • Targeting Cycling Improved: We fixed a major issue in the target cycling code. Previously, it appeared to be picking the worst possible target first and then the best target second. This has now been addressed and the logic improved for picking stuff close to you over distant stuff.
  • Beneficial Targeting Improved: When in a party and using beneficial spells(like healing or buffs), if there is no hard target set, then the caster will be the target. If you wish to cast on a party member other than yourself, you must now select them by clicking on them or using the F2–F8 keys to select them. We know that Healing Targeting can still use more work, but this is at least a much needed great first step forward.
  • Immolation: The range has been shortened by 20%. In future releases, this spell will likely become a damage shield that hits people who are in melee with the caster instead of a traveling AOE spell.
  • Shield of Air: No longer stacks with other shield spells.
  • Flurry: No longer stacks with Reckless Stance or Berserker Stance.
  • Banish Undead: Range has been reduced from 30m to 20m.
  • NPC Health Adjustments: NPCs that are caster types have had their health reduced dramatically and damage output increased. Melee types have had their health increased. The goal is to give players an incentive to go after casters and archers first.
  • Glancing Blow: Duration has been increased by a factor of 3X.
  • PVP XP Bonus (Experiment):  For this release, we’re trying a few experimental changes to see how they impact various metrics. Players that are flagged as PVP and in Multiplayer mode will receive a 25% bonus to earned experience. We know this is controversial, but we want to try it and see how it impacts PVP participation.
• Player Towns & Player Housing: Towns with player housing will now dynamically update their visuals on the Overworld based on various data, including number of claimed lots and online population. Additionally we will continue to expand the Dynamic POT Tool set. Also Obsidian homes for the Obsidian bundles will come online. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
  • Dynamic POT Tools Delayed: Work on the Overworld Population Indicator took up the entire release and did not leave room to work on any additional tools for Dynamic POTs.
  • Obsidian Homes Delayed: We chose to respond to player requests for the Greenhouse Rowhouses and Pristine Gothic Mansion before starting work on the Obsidian homes.
  • POT Overworld Population Indicators: The visuals of a POT on the Overworld will now update based on how many lots have been claimed relative to the size of the town, starting with a simple foundation and working up to the full set of buildings we have been using up until now. Additionally, we will show smoke in the chimneys and lights in the windows to indicate if there are players online in the town.
  • Exits to the Overworld Added to all POT Entrance Locations: When we added the ability for POT owners to choose different Entrance locations in R35, owners requested the ability to have those Entrance areas also include exits to the overworld. In R36, we have added wagon or boat teleporters to the overworld at all POT scene Entrances, including ones near the center of each town.
  • Exits to the Overworld Added to all PRT Centers: Teleporter boats have been added near the center of all PRT scenes. These boats provide quick exits to the overworld.
  • PRT Removal: After a careful re-analysis of our current housing needs, and in anticipation of new maps coming online that include additional housing (ex. Blood Bay), we have removed (at least for now) the following 4 PRTs that had no claimed lots in them:
    • Coral Cove
    • Bakkevoll
    • Grimmdalur
    • Horngap
  • POT Flags: We made the following items placeable as decorations in Player Owned Towns:
    • All Tents (Elven, Knights, etc.)
    • Stage
    • Podium
    • Bleachers
    • Stage Stairs
    • Kobold Radiant Energy Coil & Capacitor
  • House Polish / Bug Fixes:
    • Wood & Plaster Homes (replaced rough yellow wooden shutters with nicer shutters)
    • Gothic Mansion
    • Baron Benefactor
    • Elven Tree Tower
    • Viking Great Hall
    • Viking 3 Story Stronghold
    • Viking Row Houses
    • Elven City Home
  • R35 Lot Deed Raffle Drawing and Winners: The drawings for our Third Lot Deed Raffle will be held on November 17, 2016 and winners will be announced shortly thereafter. Deeds will be delivered in Release 36.
    • Place Anywhere Deeds (20):
      • Row: 10
      • Village: 6
      • Town: 3
      • City: 1
    • Player Owned Town Deeds (150):
      • Row: 80
      • Village: 40
      • Town: 20
      • City: 10
  • R36 Lot Deed Raffle Tickets: This will be the Fourth Lot Deed Raffle. As always Raffle tickets can be purchased with in game gold.
    • Place Anywhere Deeds (20):
      • Row: 10
      • Village: 6
      • Town: 3
      • City: 1
    • Player Owned Town Deeds (150):
      • Row: 80
      • Village: 40
      • Town: 20
      • City: 10
  • Make A Difference:
    • Ornate Outhouse: We created this throne fit for royalty for the Water.org and United Nations World Toilet Day.
  • Add-On Store:
    • Resurrection Decorations: These are fully functional resurrection locations that can be placed on lots and in POTs. There is one in the traditional Ankh shape and a new one that has a Chaos symbol that will resurrect the player in a random location.
    • Pristine Gothic Mansion (Village Home): This is what the Gothic Mansion looked like before everything went horribly wrong and you murdered all those poor people…
    • Ornate Greenhouse 4-story Rowhouse: All those high-falutin neighbors with their giant fancy yards and big greenhouses are now not the only ones with fast growing skills. The glass roof on this four story rowhouse gives the greenhouse agriculture grow bonus to the top floor!
  • Add-On Store Holiday Content:
    • 2016 Menorah: Light the candles to celebrate the holidays with the 2016 version
    • 2016 Snow Family (4): Everyone’s favorite water crystal family is back again with new faces and new outfits! Novian magic somehow keeps Snow Mom, Dad, Daughter, and Son from melting even when placed so very close to the fire…
    • 2016 Yule Stockings (3): Yule be sorry that you didn’t buy the small, medium, and large stockings that can hang from shelves, mantles, or any other flat surface. Stuff them full of presents for all the girls and boys (or coal if their virtue is low).
    • 2016 Yule Trees (4): Gather round the 2016 silvery Yule trees to celebrate the holidays. You can choose from sizes ranging from Tabletop to Gigantic.
    • 2016 Yule Gift Boxes (3): What could be inside these Yule themed holiday containers? A puppy? A pair of wings? A lot deed? NOTE: ability to shake presents to figure out contents is not a currently supported feature
    • 2016 Gift Boxes (3): If you want to provide gifts without the distractions of Yule themed decorations these Gift boxes are for you!
    • 2016 Yule Wreaths: These beautiful wreaths are a lovely addition to any home. For 2016, we created them in 3 different sizes. Interestingly, due to a programming glitch when these items are placed on doors, Watchers are sent into a fatal loop. Thus, the Oracle has altered physics to prevent their placement on doors.
    • Ice Building Blocks: These holiday recurring items can be used to build wintry-looking structures.
  • New POTs/POT Changes:
    • Bastion’s Point: Converted to Forest 01b.
    • Baubbleshire: Upgraded to Hamlet.
    • Bladewyke: Upgraded to Crossroads Village.
    • Caelestis Canton: Upgraded to Hamlet.
    • Crossroads: Upgraded to Metropolis.
    • Dragon’s Fall: Converted to Forest 01c.
    • Formosa: Interconnection (with Elad’s Lighthouse, changed nested interconnection to within Brittany Wharfs).
    • Grumpie Hermit’s Hide-a-way: Converted to Island 01a.
    • Knightmare Falls: Renamed (formerly Portus Mori). Converted to Forest 01c. Ownership changed. Changed location. Removed interconnection (with Bloodstone).
    • Moonglade: Renamed (formerly Advenire). Ownership changed. Upgraded to City.
    • Nido dell’Aquila: Interconnection (with Elad’s Lighthouse).
    • Owl Sky City: Converted to Forest 01b.
    • Praga: Converted to Forest 01b. Interconnections (with Brittany Wharfs, Brittany Alleys, Brittany Fields).
    • Reliquary: New addition.
    • Reverie: Upgraded to Crossroads Village.
    • Salisbury Plains: Renamed (formerly Traders Hill). Converted to Grasslands. Rotated to Left. Ownership changed. Changed location.
    • Shadow’s Rest: Converted to Forest 01c. Upgraded to Village.
    • Thapae Mizellmist: Interconnections (with Central Brittany, Brittany Fields, Brittany Wharfs, Brittany Alleys).
    • White Hart on Abundis: Removed interconnection (with Bakkevoll).
• Crafting: Crafting will be refactored to include the new Damage Types and Resistances. We will also add more Enchantments and Masterwork modifiers, including some related to Celestial Mechanics.
  • Celestial Mechanics Delayed: We chose to focus on doing the data pass on Teachable Recipes instead of working on getting recipes connected to Celestial Mechanics.
  • Recipe Discoverability Limited (Experiment): Discoverability on Recipes is no longer universal to all recipes. Currently we have removed Discoverability from all but the lowest-level recipes. This, along with Teachability, is part of a larger effort to reward specialization and advancement in crafting by having different levels of rarity in the recipes. We will not be removing any recipes that players already have. Those will be grandfathered in. Please note that this an initial pass on which recipes should or should not have Discoverability. If there are any recipes you feel should have remained discoverable (and therefore also Teachable) then please feel free to provide us that feedback and we will consider it. Note that by limiting recipes this way and not making them universally available we can start to increase the value and power of components and items.
  • Teachable Recipes: The lowest level and most common recipes can now be taught to other players, and even be re-taught. The next tier of recipes can be taught but not re-taught. However, some rarer recipes (like Bone Armor) are not teachable nor re-teachable. This is part of a larger effort to reward specialization and advancement in crafting by having different levels of rarity in the recipes. We will not be removing any recipes that players already have. Those will be grandfathered in. However recipes that you currently own cannot be taught without being repurchased.
  • Ward Gems: Gems can now be cut into Ward Gems which offer Resistances to magic damage types (see Resistances above). These are socketed just like Attunement based Gems, so you now can choose if you want to increase Attunement (offense) or Resistance (defense) when you add a Gem to an item.
  • Scaled Full Durability Repair Cost (Experiment): As part of our commitment to having a Player Driven Economy, we want there to be a real possibility of items wearing out while balancing that with an understanding that for very rare items (+16 crafted gear), players want a way to preserve them. In order to support both, we introduced repair with Gold Crowns several releases ago. The cost to repair was only a single Gold Crown, however, and an item could be repaired infinitely. This lead to a stagnation in demand once players got an “ideal” piece of gear. For R36, we are going to experiment with scaling the repair cost based on the number of times you have repaired the item. The formula for this scaling is:
    • Amount repaired by a COTO = 2/(1+repairCount)*MaxDurability
    • So if your sword is at 20/100 and has been repaired twice before, making this the third repair: 2/(1+3) *100 = 50
    • If it is the 9th time,
      2/(1+9)*100 = 20
    • So effectively, first repair cost 1
    • Second cost 3
    • Third cost 6
    • Fourth 10
    • Fifth 18
    • Sixth 30
  • Clothing Removed from Merchants: We have removed all the following Clothing Items from merchants and turned them into recipes
    • Wizard’s Hat
    • Cloak
    • Red Dress
    • Fancy Cloth Merchant Boots
    • Fancy Cloth Merchant Gloves
    • Fancy Cloth Merchant Pants
    • Fancy Cloth Merchant Shirt
    • Cloth Merchant Shirt
    • Cloth Merchant Skirt
    • Full Body Merchant Outfit* (note: this was NOT made into a recipe because it duplicates the pants and shirt)
  • Wells and Fountain Fixes: Fixed several issues with gathering water from wells and fountains including the ability for more than just the POT owner to gather, making sure all wells and fountains have the water gather flag set properly, and making sure Avatars can path properly to them.
  • Unique Names: All items in the Recipe Book now have unique names, main offenders were rugs and chairs.
  • Potted Topiaries: The potted crafted topiaries are now flagged for POT placement.
  • Obsidian Armor: Fixed color to be the correct Obsidian Black.
  • New Plants: More plants have been added to Agriculture.
    • Grape Vine
    • Coconut Palm
  • New Recipes:
    • Greenhouse 4 Story Row House: All those high-falutin neighbors with their giant fancy yards and big greenhouses are now not the only ones with fast growing skills. The glass roof on this craftable four story rowhouse gives the greenhouse agriculture grow bonus to the top floor!
    • Gustball Field: No longer will you need to slave away building a Gustball Field from component parts! This craftable field includes the field, goals, and referee stand. It can be placed in a POT, on a Town lot, or even in an interior (provided you can find a house or basement with a large enough open space).
    • Yule Wreath: This beautiful wreath is a lovely addition to any home. Interestingly, due to a programming glitch when these items are placed on doors, Watchers are sent into a fatal loop. Thus, the Oracle has altered physics to prevent their placement on doors.
    • Yule Stocking: This craftable container can be hung from any flat surface (mantle, shelf, etc.)
    • Gift Box: What could be inside this craftable container? A puppy? A pair of wings? A lot deed? NOTE: ability to shake presents to figure out contents is not a currently supported feature
• Character: We will begin work polishing the Kobolds and updating them to better reflect their lore (much of the technology in Novia can be attributed to them). We will also work on the Testing Incentives Program Wearables and Summer Telethon items.
  • Kobolds, Testing Incentives, and Summer Telethon Items Delayed: The work on Shogun Siranto, Priestess Khasi, and Hair Polish caused us to have to delay work on the Kobolds, Testing Incentive Items, and Summer Telethon Items.
  • Hair Polish: We completed a polish pass through the current hair styles to update them to current shaders, improve the meshes, and include transparency layers. We will begin to increase the variety of hairstyles over time.
  • Shogun Siranto and High Priestess Khasi: These two NPCs represent the first region-specific clothing in Ardoris. Their clothing is still in progress and will have some further progress in R37. Shogun Siranto’s royal regalia is meant to convey the image of a mountain while Khasi’s robes (and a headdress still in development) will eventually  invoke the imagery of wind.
  • Looking at the Ground fix: We fixed a bug with Avatar head tracking that made it so that much of the time everyone appeared to be looking at the ground.
  • Summer Telethon Part 2 Firedance emote: After getting feedback about the original animation, we added a crossover move to the firedance emote that comes with the firedance stretch-goal reward from the Summer Telethon. We also made that crossover move its own emote (/firedancecross) and gave that to telethon purchasers.
  • /fan emote: This emote is now properly set to be teachable (you can Claim Rewards at the bank to upgrade a previously un-teachable version)
  • Custom Clasped Gauntlet Cloaks: The first sets of Customized versions of the cloaks are starting to be delivered to the following event backers:
    • Britannian Mining Company 2016 Convention
    • Ultima Dragons 25th Anniversary
    • SotA Con East 2016
  • Add On Store:
    • Emotes: /firedancewheel and /firedancespin: Watch me spin around with fire! Now watch me wheel my arms around with fire! Oh no! I’m sorry everything is on fire now! Quick harvest some water from the well! NOTE: lighting things on fire with fire dancing and then putting those things out with buckets of water from the well is not a currently supported feature
    • 2016 Snow Man Mask: Look at me! I’m a snow man! Hee! Hee!
• Social: Guilds will now be able to form alliances with each other and we will be introducing a new default guild for all new players called the Outlander Guild.
  • Guild Alliances Delayed: We were unable to finalize the details of the design for this system in time for implementation in R36.
  • Outlander Guild Cancelled: After listening to player feedback on this proposal coupled with internal deliberation, we are cancelling this feature. We will consider other ways to assist new players, but this will not be the solution.
• Auto Stacking Fixed: Items will once again auto stack with similar items when placed in containers including banks, inventory, chests, etc.
• Gold Giveaway on QA Server: To assist with testing we are giving out random daily amounts of gold on the QA server.
• Bank and Journal Performance: We sped up how quickly the Bank and Journal interfaces load when being opened.
• Data File Locations: Players now have the ability to set a new location for Data Files (save games, options, music files, etc.). As part of this we also the screenshot save location has been moved to your Pictures\SotA folder (varies by operating system). This was changed to resolve some OSX issues and will likely make it easier for users to find their screenshots. NOTE: We do not yet have the ability to migrate existing files however.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
aka Darkstarr
Executive Producer

