Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Release 147 goes live February 23rd at 10:30 AM CST.
Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 147 (R147), we offer green things and feathered things and i wouldn’t trust either of them.
For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Player Guide and Known Issues for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes.
News Announcements
Community Updates
The Vault is Permanently Closed
We have many things planned for 2026 and beyond and we’re being careful not to promise things in the manner done by past management. I’ll continue posting in my development blog to give a peek into what we’re working on (and what we’re working toward.)
Over the last few years we have been working to make the game more stable, to provide a solid base to work from. Over the last year or so, we significantly improved the visuals as well as the performance of the game. Even as these efforts are still ongoing, we have put together the plan to move the game forward.
The team recently discussed the Vault section of the Crown Store. Long-time players will remember that many Vault items originated as limited-availability rewards from past events (such as Portalarium Telethons and similar events or promotions). Those items were made available to players through the Vault, with their display names adjusted to indicate “Vault Edition” to distinguish them from the original event versions.
The existence of the Vault as a Crown Store feature has been controversial. The rarity and provenance structure we now have in place is in direct conflict with the Vault as a feature. Therefore, as of this release (R147), the Vault has been removed from the Crown Store and the items within it have been retired.
Vault Edition items already purchased by players will remain in game and retain their “Vault Edition” indicator.
Please note: Vault items are considered scarce, even though multiple versions may exist in the game (original telethon or event versions, Vault Editions, and later variants such as newer year-tagged or re-textured versions.
Since many years and multiple management teams have been involved, here is a bit of a timeline:
- Release 55 (July 6, 2018): Under Portalarium, the original Player Rewards program was started. This program automatically enrolled participants for the monthly telethon livestream stretch-goal items. Without the rewards program, obtaining these items would require a minimum five-dollar purchase during the telethon. The program allowed players to get all the stretch goal items without actually attending the livestream.
- Release 65 (April 25, 2019): The Vault was introduced specifically for the sale of Vault Edition versions of telethon stretch-goal items. Portalarium added some items from the telethon catalog into the Vault each release manually.
- Release 66 (May 29, 2019): The recurring telethons ended, shifting the method of obtaining Stretch Goal items solely to the Rewards Program and/or the Vault. (Rewards program participants would receive up to 3 stretch-goal items monthly).
- Release 71 (October 2019): Catnip Games took over the game. The development team was still made up entirely of the remaining first-generation Portalarium developers.
- Release 77 (May 22, 2020): The program was relaunched as the “Subscriber Program” and the exclusivity of the items was officially changed to a period of 10-14 days between subscribers receiving the items and them being placed into the standard Crown Store. This provided subscribers first dibs and the ability to display or trade the items with others before they were generally available.
- The practice of adding telethon and other special rewards to the Crown Store or Vault ceased after the exit of the second-generation development team members circa March of 2022.
In summary, the original Player Rewards Program ended with the telethons in 2019. The current Subscriber Program does not provide permanent rarity. The current subscriber program tiers offer items that, in total, well exceed the monthly cost and can be traded or sold to others in game, in addition to the other time-based items and benefits, such as exclusive titles.
We have replaced the vault method with a process to provide the players with opportunities to obtain true rares through a number of methods. The Ultra-Rare and Bug Hunter programs have been the best ways to obtain items that will not be sold in the Crown or Web Stores. The initial Ultra-Rare offerings began with the 10th anniversary of Release 1 in December of 2023. These items are released periodically as bonus items accompanying a qualified purchase on the web shop. Going forward, there will be additional classes of rare items (Rare and Very-Rare). These items will be obtained in game, but will be made rare by spawn rules, drop frequency, appearance rates, or other methods. These three classifications of items will never be added to our website or into the Crown Store under any category.
There will be increased offerings of new Ultra-Rares as we move forward into 2026. We are working on the structure now and should have things ready for some different types of offers, special events, and (of course) COTO bonus items.
In addition, we are preparing a new collectible set of in-game items that will provide opportunities to collect items with varying degrees of rarity within the set. Spawned Rare and Very-Rare items will also start making their appearance in game in 2026.
We have been working to create a backlog of items so we are not always under the gun to create assets required for a monthly commitment. The delivery delay of the Ultra-Rare Dolls offering is a good example of what can happen if assumptions are made regarding the amount of time required to create and test assets during a single release cycle. The haunted doll Ultra-Rares vulcanized our determination to not advertise and offer items until they are ready. For example, if we were to have a telethon-style event, any items that would be on offer would already be in game and ready to ship.
