Greetings Fellow Avatars!

The Catnip Games development team now brings the players of Shroud of the Avatar another round of new content and improvements. For Release 93 (R93), two new adventure scenes have been added to the game, Jotungrund and The Outlaws’ Run! 12 new potions and potion recipes have arrived! 2 new artifacts! New quests! MANY new craftable items, and a long list of UI improvements and bug fixes are also live as of R93. Check out the update below! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• New Adventure Scene: Jotungrund!
• New Adventure Scene: The Outlaws’ Run
• Release 93 Patch Notes!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Labor Day Sales Event!
• Crown Store: Planting Areas, Tents, Virtue Recalibration Kits, Time Machines & More!
• September Login Reward: Wizard’s Wand!
• Release 93 Subscriber Login Rewards: Wizard’s Hat, Kopis Sword, & Backpack!
• New Bug Brigade’s 1st Anniversary Party!
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

New Adventure Scene: Jotungrund!

Jotungrund, an enormous new Tier 14 adventure scene in Mistrendur which is only available to Episode 2 access holders, has been discovered! As the development team works to deliver more and more Episode 2 content, Mistrendur has become a popular hunting grounds to many adventurers of New Britannia, and this icy scene is likely to be a favorite amongst them. Packed with new content, concepts, and loot, players will have much to do in this frigid wasteland…

“Far to the northeast of Mistrendur awaits the vast icy wasteland known as Jotungrund, the Plain of Giants. Large packs of oversized wolves, hidden enclaves of fearsome barbarians, and furious “ice devil” hazards are mere distractions for the hardiest avatars. Make sure to bring your friends before you climb to the battlefield dominated by the most fearsome threat in New Britannia: a storm-wielding Frost Giant!”

The Frost Giants of Jotungrund utilize an entirely new character model with amazing new animations and special attacks with ominous VFX befitting their grandeur and prowess in combat. Their sheer size alone would frighten off most adventurers of New Britannia, but YOU are the Avatar! Will you dare to test your mettle against such a threat?

There are other challenges within Jotungrund, for those willing. Seek out the friendly inhabitants of these lands and lend them your sword arm. Obtain rare artifacts and other treasures! Horde precious raw materials to utilize at your crafting stations, such as Pure Elemental Ice which is a common material for the new player-crafted invisible walls and walkways! But what else can one obtain within these icy reaches of Mistrendur?

The common version of a new artifact known as the Ice Hammer of Jotungrund has a small chance to drop from the barbarians in Jotungrund. Players completing the first iteration and daily version of Hisa’s “signal fire” quest can also receive a common version of this artifact. This upgradeable artifact scales between Common to Epic tiers and offers varying bonuses to Ice Arrow damage. A new imbued gem can be salvaged from all tiers of this artifact at varying chances, which provides an Ice Arrow Damage bonus to items accepting imbued gems. Players can also salvage all tiers of this artifact to receive a pattern which can be applied to other two-handed bludgeon weapons.

A new artifact known as the Frost Giant’s Eye can be looted from the Frost Giants in Jotungrund. Every giant will drop at least a Common version, and this artifact, which is upgradeable and scales between Common to Epic tiers, offers bonuses to Water Attunement, Ice Field Damage, and Ice Field Radius. Also, a new imbued gem can be salvaged from these artifacts at varying chances, which provides Ice Field Damage and Ice Field Radius bonuses to items accepting imbued gems. An additional stat will be added during R93 which allows wielders of this artifact or items socketed with the related imbued gem to apply a frost resistance debuff to their combat targets.

The Frost Giant Skull has a small chance to drop as loot from a Frost Giant, which offers those with “peculiar tastes” to decorate their home or Player-Owned Town (POT) with this sinister decoration.

The Frost Giants in Jotungrund also have a small chance to drop either a Frost Giant’s Hammer Fragment (Head) or Frost Giant’s Hammer Fragment (Handle) which can be used in a high level carpentry recipe to form the Frost Giant’s Hammer Trophy. The recipe also has a small chance to drop from the Frost Giants in Jotungrund.

The Frost Giants also drop various fragments of their giant helmet when slain. These fragments can be utilized to to rebuild a Frost Giant’s Helm decoration as a trophy to place in your POT or property. Upon the first completion of Hisa’s “signal fire” daily quest, you will receive the recipe for rebuilding this helmet.

We hope you enjoy this latest addition to Episode 2 content. So many more scenes are coming to the lands of Mistrendur, and as they’re added, the story of this new continent will continue to unfold. More quests, more challenges, and more rewards are inbound, so stay tuned and keep your blades sharpened!

New Adventure Scene: The Outlaws’ Run

The Outlaws’ Run is an additional new Tier 8 adventure scene added as R93 content, which is also only available to Episode 2 access holders. This densely wooded area is loaded with nooks and crannies to explore and dangers to face, for much is hidden from view under the thick canopy of the forest. Bandits abound! New quests aplenty! Will you dare to explore The Outlaws’ Run and claim the treasures therein?

“For years, merchant caravans of Mistrendur’s central island risked using a wilderness shortcut known as The Outlaws’ Run. Recently, the criminals dominating these woods have become bolder and more aggressive, robbing caravans, destroying one of the two local waystations, and even kidnapping a handful of travelers! Unable to venture too far from the road for fear of lawless bandits, vicious wildlife, the deadly Ancient Druid that haunts the nearby groves, or getting lost in the ever-shifting hedge maze that is rumored to surround a secret outlaw village, desperate caravanners are relying on the avatar to conquer these threats before their livelihoods are destroyed forever!”

Hidden throughout this bandit-ridden territory, much treasure is rumored to exist, but will you survive long enough to discover these riches? Four of the 12 new potion recipes are rumored to exist in the hands of the denizens here, but will you be able to wrest these papers from their dying grip? Or will you become lost in these woods, never to be seen again?

Release 93 Patch Notes!

Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 93 (R93) in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R93 is a content, improvement and bug fixes month. Polish, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R94 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 93!

Crafting, Decoration, & Inventory Item Changes:

• All 27 varieties of regular agriculture plants now have a small chance to also yield a decorative version of the plant during an optimal harvest. The chances for the new plant decorations to drop vary slightly between plant types, but none are greater than 5% and none lower than 1%. These new plant variations can be placed on any ground surface to include the ground in Player-Owned Towns. Each plant features 2 versions, one regular and one mature, providing a total of 54 additional plant decorations. All supply bundles (and therefore Storehouse Containers) also feature a chance to drop these new plant decorations, with chances varying between bundle type. The “Ancient Druid” enemy which sometimes appears in Outlaw’s run, has a 100% chance to drop one of these 54 plant decorations upon every kill. In future releases, the ability to salvage these decorative plants for crafting materials and spell reagents will be introduced.
• 3 new Aether versions of the Potions of Acumen, Deftness, and Might and their recipes have been added to the game. The original versions of these potions have also been altered to behave in a fashion related to these new Aether versions. Each type exists in its own channel. For instance, only 1 Acumen potion can be imbibed, whether it is an old version or a new Aether version. Each Acumen, Deftness and Might potion scales with adventurer level, and each also features a small penalty to the other primary stats. Recipes for the new Aether potions can be found in these locations:
  • Potion of Acumen, Aether: Satyr Mages in the Tartarus maze.
  • Potion of Deftness, Aether: Bandits in The Outlaws’ Run.
  • Potion of Might, Aether: Goruk in Ruined Keep.
• 9 Potions of Magic Mastery and their recipes have been added to the game, one for each school of magic. These potions provide a bonus to each school’s mastery ability, and the bonuses scale with adventurer level and your specialization ability. Only one Mastery potion can be taken at any given time as they all share the same channel. Recipes for the Magic Mastery Potions can be found in these locations:
  • Potion of the Master Air Mage: Suutak in Aldur.
  • Potion of the Master Chaos Mage: Tharsis Vrul in Solania Catacombs.
  • Potion of the Master Death Mage: Elrin Nayer in Despair.
  • Potion of the Master Earth Mage: The druid in The Outlaw’s Run.
  • Potion of the Master Fire Mage: Xavara and Tier 15 Fire Elementals.
  • Potion of the Master Life Mage: The druid in The Outlaw’s Run.
  • Potion of the Master Moon Mage: Wisps in The Outlaw’s Run.
  • Potion of the Master Sun Mage: The Phoenix in Rhun Ruins or Wynton’s Folly.
  • Potion of the Master Water Mage: The Frost Giants in Jotungrund.
• A Withered Flesh Flayer Baby has a small chance to drop from Flesh Flayers in all scenes available, which are primarily located in PvP Shardfalls. Supply Bundles and the new druid NPC in The Outlaws’ Run also have a chance to drop a Withered Flesh Flayer Baby. This withered plant can be placed as a decoration, or players can utilize a recipe to revitalize the withered plant. The revitalization recipe can be found in the loot of the three elf mages in the small room just southwest of the Flesh Flayers in The Rise. When all the ingredients for the recipe are found, players can then craft a Revitalized Flesh Flayer Baby using an alchemical and magical procedure at their alchemy crafting station.
• Two new craftable decorations and their recipes have been added to the game to provide bulletin board or mounting board concepts to player-decorated walls. The recipes for the very rustic looking Wall Board (Square) and Wall Board (Rectangular) are now available on the decoration merchant above the bank in Central Brittany. Many wall decorations such as bulletin board flyers can be placed on these items.
• The Small Canvas Tent recipe has been added to the game and is available on the decorations merchant above the bank in Etceter.
• The Small Kobold Tent and the Triangle Kobold Tent recipes have been added to the game which have small chances to drop from the kobolds in Greymark Forest.
• Property deeds have been renamed to better indicate their functionality as well as to improve sorting results in inventories. Also, the tooltip descriptions have been revamped to better describe their functionality and how to perform an upgrade. No-trade deeds now clearly indicate that they are no-trade in their display names and tooltip descriptions, which also is indicated in the upgrade context menu if listed.
• All fishing bait now includes “(Bait)” at the end of each nomenclature to improve inventory search/filtering capabilities.
• All backpacks can now be placed as POT decorations.
• The Aether Vibration Amplifier Backpack can no longer be rotated along the additional axis, nor can it be placed onto walls as of this update.
• Newly-crafted Large Pots and Cleavers in the two kitchen utensil set recipes now feature 50 extra durability since exceptionals no longer provide 50 durability.
• Recipes using Pecan Nuts no longer require nearly as many nuts as before.
• Salvaging mundane items such as beakers, test tubes, flasks, and jars now provide a little more quartz per attempt.
• Zinc has some chance to be obtained by salvaging mundane items which appear to have metal parts.
• Fixed the issue with exceptional ranged weapons not getting exceptional modifier.
• Fixed the issue with leather belt masterwork attempts using the cloth armor masterwork skill. Now masterworking these leather belts properly uses leather armor masterwork skill.
• Fixed the issue with color deviations in dragon masks after being patterned.
• Fixed the visuals on the Jar of Oil and Jar of Vinegar items.
• Fixed the jar decorations so they can properly stack.
• Emotes and recipes can once again be traded properly.
• Empty Flask and Empty Flask, Hardened items now actually appear as empty when placed as a decoration.
• Fixed an issue with books not displaying the correct name in the tooltip when switching from runic to normal text.
• Applying the patterns from The Shard of Night, the Xen Penetrator, or the Halberd of the Sun no longer include the tier of the artifact in the patterned item’s name.
• Merchants with the same wares as Emily from Owl’s Head will no longer display two separate stacks of torches for sale.
• The artifact upgrade recipes for the Two-Handed Sword of Elf Slaying, the Two-Handed Mace of Elemental Slaying, and the Wand of Wild Lightning now also reflect the new names recently applied to these artifacts.
• The recipe for the Round Rug (Royal) has been renamed to “Recipe: Oval Rug (Royal)” to match the item it creates.
• The Skull Mask no longer allows attempts at applying dye. The visuals for this item were never designed for dyes, but dye application was inadvertently enabled for this item.
• The Fancy Ice Box can now be traded.
• The New Water Lanterns can now be placed as POT decorations.
• Adjusted many chandelier decorations to allow for exterior ceiling and POT placement.
• The Isabelline Stone 2-Tier Outdoor Fountain and the Cinereous Stone 2-Tier Outdoor Pedestal Fountain can now be placed on other decoration items which accept other decorations as child objects such as castle walls or building blocks
• Adjusted all the Xenossian shields to be placeable as POT decoration.
• The Ancient Xenossian Bracers eternal pattern now functions and can be applied to hand slot items.
• The ground and hanging versions of the Dunkleosteus trophies will now scale based upon the size of the lava fish.
• The Heraldry Heart Shield can now be placed on exterior wall surfaces.