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Hello everyone, this is Asclepius, with a wonderful story from Themo Lock, entitled
Thug Life
Background music by Smartsound

Cavendish brushed the pine needles from his crimson pants and adjusted his hood nervously, it was time to address his men. Cavendish was the forty-second leader of the Serpent’s Spine branch of the crimson bandits, a group that had only formed two months previous. He would be lying if he were to say that he was not concerned with the average life expectancy of the groups management positions, but at least it was somewhat higher than that of the rank and file. For reasons known only to the upper echelon of the organization, his group had been charged with the task of holding the foothills and exacting a “tax” from any interlopers. The area could only be described as “hostile”, being home to countless wolves and giant bears who had their own idea on who the regions rightful owners were. And now there were the outlanders… beings of great power that would periodically pass through laying waste to the region before carrying off entire trees, piles of bandit weaponry and mountains of bloody hides. He had once seen an outlander slain by a pack of wolves only to witness the man return minutes later to resume picking at a vein of copper in the cliff side. Cavendish shuddered and pushed the memory to the back of his mind, he had business to attend to.

He pushed aside the canvas flap and stepped from his tent, confidently striding over to the nearby clearing where his men stood to attention. “Where are the others?” he asked gruffly “This meeting is not optional”. A slightly overweight bandit in shabby, torn clothing kicked at the dirt with a scuffed, unpolished boot “This is all of us sir” he mumbled. “What?” Cavendish boomed “Where is Black Greg and Olaf?”. The portly bandit winced before answering “Wolves sir… there were just so many”. Cavendish rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand, Black Greg was his brother in law and this was not going to sit well with his sister at all. “Alright… well that is unfortunate” he stated “I am sure they did us proud and died bravely and well”. A taller bandit with hair the colour of sun dried straw spoke up this time “Not really sir, Olaf sort of panicked and tried to run but Greg used him as a human shield…” Cavendish interjected at this point “Yes well, these things happen in the heat of battle i guess “. Unperturbed, the lanky bandit continued his recollection of the fight “… and i am pretty sure Greg soiled himself”. After a brief moment of disrespectful silence, the bandit leader sighed “OK men, we work with what we have.” he declared “Caynis, what news from the upper pass?”. The portly bandit spoke up once more “Caynis is dead sir, a bear threw him off the upper pass”. At this news, Cavendish spun on the heel of his boot and marched back into his tent to compose himself.

The bandit leader breathed deeply in through his nostrils and slowly released his breath through thin, trembling lips. He was giving serious thought to the possibility that crime did not pay and wondered if his uncle would still take him on as an apprentice lamp lighter in Ardoris. Screams erupted outside, along with the chilling sound of magical fire being summoned into being. Since the bandit groups last mage had accidentally blinked herself off a cliff some days previous, this could only mean that the camp was under attack. Cavendish briefly contemplated impersonating a bedroll before drawing his short sword and launching himself out of the tent with the best battle cry he could muster, a sound that could only be described as an enthusiastic gargle.

The scene that greeted his eyes outside the tent froze the bandit leader in his tracks. A huge circle of fire was before him, within its perimeter the roasted remains of his men crackled and spat like overcooked pork. At the epicenter of the unnatural blaze stood a small girl, clad in bright pink cloth robes and playing a merry, otherworldly tune on what appeared to a home made set of bagpipes. The girl marched around in circles squeezing the instrument completely unharmed by the flames as she kicked at the lifeless bandits, presumably in search of loot. This was no mere mortal, this was an outlander and the bandit leader suddenly felt that being anywhere else but here would be desirable. Cavendish slowly began to back away but collapsed to the ground with a loud thump as his footing was compromised by a palette of week old cabbages, the bandit groups sole source of nourishment. “Don’t make eye contact” he yelled internally “don’t make.. OH SWEET LORD I MADE EYE CONTACT!”. The girl calmly raised a tiny, well manicured hand and smiled sweetly. The last thing Cavendish witnessed in his brief role as a bandit lord was a burst of flames erupting from the bagpipes and a white hot ball of fire hurtling in his direction.

Some days later, Helgrid the bandit stood at the edge of a circle of charred earth and eyeballed a group of fresh recruits. She was the forty-third leader of the Serpent’s Spine branch of the crimson bandits, a group that had only formed two months previous. Her outlook was positive and her dagger was sharp, she had big plans for this company of bandits and there was work to be done.

The post Thug Life – by Themo Lock – narrated by Asclepius appeared first on Echoes from the Caverns.

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Periodically, NPC towns will come under siege by the Obsidian Cabalists. The timing, duration, and location of these sieges will be driven by Celestial Mechanics. When you attempt to enter a town under siege, you will first enter the Town Siege scene where the enemy has made camp outside the town and is fighting the town defenders. You can choose to join the battle and end the siege early or work your way around the perimeter, perhaps encountering only some scouting parties.

