Release 20 Instructions

[A SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]

Greetings 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 20 access for all backers at First Responder level and above, as well as attendees of Classic Game Fest, begins this Thursday, July 30 at 10:30 AM Central Time (16:30 UTC). If you signed up at Classic Game Fest for weekend access, please be sure to create an account on our website as soon as possible in order to gain access for the weekend.

This continues to be the most amazing community I have ever worked with. It also continues to be the most amazing process of development I have ever experienced. We are truly co-developing this game together in a completely transparent and iterative process, and it is humbling and thrilling all at once. Thank you so much for supporting us with your funding, your content submissions, your community run events, your suggestions, and of course your critique. You make this project possible, and you are making it better.

While we are getting closer to launch, we are still in a constant state of change, and we do not yet have in-game systems to inform players of these changes, or to share ways to help them to explore new content and systems. This means we rely entirely 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.

Release 20 is probably one of the biggest releases we have made so far. It includes a wealth of new content that gets us that much closer to Alpha. The Troll expands our ability to support very large creatures, and therefore, more thrilling combat. That thrilling combat is expanded with Taming, allowing players to harness the power of wild animals. And the creativity of our players will certainly shine in Player Owned Towns, thanks to the incredibly flexible Dynamic Lot Placement tool. The Player Driven Economy is also taking real shape as we push more content towards crafting and away from Merchant sales, while at the same time providing Player Owned Vendors for pledge holders.

We know many of you have been waiting for more visible focus on the story versus the simulation. As we have said before, we have to build the entire simulation first and then put the narrative over that foundation, so the story has had to wait until that time. And we know that the length of time it has taken us to reach that stage is frustrating for many of you; and we completely understand! We are frustrated too!

The good news is that we are now within sight of the time which story progress can begin in earnest. Now, the only remaining issue is creating the spaces for the story to happen in, and that is why you have seen us ramp up hiring. For R20, we focused our story energies on the Tower of the Shuttered Eye. We hope that the mystery, challenge, and detail there will reflect well on how we want the whole game to be.

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. So, be sure to check out a couple of the Community Events Calendars run by our community members (via in game book or the player run websites Avatars Circle Community Events and Events of the Avatars calendar).

Without further ado, here are the R20 deliverables.

Key:

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

RELEASE 20, July 30, 2015

• Full Wipe: We are going to make some fundamental changes to item architecture that require us to do a full wipe for Release 20. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please note that if you have been waiting to melt down add-ons, this is your chance to do so as long as you do NOT login to the game once R20 goes live (which automatically claims the items and prevents melt down).
  • Wipe: As promised, we have done a complete wipe of all characters and properties. Unfortunately, this means everyone does have to start over, but as we have done before, there will be an experience bonus applied until you reach your previously attained level. Please note that social data (friends & guilds) remains intact.
  • Melt Downs: Remember, do NOT login to the game before melting down. If you login to the game BEFORE melting down, then all your items are automatically claimed and cannot be melted down.
• Combat Pets & Taming: We will expand pet functionality to include the ability to tame some creatures and have them help you in combat.
  • Taming Summary: Animals can be tamed, and then summoned to fight alongside you. Currently, only one animal can be tamed at a time, and there is a long cooldown for re-summoning. While this is current implementation, we plan on iteratively improving this feature in future releases. As such, there will likely be changes to how this feature works, including tamed animals draining your focus while they are summoned.
  • Taming Skills: There is a new Taming Skill Tree in Adventuring with four new skills. We originally planned for Taming to be part of Crafting, but since the primary use of tamed animals will be for combat, we decided to make it an Adventuring skill set, allowing skill point allocation to be balanced against other combat skills. In other words, you need to make some strategic choices if you want to use tamed animals in combat.
    • Animal Handling: Increases chance to tame animal.
    • Obedience: Reduces the health point at which a tamed animal will flee combat.
    • Combat Training: Increases combat effectiveness of a tamed animal.
    • Summoning: Reduces the cooldown after summoning a tamed animal.
  • Taming Collars & Summoning Whistles: To tame an animal, you use a Taming Collar on it. Unfortunately, you have to get pretty close to use the collar, which means the animal is most likely going to be attacking you while you are attempting to tame it. Once an animal is tamed, you can summon it with a Summoning Whistle. See crafting notes below on where to get Collars and Whistles.
  • Wolves & Bears: These are the first two animal types that can be tamed. Once we feel these are balanced and fun, we will slowly expand to more animal types.
  • Pet Hotkeys: Since tamed animals significantly expands pet functionality, we wanted to increase pet ease of use. Now, hotkeys can be designated for all pet commands.
• Encounter Revamp: Random encounters are being reworked to be more engaging experiences, not just ambush scenarios. Additionally, roving encounters (patrolling creatures) will now appear on the overworld map and can be engaged (pulling you into a scene) or avoided if you wish to sneak past.
  • New Random Encounters: We have removed all the original placeholder random encounters in Novia (except for the Battle Camps) and replaced them with five new encounters that have a wider variety of interaction (i.e. not just combat) and better playability (creatures actually running towards you and attacking). The new encounters include:
    • Highway Robbery: Human bandits ambush you!
    • Farm Animals: You stumble upon herds of domesticated animals grazing peacefully and protected by dogs.
    • Wild Herds: You disturb a herd of stags grazing along your way.
    • Rare Goods: You happen upon Shandy Chapman the wandering merchant who sells rare items to those he meets along the Perennial Trail.
    • Haunted Ruins: You are lured by tempting reagents into undead-infested ruins
    • Wolves: A pack of wolves that have been tracking you suddenly surround you!
  • Roving Encounters Delayed: Before we add this new functionality to the game, we want to produce more encounters that are interesting (versus being just annoying). We are also considering that perhaps roving encounters should be something special (dragons, gypsy wagons, etc) vs. common encounters.
• Player Owned Vendors: Players will now be able to place a Vendor on their property to sell goods.
  • Vendors Unleashed: The pledge versions of vendors are now operational in game, and can be placed anywhere on your property that a decoration can be placed (including basements). They can can be stocked with any goods and you can set the price for them. Anyone who has permissions on your lot can share the vendor with you. The larger the lot, the more vendors that can be placed. Unlike public vendors (and in game purchasable Player Vendors), Pledge Player Vendors have no fees and no time limits. In the future, we hope to expand this to include features like naming and purchase orders (so your vendor can also buy goods for you, not just sell them).
  • NPC Limits: We have added a new limit for housing that controls the number of NPCs you can have placed on your lot. This includes Vendors, House Pets, and Servants. Here are the current numbers (that we hope to increase with future optimizations):
    • Row: 1
    • Village: 2
    • Town: 3
    • City: 4
    • Keep: 5
    • Castle: 6
• Spells & Skills: We will continue to make a pass through the skill trees and add new skills, balance existing skills, and replace less useful skills.
  • Archery: Archers can now experiment with the Free Attack Mode and the requirement for Special Arrows has been removed from Ranged Skills.
  • Armor Swapping Limits: Armor swapping in combat will now take significantly more time based on the number of items swapped.
  • Focus Skills Removed: The focus skills for deck size, draw speed, number of locked glyphs, consumables in deck, and duration have been removed. These are now at the max values!
  • Locked Deck Mode Removed: And instead, players can now lock any number of glyphs and locked glyphs can be mixed freely with dynamic glyphs.
  • Skill Combos Weaving: Mixing two cards to create a new effect will now be referred to as Spell/Skill Weaving!
  • Skill Weaving with Locked Glyphs: Locked glyphs can be combined with dealt glyphs, but not vice versa.
  • No More Penalties on Locked Glyphs: The penalties on locked glyphs have been removed.
  • Locked glyph cooldown: The cooldown time on locked glyphs was split from dynamic glyphs and reduced to be more useful.
