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

Game Development

• Play Release 48 Now!
• Winter 2017 and R47 Telethon Items

News Announcements

• Release 48 Postmortem Telethon – Dec.1
• Release 48 Major Artifact Changes Clarifications
• Survey: Your Shroud of the Avatar Gameplay Experience
• BrightLocker’s Crowd Equity Campaign Shroud of the Avatar Perks
• Community Wellness with the Meretz Fitness App
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus Continues
• Russian Version Launch Sale Week 3: Home and Outdoor Decorations
• Livestream: Scottie’s Yuletide Gifts
• R47 Lot Deed Raffle Winners
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• Contest: The Avatar’s Guide to Knowledge and Virtue
• Party: Portalarium Studio Grand Holiday Party – Jan. 12
• Event: R48 Welcome Quest in Veritas Sanctuary
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Underworld Ascendant

Play Release 48 Now!

Release 48 successfully launched yesterday, November 16, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Read more…

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

Game Development

• New Low-level Mines
• Truth, Love, and Courage Armor
• Scottie’s Yuletide Objects of 2017
• Winter 2017 and R46 Telethon Items

News Announcements

• R47 Postmortem Telethon Results
• Movember: Moustache of the Avatar
• UO 20th Postmortem at GDC 2018
• Portalarium at SXSW 2018
• Free Trial Test – Nov. 1-15
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus Continues
• Russian Version Launch Sale Week 1: Wearables and Property Deeds
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• Halloween Contest Winners!
• Extra Life Charity Livestreams This Saturday, Nov. 4!
• WANTED! The Hispaniola Treasure Map Hunt
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Wasteland 3

New Low-level Mines

Until now all our mines have been Tier 5 dungeons making it impossible for low-level players to find high concentrations of ore. After many requests from the community and an intense roundtable at SotA Con Austin we have made the decision to add three Tier 2 mines to Novia. Each mine is located along one of the three paths (Truth, Love, Courage) approximately between the outskirts map and the starting town for that path. The mines are mainly sources of metal ore (iron and copper) with a very small occurrence of gold or silver (no gems).

The Making of Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine

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

Hey folks, I have some screenshots to share of the upcoming Tier 2 mine, Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine. This will be one of three low-level mines that are planned for this release.

This mine was once a primary supplier to local military units. After a collapse, it hasn’t been used in decades. Its recently been unearthed by Ebon Dawn humans.

The East Chamber Read more…

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

Game Development

• SotAMap Now Under Official Development

News Announcements

• R47 Postmortem Telethon – Nov. 3
• R46 Postmortem Missed Questions
• SotA Con Austin 2017 Recap
• Nightmares of New Britannia – Halloween Contest Extended!
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus Continues
• Weekend Flash Sale: Trees, Bushes, Cacti
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• Event: Shooter Jennings Meet n’ Greet
• Extra Life Schedule and Livestreamers Needed – Nov. 4
• Mynwent Haunted House
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Brightlocker CrowdEquity Campaign

SotAMap Now Under Official Development

[From a Forum Post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

Our original plan for maps in Shroud of the Avatar was individual hand drawn maps of various quality levels for each scene. These would be found, collected, quested after, etc. by the players and then could be used to navigate the world. We managed to implement a few of them but the scale of production involved in making them prevented us from staying abreast with the pace of the hundreds of scenes we were creating. They also failed to account for scenes with player housing that would dynamically change, sometimes dramatically.

Then along came the incredible tool, SotAMap, created by community member Jakub White and contributed to by other community members. Using a Google Maps type functionality, this amazing third party external application maps the entire world of Novia and allows POT owners to customize their town maps.

We liked SotAMap so much that we officially integrated it into the game in Release 40 back in March of this year. We quickly realized that this would be a fantastic solution to our problem of creating maps for every scene. After testing it out in the game for a couple of releases, we decided to approach Jakub about acquiring SotAMap so that we could make it a fully integrated and optimized feature of the game. We are very excited to announce that we have now come to a purchase agreement for SotAMap with Jakub White!

This means we can now proceed with a large list of changes that will improve the experience of using SotAMap. These will be broken up into two phases. We hope to have Phase 1 complete by the end of the year and Phase 2 by Launch.

Read more…

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

Game Development

• More Make a Difference, R45 Telethon, Halloween, and SeedInvest Item Screenshots

News Announcements

• R46 Postmortem Telethon Results
• SotA Con Austin 2017 This Weekend
• Nightmares of New Britannia – A Spooky Halloween Contest
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus Continues
• Community Livestream: North Quel Way First Look
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• Event: Think Pink – Organized Chaos Grand Capture Fair
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Underworld Ascendant

More Make a Difference, R45 Telethon, Halloween, and SeedInvest Item Screenshots

As mentioned in a previous update we created several new threads to show off content that we have been creating for SeedInvest Perk Packs, Telethons, and the Holiday Season. We will be making and posting in these kinds of threads going forward so that our players can stay up to date on the latest images of these items as we make them. In the case of the Telethon and holiday content they will first go in Dev+ and then later be included here in the Weekly Update.

Last week we created a thread about the R45 Telethon items and we added more items to the SeedInvest thread. This week we started a thread about some new Make a Difference items we are working on for Water.org and Children’s Hospitals / Doctors without Borders.

Make a Difference:

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

As part of Portalarium’s founding purpose to promote good will and make a positive difference in the world, we’ve provided these “Make a Difference” charity items as a channel through which our community of backers can contribute to causes they support. For each of these 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.

We are excited to be adding more items to the store this year including a whole new section in support of Children’s Hospitals/Doctor’s without Borders (this will also be in support of Xtra Life).

Water.org

First up is an ingenious contraption that brings bodily evacuations indoors through the clever use of Kobold technology. This is in support of Water.org’s World Toilet Day on November 19, 2017.

World Toilet Day is about inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis. Today, 4.5 billion people live without a household toilet that safely disposes of their waste. The Sustainable Development Goals, launched in 2015, include a target to ensure everyone has access to a safely-managed household toilet by 2030. This makes sanitation central to eradicating extreme poverty. In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly officially designated November 19 as World Toilet Day. World Toilet Day is coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with governments and partners.

Kobold Indoor Toilet
Read more…

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

Game Development

• Play Release 46 Now!
• Making of Blackblade Foothills, North Midmaer Way, & North Quel Way

News Announcements

• Q4 2017 Schedule Update
• R46 Postmortem Telethon
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus
• R45 Raffle Winners Announced
• SotA Con Austin 2017 Schedule

Community Updates

• Upcoming Events Calendar
• Play: Hungry Eyes in The Darkness
• Event: Veritas Sanctuary R46 Welcome Events
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Numenera 2: Discovery and Destiny

Play Release 46 Now!

Release 46 successfully launched yesterday, September 28, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Read more…