We hope to have the first iteration of this feature and one map live in Release 37.

[A Dev+ Forum Posts by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf and Keith “Sannio” Quinn]

Hey folks, Sea-Wolf here with some screenshots for the new forest siege encounters!

The Entrance

The Blockade

The Battlefield

The Enemy Camp

The Forest

Chris Wolf
Level Designer

* * * * *

Town Siege Comments by Keith “Sannio” Quinn

Keith Quinn
Level Designer

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Hello everyone! Here is the news of the week!

• The Making of Midras Ruins
• The Making of a Forest Town Siege Map
• Xenos Polish
• R35 Postmortem Recap
• Homes of New Britannia – House Decorating Contest Winners!
• 17-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon
• 2Community Spotlight: Beran’s Reach
• Upcoming Events – 1st Bear Tavern Beast Brawl
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Recommended Projects to Back

The post Echoes From the Caverns 11-11-16 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:

• The Making of Midras Ruins
• The Making of a Forest Town Siege Map
• Xenos Polish
• R35 Postmortem Recap
• Homes of New Britannia – House Decorating Contest Winners!
• 17-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon
• Community Spotlight: Beran’s Reach
• Upcoming Events – 1st Bear Tavern Beast Brawl
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Recommended Projects to Back

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“The abandoned shells of buildings looked silently down on them from either side of the road.”
– From The Sword of Midras by Tracy Hickman & Richard Garriott

The Making of Midras Ruins

The Midras Ruins are one of the six ruined cities found in Novia that date back to the period in Novian history in which the Obsidian Order rose to power. (As described in the Sword of Midras prequel novel by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott). The exact history of some of these cities has been lost to time, but it is rumored that some of them may have been abandoned even before the rise of the Obsidians. Midras, in particular, is significant because it is the location of the Crypt of the Avatar. Note that all eight of the ruins are Open PVP zones.

Midras started as a clone of the Opalis Ruins but is getting completely rebuilt this release to have a unique layout and visuals. We are expressly focusing on being sure the map has interesting setups for PVP conflict, with plenty of space for hiding, escaping, ambushing, and skirmishing.

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

Hey guys, SorcerousSteve here to give you an update on the Ruins of Midras coming this R36!

The Ruins of Midras are nestled in the peaks of Midmaer. I took a lot of inspiration from its reference in Blade of the Avatar along with adding my own take to the map.

Aesthetically I was inspired by the city of Osgiliath in the LOTR. Especially the idea of having ruins that had vertical space and were now only frames of what they had once been.

The ancient ruined skyline of Midras.

“They followed the road toward the center of Midras. The newer structures gave way to the more ancient ruins near the center of the city. They came to where the avenue ended in a circular plaza in the center of the town. Here it was evident by the carnage that the fighting had been the most intense. On the east side of the plaza, an enormous tree rose up out of the ground. It had once been a part of a small garden before the doors entering the ancient temple. ”
Chapter 2, Blade of the Avatar

“The abandoned shells of buildings looked silently down on them from either side of the road. At their feet, shattered stone and splintered wood”
Chapter 2, Blade of the Avatar

In designing Midras, we made sure the ruins had plenty of PVP areas for fun dynamic gameplay.

Fight and lose your opponent through corners, alleys, dents, ditches, tumbled rocks, collapsed buildings, rock walls, and overgrown hedges!

“This tree and the trees from its seeds will be here long after the stones have been crushed into sand and the walls erased”.
Chapter 2, Blade of the Avatar

Esteben Zaldivar
Level Designer

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The Making of a Forest Town Siege Map

Periodically, NPC towns will come under siege by the Obsidian Cabalists. The timing, duration, and location of these sieges will be driven by Celestial Mechanics. When you attempt to enter a town under siege, you will first enter the Town Siege scene where the enemy has made camp outside the town and is fighting the town defenders. You can choose to join the battle and end the siege early or work your way around the perimeter, perhaps encountering only some scouting parties. We hope to have the first iteration of this feature and one map live in Release 37.

[A Dev+ Forum Posts by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf and Keith “Sannio” Quinn]

Hey folks, Sea-Wolf here with some screenshots for the new forest siege encounters!

The Entrance

The Blockade

The Battlefield

The Enemy Camp

The Forest

Chris Wolf
Level Designer

* * * * *

Town Siege Comments by Keith “Sannio” Quinn

Keith Quinn
Level Designer

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Xenos Polish

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]

Having gone so far with Xenos before Richard Matey left (just in time for folks to choose their plots for housing), it’s now time to go back into the city to fulfill an even broader vision for it, and to polish it up for completion! Since I had built the entrance to Artifice, into which one may go only after having won the fabled Lottery of Elysium, I was asked to expand upon my ideas for the developed areas of that region to have a similar “Greco-Roman” feel to its architecture. For the capital Xenos and its surrounding environs, there would also be a bit of old-world Italy in the mix, just for the sake of variety… Like Rome in our world, Xenos should evoke the feeling of new architecture have been built within and upon the ruins of the older civilization that once thrived there. Since Xenos is not quite as huge as Rome, however, I decided to also draw additional inspiration from concepts of what Pompeii must have been like in its hey-day, before the terrible destruction of Vesuvius…

Below you can see my initial work as I begin upgrading the center of town, specifically the port-side entrance and its main attraction, the Forum of the Lottery. Here visitors to Xenos from across the world gather to participate in the Lottery in the hopes of winning the great prize, a ticket of entrance into mysterious and miraculous Artifice itself! On approach to the outer arches, flaming braziers atop stone pillars light the great statue of the Titan of Truth, which seems to welcome visitors as they enter below. Beyond those arches will eventually be a cultured garden walk, where participants and bystanders gather in conversation while awaiting the ceremonies.

Another set of inner arches, formed by the mighty bases of aqueducts that feed water into the city from the forested hills south, is topped by huge statues depicting the satyrs which are said to roam the far northern mountains of Elysium where they tend to the grounds surrounding Artifice’s magical golden entrance. Past hanging crimson banners can be seen the amphitheater of the Forum, also lit by large flaming braziers and lanterns suspended above the curving stone seats, where gathering guests will sit once the Lottery begins. Once fully constructed, this area will also host fountains fed by water falling from draconic gargoyle heads, much like Artifice itself. As one would expect, more foliage and cultured plants will be added as well.

I entered this scene at dusk, which suited me well, since I wanted to gaze at the effect of the various light-sources. And of course, I just had to climb the stairs of the amphitheater to sit beneath the night sky and look down upon the scene as other guests would. In so doing, I saw that the shattered moon arced wonderfully overhead at just that moment, so yet another screenshot was required!

Hopefully you find this initial work exciting… Once I finish working on the wrapped gift boxes, I’ll be getting back on this again and digging in for the rest of the milestone! I’ll post more images and descriptions into this thread as I go… Wish me luck!

Scottie ^_^

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R35 Postmortem Recap

Our Release 35 Postmortem was this past Thursday and we answered a ton of questions and gave away lots of in-game prizes including X & Y

While we did not have time to answer all the questions, Starr “Darkstarr” Long got on the forums afterwards and answered all the questions that were missed here.

Here’s the video for those who missed it:

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Homes of New Britannia – House Decorating Contest Winners!

Congratulations winners of the ‘Homes of New Britannia’ House Decorating Contest! We had over 60 participants and some truly amazing home entries. As we toured each one, we smiled, laughed, and even cried (in a good way!) at some of the decorating themes. Well done by all!

As we announced, the winners were organized by themes. We had one change and that was the removal of the Steampunk theme, since no one decorated their house in this way. To replace it, we added another “All-around well decorated” winner, since we had so many entries for that category.

And the winners are…

Shop/service theme goes to: Bamboozle

Rustic theme goes to: Meridyn

Elegant theme goes to: Amaasing

Naturalistic theme goes to: Krissa Lox

Spooky theme goes to: Andrew Silverston

All-around well decorated, entry #1: Nemesis2

All-around well decorated, entry #2: Mishikal

Costume themed winner goes to: Licemeat

Click here for a complete list of all the entries!

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17-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon

We’re counting down the days until our Fall into Winter Telethon and your last chance to purchase a bunch of items that are expiring, as well as receive your 15% Black Friday Bonus!

At 11:59 PM CDT (4:59 UTC) on November 28, 2016, we are expiring the following content / features:

• House Stacking in Bundles (only 1 House per Bundle going forward)
• Adobe 2-Story with Upper Deck Village Home
• Adobe 2-Story with Patio & Balcony Village Home
• Adobe 2-Story Village Home
• Adobe Brick 2-Story with Roof Access Village Home
• All Kobold Masks (some will still be exclusively available in Kobold Bundles)
• All Prosperity Tool Packs (will still be available as part of Bundles)
• Wax Cylinder Soundtrack Vol 1
• Battle Banner
• 2016 Jack O Lanterns
• 2016 Jack O Lantern Mask
• 2016 Jack O Lantern Mask with Glow
• 2016 Grim Reaper Statue
• 2016 Grim Reaper Mask
• 2016 Rotten Armor
• 2016 Rotten Flesh Cloak
• /juggleseveredheads
• /jugglezombieheads
• /jugglejackolanterns
• 2016 Spooky Soundtrack

At noon on that same day, we are starting a 12-hour telethon that will include an array of fun activities and engaging content, many of which you can directly participate in with us in-game! We are also giving away a ton of fabulous prizes*, and as always we will be having stretch goals that based on how much players spend during the telethon (see below).

As usual, your questions will be answered throughout the event. You can pre-post your questions in the article’s comments section (linked here), or post questions during the telethon in Discord chat.*

As a special bonus, we are offering Telethon Funding Stretch Goal Rewards to any backer that pledges a minimum of $5 from the start of the telethon, until Midnight (Spending Store Credit to make $5 minimum purchase does not apply). The Fall Into Winter Telethon of the Avatar Funding Stretch Goal Rewards are:

• $10K: /rainautumnleaves
• $25K: Autumn Leaf Crown (increases length of /rainautumnleaves emote)
• $35K: Autumn Fairy Leaf Dress + Autumn Leaf Wings
• $50K: Pet Squirrel
• $65K and beyond: Secret Winter items!

Did you see what was unlocked in the last telethon? This one is going to be even bigger!

Cheer on the Devs!

