Update of the Avatar #96 – 2014.10.24: Play R11 Now and get Carnival Tricorn Hat, R11 Community Events, Steam Access for Backers, New Housing Page, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Play Release 11 Now and Get Your Carnival Mask Tricorn Hat
• R11 Patch Notes
• Release 11 In-game Community Events
• R11 Steam Access Keys Now Available for All Backers
• SotA Quick Reference Card by Stile Teckel
• New Housing Page
• MMORPG Shroud of the Avatar Release 11 Preview: It’s Steamy!
• Zack’s ELEMENTUM Makes Captivate Conference Finals
• BEDLAM’s Final Hours Stretch Goals
• Lord British vs Darkstarr: A Family Feud
• Get Your 15% Bonus
• Last Chance Exclusives
• Flexible Placement Stretch Goal: Stables
• Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon
• Upcoming Events

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The Mad Hermit’s “Carnival Mask Tricorn Hat – Grand Tour Head Start” Video Guide

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Play Release 11 Now and Get Your Carnival Mask Tricorn Hat

Release 11 successfully launched yesterday, October 23, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, logging in, and checking out the new changes! Lots of new content to check out, including:

• Character Advancement: Our first pass at advancement will allow players to begin accumulating experience points and levels, while earning skill and attribute points that can be spent.
• 9 New Skills: Including Summon Skeletons and Liches, Light Armor: Escape, Heavy Armor: Taunt, Ranged: Blinding Shot, Tactics: Dexterity, Focus: Intelligence, etc.
• New Scenes: The dynamically changing Solace Bridge, Kobold Battle Camp, Obsidian Keep, Swamps, and more.
• 29 Cooking, Butchery and Alchemy Recipes: Alchemy makes its first appearance with the ability to craft health and focus potions. Cooking also premiers with such recipes as Garlic Cheese, Bark Bread, Ardoris Coleslaw, Iolo’s Cat Gut Gulash, and Gorn’s Venison Roast.
• Improved Creature Combat AI: We targeted the Liches this Release, and give them the ability to summon skeleton allies, stun/root multiple players, and generate area of effect spells around them.
• Control Point Prototype: Vertas Pass is our first prototype of a control point. If you manage to defeat the Dark Elves holding Vertas Pass, then you can attempt to hold it against increasingly difficult waves of Dark Elves.
  
• 54 New Wearables: We’ve made wearables directly obtainable in-game, including Admiral’s clothing, backers tunics & cloaks, Elven bow, Sword of Ba’Heer, etc..
• 24 new decorations: Including that nifty new life size chess set!
• …and more!

The Grand Tour Quest
Just as in our last release, we’ve included a Grand Tour Quest designed to guide you through all the new content. And just in time for Halloween, you will be able to get the Tricorn Hat with Carnival Mask by completing the Release 11 Grand Tour Quest. This reward can only be unlocked during Release 11 (did someone say rares?), so be sure to log in to R11 (Oct 23-26) and talk to all the Tour Guides!

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Battle chess action at community member Forgiven’s village lot in Owl’s Head

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R11 Patch Notes

We’ve been busy fixing R11 bugs reported by our players. Here are the patch notes for the two builds we’ve pushed since opening the game Thursday morning:

October 24, 2014

Build Number 171 (Linux, Mac, PC)

Notes:

• Performance fixes in Forests and Brave Coast
• Fixed overblown godrays in Solace Bridge maps
• Fixed incorrect prices in NPC merchants when trying to sell after resorting inventory list
• Tooltips made more readable
• Linux Patcher Fix
• Added some starting recipes for cooking, butchery, and alchemy
• Fixed some issues with the puzzle torches in Ravensmoor
• Knight Marshal’s Winged Helm now on the vendor in Owl’s Head
• “Aether Vibration Amplifier” (wireless device) added to bar and decoration vendor in Owl’s Head
• fix lot type on text of Druid Tree deed
• Fixed word wrapping issues in Recipe Book to fix new cooking recipes going past page limits
• Hidden Vale Overworld polish pass (more to come in R12!)

October 23, 2014

Build Number 168 (Linux, Mac, PC)

Notes:

• Starting Round Wooden Shield is now visible
• Replaced Humans with Kobolds in South Ravenswood
• Grand Tour Guides should die far less often (if ever)
• Tour guide explanation of Ravensmoor changed to make it explicit that the guide is inside the dungeon.
• Northmarsh is now pointing to the correct scene

Build Number 167 (Linux, Mac, PC)

Notes:

• Starting Shield is invisible, will be fixed in next patch

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Release 11 In-game Community Events

Our amazing community has another great lineup of in-game events planned for Release 11. If you missed out on these player events during the previous Releases, we highly recommend you check some of them out this weekend. Here is the latest schedule of player events from the Avatar’s Circle Community Events calendar (http://avatarscircle.com/community-events/):