Combat & Skill Changes:

• Creatures throughout all of Novia now have improved hearing and can detect players behind them up to 12 meters away instead of 6 meters.
• The base weapon skills in the Ranged Combat, Polearms, Bludgeon, and Blades skill trees were not being applied to special attack calculations for almost all active weapon skills. This has been fixed.
• The Spinning Attack polearm skill will now be able to critically hit and also include polearm specific bonuses.
• The combo Icy Puncture’s range should now scale with the player’s polearm Reach skill.
• Ice Fist’s range was utilizing fire range as an additional modifier, which has been removed.
• The “Gust Chance” buff provided by the Ring of Air artifact or items socketed with the Imbued Jewel of Gust now correctly applies to the player’s character.
• Flaming Bash and Shield Smash buff descriptions now show properly on the icon tooltip in the buff window if active.
• Icefield damage now utilizes the correct damage bonus stat. Previously it was using the Meteor Shower damage bonus.
• Melody of Mending and Atonal Aria now display the proper icon in the active buff bar instead of Ice Field’s icon.

User Interface, Lua, & Performance Changes:

• Added a pet version of the character sheet which features many pet statistics for your summoned and tamed pets. Simply right-click the nameplate or the pet to reveal the context menu, then select the “examine” option. The sheet also features 3 equipment slots which will be utilized by upcoming pet gear items to be revealed in future releases.
• A new feature has been added which allows players to right-click the gear item to select repair options. The appropriate repair tool must be in the player’s inventory.
• A performance pass was made on many UI elements and NPCs to improve frame rate for scenes with high numbers of creatures.
• The following items were added to the character sheet which appears when examining another player:
  • Second ring slot.
  • Extended character stats.
  • Show “more” character stats button and functionality.
• The Looking For Group window now indicates the time the party was formed.
• Critical chance calculations have been improved on the character sheet and a new tooltip was added to reflect this change.
• Created in-game maps for the following locations:
  • Obsidian Panopticon
  • Desolate Hills
  • Jotungrund
  • Skrekk (Exterior)
  • Kobold Battle Camp
  • The Outlaws’ Run
• Added feedback in the chat window for when the AskADev command is properly utilized.
• Additional improvements to the game’s mouse cursor have been implemented.
• 82 more items have been added to the player vendor “Manage Orders” listing, to include items such as totems, young fish, wyvern heads, dragon eggs, quartz, and many more.
• Added 4 new Lua functions: ShroudGetCurrentSceneNameRaw() ShroudGetPetInfo() ShroudGetPetBuff() ShroudGetPlayerBuff().
• Fixed an issue where the loot window would show color codes when resized.
• Fixed the subterfuge checkbox in the decks window filter which was not remaining checked when selected.
• The Hamstring combo now displays properly in the decks window.
• Fixed the issue for cloaks showing after dismounting even if the option to hide the cloak was enabled.
• Fixed the issue where the low ammo indicator was showing instead of the damaged weapon indicator.
• Fixed the missing low ammo indicator tooltip which showed an error.
• Fixed the mount icon reappearing when changing scenes while mounted.
• Fixed the Romeus disconnection issue when players would go AFK.
• Fixed for text aberrations in the decoration palette window.
• Fixed the issue in the dye application version of the character sheet which was inappropriately displaying the show “more” button.
• Fixed the issue where the mount button misbehaved when another player would mount next to you.

Player Economy, Rewards, & Loot Changes:

• Added a new uncommon quest reward for the newly added Kingsport Storehouse Container which accepts 100 diamond fragments for the Uncommon container. The Common containers feature Metal Scrap, Leather Scrap, Fabric Scrap, and Wood Scrap.
• The drop rates for Zinc have been increased greatly across all mechanical/clockwork beings such as Automatons, Spiders, Flyers, Cats, and Dogs. Automatons still remain the likely primary farming source for Zinc since they are guaranteed to drop Zinc with every kill. Grey, Yellow, Blue, and Orange supply bundles will now provide much larger quantities of Zinc and at higher drop chances within their loot tables, which also increases Zinc’s availability at Storehouse Containers. Clockwork Dragons now also drop significantly large stacks of Zinc with every kill.
• The gold value of Zinc has been greatly reduced.
• Grey and Yellow Supply bundles now have a greater chance to drop a stack of Pecan Nuts, Brown Cap Mushrooms, or Cinnamon Bark.
• The little scavenger girl in Tanglemire now also provides Pecan Nuts as a reward to the Missing Bones daily.
• Pecan Nuts have been added back to NPC merchants for the duration of R92 with a price increase from 15g to 25g. They’ll likely be removed from NPC merchants in R94.
• Quartz nodes now also provide more quartz.
• Clockwork Monkeys in the Monkey Room of K’rul were unintentionally featuring regular loot and now feature reduced control point type loot.
• The loot for the kobold boss in Mysterious Swamp once again drops kobold boss loot.

World, Quests, and Miscellaneous Changes:

• Aerie and Resolute: Improved the logic which allows the devotional caretakers to recognize when the avatar has defeated their respective Cabalists.
• Aerie: Fixed a typo in one of Vivienne’s responses.
• Arabella: Updated her responses related to the starting locations (Blood River, Highvale, and Solace Bridge) of the three Episode 1 storylines.
• Ardoris: Updated a cushioned chair so that NPCs have a better sitting orientation.
• Ardoris: Updated Siranto’s “undead” response logic to help ensure he gives the proper dialog.
• Blood River Outskirts: If a player receives the “reward” version of the manifesto from Alberic, then accidentally destroys it before giving it to Captain Bearfield, they can get a replacement by saying “manifesto” to Alberic.
• Blood River Outskirts: Updated the logic which Phineas uses to give poison to the avatar.
• Blood River Outskirts: Updated the logic, compass markers, and food interaction for the “poison the food” quest. Also, avatars on a certain stage of the quest can now delete the poison item and get a replacement from Phineas.
• Broken Echoes Silver Mine: Replaced several nonfunctional destructible crates with functional versions.
• Highvale: Updated the “Aldorn is missing” quest with improved dialog, updated journal entries, compass markers, and the chance to find “evidence” in the Battle of Highvale the same as its aftermath.
• K’rul: Fixed an issue with several crates that had displaced collision.
• K’rul: Swapped the plane version of the grate for the 3D version.
• Necropolis Barrens: Fixed an issue with one love letter that couldn’t be collected.
• Necropolis: When Davropos accepts a dead body, he’ll advise the player that he’ll return anything he finds that’s not the body.
• North Brightbone Woods: Katana-wielding Ebon Cultist Champions now wear proper Ebon Dawn gear.
• Novia: Fixed an issue where players were being drawn into a swamp encounter in a hills location.
• Plains Encounter: Avatars will no longer get a message about a great threat when entering the Hidden Vale dragon scenario of this encounter.
• Plains Encounter: Fixed an issue where the Mistrendur dragon scenario was incorrectly pointing to Hidden Vale assets. Also, ensured all random encounter locations with Aether dragons are able to spawn them.
• Return to Previous Destination teleporters: Added “return” boats or balloons to the docks or default entrances to several scenes. These teleporters have purple canvases.
• Serpent Spine Mines: Updated stairs in a “lich boss area” to improve the path grid.
• Skrekk: Added a “skilled hacker” and props near the west entrance to this area.
• Skrekk: Added compass marker to skilled hacker that appears for avatars that have a virtue recalibration kit in their inventory.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Bancroft will advise places who have received their Episode 1 lot deed to visit the banker in Soltown, now named SLT-3113.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Updated the logic which Kinsey uses to set players on the quest to deliver the report to Stanley.
• Solace Bridge: Updated text for Quincy’s compass marker.
• South Drachvald Spur: Updated the path grid to help NPCs walk on troublesome slopes.
• Tanglemire: A new load screen has been added for Tanglemire, which is an alteration of a screenshot provided by the screenshot contest winner Ian Berie — congrats on your contest win, and thank you for the submission, Ian!
• Tenebris Harbor: Changed the ore nodes from tier 4 to tier 5, as befitting the scene’s tier.
• The Brave Coast: Removed a redundant target (West Docks) from the signpost teleporter network.
• The Obsidian Panopticon: Moved an exploding barrel away from a bed that it was intersecting.
• Valhold: Added a compass marker for the Town Crier.
• Valhold: Fixed typos with the “amulet of testimony” quest.
• Valhold: Players are no longer blocked from finishing the Valhold amulet of testimony quest when trying to finish after completing the path of Courage.
• Wynton’s Folly: Swapped tier 5 ore nodes for tier 6 nodes, as befitting this tier 6 scene.
• Fixed issues with the dismount dissolve animations.
• Fixed the issue which allowed players to perform various actions while a ghost.
• Ankhs are now properly visible in the Ardoris PVP Arena.
• Linux players will no longer see a mysterious ladder appear and disappear in the Hills Random Encounter.
• Adjusted the spawn locations in the Village Mine Basements to prevent players from spawning inside of a support post.
• Decorations on the Dais in the player-made dungeon Lich Room no longer float above the surface.
• The player-made dungeon “Hilt Rotunda” can now be decorated on the first floor, the dais, and on the mezzanine.
• All store entries for planting beds (elven and viking) have been split into separate entries.
• All planting beds and areas are now in the crafting section instead of the outdoor planter section of the store.
• Cloaks, Wings, and Backpacks are all now in a new store subcategory called Cloaks, Wings, Backpacks.
• Fixed a typo in the Ancient Xenossian Spear store entry.
• Fixed a typo in the Fancy Ice Box store entry.

Player-Owned Town Changes:

• B’azaar of the B’izarre: Upgraded to Teralopolis.
• Broken Ground: Upgraded to Crossroads Village.
• Kustingen: Added new holdfast to Novia west of Ardoris.
• Nauvoo: Upgraded to Metropolis.
• Quel Regional Market: Added crossroads village southeast of Etceter.