For every $2,500 donated, all developers on camera have to either dance, sing, or drink a shot of alcohol.

Additionally, we will be spinning the Wheel of Fortune & Doom! The wheel will have 14 items at any given time, but dozens of total prizes ultimately will be given away! This includes developers that, if selected, have to either dance, sing, or drink a shot of alcohol.

As the wheel is spun, what is selected will be replaced by something else. Details list of wheel items coming soon. Items already selected will be removed for a time (some may not come back onto the wheel for the rest of the telethon. Keep in mind that some of these may never come up, so cross your fingers for your preferred item!

Watch The Telethon on Twitch! or YouTube! The final recording will be archived on YouTube after the event as well. See you on the livestream chat at Noon this coming November 28th!

Get Your 15% Black Friday Bonus Now!

For the past two years we’ve extended our Black Friday Promotion to give you up to 8 weeks to take advantage of our 15% Black Friday Bonus, and we’re doing it again this year! For all new purchases (including bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, player owned town upgrades, and Make a Difference items) between Midnight CDT October 6, 2016 (5:00 UTC, October 7, 2016) and Midnight CST, November 28, 2016 (6:00 UTC, November 29, 2016), we will add an additional 15% bonus to your Store Credit!

[Read more…]

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Community Spotlight: Beran’s Reach

This week’s community spotlight features the Player Owned Town, Beran’s Reach! Each week we tour towns and talk with guilds and other groups, all of which are open to be spotlighted on coming tours brought to you by Berek, your community wood elf druid.

Here is what I witnessed while I roamed this holiday themed town:

On a high peak dominating the environs of Central Sanctus, the walled Metropolis of Beran’s Reach takes a commanding position in the wilds north of Regalis. For many who live within the northern realms, ‘the Reach’ has become synonymous with sanctuary from the great dangers that lurk within the moors and forests, both men and beast alike. It is perhaps with no degree of relief that my caravan rounded corner to reveal the stark, imposing walls and turrets that mark the outskirts of the settlement-proper.

After being ushered in by grim-faced guards, I must admit that I was taken aback by the splendor of a bustling settlement, a far cry from from the wilderness beyond.

[Read More…]

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Upcoming Events

Nov 17, 2016 – Release 36
Nov 18, 2016 – Community of the Avatar livestream
Nov 21, 2016 – Courtesy Automatic Claiming of Rewards
Nov 28, 2016 – Fall into Winter Telethon and Expirations (House Stacking in Bundles, etc.)
Dec 9, 2016 – Community of the Avatar livestream
Dec 15, 2016 – Release 37
Dec 16, 2016 – Community of the Avatar livestream
Dec 20, 2016 – R37 Postmortem
Jan 26, 2017 – Release 38

Community Activities

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.

1st Bear Tavern Beast Brawl

[Events Forum Post by moko]

Greetings travelers!

In the Bear Tavern’s continued effort to serve your needs for mead and mayhem we proudly present you the First Beast Brawl!

The event will be held on November 12th 1pm NBT (1 pm CST, Saturday) in the Victory Arena in Beran’s Reach (see map), and will be held as a “bring your own beast” tournament. Participants will be grouped according to their skill in handling beasts [skill will be determined using the following formula:

(Summoning/2+combat training+obedience)/3; groups will be 1-40, 41-60,61-80,81-100,101+] and their pets will fight 1 vs 1

The initial matches in each group will be randomly drawn, the winner of the match will battle the winner of another match of his group and so on. Entries are limited to 16 participants

We are awarding 10 000g for the 1st place, 5 000g for the 2nd place and 2 500g for the 3rd place for each tournament.

Rules:

• No Avatar participation, including healing of pets, will be permitted
• Pets will be fighting against pets, the first pet with 0 (zero) hp loses the match
• An avatar is allowed to yield at any time, his opponent will then win the match
• If both pets are still standing after 3 minutes the match will be ended and the pet with the most hp left wins the match
• If there is a draw a game of rock, paper, scissors via whisper will decide the match

Please PM us or in game (Lilian Federkiel) with your avatar name and bracket if you wish to enter.

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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

Crowfall

In this Throne War Simulator, characters are persistent but the campaign worlds are not, thanks to voxel technology which enables fully-destructible settings. A seamless blend of an MMO with a large-scale strategy game, players are immortal champions, traveling between realms to fight in an eternal War of the Gods.

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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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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.

Niteowl57: What is the future of the Ring Mold currently still available at all NPC Crafting Merchants?
That is a bug. It will be removed

Baron Drocis: Can we please add a concentration bonus...

R35 Post Mortem: Missed Questions Answered (mostly)

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Congratulations winners of the ‘Homes of New Britannia’ House Decorating Contest! We had over 60 participants and some truly amazing home entries. As we toured each one, we smiled, laughed, and even cried (in a good way!) at some of the decorating themes. Well done by all!

As we announced, the winners were organized by themes. We had one change and that was the removal of the Steampunk theme, since no one decorated their house in this way. To replace it, we added another “All-around well decorated” winner, since we had so many entries for that category.

And the winners are…
 

Shop/service theme goes to: Bamboozle

 

 

Rustic theme goes to: Meridyn

 

Elegant theme goes to: Amaasing

 

Naturalistic theme goes to: Krissa Lox

 

Spooky theme goes to: Andrew Silverston

 

All-around well decorated, entry #1: Nemesis2

 

All-around well decorated, entry #2: Mishikal

 

Costume themed winner goes to: Licemeat

 
Runner-up for the costume category was: x_Selene_x

 

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Congrats again to these beautiful houses and the unique talent of their decorators! See below for links to each of the other entries in the contest. If we missed your house in the list below, we didn’t forget you in the decision process! It was simply not added below, so please ask us why.

Zombie	Lord Barugon	Moko
Leelu	Alexander	Ellrynn
Trina	Anosa Saycosie of Gilnea	Dwalin Bombardin
Licemeat	Kaeshiva	Gaelis
Mirellani Brave	Jammaplaya	Cassandra Corax
Emusican	Tahru	Sir Holisy
Sir Holisy	Scorpius2	Leiknir
Autumn Willow	Rowell	Venusada
Katakaio	Shathiell	Kara Brae
Arryndel	Yobtar	Vox Aquila
RadioMan	Cypher Black	Merv DeGriff
Stryker Sparhawk	Killindor	Hornpipe
Lumpygravy	Sheamus McGuinness	Glantor Edge
Obsidian Tempest	Vladamir Begemot	Zethgrim
Datendrache	Druid Apprentice	Sartassa
flreSpHere	Wylder	Neverborn
Astor Cerberus	niteowl57	Heavy44
Beandipcabra	Mystarr	Sir Leonard

Do you want to propose the next contest we run? Send suggestions to Berek!

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This week’s community spotlight features the Player Owned Town, Beran’s Reach! Each week we tour towns and talk with guilds and other groups, all of which are open to be spotlighted on coming tours brought to you by Berek, your community wood elf druid.

Here is what I witnessed while I roamed this holiday themed town:

On a high peak dominating the environs of Central Sanctus, the walled Metropolis of Beran’s Reach takes a commanding position in the wilds north of Regalis. For many who live within the northern realms, ‘the Reach’ has become synonymous with sanctuary from the great dangers that lurk within the moors and forests, both men and beast alike. It is, perhaps, with no degree of relief that my caravan rounded corner to reveal the stark, imposing walls and turrets that mark the outskirts of the settlement-proper.

After being ushered in by grim-faced guards, I must admit that I was taken aback by the splendor of a bustling settlement, a far cry from from the wilderness beyond.

The streets teemed with all-manner of folk, from adventurers to traders, artists to craftsmen and merchantmen. The broad, well-kept streets are flanked by imposing stone and timber buildings, the home of many a guild and shopkeeper. Dominating the interior, the high keep of the famed Bear Tavern rings with the sound of song and laughter, a multitude of bright lights and roaring fires helping to stave off to bitter cold of the world beyond.

It is here that I met Vallas Tellen, a tall and rather direct man who served not only as the tavern keeper, but also as the local governor. With a firm handshake and a nod, he gestured to a quiet table. Before long, the table was groaning under the weight of fine ales and beers, as well as an array of goods from the tavern kitchens. Contented murmurings from the other patrons as well as the soft tones of a musician on the stage gave the expansive tavern a warm and inviting feel.

As we settled in for the evening, I asked Governor Vallas Tellen…

What can you tell me about Beran’s Reach?

Beran’s Reach is a one of the largest of the northern settlements. For many who live here, it offers a place a sanctuary and respite from all manner of foes that live out there, especially this far north. It’s acted as a sanctuary for oh, well past living memory, with bards and storytellers telling great tales of the Reach as a bastion of hope in times of need. For many who venture to and from the northern wilds Beran’s Reach acts as an important waystation, a natural layover before either venturing deeper on into the wilderness or heading south towards Brittany herself.

We’re a big settlement, with all manner of trades and businesses catering to those moving on and those who have stayed and called this place home. You’d be surprised how many new faces try their luck out here to earn a bit of fame and glory. Bards, adventurers, merchants, you name it, we don’t tend to ask too many questions about people’s reasonings for venturing out here. Still, despite all the toing and froing we’re a tight-knit community. We look after our own.

Who is welcome to reside in Beran’s Reach?

The Reach is already home to more than a few guilds and merchant houses that live out here on a permanent basis. One of the benefits of living out in the wilds is that we have more than enough space for everyone, though we do of course keep an eye on travellers and citizens of the Reach to ensure that things stay civil. The militia patrols the roads to ensure that the roads stay safe, as best we can make them anyway.

If anyone fancies joining us, they’re welcome to. We have plenty of room in our local guest houses and we’ve plots of land available. Simply make an enquiry and we’d be happy to oblige you.

What are the unique areas of Beran’s Reach?

We are fortunate to have some of the finest amenities outside of Britanny, a testament to years of hard work and toil at the hands who have decided to live with us. Within the Reach itself, we can offer both comfort and a feeling of warmth and security for those who perhaps prefer to live away from the civilised world to the south. Nearby, not only do we have the city-proper, we also have a variety of villages and isolated farmsteads that each have a their own distinct character; or for those who wish to keep to themselves.

Within the centre of Beran’s Reach, the market and the grounds of The Bear Tavern itself provide an attractive setting for all manner of celebration. Here, a pumpkin festival has taken on a life of it’s own.