Friday, October 24
2:00pm CST – DJ FireLotus Release 11 Party, at Fire Lotus Tavern (Owl’s Head)
6:30pm CST – Story of Vengeance – Town Meeting
7:00pm CST – PaxLair Gathering – Valemark Entrance

Saturday, October 25
9:00am CST – Story of Vengeance – Revenge
10:00am CST – Britannia Theatre Troupe, Performing “They who dwell in darkness” – Live @ PaxLair
12:00pm CST – Welcome Quest in R11 (details)
2:00 pm CST – Community Hangout – R11 Feedback
3:00pm CST – Storytelling Event in Port Phoenix (Holtrot)
4:30 pm CST – Explore Novia! Spooky Braemar

Sunday, October 26
10:30am CST – Church of The Dark Star – Power of Chaos – Creating a fuller, better life.
12:00pm CST – Bear Tavern Brawl (1v1 & 4v4v4 free-for-all) (details)
2:00pm CST – Maze Event
4:00pm CST – All Town Gathering
5:45pm CST – Story of Vengeance – Serenite
6:01pm CST – Story of Vengeance – Malus
7:00pm CST – PaxLair Meeting – Valemark

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Release 11 Steam Access Keys Now Available for All SotA Backers

SotA will launch on Steam Early Access on November 24, but we’ve made Steam Access Keys immediately available to all our backers as part of their basic pledge rewards! Once you’ve redeemed your Steam Access Key you’ll have the option of playing SotA either with the Steam client or the regular client (or both). Here are the instructions for redeeming your Steam access key and installing the SotA client:

1. If you are not currently a backer of SotA you will need to purchase a pledge. Click here for more information about our pledges.
2. Log into SotA and go to your Account page (or look on the right side-bar of the main page)
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see a box on the right side labeled “Play SotA through Steam”. Click on the link that reads “…click here to redeem an access key by signing in through Steam!“
4. You’ll be instructed to Sign in through Steam
5. Click the “Allow” button to redeem and activate the SotA key on your Steam account
6. You’ll see a SotA “Congratulations” message confirming successful Steam activation. Click the “account page” link to return you to your SotA Account page.
7. Scroll to the bottom of your account page and you’ll see “Play SotA through Steam” box now states that your Steam access key has been redeemed, and displays the Steam Account it is associated with.
8. You will need to launch your Steam desktop client to see Shroud of the Avatar in your Steam Library (because SotA is not yet available in the Steam Store to the general public, it will not show up in your library if you view your Steam account through a web browser)
9. Select Shroud of the Avatar in your Steam Library and click on “INSTALL”
10. Follow the Steam installation instructions and once the download is complete you will be able to launch SotA from Steam (but remember, you won’t be able to play SotA until Release 11 launches next week, Oct 23).

Let us know if you have any problems and thanks for helping us test the Steam client in preparation for launching SotA on Steam Early Access on November 24th!

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SotA Quick Reference Card by Stile Teckel

Community Member Sir Stile Teckel created a very handy Quick Reference Card for SotA, including some great game resource links. He put this together initially for Release 9 and has been updating it with each new Release. Here’s page 1 of the latest version:

[Here’s the link to the latest version of the full 2-page document]

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New Housing Page

We’ve added a new housing page to the SotA website (under the “Store” menu). This section compiles all the housing images and details currently scattered across all the pledge descriptions and weekly updates. Additionally, we’re including blueprint images for each house (thanks Rustic Dragon). The housing page is still under construction so look for additional houses to be added each week.

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MMORPG Shroud of the Avatar Release 11 Preview: It’s Steamy!

Red Thomas visited the Portalarium Studio this week and was treated to a preview of Release 11. Here’s excerpt from his R11 article on MMORPG.com:

I am quite literally just back from Austin as I sit down to write this latest update on Shroud of the Avatar. I wasn’t able to make it up for my typical week-before-release hangout with the guys, so today was pretty much a drive by. It’s well worth staying up past my bedtime to hack this article out, though. Despite the brevity of my visit, I got a load of cool information to share with you folks, and I’m excited to do it.

Right… So a triple shot espresso later, and we’re rolling into paragraph number two, but my energy crisis isn’t what you’re here for. You want to know about the things coming up for Release 11, like character advancement and some of the new crafting changes. You probably already know about that stuff, and about the recent news concerning Steam. There’s even cooler stuff in store though, so read on!

[Read more…]

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Zack’s ELEMENTUM Makes Captivate Conference Finals

The Captivate Conference starts today (Oct 24th) here in Austin, TX, and runs through October 26th. Several members of the SotA Dev Team are giving talks there, including Starr Long, Finn Staber, Geoff Mellon, and Jay Reichman.