Read more…

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 92 is upon us, and the potion system revamp has begun! Potions of Health, Focus, and Restoration have received the initial changes for the new system, with many more potion system updates in the works for R93! The User Interface (UI) has received many improvements, and a considerable amount of new crafting recipes have been introduced into the game!  A large number of bug fixes and quality of life improvements are now live! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Release 92 Patch Notes!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Crown Store: Turbines, Invisible Walls, Turbines, Gothic Furniture, Seasonal Items & More!
• August Login Reward: Water Lantern 3-Pack!
• Release 92 Subscriber Login Rewards: Fancy Ice Box, Mini Ice Elemental, & Xenossian Spear!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Release 92 Patch Notes!

Below are a list of updates that are live as of Release 92 (R92) in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R92 is a polish, improvement and bug fixes month. Content, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R93 next month which is slated to include two additional adventure scenes! We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 92!

Crafting, Decoration, & Inventory Item Changes:

• The following additions and changes to potions have occurred:
  • A new “Aether” tier of potions and their associated recipes have been added to the Health, Focus, and Restoration series of potions, which is considerably more powerful than their “Imbued” counterparts.
  • In addition to the new “Potion of Restoration, Aether” recipe, the Restoration Potion series now includes 6 more recipes to match the available tiers, batching, and combining recipe types available for Health and Focus potions, which also includes the previously missing Lesser and Greater versions of these potions. Other than the Aether version, all of the new Potion of Restoration recipes are available on Alchemy merchants.
  • All of the new “Aether” potion recipes utilize a new crafted “Empty Flask, Hardened” that has a recipe which drops from Kobold Grenadiers. This flask recipe provides additional uses for Zinc as an ingredient.
  • The new “Aether” recipes also utilize a new item called the “Aether Infusion” which can be purchased at alchemy merchants and also occasionally received from utilizing Uncommon Storehouse Containers. The Aether Infusion item will be used in many more recipes coming in the releases ahead.
  • The recipe for the “Potion of Health, Aether” drops from the dragon in Ulfheim each time it is skinned.
  • The recipe for “Potion of Focus, Aether” drops from the lich lord deep within Owl’s Head Sewers with every kill.
  • The recipe for “Potion of Restoration, Aether” drops from the ghost commander within the Elysium Mines temple at a significantly common rate.
  • Health, Focus, and Restoration potions now feature a 30 second cooldown and a stacking Elixir Receptiveness penalty of 25% which lasts for 30 second and can even affect existing potion buffs throughout the debuff duration. As more powerful potions are added to the game, many of which will be for situational use, we’ll be employing these effectiveness type debuffs to encourage more careful/planned use of potions yet still afford some flexibility if another potion must be taken in emergency situations at a reduced effect. (The first patch just after release will contain improvements to the stacking of this debuff.)
  • All Health, Focus, and Restoration potions are now affected by Adventurer Level. The higher a player’s Adventure Level, the more effective all of these potions will be at all tiers. As the potion system continues to be revamped, nearly all upcoming potion work will include considerations for Adventurer and Production Level in the buff calculations.
  • All potions other than Lesser Focus and Lesser Health have been removed from loot and merchants to encourage more potions being crafted by the community of crafters.
  • The Lesser Restoration Potion has been added to the same loot tables and merchants which drop/sell the Lesser Health and Lesser Focus potions.
• Invisible walls/walkways (9 variations) have been added to the game. Of these 9 variations, 3 are craftable, and 6 are premium which are shown in the Crown Store section further below. These items become visible once a player approaches or when the player utilizes the Night Vision spell. The 3 crafting recipes drop in The Rise from the Imps in the invisible wall maze. As a result of their increased responsibility in New Britannia, these Imps hit the gym and have been increased to Tier 10.
• A new raw material has been introduced called Pure Elemental Ice which has a slight chance to drop from Tier 1 and Tier 5 Ice Elementals, but has a much better chance to drop from Tier 15 Ice Elementals. Overall, those 3 sources will provide very small amounts of this new crafting material into the player economy; however, a new frozen tundra adventure scene known as Jotungrund has been added which is the primary drop location for Pure Elemental Ice. Currently, the scene is available for early testing and the frost giant known as Jotun will not yet spawn. Jotun is only available for testing on the QA server. The first or second patch after release will add Pure Elemental Ice to the loot tables on the live server for barbarians throughout the scene, and the frost giant will be dropping larger quantities once he becomes available on live.
• Pure Elemental Ice can be placed as a decoration which looks like a tiny ice cube.
• Pure Elemental Sand can now be placed as a decoration, which looks like a small dirt/sand pile.
• A recipe for the “Floor Turbine, Low Power” has been added as a drop in the Mysterious Swamp. The kobold commander atop the keep has a 100% chance to drop the recipe, and all the kobold minions in and surrounding the keep have a very slight chance to drop the recipe.
• Three Wooden Mooring Post decorations (Short, Medium, Tall) can now be crafted, and their related crafting recipes are now available (and discoverable) on the decoration merchant in Owl’s Head. These items can provide an immersive look to your waterways but are also great for player-made jump puzzles.
• Two new decoration recipes have become available on Carpentry merchants. The Box Crate is a plain decoration item which works well in player vendor, docks, or crafting decoration areas, and the Box Shelf provides a rustic look to wall décor.
• Many cooking recipes now result in increased product, such as Butter, Flour, Pie Dough, Beef Stock, Cooking Oil, Nut Butter, Vegetable Stock, and Yeast.
• Animal Bone, Animal Sinew, and Fat can now be obtained across almost all animal butchering recipes.
• Commoner dead bodies can now be processed at butchery tables to provide items such as Rotting Flesh, Corpse Wax, Skeleton Bones, Skeleton Pelvic Bones, and Pristine Skeleton Rib Cages. The drop rates for these dead bodies has been significantly reduced.
• Unicorns now drop haunches, which can be processed into meat for the three unicorn food recipes. Unicorn haunches drop more regularly than the prior meat drops did, and the processing of the haunches provides extra meat, animal bone, animal sinew, and fat possibilities.
• Lingering gear exclusion info has been removed from Rare versions of The Ring of the Unknown BMC Member. All varieties of BMC rings can now occupy either ring slot with no exclusion considerations for other items.
• The Legendary version of the Ring of the Unknown BMC member no longer features the same bonus as the Epic, and therefore has been reduced to 5% Meticulous Mining Chance from 6%.
• A small blue light will now emit from the Radiant Energy Capacitor when it is activated.
• Potted flayer decorations and store entries have been renamed to indicate they are “potted” and 4-Story or Epic size descriptors have been removed as they were neither 4-Story nor Epic in size.
• The lich spawned from the Lich Fighter Spawner Statue T15 will no longer fight other creatures in player-created dungeons.
• 42 varieties of tables can now be scaled in size at a wider range so players can have more control over their size in comparison to chairs and other decorations. These 42 items were also adjusted if necessary to ensure they could be placed as POT decorations or onto other decorations which accept child objects such as castle walls or blocks.
• The item effects for the Shroud of the Avatar no longer features negative values. Aggro Boost was replaced with Attack Speed. Slight adjustments to other stats were made to ensure characters that are purely virtuous or purely anti-virtuous received appealing buffs. Base stats with neutral virtue are now also more appealing.
• Acara’s Shield of Defiance, Shield of the Wicked King, and Shield of Attraction (all variations) can now be socketed with non-imbued gems.
• The tooltips for skill unlearning items have been improved to better explain their functionality.
• Crafted Rectangular Shields now properly feature a block stat.
• The Two-Handed Sword of Elf Slaying now utilizes the proper animations for free/auto attacks.
• The Xen Penetrator, Shard of Night, and Halberd of the Sun patterns no longer apply the Legacy indicator (L) to the name of a patterned item.
• Artifact one-handed swords can now accept all one-handed blade patterns. Also, all varieties of the Cutlass of the Swashbuckler can also have their patterns removed using a pattern remover.
• Adjusted the VFX for the Lava Hot Tub so it no longer bleeds into a floor below if placed on upper floors.
• Colliders on the Tower Archway Teleporter have been adjusted to alleviate some placement problems as a decoration.
• The Beach Umbrella has received improved visuals.
• Various guide books provided to new players have received improvements.

Combat & Skill Changes:

• The Damage-Over-Time (DOT) effect for Flame Fist has been fixed.
• NPC spell casters will use the Ice Field spell less often, and when it is cast it will have a shorter duration

User Interface & Lua Changes:

• Players can now ask questions to developers by typing askadev <question> into universal chat. Developers will use this pool of questions for answer sessions during livestreams and within forum threads.
• Player can now see more stats for their character by clicking “Show More” at bottom of the character sheet. Many of these stats are approximations and could vary based upon your combat targets and their innate resistances.
• Broken and nearly-broken armor indicators will now show the name of the equipment items which are broken or nearly-broken. (This change will be in the first patch just after release.)
• A new “Dismount” button has been added to the user interface.
• The text for recipes in inventories or merchant interfaces will be displayed in light blue instead of white if the recipe is not yet learned.
• A new menu option has been added allowing players to double their mouse cursor size.
• By popular demand, the inventory UI has received another round of improvements. Tabs are once again available, and the “All Items” tab can be filtered for a large variety of item types. The Equipment, Crafting, Housing, and Consumable tabs are not affected by “Sorting Options” drop-down menu selections. The “All Items” tab label and the “Sorting Options” drop-down field label are both orange to help players associate the two items. A tooltip has also been added when the mouse hovers over “Sorting Options” to indicate the menu only affects the “All Items” tab.
• Added “Container” and “Artifact” to the “Sorting Options” drop-down menu in the inventory window.
• The “Hide Quest Item” inventory option (available by left-clicking the cog in the top-right corner of the inventory window) no longer hides quest items in the “All Items” tab if “Quest” is selected within the “Sorting Options” drop-down menu.
• “Show Locked Items” and “Hide Locked Items” are new inventory options (also available by clicking the cog mentioned above). “Hide Locked Items” will hide any locked items from view unless “Locked” is selected within the “Sorting Options” drop-down menu, in which case they would only be visible in the “All Items” tab.
• Players can once again sort by name or weight in their inventories.
• The icon which opens the Social window will now display the correct player count.
• Teleport scrolls will now be affected by the “Show PvP Zone Confirmation” option available in the Multiplayer menu in Options.
• Issues pertaining to the width for the Decoration Palette window have been fixed.
• An overly transparent “X” button in the bank interface is now fully visible.
• Crafting material bonuses displayed in tooltips should now properly show stats for negative effects.