To the North West overlooking Beran’s Reach, Victory Arena provides an enormous venue that is open to all. The size of a castle, the Arena floor regularly is the setting for all manner of events and tournaments.

To the South, the headquarters of the Beran League Militia makes its home, ready and willing to defend the lands if called.

To the North, the Beran’s Reach courthouse ensures that the rule of law is maintained. Its magistrates work with the Beran League militia to ensure that a modicum of peace remains within the northern lands.

Some of our residents have brought a taste of civility with them. The Crusty Lobster, moored nearby is run by Master Cook Ertai Vodalion, providing some of the finest cooking found anywhere.

The High Rock Brewery Theatre provides a cozy venue for bards and entertainers alike. It plays host to the works of all-manner of theatrical groups and entertainers, all while serving a fine range of wines and ales.

Still, less reputable individuals may find other venues to cater to their particular tastes. Budner’s Lounge in the south west of the Reach has a somewhat dubious reputation.

Across Beran’s Reach, many artisans ply their respective trades, ensuring that both locals and visitors have all they need to survive in the harsh wilderness beyond.

This is just a selection of what Beran’s Reach can offer. We are keen to support those that choose to live with us and we encourage new arrivals to explore!

Beran’s Reach is a proud founding member of The Beran League, a community of guilds and land owners working together to foster mutually productive relationships and to act as a force for good. With many members having substantial experience dating back many, many years, the League provides aid to those in need.

What is the future of Beran’s Reach?

Beran’s Reach has established itself as a vibrant and unique part of the world that is proud to support those that call it home. While much has been built, there remains much more still to do. The Reach will continue to build to accommodate those that wish to join us, providing new land for future citizens. What’s more, we aim to further our aims of building a thriving economic hub, for the benefit of the entire community.

Finally, we want to make Beran’s Reach an experience that everyone can come to make full use of, regardless of rank or affiliation. It is our dearest hope that everyone can come to enjoy what we have built here, be it hosting parties at the tavern, concerts and tournaments at the arena or simply making use of the surrounds by running your own shop or venue. We are here for the benefit of all, and we’d dearly love to have you spend some time with us.

If interested in becoming part of the Beran’s Reach community, message Duke Vallas Tellen in the community forums to show your interest.

Do you have a Player Owned Town, guild, or other type of group that makes available great things for the community? Let us know! We would like to include your establishment in an upcoming spotlight. Just send Berek a brief proposal of what you have to present!

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

Awhile back, when I was working on the fireplace sets, we had a discussion pertaining to the possibility of Yuletide Season stockings that could be hung from the mantels… I know this wasn’t the first time this subject had come up, but until that moment we hadn’t really had the chance to dig into the tech enough to attempt to create this kind of container for the sake of “hanging” from small surfaces and other deco objects… The folks here seemed to like the idea, and many of you seemed excited by it too, so guess what I had the chance to work on this week! Here’s the four initial stockings in Max… On the far right is the basic, rustic craft-able Yuletide stocking (at least for this year) based on the crochet stocking actually made for me by my mother long ago, and to its left you can see the Yule 2016 Large, Medium, and Small versions, which are all a part of the same visual “family” of stockings that will be available in the Add-On Store for this year’s Yule… I’ve already found a number of other “looks” that have inspired me for later types, and which I’ve set aside for years to come,…but these you see here will be the exclusive set for 2016!

Once I finished modeling them in Max, it was time to take them into the Unity Engine and get their materials working nicely! The hardest (and most important) part was the spec map, and massaging it in Photoshop just right until all the little bells shined like polished brass, certain surfaces glistened like candy, while others had the comforting softness of spun wool…

Of course, this test scene was lit up like a photo-shoot set, so as much as it allowed me to test the bump map and the specular highlights, it lacked a certain “Yuletide cheer” that would convince me that I had achieved the magical holiday feel I was really going for… And so,…on to my outdoor test map, where I had set up a few cottages in which to play with all these fun things I’m making! Below you can see all four of this year’s stockings lined up in a neat row on the larger ornate wood and stone fireplace.

I moved about the chamber a bit so you could get a slightly closer look inside them, to be teased by little treats that might also be appearing on this year’s Yule tree as fun decorations! Of course, these stockings will be set up not only as decorations that can be placed on (hung from) a variety of horizontal (upward facing) surfaces in the game (such as mantels, tall-enough tables, the tops of cabinets and dressers, etc.), but ALSO they will be set up as containers in which you can stuff all sorts of items (as you would a sack or chest) so that the whole thing can be given away as gifts for others! The items they are visibly stuffed with in the image below are, of course, merely representative of the fact that it’s meant to be full of treats which you can provide…

The basic rustic version (seen on the lower left in the image above) will be the one you will be able to craft in-game this year (perhaps we’ll do another craft-able version next year)… Rick has already taken one of them I’ve made and hooked it up in the game to test as decos, and they seem to be working as planned! Once I get back from this weekend, I’ll fully test them all, make tweaks as necessary for the sake of functionality, and finally create the “GUMP” to be used for its interface once the container code begins working for it… I’ll post more images of these in use as actual decos on a variety of test object next week. Look for these to appear soon for the holidays!!!

Happy All Hallow’s Eve! And here’s looking forward to the Harvest Feast and Yuletide Seasons soon to be on their way!

Scottie ^_^

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Hello everyone! Here is the news of the week!

• Happy Halloween from Portalarium
• Make A Difference: World Toilet Day & Charitable Giving Report
• 2016 Yule Stockings
• Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 35 Post Mortem
• The Making of Elad’s Lighthouse (cont)li>
• The Making of Graff Island (cont)
• 24-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon
• Community Spotlight: Bay Lunaire – Player Owned Town
• Upcoming Events
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Bastion’s Point Lunar Rift Chronometer
• Recommended Projects to Back

The post Echoes From the Caverns 11-04-16 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:

• Happy Halloween from Portalarium
• Make A Difference: World Toilet Day & Charitable Giving Report
• 2016 Yule Stockings
• Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 35 Post Mortem
• The Making of Elad’s Lighthouse (cont)
• The Making of Graff Island (cont)
• 24-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon
• Community Spotlight: Bay Lunaire – Player Owned Town
• Upcoming Events
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Bastion’s Point Lunar Rift Chronometer
• Recommended Projects to Back

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Happy Halloween from the Portalarium Team!

We hope all of you had a safe and enjoyable Halloween this week! We certainly did! One of the perks of having a full-time community manager onsite is being able to plan community events for the Portalarium team members! Thanks to Mathew “Berek” Anderson for coordinating our very first annual Portalarium Halloween Costume Contest! The contestants were voted on by the Portalarium team across four categories, and the winners were:

• Scariest Costume: Skeleton (Starr “Darkstarr” Long)
• Funniest Costume: Olaf aka The Best Dad Ever (Chris “Atos” Spears)
• Best Themed Costume: Shegan aka The New Boss (Sarah “Serafina” Dworken)
• Most Unique Costume: Ness (Dan “PlagueofLocusts” Brennan)

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Make a Difference: World Toilet Day

As part of Portalarium’s founding purpose to promote good will and make a positive difference in the world, we have partnered with members of our community to contribute directly to charities as well as support charitable giving. It started a year and a half ago, when Wrath Phoenix approached the SotA team on behalf of RizeUp Gaming to participate in their inaugural Water.org charity drive and telethon. This event served to remind us of our founding purpose and inspire us to create our first Make A Difference charity items.

Throughout the past eighteen months, we have continued to participate in other community-driven charity events, either through promotion or with Make A Difference charity items. We wish we could do more, as this speaks to the core of our principles and values. As time and funding permit, we intend to expand our community-based charity participation over the months and years ahead.

And to that end, our next effort, in collaboration with Water.org, is centered on World Toilet Day. The UN has declared November 19th as World Toilet Day, with the mission statement of: “The aim of World Toilet Day is to raise awareness about the people in the world who don’t have access to a toilet, despite the fact that it is a human right to have clean water and sanitation.“

Water.org is a committed partner of World Toilet Day, as evident by their statement: “It’s time everyone everywhere has access to a toilet. Today 2.4 billion people don’t have one so they spend hours of their day searching for a safe place to go. Water.org gives people the tools they need to fund their own sanitation solutions because we believe it’s time for toilets for all.”

Water.org is celebrating #toilets4all the week of November 14th-19th. To help support the cause, we have created the Make A Difference Ornate Outhouse charity item! Not only is it a throne fit for royalty, but by purchasing this item, you are helping to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.

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Make a Difference: Charitable Giving Report

Beginning with that inaugural Water.org charity drive in collaboration with Rize Up Gaming in May 2015, here is the latest information on how the combined charitable efforts of Portalarium and the Shroud of the Avatar community have performed over the past eighteen months.

Make A Difference Store

Portalarium created digital, in-game charity items for Shroud of the Avatar as a channel through which our community of backers can contribute to causes they support. For each of these Make a Difference charity items purchased, Portalarium will donate up to 50% of its share of the purchase price to the designated charity (see each item for percent contribution). By purchasing these items you get to have fun with them in Shroud of the Avatar, as well as make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves. To date, backers have enabled us to contribute an amazing $27,335 to the combined charities of Water.org, Autism Awareness (NAA & NAS), Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and various Blood Charities (see details below).

Thank you, Avatars, for being so virtuous!

Water.org

To date, we have donated $12,389 to Water.org, from contributions by our generous backers through purchases of the Wishing Well, Water Cloak, and /rain emote. Water.org is a nonprofit organization that has transformed hundreds of communities in Africa, South Asia, and Central America by providing access to safe water and sanitation. You can learn more about the projects your donation helps support here.

Breast Cancer Research Foundation

Starting with an amazingly generous donation by Shooter Jennings of his recently released album, Countach (and related items), we have managed to donate an incredible $5,807 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) through community purchases of the Countach Wax Cylinders, Countach Pink Dye, Countach Album Cover, Countach Phonograph, and most recently the Juggle Pink Lights emote for Breast Cancer awareness month. BCRF is an organization that works to achieve prevention, and a cure for breast cancer in our lifetime, by providing critical funding for innovative clinical and translational research at leading medical centers worldwide, and increasing public awareness about good breast health.