Special congratulations to SotA programmer, Zack Sheppard, whose student project, ELEMENTUM, made it to the Captivate Competition Finals! ELEMENTUM is a 2.5d puzzle/platformer where the character harnesses elemental powers to explore the world. Good luck in the competition Zack!

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BEDLAM’s Final Hours Stretch Goals

BEDLAM, a really cool game being Kickstarted by our friends and fellow Austinites at Skyshine Games, have reached their funding goal and first six stretch goals! Way to go Skyshine!

BEDLAM is a strategic single-player roguelike turn-based RPG set in a post-apocalyptic era, created for the PC and Mac – Inspired by great games like The Banner Saga, FTL and XCOM.

“I loved Heavy Metal growing up. I read the magazine and watched the movie about a zillion times (more than Star Wars actually)”, said Starr Long (SotA Executive Producer). “…[BEDLAM] totally resurrects that Moebius 80s sci-fi look. It is also another great example of the resurrection of turn based RPGs (hallelujah!). So go check out their Kickstarter and let’s make this happen!”

Check out their video and if you like what you see then jump over to the BEDLAM Kickstarter page and pledge your support (they are in their final hours so you better hurry)!

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Lord British vs Darkstarr: A Family Feud

It seems the Lord British vs Darkstarr duel has become a family affair. Darkstarr’s daughter has joined the feud!

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Only 39 Days left to get your 15% Black Friday Bonus!

If you were thinking of pledging your support to the development of Shroud of the Avatar, upgrading your existing pledge, or purchasing an add-on item, player owned town, or stretch goal item, now’s a great time to do it! From now thru Black Friday Weekend we’ll add an additional 15% bonus to your Store Credit! Here are the details:

For all new purchases (including pledges, pledge upgrades, add-on items, player owned towns, and stretch goal items) between 12:00 am CST October 10, 2014 and 12:00 am CST December 2, 2014, we will add an additional 15% bonus to your Store Credit! You can use your Store Credit toward any additional purchase (including pledges, pledge upgrades, add-on items, and player owned towns).

[NOTE: The 15% bonus is calculated every day at 1:00 pm CST and added to your Store Credit account; Store Credit cannot be applied toward stretch goal items]

For example, if you have the $45 Adventurer pledge and really want to upgrade to the $90 Royal Artisan pledge which includes Episodes 2 and 3 as pledge rewards, you would normally pay the extra $45 for the upgrade. But using the 15% bonus you can immediately save $5. To do so, you would first purchase $40 worth of Store Credit Gift Coupons (via PayPal, Amazon, Bitcoin, or credit card; excluding existing Store Credit) then use the “Convert to Credits” option on your account page to transform the Store Credit Gift Coupons back into Store Credit. Within 24 hours an additional $6 bonus ($40 x 15%) would be applied to your Store Credit account, bringing it up to $46. You would then use $45 of your Store Credit to upgrade to the $90 Royal Artisan pledge.

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Last Chance Exclusives

Every week going forward we are removing select items from the Add-On Store, so if you want them you better get them before they are gone! Over the past few weeks we’ve phased out the Shingle-Roof Village Homes, Cubit Measure of Prosperity, and the Crafting Sigil Cloak. This week, the following item is available for an additional 20% off, and then will no longer be available in the Add-On Store.

Rustic 2-Story with Balcony Village Home

In our line of rustic homes is this quaint, 2-story, 2-room village home (you may have seen this house in Braemar).

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Flexible Placement Stretch Goal: Stables

If you’d like to support the flexible lot placement with multiple structures stretch goal then head over to the Stretch Goal Store and purchase these stables. It’s the perfect out-building to hold your mounts and other assorted fauna found in New Britannia. If the stretch goal is met, this item will gain the ability to be decorated:

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Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware’s powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

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Upcoming Events

2014.10.23 – Release 11 Access
2014.10.24 – SotA at Captivate
2014.10.29 – Monthly Video Hangout: R11 & R12 Discussion
2014.10.29 – SotA at Paris Games Week
2014.10.31 – SotA at PAX Australia
2014.11.03 – SotA at GDC Next
2014.11.14 – Duke & Lord of the Manor VIP Design Roundtable with Lord British and Portalarium Studio Tour
2014.11.15 – HoBLotH II: Legends of the Hearth
2014.11.20 – Release 12 Access
2014.11.24 – SotA launches on Steam Early Access
2014.11.26 – Monthly Video Hangout: R12 & R13 Discussion
2014.11.27 – SotA at Dreamhack (Sweden)
2014.12.18 – Release 13 Access
2014.01.22 – Release 14 Access
2014.02.19 – Release 15 Access
2014.03.13 – SotA at SXSW Interactive
2014.03.26 – Release 16 Access

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