Avatar’s Update #320: Release 63 on QA, Player Dungeon Livestream Today

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

News Announcements

Community Updates

Release 63 on QA, Goes Live Next Thur

An early version of R63 is on the QA server. R63 is full of new content and fixes, some of which is now on the QA server for early testing. An early version of the R63 Instructions are also available for review. We could really use everyone’s help to test all of this amazing content before it goes live next Thursday February 28!

Envy Angel
Pronged Weapons (Pitchforks & Tridents)
Player Dungeon Encounters
Pirate Wearables
New Decorations
Crown Shop Polish
Prison Themed Player Dungeon Rooms
R60 Livestream Items
More Bug Fixes
and more!

Please join us in testing on the QA server (instructions are posted each release in the bug forums) so we can make each release the best it can be. By helping us test prior to the release we can insure there are less bugs, more stability, and more balance.

Participating qualifies you for the Testing Incentives Program! We will reward you for your efforts because we do understand that time spent on QA is time lost on advancing your character on live. Each release we will randomly reward the following rewards (one prize per player):

5 Gold Crowns (4 prizes)
Ant Farm (4 prizes)
Antennae (4 prizes)
Bug Cloak (4 prizes)
Set of Bug Paintings (4 prizes)
Bug Sprayer with emote (1 prize)
Insect Leg Table (1 prize)
Corpion Chair (1 prize)

In order to qualify you must meet the following requirements:

Install the QA version of the game
Login and play on QA for at least 4 hours per release
Report at least 1 bug in the QA section of the forums
- Note that players will only be submitted for the lottery once per QA cycle. Continued bug reporting will not count toward additional submissions into the lottery.

Thanks Avatars!

Player Made Dungeon Livestream Today!

Another content packed weekly Community Livestream is, today, this Friday February 22 at 4 PM CT on Twitch!

This week we are going to show off how creature spawning is going to work in Player-Made Dungeons (the first version of which goes live in Release 63 next week)! We will also show the new Prison-themed dungeon pieces going live in Release 63.

This is last week to earn the Release 62 Carnival stretch goals by making a purchase or by participating in the Rewards program!

ACHIEVED! $15K: Masquerade Mask
ACHIEVED! $30K: Carnival Colors (Purple, Green, Yellow) Cycling Dye Replenishing Box
ACHIEVED! $45K: Jester Mask Wand & Jester Mask Staff
ACHIEVED! $60K: Brewing Themed Basement Hatches
ACHIEVED! $75K: Formal Dress (Wedding Dress Variant)
$90K: Tuxedo Variant
$105K: Ballroom Dungeon Room
$125K: Jester Outfit

As usual we will be giving out prizes at 4:15 and 4:45! To be eligible all you need to do is either make any purchase in the store or log into the game and type “Let the good times roll” in the chat window (no purchase necessary).

Watch on Twitch this Friday at 4 PM CDT

Are You a Livestreamer?

Get this exclusive in-game Streamer Camera for being a veteran of our Livestreamer Program!

Notable Changes in Recent R62 Patches

We have made many notable changes in recent patches to the game to improve general quality of life and make purchasing experiences easier.