Autism Awareness

In another collaborative effort involving RizeUp Gaming and Game4Autism, our generous community has raised $4,846 through purchases of the Puzzle Pattern Cloak, Puzzle Tree Cloak, and Puzzle Tree Make A Difference charity items. We split these donations equally between the following two organizations:

The National Autism Association, headquarted in Portsmouth, RI, whose mission statement is “…to respond to the most urgent needs of the autism community, providing real help and hope so that all affected can reach their full potential.” The National Autism Association is a parent-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Founded in 2003, NAA is a parent-run advocacy organization and the leading voice on urgent issues related to severe autism, regressive autism, autism safety, autism abuse, and crisis prevention.

The National Autistic Society is the leading UK charity for people on the autism spectrum (including Asperger syndrome) and their families. They provide information, support and pioneering services, and campaign for a better world for people with autism.

Blood Charities

Through the sales of the Lord British and Darkstarr Blood Reliquary Bundles we have donated $4,293 to a host of blood related charities, including:

• Shriners Hospitals for Children – Northern California
• Children’s Cancer & Blood Foundation
• Marie Curie – Terminal Illness Support
• The Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas
• Doctors Without Borders

Charitable Support

In addition to our Make a Difference store, we periodically support other fundraising efforts, like Movember, Extra Life, and community-driven events.

• Movember: The Movember Foundation’s mission: “The state of men’s health is in crisis. Men experience worse longer-term health than women and die on average six years earlier. Prostate cancer rates will double in the next 15 years. Testicular cancer rates have already doubled in the last 50. Three quarters of suicides are men. Poor mental health leads to half a million men taking their own life every year. That’s one every minute.Our fathers, partners, brothers and friends are facing this health crisis and it’s not being talked about. We can’t afford to stay silent.” Back in 2013 we created a Portalarium Movember team called Shroud of the Moustache and raised $1,680. We are doing it again with a new team called Moustache of the Avatar. Several of us will be growing moustaches (or hiking if we are Mo Sistas) in order to raise awareness about men’s health issues. Starr “Darkstarr” Long even shaved off his signature soul patch!
• Extra Life: Last year our incredible community organized a 24 hour streamathon with a ton of events as part of Extra Life (an event that unites thousands of players around the world in a 24 hour gaming marathon to support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals). Community members including Browncoat Jayson, Amber Raine, the RizeUp Gaming crew, Lazarus Long, and Kazyn Phoenixfire all streamed the entire 24 hours and raised $832. Unfortunately due to the proximity of SotA Con and Release 35 we were unable to organize an event this year, but we will be back for 2017!
• RizeUp Gaming: Rize Up Gaming (www.twitch.tv/rizeupgaming) was founded in September 2012 with the intentions of curbing bullying, sexism, gender discrimination, and hate speech on all gaming platforms. Their goal is to promote fun gaming without negativity. Rize Up Gaming uses a staff of streamers to keep their channel running and to fundraise for many different charities throughout the year. As mentioned above, we collaborated with RizeUp Gaming for our first Make A Difference event, their inaugural Water.org Charity Drive. In addition to the Water.org and Autism Awareness charity drives, RizeUp Gaming has also collaborated with the Shroud of the Avatar community on the following charity drives (to name just a few):
  • Batten Disease Charity Drive
  • Seattle Children’s Hospital Charity Drive
  • Cystic Fibrosis Charity Drive
  • Multiple Sclerosis Charity Drive

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2016 Yule Stockings

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

Awhile back, when I was working on the fireplace sets, we had a discussion pertaining to the possibility of Yuletide Season stockings that could be hung from the mantels… I know this wasn’t the first time this subject had come up, but until that moment we hadn’t really had the chance to dig into the tech enough to attempt to create this kind of container for the sake of “hanging” from small surfaces and other deco objects… The folks here seemed to like the idea, and many of you seemed excited by it too, so guess what I had the chance to work on this week! Here’s the four initial stockings in Max… On the far right is the basic, rustic craft-able Yuletide stocking (at least for this year) based on the crochet stocking actually made for me by my mother long ago, and to its left you can see the Yule 2016 Large, Medium, and Small versions, which are all a part of the same visual “family” of stockings that will be available in the Add-On Store for this year’s Yule… I’ve already found a number of other “looks” that have inspired me for later types, and which I’ve set aside for years to come,…but these you see here will be the exclusive set for 2016!

Once I finished modeling them in Max, it was time to take them into the Unity Engine and get their materials working nicely! The hardest (and most important) part was the spec map, and massaging it in Photoshop just right until all the little bells shined like polished brass, certain surfaces glistened like candy, while others had the comforting softness of spun wool…

Of course, this test scene was lit up like a photo-shoot set, so as much as it allowed me to test the bump map and the specular highlights, it lacked a certain “Yuletide cheer” that would convince me that I had achieved the magical holiday feel I was really going for… And so,…on to my outdoor test map, where I had set up a few cottages in which to play with all these fun things I’m making! Below you can see all four of this year’s stockings lined up in a neat row on the larger ornate wood and stone fireplace.

I moved about the chamber a bit so you could get a slightly closer look inside them, to be teased by little treats that might also be appearing on this year’s Yule tree as fun decorations! Of course, these stockings will be set up not only as decorations that can be placed on (hung from) a variety of horizontal (upward facing) surfaces in the game (such as mantels, tall-enough tables, the tops of cabinets and dressers, etc.), but ALSO they will be set up as containers in which you can stuff all sorts of items (as you would a sack or chest) so that the whole thing can be given away as gifts for others! The items they are visibly stuffed with in the image below are, of course, merely representative of the fact that it’s meant to be full of treats which you can provide…

The basic rustic version (seen on the lower left in the image above) will be the one you will be able to craft in-game this year (perhaps we’ll do another craft-able version next year)… Rick has already taken one of them I’ve made and hooked it up in the game to test as decos, and they seem to be working as planned! Once I get back from this weekend, I’ll fully test them all, make tweaks as necessary for the sake of functionality, and finally create the “GUMP” to be used for its interface once the container code begins working for it… I’ll post more images of these in use as actual decos on a variety of test object next week. Look for these to appear soon for the holidays!!!

Happy All Hallow’s Eve! And here’s looking forward to the Harvest Feast and Yuletide Seasons soon to be on their way!

Scottie ^_^

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Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 35 Post Mortem

Join us Thursday, November 10th at 3:00 PM Central (20:00 UTC) for our monthly Hangout of the Avatar! The team will be chatting about Release 35 and looking ahead to the Fall into Winter telethon later in the month!

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!

Watch live video from shroudoftheavatar on www.twitch.tv Sorry YouTube livestream folks, but we had too many connection problems with the past few livestreams to warrant streaming both to Twitch and YouTube simultaneously. We are having to cut the YouTube stream, though the final recording will be archived on YouTube after the event.

Post your questions in the comments below the post here. 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.

Questions and feedback related to this release’s specific topics will be given priority and really verbose questions may be skipped, as they can be a challenge to shorten and summarize live on the air. In brief… please keep your questions… brief.

Tweet with us @ShroudofAvatar to keep updated on the latest SotA livestreams and game news!

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The Making of Elad’s Lighthouse (cont.)

Elad’s Lighthouse is located in Spindrift Bay directly across the water from Brittany. It is home to Elad, who retired to the island after an illustrious career as Lord British’s shipbuilder and lighthouse builder. As with many of our scenes, Elad’s Lighthouse started as a cloned scene using one of our PRT / POT templates based off of the Forest 01 base template (aka PaxLair). However, it always had the unique feature of Elad’s Lighthouse which will continue to be a prominent feature. Now though, it will have unique terrain featuring dramatic cliffsides, a dockyard, lumbermill, and many other unique changes.

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. One of our new worldbuilders Chris started work on Elad’s this release and we hope to have it live in the game in its newly uncloned state in Release 36.

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

Last round of screen shots!

The River

The Logging Station

The Waterfall (Thanks Vas Corp Por for helping with the particle systems!)

The Town

The Countryside

The Cliffs

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The Making of Graff Island (cont.)

Another update on Graff Island! Graff Island is located in the Drachvald region. It is in the northernmost reaches of Spindrift Bay across from Port Graff and is central to the gem trade of the region. It is the site of a factory that sculpts the gems into weapons, armor and other goods. It is also the home of the Graff family and their sprawling mansion. 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. In the case of Graff Island, we are replacing the terrain and foliage, adding the Graff family mansion and the Graff Gem Factory. One of our new worldbuilders, Travis, started work on it this release and we hope to have it live in the game in its newly uncloned state in Release 36.

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

Another Update:

Some old ruins by the lake

Updated riverbed

A shot of the updated town center

Graff Island Amphitheater (hoping to see some player-run productions take place here)

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24-Day Countdown to Expirations, 15% Black Friday Bonus, and Fall into Winter Telethon

We’re counting down the days until our Fall into Winter Telethon and your last chance to purchase a bunch of items that are expiring, as well as receive your 15% Black Friday Bonus!

At 11:59 PM CDT (4:59 UTC) on November 28, 2016, we are expiring the following content / features:

• House Stacking in Bundles (only 1 House per Bundle going forward)
• Adobe 2-Story with Upper Deck Village Home
• Adobe 2-Story with Patio & Balcony Village Home
• Adobe 2-Story Village Home
• Adobe Brick 2-Story with Roof Access Village Home
• All Kobold Masks (some will still be exclusively available in Kobold Bundles)
• All Prosperity Tool Packs (will still be available as part of Bundles)
• Wax Cylinder Soundtrack Vol 1
• Battle Banner
• 2016 Jack O Lanterns
• 2016 Jack O Lantern Mask
• 2016 Jack O Lantern Mask with Glow
• 2016 Grim Reaper Statue
• 2016 Grim Reaper Mask
• 2016 Rotten Armor
• 2016 Rotten Flesh Cloak
• /juggleseveredheads
• /jugglezombieheads
• /jugglejackolanterns
• 2016 Spooky Soundtrack

At noon on that same day, we are starting a 12 hour telethon that will include an array of fun activities and engaging content, many of which you can directly participate in with us in-game! We are also giving away a ton of fabulous prizes*, and as always we will be having stretch goals that based on how much players spend during the telethon (see below).

As usual, your questions will be answered throughout the event. You can pre-post your questions in the article’s comments section (linked here), or post questions during the telethon in Discord chat.*

As a special bonus, we are offering Telethon Funding Stretch Goal Rewards to any backer that pledges a minimum of $5 from the start of the telethon, until Midnight (Spending Store Credit to make $5 minimum purchase does not apply). The Fall Into Winter Telethon of the Avatar Funding Stretch Goal Rewards are:

• $10K: /rainautumnleaves
• $25K: Autumn Leaf Crown (increases length of /rainautumnleaves emote)
• $35K: Autumn Fairy Leaf Dress + Autumn Leaf Wings
• $50K: Pet Squirrel
• $65K and beyond: Secret Winter items!