Player Economy, Rewards, & Loot Changes:

• A new artifact known as the Necklace of the Meticulous Forester has been added to loot tables in Serpent’s Spine Foothills and Serpent’s Spine Mines. The bandits in the foothills have a slight chance to drop the Common version of this artifact. The kobolds within the mines have a slightly better chance to drop the Common version of this artifact. The mysterious lich lord at the bottom of the pit will always drop the Common version of this artifact with small chances at an Uncommon or Rare version being possible. Salvaging the necklace provides chances to yield an Imbued Jewel of the Meticulous Forester, which can only be applied to crafted/non-artifact rings and necklaces.
• All potions and poisons have been removed from loot tables and merchants, except for Lesser Health and Lesser Focus potions. These lesser potions were also added to many loot tables and merchants, with many more lesser potion varieties coming in the future. With the removal of many potions from loot and merchants, players will have more potions viably available for crafting and posting for sale on their player vendors.
• Cinnamon Bark, Browncap Mushrooms, and Pecan Nuts have been removed from NPC merchants. All 3 items have increased chances to appear in Grey and Yellow Supply Bundles, and as Storehouse Container rewards.
  • Cinnamon Bark now also has significant chances to drop from Fauns.
  • Pecan Nuts now have increased drop rates with squirrels and can also be found in containers and destructible crates throughout Novia.
  • Browncap Mushrooms can also be looted from all tiers of fungus creatures.
• Zinc, which is utilized in the new “Floor Turbine, Low Power” recipe, has been added to loot tables for all clockwork creatures, with a significantly higher chance to drop from Automatons.
• The drop rates of the Two-Handed Sword of Elf Slaying on non-control point kobold fighters (T2 through T10) have been increased.
• Drop rates for Kobold Essences have been increased to be more on par with the drop rate of Elf Essences. Also, Kobold Essences will drop from many more T5 Kobold types than before.
• Clockwork Dragons now also drop significant amounts of mechanical parts as loot.
• Granite mining nodes will now yield significantly more granite.
• Subscribers to the Rewards Program can now choose the glowing, glowing pulse, and sparkling pink dyes when utilizing their Dye 12-Pack Reward.
• The gold value for crafted belts has been reduced.

World, Quests, and Miscellaneous Changes:

• Jotungrund, the new icy adventure scene has become available on live to allow players more expanded testing opportunities for the scene. The giant will not be available until R93, but players can explore the scene and engage in various roaming bears, barbarians, and air elementals.
• Aerie: Fixed a typo in Arabella’s conversation.
• All Outskirts: The adventurer trainers in Blood River Outskirts, Highvale Outskirts, and Solace Bridge Outskirts now have the title “Basic Adventurer Trainer.” Also, the Blood River Outskirts adventurer trainer now shares his name, Titus.
• Arch Lapin: Fixed errors in the “Collect 3 Bones” task.
• Ardoris, Aerie, and Resolute: Improved the logic which displays compass markers for the Devotional Caretakers’ “Tell <City> About <Cabalist>” tasks. (Players who have lingering compass markers should say the related Cabalist name to one of the caretakers in that city to help clear the marker.)
• Battle of Solace Bridge: Edvard no longer gives the “Investigate the Undead Mystery!” task, Also, Avatars already on this task may find it automatically archives itself.
• Battle of Solace Bridge: Added a safety so that the “Speak to Edvard the Wanderer” task automatically archives.
• Blood River Forest: Every sack in this scene now guarantees at least one item for the first person looting that sack.
• Bramble: Added a mailbox next to the bank stall.
• Brittany Estates: Brush and trees clipping into housing lots and buildings have been fixed.
• Brittany Wharfs: Avatars will now get this city’s town crier compass marker when entering from the default entrance or the main docks.
• Eastmarch: Fixed a typo in Millicent Davis’s responses.
• Elad’s Lighthouse: Moved a lot marker outside of the lot boundaries.
• Elysium Mines: Fixed several stuck spots.
• Etceter: Added missing conversation elements for Eric.
• Etceter Crag Mines: Corrected the scale of many oversized ore nodes.
• Explosive Chest: Fixed an issue where the explosion effects were incorrectly repeating.
• Graff Island: Added a compass marker to lead players to Lauran Graff when they have Samael’s broken ring.
• Necropolis Barrens: Changed the logic by which the “Give Another Dead Body to Davropos” task to improve automatic archiving.
• North Drachvald Spur: Updated the mine so that rain no longer falls inside.
• Northwood: Improved the logic used to archive Clara’s “Recover Chess Piece” task.
• Novia: Increased the chance that a Naughty Brat random encounter will appear in North Paladis.
• Port Graff: Corrected the label for a teleporter boat to correctly say it leads to Player-Owned Towns.
• POT Underground Template: Fixed an area where players could get outside the play space.
• Random Encounters: In addition to a message saying “You sense a great threat approaching….” before a wave of higher-threat enemies approach, there’s now a second message saying “You sense the greatest threat has passed….” after those enemies have been defeated.
• Resolute: Removed the schedule from Molly the alchemist because her off duty conversation wasn’t working properly.
• Resolute: Fixed a typo in the response for “avatar” used by the knights in this scene.
• Resolute: Sean Campbell has been scolded by human resources and has agreed to no longer obsessively close the building door.
• Ruins of Ravensmoor: Made small updates to some conversations. Also, players can now delete the Roedberk quest items.
• Skrekk: Returned the south exit archway back to its correct location.
• Solace Bridge: The “Speak with Frightened Child” task is now easier to complete.
• Storehouse Containers: Corrected the name of the “Animal Hide” crate. Also, added hide props to the crate.
• Well of Aldur: Fixed a stuck spot.
• Well of Aldur: For the scholar, fixed a typo in his fragments response as well as adjusted some of the daily turn-in logic.
• Well of Aldur: Fixed an issue with some cyan-colored collision which was unintentionally visible.
• Yew: Improved Pendro’s response about Yew, and he no longer indirectly refers to himself in the third person.
• Yew: The elevator no longer sinks into the mud.
• Fixed various decoration surfaces in the Ornate Triple Connection Marble Dungeon Foyer.
• Players no longer get stuck in small doorways as a result of recent improvements to movement up stairs and small obstacles.
• Fixed various error spammers which were causing lag in some situations.
• Fixed the bug which allowed players to play (and fish!) as a ghost indefinitely.
• Fixed movement issues with a number of larger footprint pets like bears, crocodiles, young dragons, corpions, spiders, and earth/ice elementals.
• Fixed for an issue which prevented dismounting when another player was in the same scene.
• Players will no longer sink into the ground slightly when idle.
• A new store section has been added in the Adventure Design area called “Magical Walls & Walkways” to accommodate the new Invisible Walls and Walkway items as well as future offerings.
• A new store section has been added in the Adventure Design area called “Traps & Mechanisms” to accommodate the new turbine and decorative trap store items.
• To improve performance, view distances for NPCs are now based on their size on your screen rather than fixed distances.
• The Ardoris PvP arena now features several more ankhs for resurrection.
• The dragon in K’rul will no longer fly into the hallway.

Player-Owned Town Changes:

• Ahnen Hain: Upgraded to City. Consolidated interconnection boats.
• Broken Ground: Added new POT in the south side of the central island of Mistrendur.
• Crossroads Alleys: Upgraded to Metropolis.
• Hammaburg: Consolidated boats into one list teleporter boat.
• M’hul Island: Upgraded to Hamlet.
• Mist Village: Added City to shoreline near Grumridge.
• Mossrest: Upgraded to village and moved to near Soltown.
• Mysteria: Upgraded to Metropolis.
• NobleBright: Upgraded to Village.
  PaxLocus: Upgraded to Crossroads Village.
• Rajazel: Upgraded to Town.
• Salem: Upgraded to City.
• Skalabrekka: Moved to Novia on the road north of Soltown.
• Soltowns Harvest: Added Hamlet on the road west of Soltown.

Read more…

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 91 has arrived! Happy Birthday Lord British! A large variety of premium items are now on sale until July 5th! A new type of daily turn-in quest has been added to the game in the form of Storehouse Containers. Visit 9 different towns to explore the turn-in options available for up to 5 additional daily rewards. Imbued Gems and Jewels have been added with crafting and gathering bonuses which can be extracted by salvaging crafting and gathering related artifacts. MANY bug fixes, UI improvements, and quality of life improvements are now live! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Storehouse Container Daily Turn-In Quests!
• Release 91 Patch Notes!
• Lord British Birthday Sales Event!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Crown Store: Lord British Birthday Cake 2021, Ruined Walls, Transformation Potions & More!
• July Login Reward: Beach Umbrella!
• Release 91 Subscriber Login Rewards: Lord British Telescope, Xenossian Bracers & Shield!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Storehouse Container Daily Turn-In Quests!

A new type of daily turn-in quest has been added to the game in the form of Storehouse Containers! These containers are located in 9 different towns by their docks, with each town providing a variety of 5 containers to fill with player loot and crafting goods. Upon each turn-in, players will be rewarded a variety of rewards as follows: Grey or Yellow Supply Bundle Loot, Adventure/Production EXP, Gold, and a chance for a large variety of bonus rewards.

Each day, a single character may trade with any 4 Common Store House Containers. Common containers contain the same loot as a Grey Supply Bundle as well as additional bonus reward items from a newly added loot table. Also players will receive Adventurer and Production EXP from each turn-in and a small amount of gold. The bonus reward items are greatly varied and will not always be provided. The Common Storehouse Container bonus rewards and turn-in items are as follows:

• Ardoris, Harvest, Xenos: Bonus rewards are gear and decoration related crafting goods as well as items such as Ancient Essences. Players must turn in 150 Fabric Scrap, 150 Leather Scrap, 150 Metal Scrap, or 150 Wood Scrap.
• Brittany Wharfs, Broochash, Westend: Bonus rewards are consumable related crafting goods as well as items such as Elixirs of Longevity and Potency. Players must turn in 15 Cure Plague Potions, 150 Animal Bones, 150 Fat, or 150 Sinew.
• Mud, Port Graff, Storms Reach: Bonus rewards are agriculture and fishing related goods as well as rare chances to receive gathering related common artifacts. Players must turn in 15 Animal Hides, 150 Bone Powder, 150 Quartz, or 150 Small Balls of Clay.

Also each day, a single character may trade with 1 Uncommon Storehouse Container. In additional to other items, Uncommon containers always include same loot as a Yellow Supply Bundle. Players will also receive Adventurer and Production EXP from each turn-in and a larger amount of gold. There is also a significant chance to receive bonus rewards which are gear and decoration related crafting goods, but bonus reward items are greatly varied and will not always be provided. The Uncommon Storehouse Container turn-in items are as follows:

• Ardoris: 25 Sunfish
• Brittany Wharfs: 25 Tilapia
• Broochash: 25 Elven Brandy
• Harvest: 25 Anomalocaris
• Mud: 25 Mechanical Parts
• Port Graff: 25 Kobold Spirits
• Storms Reach: 25 Salmon
• Westend: 25 Maple Tree Bark
• Xenos: 25 Satyr Spirits

The Storehouse Container system was developed to provide a variety of possible benefits in the years to come as it continues to be expanded and enhanced:

• Login Reward: Upon logging into the game, some players might find that delivering their 5 Storage House Container turn-ins becomes a daily ritual to receive extra rewards for daily login.
• Item Values: Many of the items utilized for turn-in for these new dailies will now have more purpose and could essentially become more valuable to players through trade and sale.
• Overstock Reduction: Some players might find many of these turn-in items are overstock items in their inventory and banks. Players now have a method to exchange applicable overstocked items for potentially more valuable rewards.
• Additional Item Delivery Option: With these newly added containers, developers will now possess an additional tool in their arsenal for reward deliveries and item exchanges.
• Lottery/Jackpot: The Storehouse Container system is also designed to provide a lottery/jackpot feel. Initial implementation of these rewards will be monitored and updated regularly to ensure players get significant changes to earn valuable items. Players can expect loot ratios to be adjusted based on feedback, and MANY additional reward items added into the system in the future.
• Supply Bundle Improvements: Since a portion of the rewards from these containers are direct from Supply Bundle loot tables, any future improvements we make to the bundles will also improve loot in the Storehouse Containers.
• Influencing Daily Play Routine: Upon delivery of rewards, players might obtain items which influence what they do for the remainder of their play session.