  • Free Attack Charging: The free attack system now has a variable level of charge based on weapon used. Bigger weapons will have higher charge times. Damage is increased by 33% per full bar filled! There is an optional “tick” sound to help with timing if you want to not have to take your eyes off the screen but you do want to try out charged attacks.
  • Target Indicators: Now much more subtle than the old eye-burning, immersion breaking red outline. Targets that are within your cone of attack in free attack mode will now pulse slightly. There is also now a slider in options that allows you to control how much of the target is highlighted.
  • Combat math overhaul: The to-hit and damage math was reworked for R20 to make things more deadly. Also, to-hit math for PVP was flattened out completely so level is not used in the calculation.
  • New Mini-boss: To test to see what players are capable of, a mini-boss troll was added to the south end of the Hidden Vale. Challenge him at your own peril!
  • Ammo Scavenger: Ammo scavenger was moved to tier 2. Along with changes that allow bow shots to be charged up for extra damage, this should greatly decrease the use of arrows for archers.
• Maps: We will continue to polish scenes along the Perennial Coast by converting to dynamic spawning and adding additional content like night-time spawners. We will also be adding a few new scenes; including the Crags Foothills (where players can enter the Etceter Crag Mines) and Desolate Hills.
  • Crags Foothills: Etceter Crag mines is the newest scene in the Quel region and is where players can now find the entrance to Etceter Crag Mines
  • Spectral Mountains: The Spectral Peaks that divide the Perennial Coast and Grunvald can now be explored in this scene.
  • Eastreach Gap: This newest control point (see more about Control Points below) can be found at the eastern end of the Spectral Peaks mountain chain and controls travel between the Perennial Coast and Grunvald. Zombies and Ghosts control this ruined high desert fort, so beware! You can fight your way through the gates, or try to find the rumored secret paths that allow you to drop down into the middle of the fight.
  • Etceter Crag Mines: These haunted mines were given a polish pass that includes using the new “Breakables” tech for walls (see below). There is also a new puzzle involving the anguished ghosts of deceased miners that are being tortured by a Lich.
  • Ardoris Boatmen: To provide faster travel around Ardoris, a boat service has been introduced.
  • Ardoris NPCs: New crowdsourced dialogs for all NPCs in Ardoris (except guards) have been added.
  • Tower of the Shuttered Eye: This haunted swamp to the east of Ardoris has gotten a large polish pass, including dynamic spawns and nighttime spawners. Additionally, there is now an entire quest line devoted to the inside of the Tower itself, and the completion of a quest of intrigue and mystery involving the rulers of Ardoris. Solving the riddle will take as much intellect as it will brawn, as you must also defeat the undead hordes infesting this Obsidian tower.
  • Banners on Overworld: Going forward only adventure scenes or scenes that have story elements will have banners over them.
  • Desolate Hills delayed: We wanted to spend more time polishing the Tower of the Shuttered Eye, so this scene will now go live in Release 21.
• Player Owned Towns: We will launch our island template and the first city using that template will be the Duchy of Dara Brae.
  • Island Template 1: Island Template 1 is the first new Player Owned Town template not based on the original PaxLair template. It is a temperate, forested, yet rocky biome. It is built to support a dense grid, as well as a more spread-out, naturalist layout.
  • Duchy of Dara Brae: Duchy of Dara Brae is the first Player Owned Town to use the Island Template and can be found in Spindrift Bay.
  • Dynamic Lot Placement Tool: As we have been building out Player Owned Towns, we have gotten a lot of very valuable feedback from you that static lot placement was limiting the flexibility of these towns, especially if the needs of the owners’ and tenants’ changed. For instance, if you had a tenant upgrade to a larger lot, but all your lots were already allocated, you would have no recourse. We also heard how much you all wanted to make personalized tweaks to lot layout—for instance, how close row lots were to each other. So in R20, we decided to experiment with creating a new tool for town owners (and stewards) which would allow them to place lots dynamically (providing there is a big enough flat area). Once a lot is placed, everything works exactly as it always has regarding permissions, decorations, etc. Only lots can be placed for now, but we hope to expand this over the next several releases to include NPC Buildings, NPCs, and other “town” decorations (trees, signs, street lights, cache chests etc.). The dynamic lot placement tool still remains a bit of an experiment, but pending your feedback in Release 20, we think this could grow to be a great way for Player Owned Towns to express their individuality and flexibility.
  • 113 New Player Owned Towns: At the end of June we pulled data from all the submission forms. If you had completed payment up to at least Holdfast level, entered a name/location/biome, and were connected to the Overworld (or if you were connected to a hub PoT also being placed), we added your Town to Novia as a blank template map with dynamic lot placement based on the information we had at that time. We did not use ANY other criteria for making this list. Please note that “blank template” means there is currently nothing on the map other than a town crier/banker (no NPC buildings, no music, no NPCs, etc.). If you changed your template since the end of June, those changes will NOT be reflected in R20. If we did not have a biome for your request available yet (i.e. Mountain, Grasslands, or Underground), we defaulted to Forest01 until such time as a template with your biome comes online. Please be patient as we work our way through making templates, and variations, for all of the available biomes. Please note that all names, locations and connections should be considered approximations and are subject to change in future releases at our discretion and/or your request. Please do not submit support tickets or post bugs in the forums about the name, location, connection, etc. Just update the information in your form. When we do a pass through PoT’s in a future release, we will attempt to make any changes requested. There is a chance that not every PoT on this list will make release in the morning but they should all be present before the weekend. Here is the complete list of all the new Player Owned Towns appearing in R20:
    