A major issue in the past was the lack of written policies and restrictions around limited items, along with insufficient hand-off to newer generations of the development team. Going forward, we now have a structure in place that will support varying rarity levels of items including protection of the permanent exclusivity of Ultra-Rares.
Monthly Login Rewards for subscribers who help support the development of the game will continue to have a 10-14 day exclusivity, after which these items will continue to help support the game by being placed into the Crown Store.
The monthly Login reward for players who log in each calendar month will continue to be no-trade at the time of delivery.
Items flagged as Rare, Very Rare, and Ultra-Rare will include description text indicating how they were introduced and their rarity level. Items created as scarce, limited loot, rare world items, server spawns, or special ‘Ultra-Rare’ bonuses for specific events or sales will be governed by written policy. These classifications of items will only ever be distributed in the manner each is originally intended.
We will not be repeating the methods of past management. Past eras of management would change course, possibly too easily in some cases. We have a course plotted, and even though we have a firm plan to execute, we do read all of the feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions. If ideas, suggestions, or feedback can fit in with our established plan, we will consider them but players may not see a detailed response from the team on them.
For the last three years, we have been cleaning up, organizing, and restructuring systems and content across Shroud of the Avatar and 2026 should be a significant year as more of that work becomes visible to the players. Keep in mind that we are a very small team and we appreciate your patience as we work to deliver a better game with every release. With your continued support, more amazing, mysterious, and dark things will unfold in New Britannia!
This is an extremely busy first quarter, lots of writing needs to be done to flesh out policies, overhaul the website with better, easier-to-find FAQs, details, and … and …
This team is dedicated to moving the game forward and expanding content while continuing to improve the quality of the game. With support from the community who also want the game to succeed, we can increase the number of developers and ensure that New Britannia’s future very bright (if the oncoming darkness in future episodes is dispelled of course!
Thank you for playing and supporting the game!
– Ravalox
Wine Cabinet Ultra-Rares
Now through the 6th of March, we are offering some bonus items when players buy qualifying COTO packs on the website.
With a purchase of a 10K COTO pack, players will receive a bonus Large Vintage Wine Cabinet along with eight wine bottles.
With a purchase of a 6K COTO pack, players will receive a bonus Small Vintage Wine Cabinet along with (the same) eight wine bottles.
The cabinets and wine bottles are Ultra-Rare. As an additional bonus, a non-rare carrying crate for the wine bottles will also be included.
To qualify, the COTOs must be claimed by logging into the game (online) while the special offer is in place, which is through March 6th, the end of the sales and bonuses period for the release.
These cabinets and bottles are ready to deliver after the Ultra-Rare bonus event ends and will be in Hometown for viewing when Release 147 goes live.
This Ultra-Rare offering will help fund a series of collectible regional wine bottles. We are planning to introduce these bottles with beautiful Scottie-original custom labels representing some of the regions and more notable cities of New Britannia. The bottles will appear in the game in various ways including, but not limited to, quests, gold purchase, and limited or scarce loot.
These bottles will arrive in the game in waves. Once a new wine rack is completed and the first set of bottles is in game, the rack will be added to the Crown Store.
Sound too easy? Think again! Some of the bottles will be scarce and harder to find than others. Some of them will actually be Rare and may take some time to find and complete your collection. Think of a Trading Card Game or sports card collection: some are harder to get than others, but not impossible.
Details of what cities, regions, or maybe even dungeons will have bottles to offer and how to get them will be found IN GAME. Do not ask the Devs, they will not tell… this (besides killing players during the Annual Egg Hunt) is how we have our fun!
The wine rack itself will act as organized storage for the collected bottles. More details on the look, feel, and function of the rack will be posted in the forum when nearing completion. (No doubt there will be work streams as it is being created.)
– Ravalox
Infrastructure Geek Update
We successfully reduced our footprint in the datacenter by two more servers. Virtualization and consolidation into new hardware proceeds as hoped! I have yet another server that I purchased which should (when put in place) reduce our build times and improve performance overall, not to mention eliminate more old hardware.
As noted in other articles this month, there is much happening. In order to accomplish our goals, all these things need to be worked on in parallel as much as possible. With these last few physical changes, I should now have room to virtualize and shift processes around without having to spend so much time in the datacenter.
This also should allow us to deploy [REDACTED] and a [REDACTED]. :O
– Xolavar
Release 147 Patch Notes
Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 147 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! Polish, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R148 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 147!
Read more…