POT Square Footage Requirements (Patched R62): There has been a requirement reduction for City, Keep, Castle lots in POTs. Sometimes the simplest answers aren’t the best. We’re seeing this has been true with several decisions we made long ago regarding how POTs work. We went with the obvious design of POTs having a total square footage that could be placed and houses take up exactly as many square feet as they take up. While this seems fine on the surface, the reality is that it makes POT owners choose between having 1 guy in an awesome castle or 32 friends in Row lots. This puts a huge burden on POT owners for costs and planning that is just not cool. Also, many of these lots only have a couple of spots where they can fit within a POT template. So, we dramatically reduced the cost to POT owners for city, keep, and castle lots. Here are the old and new values for the cost to place these deeds in POTs:
- City 2400 –> 1800
- Keep 4800 –> 2400
- Castle 9600 –> 3000
POT Deco Limits Doubled: Doubled the decoration item limit for all POTs so twice the number of decorations can now be placed.
Player-Owned Town Upgrading with Crowns: You can now upgrade your POT using Crowns. After investigating a number of options for how best to do this, we decided the simplest implementation was the best since this will be used by a fairly small audience. To upgrade, simply log into the game and send an in-game mail to Atos (Chris Spears) noting the town name you wish to upgrade and adding the Crowns to the mail. We’ll upgrade your POT and push the change live in the next available patch! If you want, feel free to nudge Chris after sending the in-game mail by sending Chris a message in the forums. (Don’t tag Chris but rather use the “Start a conversation” feature. Chris gets tagged hundreds of times a week and usually miss it when he’s tagged.) Expect us to refine this process as we go.
Crown Shop Buff: To encourage players to find the Crown Shop button we have added a buff! Players will get a small one-day long buff with any purchase from the Crown Shop. The buff strength is the same whether you spend 1 crown or 1000. You can have up to three buffs at once and there are currently 22 variations. These buffs will remain available for a couple of Releases to help players with the transition to an in-game shop.
Lot Deed Upgrades for Crowns changes:
- Size Limits for Upgrades per Type (No PA Keep, Nor PA Castle): We recently added the ability to right click on a lot deed in your inventory in order to upgrade it with Crowns. Previously, any deed type could be upgraded all the way to Castle. Now, you can now longer upgrade to Tax Free Founder Keep or Castle, or Tax Free Keep or Castle. All other Keep/Castle types can still be upgraded to, including Tax Free Player Owned Town Keep, for example.
- Deed Type Upgrading: Now, you can also upgrade your deed “type” for crowns. This means, for example, you can upgrade from a Taxable Player Owned Town Village Lot Deed to a Taxable Player Owned Town Water Village Lot Deed, adding the ability to claim a water lot. This was previously available in the Game Services store but can now be done directly with crowns. You can also upgrade from Taxable to Tax-Free deeds, with the exception that other types of deeds can not be upgraded to Founder deeds. Also, you can only upgrade types, not downgrade, so you can not go from a Tax Free deed to a Taxable deed, for example.
- Upgrade Costs: Each lot deed has an associated Crowns of the Obsidians value. The total cost to upgrade from one deed to another is the difference in the crown value between deeds. The deeds below are also in “Category” order. Deeds from a lower category can be upgraded to a higher one, but not the other way around. This also excludes the Founder deed category which can not be upgraded to.
  - Player Owned Town Row Lot Deed (no trade) 9
  - Player Owned Town Village Lot Deed (no trade) 29
  - Player Owned Town Row Lot Deed 29
  - Player Owned Town Village Lot Deed 59
  - Player Owned Town Town Lot Deed 149
  - Player Owned Town City Lot Deed 399
  - Player Owned Town Keep Lot Deed 999
  - Player Owned Town Castle Lot Deed 1999
  - Row Lot Deed 39
  - Village Lot Deed 79
  - Town Lot Deed 199
  - City Lot Deed 599
  - Keep Lot Deed 1299
  - Castle Lot Deed 2499
  - Player Owned Town Water Village Lot Deed 139
  - Player Owned Town Water Town Lot Deed 279
  - Player Owned Town Water City Lot Deed 799
  - Player Owned Town Water Keep Lot Deed 1699
  - Player Owned Town Water Castle Lot Deed 2999
  - Tax Free Player Owned Town Row Lot Deed 59
  - Tax Free Player Owned Town Village Lot Deed 199
  - Tax Free Player Owned Town Town Lot Deed 499
  - Tax Free Player Owned Town City Lot Deed 999
  - Tax Free Player Owned Town Keep Lot Deed 1999
  - Tax Free Player Owned Town Castle Lot Deed 3999
  - Tax Free Row Lot Deed 69
  - Tax Free Village Lot Deed 239
  - Tax Free Town Lot Deed 599
  - Tax Free City Lot Deed 1099
  - Tax Free Keep Lot Deed Not Available
  - Tax Free Castle Lot Deed Not Available
  - Tax Free Founder Row Lot Deed 79
  - Tax Free Founder Village Lot Deed 289
  - Tax Free Founder Town Lot Deed 699
  - Tax Free Founder City Lot Deed 1199
  - Tax Free Founder Keep Lot Deed Not Available
  - Tax Free Founder Castle Lot Deed Not Available

Lord of the Isle Episode 2 Bundles

As one of the biggest and earliest supporters of Episode 2 you will be granted the largest lot deed in the land (Castle), the title Lord (or Lady) of the Isle, a tour of the Portalarium Offices, and dinner with the game leaders including Lord British himself! Only 24 of these unique bundles will be sold!