Did you see what was unlocked in the last telethon? This one is going to be even bigger!

Cheer on the Devs!

For every $2,500 donated, all developers on camera have to either dance, sing, or drink a shot of alcohol.

Additionally, we will be spinning the Wheel of Fortune & Doom! The wheel will have 14 items at any given time, but dozens of total prizes ultimately will be given away! This includes developers that, if selected, have to either dance, sing, or drink a shot of alcohol.

As the wheel is spun, what is selected will be replaced by something else. Details list of wheel items coming soon. Items already selected will be removed for a time (some may not come back onto the wheel for the rest of the telethon. Keep in mind that some of these may never come up, so cross your fingers for your preferred item!

Watch The Telethon on Twitch! or YouTube! The final recording will be archived on YouTube after the event as well. See you on the livestream chat at Noon this coming November 28th!

Get Your 15% Black Friday Bonus Now!

For the past two years we’ve extended our Black Friday Promotion to give you up to 8 weeks to take advantage of our 15% Black Friday Bonus, and we’re doing it again this year! For all new purchases (including bundles, bundle upgrades, add-on items, player owned town upgrades, and Make a Difference items) between Midnight CDT October 6, 2016 (5:00 UTC, October 7, 2016) and Midnight CST, November 28, 2016 (6:00 UTC, November 29, 2016), we will add an additional 15% bonus to your Store Credit!

[Read more…]

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Community Spotlight: Bay Lunaire – Player Owned Town

This week’s community spotlight features the Player Owned Town, Bay Lunaire!

As told from a visit to the town by your community wood elf druid, Berek, Bay Lunaire is nested off of the docks in Central Brittany. The location is perfect for quick access to trade in some of the busiest areas in Novia, and to Kingsport from Central Brittany. Once you are in the town, it’s a breeze to get to all of Brittany’s neighborhoods with a quick boat ride from the docks.

Here is what I witnessed while I roamed this beautiful town that shares so much of the life that nearby Brittany has to offer:

Entering into the Bay Lunaire, I arrived at the docks by the Town Crier and Banker. Titania Xylia, the town Govenor, greeted me by wavering her hands wildly from a distance. She quickly escorted me inland toward a beautiful display of seaside statues.

Just a few steps into town the tax free vendor is to the left where all residents get to list items for sale commission free. This vendor is accessible to all residents for listing their goods. As more choose Bay Lunaire as their home, additional vendors will be added near the dock allowing for easy trade and less anxiety about lot selection.

Directly across the street from the tax free vendor is a crafting area with expert carpentry, blacksmithing, alchemy and tailoring stations to go along with the rest of the normal crafting stations. Within a few steps residents can conduct all of their business and still get in some time for a great fishing experience.

There is a also a beautiful central park near the tax free vendor with a descriptively small (and dangerous) maze. The paths through the maze will be updated occasionally as events are conducted through it. For those brave enough to adventure into its depths, there is a public cache chest at the center with random goodies that anyone can take or contribute too. I threw in something special during my visit.

As we walked, I asked Governor Titania…

Learn the story in the main spotlight announcement!

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Upcoming Events

Nov 4-6, 2016 – SotA Con Fan Convention
Nov 10, 2016 – R35 Postmortem
Nov 17, 2016 – Release 36
Nov 21, 2016 – Courtesy Automatic Claiming of Rewards
Nov 28, 2016 – Fall into Winter Telethon and Expirations (House Stacking in Bundles, etc.)
Dec 15, 2016 – Release 37
Dec 20, 2016 – R37 Postmortem
Jan 26, 2017 – Release 38

Community Activities

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.

The Little Book of Gratitude 2016

[Events Forum Post by Vyrin]

Greetings fellow Avatars!

As another Thanksgiving approaches in the US, I would like to capture many of the people and things you are grateful for this year.

If you want to be included, simply write your thoughts in a reply to this thread. Please limit yourself to 100 characters. (It’s those book length restrictions!) Even with the limit, there may be 2 volumes if we get many responses.

I will collect all the submissions and format them into a book or books available in-game for a very modest price.

I am exceedingly grateful that Shroud allows us the opportunity to capture things like this in-game. Please join us in giving thanks!

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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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Bastion’s Point Lunar Rift Chronometer

Recently, Bastion’s Point has been sending its top researchers and scholars to the Nearby Lunar Rift in Solace Bridge in order to leverage its secret travel power and open its gates for the use of all of Novia. The Task has been Perilous and Fraught with Danger.

Some researchers who have entered the Rift returned claiming they were somewhere high above Novia looking down upon it, while others have not returned at all! Not letting the dangers stop them, the researchers pressed on..

We have been Successful!

Announcing the Bastion’s Point Lunar Rift Chronometer. Never again miss your destination window to far off lands. Bastion’s Point truly is the Window to all of New Britainia, and only minutes from wherever you are!

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Recommended Games to Back

Project: Gorgon

“While most recent MMO’s have chased the EQ/WOW models, it’s great to see games like Project Gorgon, pursuing the more open world and sandbox style that I think is underserved to gamers.” – Richard “Lord British” Garriott.

Project Gorgon, a Massively Multiplayer Online Game, was successfully Kickstarted in August 2015 by Eric Heimburg and his wife Sandra Powers. They have over a decade of experience in engineering, design, and production on games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online, EverQuest II, and others successful MMOs. Project Gorgon  features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. The game also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

As a supplement to their Kickstarter campaign, Eric and Sandra have launched an Indiegogo campaign “…to raise additional funds which will be used to implement upon existing, planned, and ‘wish list’ game features.” Check out their campaign and if you like what you see then pledge your support!

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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, this is Asclepius, with a wonderful poem by Themo Lock. It is entitled
A Beastly Exhibition
Background music by Smartsound

Kevin was a visionary, a farmer and a showman,
his farm had recently been struck by flood, he took it as an omen.
The land was in proximity to the bustling Brittany Fields,
he had a plan that would surely profit more than agricultural yields.

He would build a grand bestiary… a pay-to-spectate zoo,
and fill it with every creature known, from wolf to bugaboo.
So far he had a horse, 2 sheep and a mildly distempered bear,
and was in negotiations to acquire a crocodilian breeding pair.

Construction was already underway, he was renovating the stable,
hammer in hand, Kevin perched atop a ladder that was quite unstable.
It’s dietary needs misunderstood the bear ate its curry but wasn’t well,
the beast’s rear let out a trumpet blast that’s volume was rivalled only by its smell.

Alarmed by the sudden demonic turn, the sheep charged blindly at the wall,
the impact jarring the rickety ladder which in turn began to fall.
Kevin’s trousers caught a loose nail, leaving him temporarily suspended,
then with the sound of tearing cloth.. pants remained but Kevin descended.

He landed on a panicked sheep and he grabbed the creature to prevent its escape,
and looked his naked torso over in relief that he barely suffered a scrape.
The bear however was enraged and confused and broke free from its stall,
startled further by Kevin’s womanly screams it burst right through the wall.

The entire side of the barn collapsed in a noisy, dusty cloud,
leaving the half naked Kevin clutching a sheep in full view of a gathering crowd.
He would have thought himself in a nightmare if he only was asleep,
as realization set in that it appeared as if he was a little too fond of sheep.

A woman screamed and covered the eyes of her giggling and pointing child,
anger spread, a guard was called, the crowd was quickly getting riled.
“What in the abyss is this?!” questioned the guard as he fumbled with his sword,
“A mishap with my bestiary” Kevin squeaked “Nothing untoward”.

“Bestiary!?” the shocked guard exclaimed “That is illegal and obscene!”
“What? NO, WAIT…” Kevin gasped “That isn’t what that word means.”
The guard was having none of this and Kevin was violently arrested,
on charges that would never be dropped no matter how much he protested.

Meanwhile in Rajim’s Curry Hut patrons were caught unaware,
as the seaside restaurant was unexpectedly stormed by a berserk, farting bear.
The events of that day would never be discussed in company that was polite,
and unfortunately for Kevin, the truth of what transpired would never come to light.

The post A Beastly Exhibition – by Themo Lock – narrated by Asclepius appeared first on Echoes from the Caverns.

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This week’s community spotlight features the Player Owned Town, Bay Lunaire!

As told from a visit to the town by your community wood elf druid, Berek, Bay Lunaire is nested off of the docks in Central Brittany. The location is perfect for quick access to trade in some of the busiest areas in Novia, and to Kingsport from Central Brittany. Once you are in the town, it’s a breeze to get to all of Brittany’s neighborhoods with a quick boat ride from the docks.

Here is what I witnessed while I roamed this beautiful town that shares so much of the life that nearby Brittany has to offer:

Entering into the Bay Lunaire, I arrived at the docks by the Town Crier and Banker. Titania Xylia, the town Govenor, greeted me by wavering her hands wildly from a distance. She quickly escorted me inland toward a beautiful display of seaside statues.

Just a few steps into town the tax free vendor is to the left where all residents get to list items for sale commission free. This vendor is accessible to all residents for listing their goods. As more choose Bay Lunaire as their home, additional vendors will be added near the dock allowing for easy trade and less anxiety about lot selection.

Directly across the street from the tax free vendor is a crafting area with expert carpentry, blacksmithing, alchemy and tailoring stations to go along with the rest of the normal crafting stations. Within a few steps residents can conduct all of their business and still get in some time for a great fishing experience.

There is a also a beautiful central park near the tax free vendor with a descriptively small (and dangerous) maze. The paths through the maze will be updated occasionally as events are conducted through it. For those brave enough to adventure into its depths, there is a public cache chest at the center with random goodies that anyone can take or contribute too. I threw in something special during my visit.

As we walked, I asked Governor Titania…

Why was Bay Lunaire founded?

I founded Bay Lunaire to build a deeper connection to the in-game community and provide an open space that anyone can live in. I wanted a town that would be service oriented and focused on making life in-game as easy as possible. It’s one of the interesting aspects of living in a player owned town; you get to craft a living experience that’s by the players for the players. I seek to incorporate resident feedback regularly back into the design of the town.

The first goal was to create a place with a layout that was a little less grid-oriented. You will find arching streets that give you a unique view of player housing and the town’s common areas. I wish I could do more along those lines, but I think I’ve made as much progress as I can on that front. The town is move in ready finally. It was a lot of work!

