Updates

Avatar’s Update #252: New Low-level Mines!

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

Game Development

News Announcements

Community Updates

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…


Release 47 Postmortem Telethon

** $60,000 **

Telethon Funds Raised

Telethon Stretch Goal Rewards:

  • ACHIEVED! $10K: Snowflake Pattern Cloak
  • ACHIEVED! $25K: Big Silver Fur Hat
  • ACHIEVED! $35K: Winter Pattern Stained Glass Oil Table Lamp (3 Pack)
  • ACHIEVED! $50K: Ice Staff & Ice Bow
  • $65K: Ice Elemental Statue with icy effects
  • $80K: Ice Dragon Statue with icy effects

LIVESTREAM SCHEDULE (Central Time Zone)

Telethons are livestreamed on Twitch and include answers to your gameplay questions, world building tours, prize giveaways, sales on items, and more! See what we have planned below beginning at 3:00 PM CT on November 3:

  • 3:00 PM: Introductions
  • 3:30 PM: Postmortem Q&A
  • 4:30 PM: World Building Tour
  • 5:30 PM: Postmortem Q&A Continues
  • 7:00 PM: End of Telethon!

Read more…



Russian Version Launch Sale Week 1: Wearables and Property Deeds

In honor of our Black Sun partner launching the Russian version of Shroud today we are coordinating a three week long series of sales that represent some of our biggest sales with some of our deepest discounts ever!

Tune in each Friday to find out what will be on sale. Week 1 (November 3 – November 9) is all of our Wearable items and all Property Deeds!

See below this week’s sales…

Read more…


Avatar’s Update #251: Play Release 47 Now!

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

Game Development

News Announcements

Community Updates

Play Release 47 Now!

Release 47 successfully launched yesterday, October 26, 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…


The Making of the Oracle Temple [SPOILERS!]

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Michael “Hutch” Hutchison]

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains spoilers for the Oracle Temple scene that is the story climax of Episode 1…

Hello All,

With R47, we have finished the art requirements for the climactic Oracle Temple scene! When I stopped to consider the long road leading up to this point, I was struck by how this scene, perhaps more than any other single scene in the game, involved contributions from nearly every member of the Shroud team, either directly or indirectly. It is also a great example of how our iterative process worked to build one thing upon another.

Like anything else it all started with an idea. In this case, it was Richard’s initial idea that was the creative spark, and what followed was a process of evolution over years, as ideas changed, and grew, and became fully formed. Development of the objects, characters, and story followed a sequence of connected tasks, each one informing the next. Over time, it was this deliberate process that built all the smaller parts that contributed to the cohesive whole.

The importance of the Oracle becomes evident from the very first moments of the game, when you meet her in the Confirmatory on the Isle of Storms. That’s part of what makes the Oracle so special – she is there when you start the game, is present throughout your progress, and is there when you ultimately reach the story climax. But long before the Confirmatory was included on the Isle of Storms map in Release 31, the Oracle had already undergone several iterations.

Early Development

Everything started, of course, with Lord British himself. During the initial development of what became Shroud of the Avatar, Richard worked directly with concept artists (beginning very early with Scott Jones and then a bit later with Stephen Daniele) to develop the look of the Oracle architecture, her Watchers, and the Oracle herself.

Early Oracle design as seen in concept art…

…and with the 2013 statue head decoration

While the initial glimpse of the Oracle came in December of 2013 with the Oracle Statue Head (made by former team member Jay Reichman), it would prove to be merely a teaser of what was to come…

Read more…


Community Livestream – Reaper Rampage!

Get ready Avatars, it’s Release Week here on Friday’s Community Livestream! We haven’t really shown the Reaper before, which was introduced back in Release 46, so Dan and Keith will be leading the tour of all the scenes that Reaper can be found in (well, not all of them…).

And as usual we will be giving away more prizes (this time of the new Release 47 items), so stick around throughout the livestream for a chance to win!

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask questions about what’s presented:


Make a Difference Expansions

In accordance with Portalarium’s founding purpose to promote goodwill and make a positive difference in the world, we are excited to add more “Make a Difference” charity items to our store as a channel through which our community of backers can contribute to causes that they support.

In Release 47, we are adding a Kobold Indoor Toilet for Water.org’s International Toilet Day, as well as a whole suite of hospital themed items to support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and Doctors Without Borders just in time for the Extra Life Streamathon on November 4.

In the giving spirit of the holidays we have also expanded the Make a Difference concept outside the confines of the Make a Difference Store and now over 90 items in the Add-On Store are also tagged to share revenue with charities. Just look for the virtue symbol! In total Release 47 represents an expansion of over 100 items that will Make a Difference.
Read more…


Release 47 Instructions

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

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 47 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, October 26, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 47 is the second release in which we focused on our Top 10 Priorities for Launch. We continued to make strong progress on load time reductions, story polish, and scene rebuilding. We also created more side quests and tons of other new content, including a whole new set of Make a Difference items. Read more…


Avatar’s Update #250: SotAMap Now Under Official Development!

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

Game Development

News Announcements

Community Updates

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…