• Creatures: We intend to introduce the Troll as our first very large creature, and we hope to make the combat experience much different than would be found with normal sized opponents.
  • Troll-ing: Our very first very large creature is alive and angry. In addition to presenting a major challenge to fight (finally!), it has pushed along a lot of cool new features, including turning animation support, head and body tracking, and 180° attacks that allow large creatures to spin completely around to get at attackers trying to stay behind them. The Troll has a set of viciously powerful skills at his disposal; many of which knock you down and/or backwards. Even his death generates damage if you are too close to his gigantic, falling body. You can find Trolls in Vertas Pass, The Ruined Keep (formerly known as Obsidian Keep), and the Ravensmoor dungeon entrance. Please keep in mind this is an early work in progress, and we still have some large issues to solve over the next few releases (sorting, blending the tracking with other animations, big weapons, vfx, etc.) as we head towards even bigger creatures like the Dragon.
  • Coyotes: Deserts now have their own canids to chew away at you poor avatars. While there were wolves labeled as coyotes in previous releases, R20 is the first release where they actually look like coyotes.
• Crafting: Tailors and Alchemists will be able to begin crafting Taming Collars. Additionally, weapons and shields will now display material colors from crafting.
  • Taming Collars & Summoning Whistles: You can now use Tailoring to work leather into collars that can be enchanted Alchemically with silver wire to make the Taming Collars required to tame animals. You can also make Summoning Whistles using Carpentry and enchanted Alchemically with silver can also be crafted. Note that these items can only be obtained through crafting, and R20 marks a big push for us to start moving more finished goods away from the NPC merchants and into the player economy.
  • Material Colors for Weapons & Shields: As we did with armor last release, we have begun making all craftable weapons display the color of the materials used during the crafting process. For R20, this works for all of the craftable weapons except bows, shields, and wands.
  • Gold & Silver Ore: More resource nodes now provide gold and silver ores.
  • Blank Book Recipe: You can now use Tailoring to make blank books using paper made by Milling.
  • Decoration Recipes: As mentioned above, we are in the process of moving more finished goods into recipes and off NPC merchants. The following items can now only be obtained via crafting:
    • Maze Walls
    • Maze Hedges
    • Rough Wood Pavers
    • Rough Stone Pavers
    • Rough Wood Fences
    • Rough Stone Fences
• Player Made Books: This feature will continue to expand with the addition of Printing (making copies of books) as well as the ability to use Player Made Books as decorations.
  • Printing: You can now make copies of books using Printing Presses by inserting a player made book and blank books equal to the number of desired copies. Note that the Magical Printing Press does not yet have a magical bonus.
  • Book Decorations: Player Made Books can finally be placed as decorations in player homes.
  • In Game Writing UI: You can now write in books and letters inside the game, not just using an outside tool.
  • Runic Font: Books can now be written in Runic. Lord British personally looks forward to reading some of your runic works!
• Control Points: Control Points got a major overhaul in Release 20, and they finally block movement across the Overworld. When you come to a control point, you must enter the scene and get past the fortifications in order to get to the other side. In future releases, we plan to continue expanding functionality for control points to include things like NPCs (merchants, quest givers, etc.) that only appear when players are in control of the area, and mercenary waves that can be hired to help assault the gates. In R20, we also added the following:
  • Directionality of Entry/Exit: Which side you arrive in uses the new directional Entry/Exit feature that allows us to know which direction you entered a scene from. Over time we will propagate this to other scenes as well.
  • Gates: Control Point gates must be forced open from the outside by attacking them (in the future we hope to have siege weapons to help with this). The gates can be opened and closed normally once inside.
  • High End Resources: Control Points now have very high end and high yield resource nodes concentrated around the fortifications.
  • Side Paths: All control points will have ways around a full frontal assault. The current control points have the following alternatives now:
    • Brightbone Pass: Mages on either side will teleport you across, for a price.
    • Vertas Pass: There is a side path around the keep, but it is rumored that a mountain Troll eats those unwise enough to try this direction.