We hope players enjoy the new Storehouse Container system. Developers will continue to improve this system in the future with new and exciting turn-in and reward concepts, and we’ll be very attentive to feedback about item scarcity, reward values, and reward types. In the future, we will add additional Storehouse Container shelters in more geographically-separated NPC towns. Hidden Vale is next in our sights!

Release 91 Patch Notes!

Below are a list of updates that are live as of Release 91 (R91) in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R91 is a content, improvement and bug fixes month. Polish, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R92 next month! We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 91!

Crafting, Decoration, & Inventory Item Changes:

• 10 additional Imbued Gems and Jewels are now available! Each can be salvaged from the available crafting related artifacts, and these gems/jewels can be applied only to crafted gear.
  • Not all artifacts have a chance (yet) to yield a special gem or jewel upon salvage, so please take note! This spreadsheet, which will be maintained as we continue to expand the system, lists all available Imbued Gems and Jewels and their source, whether it be from crafting or from the salvage of artifacts. There are still many non-tiered artifacts which will be tiered and gain special gem/jewel salvage chances in the months ahead.
  • Imbued Gems or Jewels which are not related to a particular school of magic will not yet yield special enchanting bonuses yet, but there are plans to add more special enchanting bonuses in the future.
  • Here’s a list of all the new Imbued Gems and Jewels, which are also easily viewable in this spreadsheet. The source from which to obtain the gem or jewel is listed in parenthesis:
    • Imbued Gem of the Expedient Forester: +25% Forestry Gathering Time (Forest Mangler)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Meticulous Forager: +6% Foraging Meticulous Collection (Belt of the Patient Harvester)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Expedient Miner: +25% Mining Gathering Time (Gauntlets of Lead)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Expedient Skinner: +25% Field Dressing Gathering Time (Belt of the Brutal Butcher)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Master Alchemist: +10 Alchemy/Alchemy Enchanting (Ring of Chrysopoeia)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Master Blacksmith: +10 Blacksmithing Masterwork (Wayland Loop)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Master Carpenter: +10 Carpentry Masterwork (Maple Band)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Master Chef: +10 Cooking (Ring of Jones)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Master Tailor: +10 Tailoring Masterwork (Thimble of Evelyn)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Meticulous Miner: +6% Mining Meticulous Collection (The Ring of an Unknown BMC Member)
  • These are the chances of success for receiving an Imbued Gem or Jewel by salvaging an eligible artifact:
    • Common: 10% Chance, 1 Gem or Jewel
    • Uncommon: 50% Chance, 1 Gem or Jewel
    • Rare: 100% Chance, 1 Gem or Jewel
    • Legendary: 100% Chance, 2 Gems or Jewels
    • Epic: 100% Chance, 3 Gems or Jewels
    • Salvaging an applicable chest piece, a weapon, or an offhand will yield a gem, while salvaging all other gear items from other slots will yield jewels.
• An additional round of artifact changes has been implemented. This time, all crafting/gathering artifacts except for the Pax Ring have received stat or even functionality changes which are also presented on this spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will be maintained to serve as a reference for players.
  • The Forest Mangler now has base stats equal to crafted 1-Handed Swords. This artifact now has 5 tiers available, with the current version already in-game becoming the Uncommon version. The 5% Forestry Meticulous Collection Chance bonus has been removed, and the 5% Forestry Gathering Time Bonus has been spread across all tiers, scaling from 5% to 25%.
  • The Ring of the Unknown BMC Member no longer features any dual wear restrictions with other BMC rings. The encumbrance bonus has been halved to help accommodate the dual wear restriction removal. The Mining Meticulous Collection Chance now scales from 2% to 6% instead of 3% to 9%. The Health penalty on The Ring of the Unknown BMC member now scales throughout the tiers. Common varieties feature MUCH less health penalty compared to the Epic versions.
  • The Belt of the Patient Harvester no longer features a gathering time penalty, and the Foraging Meticulous Collection Chance has been reduced to scale between 2% and 6%.
  • The Belt of the Brutal Butcher no longer features a meticulous collection penalty, and the gathering time bonus has been reduced to scale between 5% and 25% between tiers.
  • The Gauntlets of Lead no longer feature a jump penalty, and the fizzle chance penalty has been reduced to 14% to match that of crafted plate gauntlets. The Mining Gathering Time Bonus has been increased slightly and now scales between 5% and 25% between tiers. Basic armor protection stats for these gauntlets have been lowered to match those of crafted plate gauntlets.
  • The Blacksmithing Masterwork bonus on the Wayland Loop now scales from 2 to 10 between tiers instead of 3 to 11.
  • The Tailoring Masterwork bonus on the Thimble of Evelyn now scales from 2 to 10 between tiers instead of 3 to 11.
  • The Cooking bonus on the Ring of Jones now scales from 2 to 10 between tiers instead of 3 to 11.
  • The Alchemy and Alchemy Enchantment bonuses on the Ring of Chrysopoeia now scale from 2 to 10 between tiers instead of 3 to 11.
  • The Carpentry Masterwork Bonus on the Maple Band now scales from 2 to 10 between tiers instead of 3 to 11.
• Fixed the stack sizes in merchant inventories for many items to equal the max stack limit in character inventories.
• Corrected a typo in the Lich Totem recipe.
• Various books were corrected for typos, incorrect covers, and flipping functionality.
• The “Theme for Rabbling” book now displays the correct lyrics.
• Grandma Kellen’s recipes can now rotate in all directions.
• Dungeon Entrance to the Compendium of Pain and Suffering can once again be placed as a POT decoration.
• Harvesting banana trees will sometimes produce a seed like other agriculture items.
• Spindrift Shark now properly displays as “Spindrift Shark Fritters” in the inventory display name, the progress bar when eating, and the tooltip for the buff icon.
• Fixed typos in the display names of 5 Pavillion related items or store entries.
• The Skeleton Bone now properly places as a decoration at long camera distances.
• The penalty for Nefario’s Cabalist Hood is now for Glancing Blow Chance instead of Combat Dodge Chance.
• The light source for the Ornate Stone Fireplace now turns off when the fire is turned off.
• The Miner’s Hat with Goggles and the Miner’s Virtue Hat with Goggles now have functional spotlights when worn. Also, they are now named Miner’s Helmets instead of Miners Hats to match the other miner’s helms without goggles.
• The set bonuses for the Acara armor pieces should now apply properly when equipped.
• The Shield of Attraction, Shield of the Wicked King, and the Acara’s Shield of Defiance (all variants) can now be socketed with non-imbued/older style attunement gems. Also, all variants of these shields can be masterworked and enchanted (many tiers were missing) and are also now viable targets for pattern removal.
• A large variety of potions can now be canceled by right-clicking the buff icon for the dismiss option.
• The Treasure Chest, Treasure Piles (all sizes), Gold Piles (all sizes), and the Chest of Gold can now be placed as a POT decoration.
• Collision on the Haystack deco has been fixed to allow proper placement and to prevent interference with pet pathing.
• Fixed pink materials appearing with certain LODs for the Plaid Shawl Peasant Dress when placed as a decoration.
• Dungeon entrances can now be placed on floors and exterior floors rather than just ground and bottom floors.

Combat & Skill Changes:

• Effects that speed up casting time, like Chaotic Feedback, will no longer speed up the consumption time for consumables.
• A number of consumables had no cooldown timer set for dynamic deck mode which allowed them to be cast without any delay. This has been fixed.
• Various combos such as Quadruple Slash, Icy Puncture, and Saw Blade Sweep now include bonuses from the base skill.
• Small Damage-Over-Time attacks will no longer force people into combat mode.
• Enlightenment VFX will no longer display inside a character’s head when mounted.
• Pets will now respect the “Teleport” and “Stop attacking” commands while in combat.

User Interface & Lua Changes:

• Removed all tabs in the inventory window and added a dropdown list with MANY more sorting and filtering options.
• Modified the player vendor and public vendor UI to feature similar changes made to the inventory window.
• Players can now salvage items that are stackable without needing to manually separate the stack into single items.
• Added new options for disabling the chat window. Players can toggle the chat interface with a new key binding, or they can select a checkbox in Options/Interface to disable chat. This is highly useful for streamers who wish to keep private messages private.
• When doing a search or turning a page in the Crown Store, the first item shown on that page will now be selected to help prevent accidental store purchases.
• Tooltips now feature less transparency to improve their readability when displaying over other windows featuring text.
• The top right menu now features improved icon placement and availability.
• The Window Selector menu has been cleaned up and reordered.
• Fixed load screens which were displaying portions of the skybox.
• The Lot Deeds menu has received minor UI polish.
• Various small journal entries now display correctly in the quest journal.
• Added the ShroudIsUIActive() Lua function to help determine if the current game HUD is active.
• Added 3 additional Lua functions by player request: ShroudOnSceneLoaded(sceneName), ShroudOnSceneUnloaded() and ShroudOnSceneLogout().

Player Economy, Rewards, & Loot Changes:

• The kobold loggers in South Boundless Forest now have small chances to drop the Common Forest Mangler artifact which features the Forestry Gathering Time Bonus. This artifact has been removed from Lich boss loot tables.
• The logging camp in South Boundless Forest now also features a Logging Camp Foreman with increased chances to drop the Forest Mangler. This T10 Logging Camp Foreman will only appear after considerable attempts to thin the Kobolds around the bunker.
• Bait recovery chances have been soft capped at 80%. Any increase beyond 80% will provide diminished benefits. We’ll be monitoring bait consumption and feedback and provide bait drop improvements in R92 accordingly. Also, 3 types of rare baits have been added to the Common Storehouse Container reward possibilities for Mud, Port Graff, and Storms Reach.
• Added “The Stone Dragon” (Part 1 and 2) as world items in the game.
• Sturdy Maces now drop as loot with slight chances to appear in supply bundles and from melee skeletons. The Sturdy Mace also has a chance to yield a Sturdy Mace Head in salvage. The Sturdy Hammer has been renamed to Sturdy War Hammer and has a chance to yield a Sturdy War Hammer Head in salvage. The Sturdy Axe has been renamed to Sturdy Hand Axe and has a chance to yield a Sturdy Hand Axe Blade in salvage. These salvaged components provide the following stats to your weaponry when added as a component during crafting:
  • Sturdy Axe Blade: +5 Strength, +1 Weapon Damage, +5% Poison Effectiveness
  • Sturdy Mace Head: +5 Strength, +1 Weapon Damage, +5% Bludgeon Stun Effectiveness
  • Sturdy War Hammer Head: +5 Strength, +2 Weapon Damage
• Added the recipe for the Imbued Theurgy gem to an additional Well of Aldur loot table for air elementals and significantly increased its chances to drop from Suutak.