Complete List of Rewards:

UPDATED: Lord of the Isle Place Anywhere Castle Lot Deed: Tax Free Forever (when placed in a POT) and Tax Free for 1 Year (when placed outside of a POT). Placeable on water as well as land!
Title: Lord of the Isle or Lady of the Isle
NEW: Unique Lord of the Isle Home (to be revealed later)
UPDATED: PLUS Choice of any 1 House currently available in the store
Castle Basement currently available in the store of your choice
Castle Wall Set currently available in the store of your choice (with enough for Castle Lot)
NEW: Unique Lord of the Isle Dungeon Room (to be revealed later)
1400 Crowns
999 Bank Slots
Pick 12 Prosperity Tools
2 Unique in-game items (to be revealed later)
Early Access to Episode 2
Episode 1 Box and map signed by the team
1 hour one on one with Chris for design discussion (via video-conference)
One real silver ring crafted personally by Lord British: Numbered 1 – 8
In-game version of the Lord British ring: Numbered 1 – 8 (including a place-able decoration version)
Tour of Portalarium Offices
Fine dinner and drinks with Lord British, Darkstarr, & Atos at a location TBD in Austin or NYC.

NOTE: Digital items that are currently available will begin delivery as soon as Release 62 (Jan 31). Other items will be delivered at a future date TBD.

NOTE: Travel costs NOT covered by Portalarium for Tour & Dinner.

Store & Crowns: Please read about important upcoming changes!

[Forum post by Chris “Atos” Spears]

Greetings avatars! As many of you know, there are some BIG changes underway with Shroud of the Avatar. After far too long, we are finally getting rid of our giant online cash shop and moving to the model that every other game uses. This is a LONG overdue change and definitely one that benefits the players and the Shroud team.

Maintaining the existing cash shop was a full time job for several people. Managing everything in game versus a webstore is both easier for us and benefits the players with easier browsing, searching, instant delivery, and is generally a much simpler process for everyone.

Also, in addition to removing the majority of the web store items, we’re also going to be changing up our semi-premium currency, Crowns or COTOs. Previously the rough target was 1 crown = $1. This was problematic because it did not give us the granularity needed for pricing smaller item and it got even more problematic when we wanted to put something on sale!

Starting in Release 63, players will see that each of their crowns will be converted into 100 crowns. Store prices will follow that conversion for now and then over time will have their prices updated to more appropriate numbers. This means some items will go up and some will go down.

With the increased resolution of crown we were also able to adjust our prices for crowns to more closely match what we wanted. Those prices will also go live with Release 63 in just over 2 weeks! The conversion rate is very slightly worse with most packages but now fall into what we believe will be a better set of numbers for the long term.

As for store and crown sales, I think most people have seen we left our sales on this entire month. This is because after looking at what we sell things for, we had effectively targeted prices based on what they cost on sale. Going forward, we will be doing far fewer and much smaller sales BUT the normal price will be roughly the current sale price.

For crown sales, we’ve also gotten people used to them always being on sale. Starting in R63 we’re going to start reducing that sale each release until we get to zero discount. We will still have sales but only briefly and only for special events.

I repeat, we’re going to reduce and then kill off the reliance of store and crown sale pricing starting in just over 2 weeks, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Also, for those who haven’t seen the new planned crown bundle prices:

$10.00 –> 750
$20.00 –> 1600
$35.00 –> 3200
$60.00 –> 6300
$100.00 –> 10750

Also, since I know some of you just read the top and bottom of the post, here is the tl;dr version:

98% of the cash shop going away
We’re doing a 1 to 100 split for crowns to give us more pricing resolution for smaller items
We’re doing away with huge sales and moving to a more steady but realistic price
Crown store sales will be going away over the next few months starting with a reduction starting with R63

As always, thanks for your patience with this stuff and thanks for your support! Also, we have a number of exciting, upcoming announcements so keep your eyes on the forums over the next two weeks!

50% Items and 20% Crowns (Extended!)

We have extended our 50% off weekend holiday sale! To celebrate our final release of our launch year we are putting most items* in the store on sale for 50% off, our deepest discounts ever!

We also have extended our Holiday Crowns Sale! Some packages are discounted as much as 20%!

Note that the Crowns sale will be slowly going away over the next few releases!

Automatic Redemption of Rewards Release 63

As part of our continuing improvements to Quality of Life in Shroud of the Avatar we are going to remove the extra step required when receiving purchased items inside the game. You will no longer have to click on a “Redeem Rewards” button. Instead we will automatically send the items to your rewards interface when you next login to the game. If you are currently logged in then they will appear as soon as the purchase transaction completes. We are also going to provide an onscreen notice for when rewards are delivered to your Rewards Interface. This improvement will go live with Release 63 on February 28, 2019

Freshwater Fishing Contest Livestream (YouTube)

Last week’s first Freshwater Fishing Contest was a blast! It was our fourth fishing contest and completed the fishing contest fishfecta of all our water types.

