You are invited to another historical album premiere inside the realm of Shroud of the Avatar! Rolling Stone lists Shooter Jennings’ latest album: “Shooter”, which releases on August 10, as one of the most anticipated albums of 2018!

For his latest album, the follow-up to his adventurous tribute to Giorgio Moroder, Countach (For Giorgio), country-rock-electronica mad scientist Shooter Jennings looked to his outlaw lineage, cutting an album of stripped-down classic country in the vein of his dad Waylon and one of his heroes, Hank Williams Jr. He also returned to where it all began, re-teaming with Dave Cobb, who produced Jennings’ 2005 debut, Put the ‘O’ Back in Country – the first album the Grammy-winning Cobb ever produced too. Simply titled Shooter, the LP will be released sometime this year via Cobb’s Low Country Sound imprint on Elektra. Says Jennings, “It’s the most country album I’ve ever done.” J.H.

The event will kickoff through a series of quests that will appear in Release 56 which goes live on Thursday July 26. The quests will lead to the party at 7:00 PM CDT on July 31st inside Shroud of the Avatar, in the Player Owned Town of Ordinis Mortis. The first players to collect the clues and finish the quest will receive prizes from Shooter himself! Those prizes will include exclusive items with Shooter’s heraldry in the game (armor, brewing casks, etc), wax cylinders with songs from Shooter’s new album, and framed art of Shooter’s heraldry that they can decorate their home with. There will be a variety of festivities at the party, including a listening of the album through Avatar’s Radio hosted by DJ Darkstarr who will also DJ a dance party!

PRIZE UPDATE: To receive a prize you need to find the real shooter at the party, whisper him the secret phrase, have a subsequent brief chat, and then he will initiate a trade with you if he is satisfied with the discussion.

DIRECTIONS UPDATE: 

• Ordinis Mortis is one of the POTs clustered directly south of Brittany in North Central Novia: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/map//?map_id=1&poi_id=3997&openPopup=true&z=5
• Once you enter Ordinis Mortis
• The main entrance is “Central” on the sign post and the Bridge
• Head to the WEST side of the Bridge toward the Red Wagon.
• Make a LEFT to the south along the river toward the Hot Air Balloon.
• Follow the path of dead trees and lights.
• The basement hatch is in the crypt in the backyard

Read more…

We had an amazing Release 55 Monthly Livestream on July 6, just two short days after Lord British’s birthday! We raised an amazing $54,500 by the time we got to midnight and we got all the way to the Lord British Pavers stretchgoal! We were also able to give a nice sneak peek into Episode 2. However we have more to reveal about Episode 2 and Lord British really, really wants more items in his theme (not that he is jealous of how many Darkstarr items there are…). So we decided to have a Part 2 of our Release 55 Livestream!

We plan to go deeper on some of the Episode 2 features we discussed in the first livestream, like Item Affinity, but we also plan to tease some new information too! One of the new features we plan to discuss is a set of new building tools including dungeon creation (player property) and defense building (player property, castle defenses and control points). These are part of a larger effort to increase the community’s ability to craft their own adventures that includes existing tools like notes and signs but is also expanding with other new features like advanced container settings (locks, place/take settings, etc.) along with craftable/purhasable/placeable traps and spawners (spider eggs, skeleton crypts, etc.). When you put all of these things together your ability to craft adventures will be limited only by your imagination!

Last livestream we also did not get a chance to talk another cool thing coming for Episode 2 which is the ability to “un-nest” and/or transfer your Player Owned Town into the new lands! The time is nigh to start reserving your slots on the surface of the new lands beyond Novia! Lord British himself is doing that as well! His very own Lord British’s Castle will be on the new Serpent Archipelago.

All Avatars from around the world are welcome to join us in the livestream activities. We will be continuing the deep dives, answering questions, having sales, handing out prizes, and tracking towards stretch goals. In honor of our sovereign’s recent day of birth, this event’s stretch goals remain Lord British themed and we will be picking up where we left off so the next goal will be the Lord British Round Table!

LIVESTREAM SCHEDULE (Central Time Zone)

Monthly livestreams are on Twitch and include answers to your gameplay questions, world building tours, prize giveaways, sales on items, and more! Here is the schedule:

• 3PM: Introductions
• 3:30PM: Deep Dive 1: Episode 2 Sneak Peek Part 2!
• 4:30PM: Q&A
• 5:30PM: Deep Dive 2: Housing & Decoration System
• 6:30PM: Q&A
• 7PM: Ending Announcements

Read more…

Another content packed weekly Community Livestream is this Friday at 4pm CT on Twitch!

Our weekly livestream in April where we showed off the music system was very popular so we are doing it again this week with even more details to show off! Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski will be on to play some instruments and walk you through how you can create sheet music by converting MIDI to ABC files, how music can be acquired from other players, how to use the radios and phonographs, how to use emotes to dance along with the music, and how to get your pets to dance too!

Watch on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT! Also join the community’s Discord chat to ask questions about what’s presented:

Read more…

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, we intend to publish quarterly schedule updates detailing our monthly releases and those monthly releases will continue just as before, on the last Thursday of each month. Even though the goals outlined in these schedules are likely to change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to periodically provide you with an updated roadmap.

Our priority continues to be to deliver new content to our players regularly, so that you can give us feedback that will help us iteratively improve Shroud of the Avatar. This collaborative process continues to benefit the game, and often results in sweeping changes such as the recent balance passes to combat. As you have seen in previous releases, the flexibility inherent to this process means that we sometimes push things out, but we also often pull new things in. Read more…

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Avatars,

Please read this entire message, as well as the linked Player Guide and Known Issues.

Release 55 is our third release since launching out of Early Access. As promised, we are continuing our cadence of monthly releases, just as before. Release 55 of Shroud of the Avatar goes live this Thursday, June 28, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 55 is the third, and final, release in which we focused on the current iteration of our Top 10 Priorities (from Q2 2018 post). We were able to address most of the items on that list in some fashion. We made strong progress on performance, physical goods, improved reward cycle, user interface polish, player direction and story polish. We will be spending more time on enemy behaviors and repeatable content in the next release and in Q3. Read more…

Another content packed Community Livestream is coming this Friday! We will be kicking off the livestream with news from Starr “Darkstarr” Long and special guest Chris “Atos” Spears. Then Brandon “Bzus” Cotton, Joaquin “Wizardsmoke” Del Canto, and Sarah “Serafina” Dworken will be on to show off the new Brewing system that is going live in Release 55!

Watch on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT! Also join the community’s Discord chat to ask questions about what’s presented:

PRIZE UPDATE: Enter for a chance to win a signed cloth map by either logging into the game and typing “Happy birthday LB” into chat OR by purchasing any item from our store during the livestream!

Are You a Livestreamer?

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