World, Quests, and Miscellaneous Changes:

• All 4 Shardfalls now feature adventure level and skill caps. These scenes as well as The Obsidian Trial now have improved tooltips on the overworld map, and there is a load message which indicates the level/skill caps upon load of the scene.
  • Grunvald Shardfall is capped at 100.
  • Verdantis Shardfall is capped at 110.
  • Paladis Shardfall is capped at 120.
  • Quel Shardfall is capped at 130.
• Player movement has been improved to greatly reduce how often players get stuck on small obstacles. This should dramatically improve behavior on steps and rough terrain and reduce how often mounted players must dismount.
• Cloaks will now reappear after swimming while mounted.
• Resolute: Sean Campbell will no longer feel compelled to close the door of his building.
• Savrenoc Stronghold: Removed invisible collision that was blocking part of a ruins.
• Desolis: Fixed typos in the “Defeat Luminous Atavist” journal entry given by Ranees Binders.
• Well of Aldur: Fixed a wall that had incorrect collision.
• Well of Aldur: Fixed a stuck spot and improved the path grid on a set of stairs.
• Xenos: The banker now correctly states he is in Xenos (not Yew).
• Kingsport: Corrected Laura’s title to be Master Moon Magic Trainer.
• Aerie: Improved the logic for displaying Felicia’s “Deliver Letter to Barkley” compass marker.
• Necropolis: Adjusted the logic by which Kardan Marbane delivers his companion whistle to the player.
• Ferig’s Battle Ground: Added extra logic for the “Deliver Wine to Ferig” task to auto-archive after Ferig is no longer able to be visited by the player.
• Ardoris: Improved the logic for ensuring the “Tell Ardoris Caretaker About Corpus” compass marker stops appearing.
• Ardoris: Fixed a typo in the responses from Caravaggios Wolf.
• Caverns of Skrekk: Removed redundant lights in a remote tunnel area.
• Northwest Blackblade Mountains: Removed dragons from a scorpion-themed spawner set that was near the entrance.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Fixed several stuck locations. Adjusted a slope to better allow NPC movement.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Adjusted Kinsey’s logic for giving players the report for Stanley, Banner of Love, and caregiver title.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Adjusted some stones by exit archways that appears to be floating, setting them properly into the ground.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Those who are first to loot the “sack” object in this scene (and others) will now always find at least one object in the sack.
• Owl’s Head: The “Kill Myron or Return to Myra” and “Kill or Leave Myron” tasks should auto-complete if Myra refuses to interact with the player.
• Owl’s Head: Todd’s dialogue has been improved.
• Crafting Tutorial: Updated Edwin in Soltown, Gilda Metcalfe in Aerie, and Bledig deCani in Resolute with improved logic for completing their crafting tutorial.
• Necropolis Barrens: Moved a floating maple tree to the ground.
• Etceter Crag Mines: Fixed a stuck spot behind a mine wall brace.
• Brittany Fields: The horses at Oakley’s stables should no longer be able to climb nearby ladders.
• North Midmaer Way: Moved a nightshade resource so it can be harvested.
• K’rul: Adjusted the collision and path grid in the clockwork dragon room to prevent the dragon from exiting the room.
• East Sanctus Forest: Removed a floating cabinet.
• Hills Encounter: Removed a mysterious ladder that could only be seen from far away.
• Spite: The “Give Another Coffin to Shimzu” task will no longer auto-archive when leaving Spite.
• Wynton’s Folly: Adjusted some terrain to prevent the phoenix from getting stuck.
• Point West: NPCs have received bark and dialogue improvements.
• Explosive barrel traps have been fixed.
• A common lantern used throughout many scenes now has improved collision.
• Made a slight improvement to the collision of common tree curtains.
• Removed text from a store entry that was a bad copy paste from a charity item.
• Numerous objects have had their LOD issues resolved.

Player-Owned Town Changes:

• Bladewyke: Changed owner.
• Ironhall Highlands: Added new holdfast near POT Ironhall in Novia.
• M’hul Island: Added a new holdfast on the northwest shore of Norgard.
• Mossrest: Changed biome to Forest 01b.
• Rock Ridge: Upgraded to Town.
• Tortuga: Upgraded to Town.

Read more…

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 90 is upon us! Imbued Gems! Imbued Jewels! Combat balance improvements! User Interface improvements! MANY bug fixes and quality of life improvements! Log in to check out this amazing update! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Release 90 Patch Notes!
• Bonus EXP! Crown, Hamlet, and Flash Sales!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Crown Store: Baroque Furniture, Summer Seasonal, Darkstarr Items & More!
• June Login Reward: Gothic Tall Vanity!
• Release 90 Subscriber Login Rewards: Xenossian Greaves, Marble Console, Crystal Chandelier!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Release 90 Patch Notes!

Below are a list of updates that are live as of Release 90 (R90) in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R90 is a polish, improvement and bug fixes month. New content, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R91 next month! We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 90!

Crafting, Decoration, & Inventory Item Changes:

• Approximately 77 Imbued Gems and Jewels can now be salvaged from many artifacts, and 18 others can be crafted using recipes found throughout New Britannia. Also, 4 new gem/jewel socketing recipes have been added to the game!
  • Imbued Gems and Jewels can only be socketed into crafted gear.
  • Not all artifacts have a chance (yet) to yield a special gem or jewel upon salvage, so please take note! This spreadsheet, which will be maintained as we continue to expand the system, lists all available Imbued Gems and Jewels and their source, whether it be from crafting or from salvage of artifacts. Essentially, neither the non-tiered artifacts nor the crafting artifacts will yield Imbued Gems or Jewels, which is slated for R91 and R92.
  • Here are the chances of success for receiving an Imbued Gem or Jewel by salvaging an eligible artifact as indicated in the spreadsheet:
    • Common: 10% Chance, 1 Gem or Jewel
    • Uncommon: 50% Chance, 1 Gem or Jewel
    • Rare: 100% Chance, 1 Gem or Jewel
    • Legendary: 100% Chance, 2 Gems or Jewels
    • Epic: 100% Chance, 3 Gems or Jewels
    • Salvaging an applicable chest piece, a weapon, or an offhand will yield a gem, while salvaging all other gear items from other slots will yield jewels.
  • The magical attunement gem and jewel recipes drop as loot from the following sources:
    • Imbued Atenism Gem: Phoenix
    • Imbued Chaos Gem: Obsidian Panopticon
    • Imbued Gaiaism Gem: Green Dragons
    • Imbued Lunaism Gem: Shadow Creatures
    • Imbued Necromancy Gem: Cabalists
    • Imbued Sorcery Gem: Lord British’s Castle
    • Imbued Tempestry Gem: High Tier Water and Ice Elementals
    • Imbued Thaumaturgy Gem: Automatons, Clockwork Dragons
    • Imbued Theurgy Gem: Well of Aldur
    • Imbued Jewels: Supply Bundles
  • The 4 new socketing recipes can be looted in the new Episode 2 location known as the Obsidian Panopticon, with the greatest chances coming from the Obsidian Watch Commander.
  • The new Chaos Gems/Jewels (6 varieties) now provide extra enchanting options if a chaos gem is socketed into applicable gear.
    • Chest armor has a chance to provide Magic Resistance, Tabula Rasa Range, or Torpid Torment Range bonuses.
    • Weapons have a chance to provide Chaos Bolt Damage or Torpid Torment Focus Damage Rate bonuses.
    • Jewelry has a chance to provide Summon Daemon Power bonuses.
  • Imbued Gems or Jewels which relate to a particular school of magic will provide the extra enchanting options related to that school of magic (if the gem or jewel is placed into the gear item prior to enchanting).
  • Imbued Gems or Jewels which are not related to a particular school of magic will not yield special enchanting bonuses.
  • Legacy epic artifacts and all new version artifacts indicated in the spreadsheet will yield (or have the chance to yield) Imbued Gems or Jewels. Legacy common through legendary artifacts will first salvage into low durability versions of the new version artifacts, just in case players wish to use them in upgrade recipes.
  • Here’s a list of all the available Imbued Gems and Jewels, which are also easily viewable in this spreadsheet as mentioned earlier. The source from which to obtain the gem or jewel is listed in parenthesis, indicating either the artifact required to salvage the item or whether it’s a crafted gem or jewel:
    • Imbued Atenism Gem: +25 Sun Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Chaos Gem: +25 Chaos Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Gaiaism Gem: +25 Earth Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Lunaism Gem: +25 Moon Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Necromancy Gem: +25 Death Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Sorcery Gem: +25 Fire Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Tempestry Gem: +25 Water Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Thaumaturgy Gem: +25 Life Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Theurgy Gem: +25 Air Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Atenism Jewel: +12 Sun Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Chaos Jewel: +12 Chaos Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Gaiaism Jewel: +12 Earth Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Lunaism Jewel: +12 Moon Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Necromancy Jewel: +12 Death Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Sorcery Jewel: +12 Fire Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Tempestry Jewel: +12 Water Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Thaumaturgy Jewel: +12 Life Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Theurgy Jewel: +12 Air Attunement (Crafted)
    • Imbued Gem of Focus: +150 Focus (Acara’s Plate Chest of Defiance)
    • Imbued Gem of Polearm Combat: +10 Polearm Combat (Halberd of the Sun)
    • Imbued Gem of Ranged Combat: +10 Ranged Combat (Crossbow of Accuracy)
    • Imbued Gem of Rending: +20% Rend Damage (Sword of Speed)
    • Imbued Gem of Renewed Focus: +1.5 Focus Per Second (Ankh of Sacrifice)
    • Imbued Gem of the Air Summoner: +20 Summon Air Elemental Power (Suutak’s Bluster)
    • Imbued Gem of Bladed Combat: +10 Bladed Combat (Two-Handed Sword of Elf Slaying)
    • Imbued Gem of the Bludgeon Combat: +10 Bludgeon Combat (Two-handed Mace of Elemental Slaying)
    • Imbued Gem of the Chaos Summoner: +20 Summon Daemon Power (Heart of Vrul)
    • Imbued Gem of the Deadly Bandit: +7.5% Base Weapon Damage (Leather Bandit Chest Armor)
    • Imbued Gem of the Death Summoner: +20 Summon Lich/Skeleton Power (Anapa’s Favor)
    • Imbued Gem of the Earth Summoner: +20 Summon Earth Elemental Power (Gaia’s Heart)
    • Imbued Gem of the Fire Summoner: +20 Summon Fire Elemental Power (Vexlyn’s Spark)
    • Imbued Gem of the Moon Summoner: +20 Summon Wisp Power (Aether Orb)
    • Imbued Gem of the Ringmaster: +10 Tame Level Bonus (Ringmaster’s Vest)
    • Imbued Gem of the Stalwart Shield: +15% Shield Durability Effectiveness (Shield of Attraction)
    • Imbued Gem of the Sun Summoner: +20 Summon Phoenix Power (Ankh of Wala)
    • Imbued Gem of the Swashbuckler: +7.5% Attack From Behind Damage Bonus (Cutlass of the Swashbuckler)
    • Imbued Gem of the Unconfused: +20% Confusion Resistance (Daemon Trident)
    • Imbued Gem of the Unrooted: -20% Rooted (Staff of Xen)
    • Imbued Gem of the Water Summoner: +20 Summon Ice/Water Elemental Power (Frozen Tear of Titans)
    • Imbued Gem of the Wicked Caster: -0.15 Cast Time Multiplier (Shield of the Wicked King)
    • Imbued Gem of Volatile Embers: +7.5% Fire Speed (Wand of Undying Embers)
    • Imbued Gem of Wild Lightning: +1 Wild Lightning (Wand of Static Discharge)
    • Imbued Jewel of Avoidance: +10 Damage Avoidance (Acara’s Plate Greaves of Defiance)
    • Imbued Jewel of Blinding Jealousy: +15% Blinding Shot Damage (Leather Quiver of Jealousy)
    • Imbued Jewel of Blindness: +10% Blind Power (Ring of the Sun)
    • Imbued Jewel of Bludgeoning Stun: +15% Bludgeon Stun Effectiveness (Leather Bandit Leggings)
    • Imbued Jewel of Civility: +50 Health/Focus (Necklace of Civility)
    • Imbued Jewel of Control: +5% Taming Specialization Bonus (Gloves of Control)
    • Imbued Jewel of Death Touch: +15% Death Touch Damage (Ring of Death)
    • Imbued Jewel of Dexterity: +6 Dexterity (Necklace of Cautious Precision)
    • Imbued Jewel of Dodging: +10 Combat Dodge Modifier (Acara’s Plate Boots of Defiance)
    • Imbued Jewel of Focus: +75 Focus (Focus Battery Necklace)
    • Imbued Jewel of Glancing: +10% Glancing Blow Power and Duration (Ring of the Gambler)
    • Imbued Jewel of Gust: +15% Gust Chance (Ring of Air)
    • Imbued Jewel of Intelligence: +6 Intelligence (Ring of Wisdom)
    • Imbued Jewel of Magic Resistance: +5% Magic Resistance (Obsidian Band)
    • Imbued Jewel of Poison: +15% Poison Effectiveness Bonus (Leather Bandit Gloves)
    • Imbued Jewel of Rapid Fire: +15% Rapid Fire Damage (Slipshod Shooter’s Sash)
    • Imbued Jewel of Riding: +.02 Mounted Speed (Supple Gloves of Riding)
    • Imbued Jewel of Shadow Form: +150% Shadow Form Length (Shard of Night)
    • Imbued Jewel of Strength: +6 Strength (Ring of Brittle Brawn)
    • Imbued Jewel of Swiftness: +5% Attack Speed (Savage Sash of Swiftness)
    • Imbued Jewel of Tamed Precision: +0.15 Tame Attack Precision (Belt of Control)
    • Imbued Jewel of Taunting: +20% Aggro Boost (Belt of the Dedicated)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Bear: +20 Tame Taunt Power (Helm of the Bear Spirit)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Cat: +50 Safe Fall Modifier (Ring of Cat’s Grace)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Cuttlekin: +0.5 Jump Strength, +2 Dexterity (Ring of the Cuttlekin)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Deep Woods: +8 Earth Attunement, +4 Life Attunement, +3 Moon Attunement, (Ring of the Deep Woods)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Energetic Tamer: +0.2 Tame Move Speed (Boots of the Energetic Tamer)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Flame Fist: +15% Flame Fist Damage (Ring of Fire)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Frogkin: +0.5 Jump Strength, +2 Combat Dodge Modifier (Ring of the Frogkin)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Giant Pirate: +5% Player Scale (Pirate Tricorn Hat of the Cap’n)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Healer: +15% Life Range and Radius (Ring of Life)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Ice Fist: +15% Ice Fist Damage (Ring of Water)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Lagomorph: +3% Move Rate (Lavalliere of the Lagomorph)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Lich Kind: +15% Death Field Power (Ring of the Lich Kind)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Mouse: -20% Aggro Boost (Ring of the Mouse)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Ox: +50% Encumbrance Capacity (Belt of the Ox)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Ringmaster: +6 Tame Level Bonus (Ring of the Ringmaster)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Sage: -10% Magic Glyph Focus Cost (Sage’s Sash)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Silent Bandit: +100% Silent Movement Duration Bonus (Leather Bandit Boots)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Spurred: +3% Mounted Sprint Speed (Spurred Boots)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Stag: +1% Tame Chance Bonus (Helm of the Stag Spirit)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Stone Fist: +15% Stone Fist Damage (Ring of Earth)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Storm: +3% Air Damage (Acara’s Plate Helm of Defiance)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Tiny Bandit: -5% Player Scale (Leather Bandit Helm)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Unrooted: -10% Rooted (Spider Silk Belt)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Wolf: +10 Tame Creature Strength (Helm of the Wolf Spirit)
    • Imbued Jewel of the Zombie: +10% Death Summon Life Drain (Belt of Zombie Skin)
    • Imbued Jewel of Waning Fizzle: -5% Magic Fizzle Chance (Acara’s Plate Gauntlets of Defiance)
• An additional round of artifact balance has been implemented. A spreadsheet has been prepared to show the specific stat changes (if any) for each artifact. This spreadsheet will be maintained to serve as a reference for players. Crafting artifacts have not received balance passes yet, and likely will receive their work for R91. Non-tiered artifacts will become tiered with potential stat changes for R91 and R92. These artifact balance changes help to correct many issues with artifacts being far more powerful than their crafted counterparts:
  • Helms of the Bear, Stag, and Wolf Spirits now feature reduced Tame Level bonuses. Base stats such as Damage Resistance values for all three animal spirit helmets have also been reduced/normalized with leather helmet crafted gear items.
  • Wand of Static Discharge has been renamed to the Wand of Wild Lightning. The Static Discharge Bonus present on this wand was also renamed to Wild Lightning and has received extra functionality to boost various aspects of Discharge, Lightning, and Chain Lightning.
  • Ring of the Mouse now has a reduced Aggro bonus, scales more evenly between tiers, and dual wear restrictions for this ring have been removed.
  • Ring of the Lich Kind now has significantly less Death Attunement bonus, and the Life Attunement/Healing Modifier penalties have been reduced greatly. Also, two Rings of the Lich Kind can now be equipped at the same time. The Ring of the Lich Kind has also received a very small bonus for Death Field Damage which scales by tier from 1% to 3%.
  • Ring of the Ringmaster now has reduced Tame Level bonuses.
  • Gloves of Control now have reduced Taming Specialization bonuses.
  • Belt of Control now has reduced Tame Level bonuses.
  • Obsidian Band now has reduced Magic Resistance bonuses and reduced fizzle penalty.
  • Two-Handed Mace of Unsummoning now has an increased range (from 3 to 4), a slightly decreased critical damage bonus, a slightly increased damage from strength bonus, and a slightly increased critical hit chance to better match standard bonuses for two-handed maces. The weapon damage was increased significantly at lower tiers yet lowered slightly at upper tiers. The Two-Handed Mace of Unsummoning has also been renamed to the Two-Handed Mace of Elemental Slaying.
  • Sword of Speed has been adjusted significantly. The base weapon damage bonus has been reduced and scales evenly between tiers, the strength modifier has been slightly reduced to match that of other swords, its range has been increased from 2.5 to 3 to match one-handed swords, and the critical hit chance has been greatly increased to match that of crafted swords. Also, a Rend bonus ranging from 2% to 10% has been added.
  • Xen Penetrator bow has received significant updates. The Glyph Focus Cost penalty has been removed. The base damage for the weapon has been reduced slightly. The bonus from strength has been reduced to be equal to that of crafted bows, and the free attack clicks have been increased from 6 to 8 to match crafted bows.
  • Warlock’s Chain has received significant changes. The attunement bonuses have been slightly lowered, and now all scale from 2 to 10 based on tier of the chain. Intelligence bonuses have been reduced and scale evenly between tiers from 3 to 15. Magic Resistance bonuses have been reduced and scale evenly between tiers from 2 to 10. The Adventure Level bonus now scales evenly between tiers. The spell reagent consumption penalty has been greatly reduced and now scales between tiers from 25% to 125% instead of 200% for all tiers.
  • Staff of Xen now has reduced Rooted, Moon Attunement, and Earth Attunement, which now also scale evenly between tiers. All 3 penalties (Magic Glyph Focus Cost, the Sun Attunement, and the Skill Learning Speed) have been removed.
  • Spider Silk Belt now features reduced Rooted and Dexterity bonuses. The Rooted and Attack Speed bonuses now scale evenly between tiers, and the Glyph Focus Cost penalty has been reduced and now scales between tiers.
  • Shield of the Wicked King has received significant changes. Combat Block values have now been greatly reduced across all tiers to scale from 1 to 5, which is lower than the standard shield Combat Block value of 8. Draw Speed Bonuses have been normalized across all tiers, now scaling between 0.1 and 0.5. Cast Time Multiplier bonuses are now a flat bonus at 0.1 across all tiers. Strength bonuses across all tiers have been greatly reduced. The Focus Damage Rate penalty now scales evenly between tiers from 0.1 to 0.5. The Combat Health/Sec penalty now scales evenly between tiers from -1 to -5.
  • Shield of Attraction now features reduced Combat Block values and now has the same fizzle chance penalty of 10% like other shields. This shield has retained its extra Durability Multiplier of 400% and still has a much higher chance to be hit for durability damage as other equipment items (to act as a durability damage sink).
  • Shard of Night no longer has a Dexterity bonus or fizzle reduction. The base weapon stats are now equal to a basic dagger across all tiers. The Sun Magic penalty has been removed. Moon Attunement bonuses have been reduced slightly at Epic, but now scale from Common to Epic evenly by increments of 5. The Lunar Hours bonus now scales evenly from 1 to 2 across the tiers.
  • Savage Sash of Swiftness now has reduced Attack Speed and Move Speed bonuses.
  • Sage’s Sash now has a smaller Intelligence bonus across all tiers, and now features scaled penalties throughout the tiers which increases the penalty for Legendary and Epic versions, yet lowers the penalty for Common and Uncommon versions.
  • Ring of Wisdom’s bonus for Intelligence has been reduced greatly, and the Strength and Dexterity penalties have been increased significantly.
  • Ring of the Gambler now has a reduced Dexterity bonus, and the critical damage penalty has been greatly reduced.
  • Ring of the Frogkin now features a reduced Jump Strength bonus, scaling from 0.2 to 1.0 between tiers, but the dual wear restrictions have been removed.
  • Ring of the Cuttlekin now features a reduced Jump Strength bonus, scaling from 0.2 to 1.0 between tiers, but the dual wear restrictions have been removed. The ring now also features a reduced Dexterity bonus.
  • Ring of the Brittle Brawn bonuses for Strength have been greatly reduced.
  • Pirate Tricorn Hat of the Cap’n now features a reduced Move Rate bonus, and this bonus now scales evenly between tiers from 2% to 10%. This hat now also has reduced Magic Resistance bonuses.
  • Necklace of Cautious Precision now has a reduced Dexterity bonus, but also features a smaller movement penalty.
  • Leather Quiver of Jealousy now has reduced Blinding Shot Damage and Chaos Attunement bonuses. Also, the Draw Speed bonus is now 0.1 across all tiers, meaning a reduction in tiers Uncommon through Epic.
  • Leather Bandit Armor Set has received significant changes:
    • The Epic Leather Bandit Boots now have 8 Dexterity instead of 9.
    • The Leather Bandit Chest pieces now have greatly reduced weapon damage bonuses.
    • The Leather Bandit Gloves now have Dexterity bonuses that evenly scale by tier, the poison effectiveness bonus has been reduced, and the fizzle penalty is now at 4% instead of 2% to match crafted leather gloves.
    • The Epic Leather Bandit Helm now has improved Light Armor Skill Focus Cost reduction, but the tame level bonus has been reduced from 9 to 8.
    • The Leather Bandit Leggings now feature improved Dexterity scaling between tiers, a reduced Bludgeon Stun Effectiveness, and reduced Attack From Behind bonuses.
  • Lavalliere of the Lagomorph now features reduced Movement and Attack Speed bonuses. Also, the Strength penalty has been removed.
  • Halberd of the Sun has received significant updates to its base weapon stats so that it more closely matches base stat values with crafted halberds. Range has increased to 4 from 3.5, base weapon damage has decreased at upper tiers, critical damage bonus has been slightly reduced, bonus from strength has been slightly reduced, critical hit chance has increased significantly, and free attack ticks have increased by 1.
  • Daemon Trident has been significantly adjusted to feature standard crafted trident base values. Range has slightly increased, base damage has been greatly lowered, base critical damage has increased significantly. Also, bonus from strength has been normalized which will show a slight reduction at higher tiers yet an increase at lower tiers. Base critical chance now matches crafted counterparts and has been lowered, and number of free attack ticks has been increased to 5 to match crafted tridents as well. The amount of chaos attunement provided has been significantly decreased to max at 30 with Epic versions, and push/pull bonuses are now normalized at 10% like crafted tridents. Also, the Daemon Trident now features a Confusion Resistance bonus.
  • Cutlass of the Swashbuckler has received significant modifications. The range has been increased from 2.5 to 3 to match crafted 1-Handed Swords, and the base damage has been greatly reduced, but is still higher than crafted 1-Handed Swords. Bonus from strength was slightly lowered, but the base chance for critical hit was greatly increased to match crafted swords. Also, an Attack From Behind Damage bonus was added which scales with tier from 1.5% to 7.5%, and the Pick Pocket and Sneak Attack bonuses now scale with tier from 5% to 25%.
  • Crossbow of Accuracy has received significant changes. The range has been lowered to be normalized with crafted crossbows. The base damage of the lower tiers has been increased, and the base damage for the Epic version has been slightly reduced, but still exceeds crafted crossbows slightly. Critical Damage bonuses have been lowered to match that of crafted crossbows, and bonus from strength has been raised to be normalized with crafted crossbows. The free attack clicks have been reduced to 10, which is still 2 greater than crafted crossbows.
  • Boots of the Energetic Tamer have received reduced Move Speed bonuses, and the Tame Move Speed bonuses at higher tiers have been increased yet slightly lowered at lower tiers to improve scaling. The Legendary Focus bonus is now set at 80 instead of 70 to fix a scaling issue, and the fizzle penalty now scales between 1% and 5%, increasing the penalty for Rare, Legendary, and Epic versions.
  • Belt of the Zombie Skin now feature reduced Death Attunement and Death Summon Life Drain bonuses, and fire and sun resistance penalties have been added.
  • The Belt of the Dedicated now features greatly reduced Strength and Damage Avoidance bonuses, and a slightly reduced Aggro Boost bonus. Also, the belt’s fizzle penalty is now greatly reduced.
  • Ancient Two-Handed Sword was received the same benefits as recent changes to crafted Two-Handed swords in regards to base stats. In this regard, this sword’s range, critical hit bonus, and free attack ticks have been increased. The base weapon damage has been reduced slightly. Also, the sword has been renamed to the Two-Handed Sword of Elf Slaying.
  • Ancient Staff of Death has received significant changes. Its attunement now scales evenly between tiers, and all penalties have been removed. Undead Mastery has been removed. Summon Undead Effectiveness now scales with tier. Summon Decay Speed now scales with tier and caps slightly higher.
  • Ancient Staff of Anarchy has also received significant changes. Its Chaos Attunement now scales evenly with tiers, and the Magic Resistance penalty has been converted to a magic resistance bonus scaling between 2% and 10%. The Chaotic Feedback bonus now scales evenly with tiers.
  • The Acara armor set has received significant adjustments:
    • The boots now feature a reduced Combat Dodge Modifier.
    • The chest now features more Focus.
    • The greaves now feature reduced Damage Avoidance.
    • The gauntlets and helm now feature reduced Air Attunement.
    • The shield now features less Air Stun Effectiveness and this stat is now tied into the set bonus so that it scales with number of items worn within the set.
    • For all of the pieces of the Acara set, instead of scaling from low fizzle penalty to a near-zero penalty, they scale from the fizzle penalty expected from plate armor down to the fizzle penalty of chain armor.
    • Each piece has received a flat rate +2% Air Damage which is not affected by the set bonus.
• Chaos and Chaos Warding Gem and Jewel recipes are added to appropriate alchemy merchants.
• Various rugs have been added to crafting recipes available for the Textile Crafting Station and removed from decoration merchants.
• Crafted rings and necklaces have improved base stats to help them be more competitive with artifacts:
  • Copper: +4 Dexterity
  • Bronze: +4 Dexterity,+2 Strength
  • Constantan: +4 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence
  • Iron: +4 Strength
  • Meteoric Iron: +4 Strength, +2 Dexterity
  • White Iron: +4 Strength, +2 Intelligence
  • Gold: +5 Intelligence
  • Silver: +1 Intelligence, +5 Magic Resistance
• Base stats for crafted belts have increased to help make them more competitive with artifacts.
  • Cloth: +6 Intelligence
  • Leather: +6 Dexterity
  • Heavy: +6 Strength
• Old versions of crafted weapons and armor have received durability increases to account for recent increases to the standardized durability for those slots. The changes are as follows:
  • Bone Legs: +10
  • Bone Feet, Bone Hands, Other Legs: +25
  • Chests, Bows: +20
  • Helms, Hands, Feet, Backs, Shields, 1H Melee Weapons, Necks, Rings: +15
  • 2H Melee Weapons: +40
  • Belts: +65
• The Practice Dummy should now respawn properly after 5 seconds. Also, an issue was fixed which prevented respawn.
• Black Cutworm Cupcake now only requires 3 cutworms instead of 5 to make 5 cupcakes
• The Acara Guantlets are now Acara Gauntlets, fixing a typo on all 10 versions.
• All crafted jewelry items now provide item effects in their name. For instance, a crafted ring that’s been socketed with an Imbued Chaos Gem would be called a Ring of Greater Chaos.
• Fixed the Thimble of Evelyn’s tooltip description.
• The Yoke description has been corrected to indicate the blacksmith station instead of carpentry station.
• Gustball Insignia’s now sell at large quantities at crafting merchants to mirror amounts available for like items.
• The Shrines of Life, Water, and Air now require new version artifacts to be crafted instead of the old legacy versions.
• Warlock Chain recipe now utilizes the new version of the Heart of Vrul, not the legacy version.
• The Chain of Mystic and Elemental Power recipes now accept the new versions of the ring artifacts.
• The Lute String recipe now requires 3 Leather and 9 Wax and yields 8 Lute Strings instead of 1.
• The Kobold Distillation Device can now have decorations placed upon it, and it can now also be placed on other decorations such as castle walls and blocks.
• The old/legacy version of the Ringmaster’s Vest (all tiers) can now be socketed with gems
• Crafted cloth and leather belts can now be masterworked.
• All casks can now be placed as POT decorations, and they now have more flexibility in placement which allows for staggered stacking.
• Small, Medium, and Large Stone Ruins can now be placed in basements in dungeons.
• The Ladybug Backpack can now be opened when placed as a decoration.
• Daggers and short swords can now be reshaped.
• The GM Potion timescale option is now capped at 2X. Be on the look out for upcoming “training party” potions are being created that will give lasting buff circle that grants a large training speed boost for those hosting training parties!
• The Small Fancy Pavilion can be placed as a decoration once again.