    • Eastreach Gap: As with Brightbone Pass, mages on either side will teleport you across, for a price. However, the drop down path is rumored to allow canny adventurers a way to drop in to the ruined fort from above and surprise the undead.
• Quest Turn-In Interface: When turning in items for a quest you have completed, there is now a user interface that can be used instead of having the item automatically pulled from your inventory. We have implemented this for the Grand Tour quest this month, and a few other quests, and will migrate all quests to this system going forward.
• Breakables Improvements: The tech supporting breakables (walls, crates, barrels, gates, doors, etc.) has expanded to include timers, difficulty, and tool requirements. In many ways, they now resemble resource nodes.
• Wearables: In addition to getting material colors to appear on weapons and shields, we added a few new wearables including the following:
  • New Augmented Leather
  • “New” Basic Leather: We deleted the old basic leather and replaced it with the old Augmented Leather (hence the quotes around “new”).
  • Kobold Mask Variations: Can be found in the Add-On Store.
• Books: All books are now filled with content in the game. There should no longer be any books that are simply props.
• Swaying Signs & Lanterns: Hanging signs and lanterns now sway in the wind and sway a little more when interacted with. When weather comes online, you will see high winds make them swing even more! Ultima fans may remember this type of little detail that set Ultima apart from the other CRPGs of the time. We are as devoted to this type of detailing now as we were then!
• Overworld: Novia is now completely opened, with all parts of the map accessible. We also made roads much clearer and added lights along the roads and at points of interest (towns, dungeons, etc.).
• Emote + Text Combos: We have added a long requested feature, especially from people wanting to act out plays in-game, where avatars can use the new /em command to construct their own emote/text combinations, and also embed animations into those emotes (or regular chat) via percent escape codes such as %point% or %dance%.
• Emoting while Sitting: You can finally simultaneously use emotes while sitting!
• Daily Experience Bonus: Each day, players will get a slight bonus to experience gain for a certain amount of experience.
• Player Housing: We polished and overhauled some existing homes as well as adding new homes and new decorations (many are available in the Add-on Store).
  • Towers renovated: The white Village and Town Towers were greatly renovated to grant access to every floor of every tower as well as the parapets. This greatly increased the number of floors and decoratable areas. The Town Tower for instance now has 6 new rooms!
  • Obsidian Towers: There are now two towers built using the Obsidian architecture (that looks suspiciously similar to the Tower of the Shuttered Eye). These are the tallest structures that can be placed on these lots. In fact, the Town size is as tall as the parapets on the Lord of the Manor Keep, which previously held the record for the tallest player home.
  • 1 Story Basements: These are now available for purchase inside the game from Home merchants.
  • Trees: There are now 6 different species of tree in 4 different sizes that can be placed on your lot including; White Oaks, Common Lindens, Yellow Cedars, Common Aspens, Fountain Palms and Blue Spruces.
  • Plants: There are now 5 different plants in 3 different sizes that can be placed on your lot including; Azalea bushes, Black Elder bushes, and Saguaro Cacti (3 variations).
  • Backer Era Lot Deeds: Lot deeds are now based on backer era and Founder/Royal Founder Lot Deeds are now required to claim water lots (they still work fine on land lots, too).
  • Battle Banner: The control point flag is now a placeable decoration that, when used, will change flag/color just like at control points. Unfortunately, it does not summon a horde of enemies (at least not yet).
  • Adobe Homes: We made a pass through the Adobe Homes we added last release to add the following:
    • Doors to connect non-connected rooms.
    • Ladders to get more roof access.
    • Interior lights.
    • Back door for the keep.
  • Stucco Row Houses: We made a pass through these to add interior lights and fireplaces.
  • Fountains: There are now two smaller fountains.
  • Large Object Placement Bug: The bug that was preventing placement of large objects (ex. Greenhouse) on some lots with specific rotation is now fixed!
  • Wood & Plaster Two-Story w/Balcony (village): Now has a fireplace.
  • Wooden Outhouse: After much demand we have finally provided you a place to do your business.
• Grand Tour 20: As with each release, we will have a Grand Tour. Instead of sending you to new scenes this month we are using the new quest turn-in UI to have players collect materials for the Master of Hats so he can restart the production lines. Completing this quest is the ONLY way to gain a rare reward. The hat for this release is a Chaperon (proper name for the Middle Ages “donut” hat) that we hope you will all enjoy.