Regarding founding Bay Lunaire, the former governor, Lord Sewyn, needed to retire from his duties as governor of the Swamp of Sorrow and was looking to pass on the town to another interested player. I quickly jumped at the opportunity. It’s an interesting challenge that I don’t believe exists in any other game. It’s a totally different type of community that can deepen relationships between friends, guild members and creates the new relationship of governor and resident.

Who is welcome to reside in Bay Lunaire?

Everyone is welcome (Bay Lunaire is a PvE area)! You do not need to be a guild member to live here. Every lot is open access save for a few special requests. This is one of several towns of the Lunar Dragons, but more guilds and players are welcome. Living in Bay Lunaire, you should find there are few restrictions placed on residents, as the town is not intended to be exclusive in anyway. I have gone as far as changing the town’s layout to meet residents’ needs on a case by case basis. It was great being able to accommodate resident feedback. It improved the town a great deal!

Tell us about your residents of Bay Lunaire?

The residents are an eclectic bunch with varied interests. The town is still very much in its growing phase, but you will see many representing Lunar Dragons and EVL guilds. There are craft focused players, adventurers and PvPers who will host PvP one-on-one or tournaments. There are even two basements dedicated to PvP including my city arena basement.

What are the more unique areas of Bay Lunaire?

We have a cozy town with easy access right from the docks to the varied vendors, crafting stations, and a nifty public treasure maze. I wanted to fashion a lot of areas as a park. Bay Lunaire is a swamp biome and has many dark paths with rich scenery. There is a grand Yew tree near the current back border. In the center of town, there is the statue park including the statues of Courage and Love bordering a city sized dragon statue. Just to the right of the statues is the guild home of the Lunar Dragons, who also reside in Elad’s Lighthouse, Vale Halla, and Crossroads.

I have personally enjoyed the fishing around town when I have needed a little time to relax.

Residents can choose to have their lots anywhere on the map that I can place a marker, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience the rest of the community. I would be happy to host more guild houses as any requests are made!

What is the future of Bay Lunaire?

Bay Lunaire will grow into a metropolis sooner rather than later. That’s my primary focus for the town, as well as becoming a great guide to the game to new players or those seeking the most challenging adventures New Britannia can offer!.

If interested in becoming part of our community, simply drop by and claim your lot or speak with governor Titania Xylia in-game, or you can message tbranch in the community forums to ask any questions out of the game.

We will be touring towns and talking with guilds and other groups, all of which are open to be spotlighted on coming tours brought to you by Berek, your community wood elf druid.

Do you have a Player Owned Town, guild, or other type of group that makes available great things for the community? Let us know! We would like to include your establishment in an upcoming spotlight. Just send Berek a brief proposal of what you have to present!

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We're growing moustaches here at the office in support of men's health! I for one have never grown facial hair before, so this should be interesting.

Support the team and we will continue to grow moustaches through the month!

https://us.movember.com/mospace/team/2249606

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As part of Portalarium’s founding purpose to promote good will and make a positive difference in the world, we have partnered with members of our community to contribute directly to charities as well as support charitable giving. It started a year and a half ago, when Wrath Phoenix approached the SotA team on behalf of RizeUp Gaming to participate in their inaugural Water.org charity drive and telethon. This event served to remind us of our founding purpose and inspire us to create our first Make A Difference charity items.

Throughout the past eighteen months, we have continued to participate in other community-driven charity events, either through promotion or with Make A Difference charity items. We wish we could do more, as this speaks to the core of our principles and values. As time and funding permit, we intend to expand our community-based charity participation over the months and years ahead.

And to that end, our next effort, in collaboration with Water.org, is centered on World Toilet Day. The UN has declared November 19th as World Toilet Day, with the mission statement of: “The aim of World Toilet Day is to raise awareness about the people in the world who don’t have access to a toilet, despite the fact that it is a human right to have clean water and sanitation.“

Water.org is a committed partner of World Toilet Day, as evident by their statement: “It’s time everyone everywhere has access to a toilet. Today 2.4 billion people don’t have one so they spend hours of their day searching for a safe place to go. Water.org gives people the tools they need to fund their own sanitation solutions because we believe it’s time for toilets for all.”

Water.org is celebrating #toilets4all the week of November 14th-19th. To help support the cause, we have created the Make A Difference Ornate Outhouse charity item! Not only is it a throne fit for royalty, but by purchasing this item, you are helping to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.

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Make a Difference: Charitable Giving Report

Beginning with that inaugural Water.org charity drive in collaboration with Rize Up Gaming in May 2015, here is the latest information on how the combined charitable efforts of Portalarium and the Shroud of the Avatar community have performed over the past eighteen months.

Make A Difference Store

Portalarium created digital, in-game charity items for Shroud of the Avatar as a channel through which our community of backers can contribute to causes they support. For each of these Make a Difference charity items purchased, Portalarium will donate up to 50% of its share of the purchase price to the designated charity (see each item for percent contribution). By purchasing these items you get to have fun with them in Shroud of the Avatar, as well as make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves. To date, backers have enabled us to contribute an amazing $27,335 to the combined charities of Water.org, Autism Awareness (NAA & NAS), Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and various Blood Charities (see details below).

Thank you, Avatars, for being so virtuous!

Water.org

To date, we have donated $12,389 to Water.org, from contributions by our generous backers through purchases of the Wishing Well, Water Cloak, and /rain emote. Water.org is a nonprofit organization that has transformed hundreds of communities in Africa, South Asia, and Central America by providing access to safe water and sanitation. You can learn more about the projects your donation helps support here.

Breast Cancer Research Foundation

Starting with an amazingly generous donation by Shooter Jennings of his recently released album, Countach (and related items), we have managed to donate an incredible $5,807 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) through community purchases of the Countach Wax Cylinders, Countach Pink Dye, Countach Album Cover, Countach Phonograph, and most recently the Juggle Pink Lights emote for Breast Cancer awareness month. BCRF is an organization that works to achieve prevention, and a cure for breast cancer in our lifetime, by providing critical funding for innovative clinical and translational research at leading medical centers worldwide, and increasing public awareness about good breast health.

Autism Awareness

In another collaborative effort involving RizeUp Gaming and Game4Autism, our generous community has raised $4,846 through purchases of the Puzzle Pattern Cloak, Puzzle Tree Cloak, and Puzzle Tree Make A Difference charity items. We split these donations equally between the following two organizations:

The National Autism Association, headquarted in Portsmouth, RI, whose mission statement is “…to respond to the most urgent needs of the autism community, providing real help and hope so that all affected can reach their full potential.” The National Autism Association is a parent-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Founded in 2003, NAA is a parent-run advocacy organization and the leading voice on urgent issues related to severe autism, regressive autism, autism safety, autism abuse, and crisis prevention.

The National Autistic Society is the leading UK charity for people on the autism spectrum (including Asperger syndrome) and their families. They provide information, support and pioneering services, and campaign for a better world for people with autism.

Blood Charities

Through the sales of the Lord British and Darkstarr Blood Reliquary Bundles we have donated $4,293 to a host of blood related charities, including:

• Shriners Hospitals for Children – Northern California
• Children’s Cancer & Blood Foundation
• Marie Curie – Terminal Illness Support
• The Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas
• Doctors Without Borders

Charitable Support

In addition to our Make a Difference store, we periodically support other fundraising efforts, like Movember, Extra Life, and community-driven events.

• Movember: The Movember Foundation’s mission: “The state of men’s health is in crisis. Men experience worse longer-term health than women and die on average six years earlier. Prostate cancer rates will double in the next 15 years. Testicular cancer rates have already doubled in the last 50. Three quarters of suicides are men. Poor mental health leads to half a million men taking their own life every year. That’s one every minute.Our fathers, partners, brothers and friends are facing this health crisis and it’s not being talked about. We can’t afford to stay silent.” Back in 2013 we created a Portalarium Movember team called Shroud of the Moustache and raised $1,680. We are doing it again with a new team called Moustache of the Avatar. Several of us will be growing moustaches (or hiking if we are Mo Sistas) in order to raise awareness about men’s health issues. Starr “Darkstarr” Long even shaved off his signature soul patch!
• Extra Life: Last year our incredible community organized a 24 hour streamathon with a ton of events as part of Extra Life (an event that unites thousands of players around the world in a 24 hour gaming marathon to support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals). Community members including Browncoat Jayson, Amber Raine, the RizeUp Gaming crew, Lazarus Long, and Kazyn Phoenixfire all streamed the entire 24 hours and raised $832. Unfortunately due to the proximity of SotA Con and Release 35 we were unable to organize an event this year but we will be back for 2017!
• RizeUp Gaming: Rize Up Gaming (www.twitch.tv/rizeupgaming) was founded in September 2012 with the intentions of curbing bullying, sexism, gender discrimination, and hate speech on all gaming platforms. Their goal is to promote fun gaming without negativity. Rize Up Gaming uses a staff of streamers to keep their channel running and to fundraise for many different charities throughout the year. As mentioned above, we collaborated with RizeUp Gaming for our first Make A Difference event, their inaugural Water.org Charity Drive. In addition to the Water.org and Autism Awareness charity drives, RizeUp Gaming has also collaborated with the Shroud of the Avatar community on the following charity drives (to name just a few):
  • Batten Disease Charity Drive
  • Seattle Children’s Hospital Charity Drive
  • Cystic Fibrosis Charity Drive
  • Multiple Sclerosis Charity Drive

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For those of you who missed the livestream, the recording of the first Community of the Avatar hour is now on YouTube!

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Join us Thursday, November 10th at 3:00 PM Central (20:00 UTC) for our monthly Hangout of the Avatar! The team will be chatting about Release 35 and looking ahead to the Fall into Winter telethon later in the month!

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!

Watch live video from shroudoftheavatar on www.twitch.tv

Sorry YouTube livestream folks, but we had too many connection problems with the past few livestreams to warrant streaming both to Twitch and YouTube simultaneously. We are having to cut the YouTube stream, though the final recording will be archived on YouTube after the event.

Post your questions in the comments below. 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.

Questions and feedback related to this release’s specific topics will be given priority and really verbose questions may be skipped, as they can be a challenge to shorten and summarize live on the air. In brief… please keep your questions… brief.

Tweet with us @ShroudofAvatar to keep updated on the latest SotA livestreams and game news!

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