Fishing Contest Winners:

Runners Up (2): Ornate Fish Throne
- Henrik Mountgrove: Pike 2
- Hildegard: King Salmon 2
3rd Prize: Small Longboat Water Decoration (digital)
- Sawtooth: King Salmon 2.2
2nd Prize: Shogun Lighthouse Village Water Home (digital)
- Van: King Salmon 2.3
- Engel: King Salmon 2.3
1st Prize: Player Owned Town Village Water Lot Property Deed (digital)
- Nubby Eerwiggles: King Salmon 2.4

We also made progress on the Carnival themed stretch goals!

ACHIEVED! $15K: Masquerade Mask
ACHIEVED! $30K: Carnival Colors (Purple, Green, Yellow) Cycling Dye Replenishing Box
ACHIEVED! $45K: Jester Mask Wand & Jester Mask Staff
ACHIEVED! $60K: Brewing Themed Basement Hatches
ACHIEVED! $75K: Formal Dress (Wedding Dress Variant)
ACHIEVED! $90K: Tuxedo Variant
$105K: Ballroom Dungeon Room
$125K: Jester Outfit

In case you missed the fun times here is the stream on YouTube:

Shroud of the Avatar Rewards Program

The Shroud of the Avatar Rewards Program lets you earn the best rate on purchasing Gold Crowns, AND receive rare stretch-goal items from our monthly livestreams! This program automatically enrolls you in the monthly livestreams (counts as the $5 minimum purchase) along with other perks.

For the low price of $9 USD per month you will receive the following:

9 Gold Crowns of the Obsidians every month
Automatic Participation in the Monthly Livestream Stretchgoals (counts as the $5 minimum purchase)
Exclusive Title every 3 months
- 3 Months: Keeper of the Faith
- 6 Months: Keeper of the Word
- 9 Months: Keeper of the Vow
- 12 Months: Keeper of the Flame
Pick any Dye 12 Pack every 6 months
Pick any three of the 7 Obsidian Potions every month, including:
- Potion of Capacity: Increases carrying capacity
- Potion of Conservation: Reduces reagent use chance
- Potion of Expedience: Swift gathering on all gathering skills
- Potion of Precision: Increases Meticulous Collection to all gathering skills
- Potion of Preservation: Reduces armor and weapon damage
- Potion of Reclamation: Increases Salvage and Repair to all production skills

Upcoming Events Calendar

Feb 28, 2019 – Release 63
Mar 4, 2019 – Release 63 Dance Party
Mar 8, 2019 – Release 63 Livestream
Mar 8 – 17, 2019 – SXSW
Mar 18 – 22, 2019 – GDC
Mar 28, 2019 – Release 64
Apr 5, 2019 – Release 64 Livestream
Apr 25, 2019 – Release 65
May 3, 2019 – Release 65 Livestream
May 30, 2019 – Release 66
June 7, 2019 – Release 66 Livestream
June 27, 2019 – Release 67
July 25, 2019 – Release 68
Aug 29, 2019 – Release 69

Meretz: Win an Obsidian Tower Town Water Home

Win an Obsidian Tower Town Water Home & earn free SotA in-game items daily!

Whether you move a little or a lot, as a Meretz user you rack up valuable Meretz Points (MPs). The more MPs you have, the more stuff you can buy!

Think: in-game SotA goodies, Sweepstakes entries, Relics by Rild giveaways, and tons more. With Meretz, we launch several sweepstakes every month. This month, we’re giving away an Obsidian Tower Town Water Home – valued at $300! You can also enter to win a Relics By Rild $50 Gift Card and other cool prizes. AND, use your MPs every day for in-game items like potions and emotes.

What’re you waiting for? Download Meretz TODAY!

Project to Support – Mechanica (Kickstarter)

“Build the best factory to manufacture adorable vacuum robots in this unique strategy board game.”

Mechanica is the latest game from our friend Mary Flanagan who featured our very own Lord British in her game Monarch.

Mechanica is a unique engine building game where you race your opponents to create the best vacuum robot factory out of interlocking puzzle pieces. The game features:

Dynamic factories that are fun to build and run
12 types of jigsaw piece-shaped tiles that snap together!
Rotating shop board
Instant setup: just open the box and play! The game stays in the tray
Exciting 1-player mode
Beautiful illustrations and adorable robots by Ann-Sophie De Steur

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.

Are You a Livestreamer?

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