So, now that it is clear what you can expect, we should also be as clear about what you should not expect:

• Performance: We have only done rudimentary optimizations, and we do not yet have a full suite of performance fallbacks (LODs, etc.). This means the game will be quite slow on older machines, and due to memory usage, and might be unstable in certain conditions (like densely decorated areas). With each release, we will be doing further optimizations and adding to our fallbacks to improve performance.
• Crafting: The crafting system is in the game as a framework, but is still missing some key components like Refining Skills, Production Skills, and quality levels for tools/crafting tables.
• Game Loop: Release 20 is a further iteration on our rudimentary game loop, but is still missing some key components like Crafting Skills for Refining and Production. Expect this to expand with each subsequent release, but it won’t be truly complete until we hit Beta later this year.
• Advanced Player Housing: There are some advanced features for player housing, including advanced permissions (ex. renting), guild housing and ceiling decorations that are not yet integrated. Expect to see these appear in future releases.
• Visual Quality: Efforts to improve visual quality are ongoing. We will continue to iterate on these until we have highly competitive visuals.
• Pledge Rewards: Pledge Rewards that have been built and have tech to support them are in the game; all other rewards are awaiting either content creation or tech support (ex. vendors).
• Persistence: As part of development, we will need to periodically wipe data including characters, property, etc. As we near official launch the frequency should decrease, but there will definitely be a wipe right before launch. So consider everything gained during early access temporary.

Here are links to instructions and known issues. Thank you again for your continued support. This is truly the most amazing community we have ever worked with, and we are proud to be on this journey with you.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
aka Darkstarr
Executive Producer

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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 20!

If you have not backed the game yet, you will need to register and login at www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the “Pledge or Send Gift!” button in the right side-bar, and purchase a pledge at the $45 Adventurer level or above. The basic Adventurer level pledge is also available on Steam Early Access.

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Release 20 Player Instructions

Release 20 Known Issues

Patch Notes