Combat & Skill Changes:

• Critical hit chances for about a dozen spells are now calculated correctly, which includes all touch and fist spells.
• All bows not receiving the damage bonus from the Ranged Combat bonus from food and the new Imbued Gems have been fixed.
• The green dragon’s stun can now only be applied one time and at a shorter duration.
• Chain Lightning’s base damage has been increased by about 20%. Additionally, it can no longer be blocked by shields and the max number of jumps it will make has been increased from 4 to 6 targets or 8 targets with Wild Lightning boost.
• The base damage for Lightning has been increased by about 20% and shields no longer offer any protection from this attack.
• Ice Fist now includes a stacking Dexterity debuff.
• Chaos Bolt will now be 4 times more likely to do one of the simple damage bolts rather than one of the other effects. Damage has also been increased.
• Undead creatures now have much less resistance to Death Magic.
• Pets can now receive teleport and sit commands during combat.
• Crossbows will no longer bypass protection from shields.
• Shield of Crystal now gives extra health scaling per level and an additional Armor Effectiveness bonus if specialized in Earth Magic.
• Shield of Ice now gives extra spell critical hit damage.
• Many caster mobs will use Blink, Confusion, and Ring of Fire less frequently.
• The damage-over-time effect from the creature casted Fireball spell now scales with creature difficulty.
• The damage from Atonal Aria has been decreased by 20% to 40%.
• The Fire Speed effect in the Fire Speed innate skill will now grant 0.3% per point instead of 0.3125%.
• A bug that allowed for instant casting of bard songs has been fixed.
• Root effects should now overwrite instead of stacking.
• Ghosts will now drain focus rather than add focus on special attacks.
• The ghost focus drain effect has been dramatically decreased.
• The ghost debuff strength skill now lasts 30 seconds instead of 1030 seconds.
• Performance issues caused by NPC casters have been fixed.
• The cold damage on the upper edge of the Obsidian Panopticon now only affects players.
• Ghosts and Episode 2 Ghost Corpions should now correctly increase in resistance to non-life/sun magic as they get higher in level.
• Shield of Air now requires 70% less focus to cast.
• High level enemy mages will now cast Torpid Torment less often.
• A global fix has been implemented for effects with negative duration never expiring. This was causing many low level roots/slows on players to last until you logged out.
• The new Ranged Defense shield skill is now available at the trainer.

User Interface & Lua Changes:

• The character inventory window now features a “Sort Recent Loot” checkbox to place recently looted or refreshed item stacks to the top of your inventory.
• Crafting components providing item effects to gear now show their provided stat(s) in the tooltip during mouseover.
• The decoration palette window now has a new column indicating the coordinate location for each decoration. This new column is visible if you have appropriate access to the property lot or Player-Owned Town.
• Buff information now shows in real time in the tooltips during mouseover.
• The bank window can now be resized horizontally and diagonally.
• A cancel button has been added to the crafting station windows that allows players to cancel a queued item while in progress without closing the window.
• In-game maps have been added for the following scenes:
  • Blood River Massacre
  • Westend
  • Sequanna Colossus
  • Ulfheim
  • Nightshade Pass
  • East Sanctus Forest
• Improvements have been made to the Hidden Vale in-game map.
• The splash screen displaying the Shroud of the Avatar logo has been removed, and the logo has been added to the main menu.
• Four new Lua functions for accessing buff information have been added:
  • ShroudGetBuffCount
  • ShroudGetBuffName(int)
  • ShroudGetBuffDescription(int)
  • ShroudGetBuffTimeRemaining(int)
• Added two new Lua hooks (ShroudForceGC and ForceAssetCleanup) to force garbage collection and freeing up assets. These new hooks are primarily for testing purposes.
• The journal window no longer displays task difficulties after the task has been completed.
• The journal no longer shows active tasks in the completed section.
• The lot listing window can no longer be opened while in the Overworld.
• The lot listing window can now be accessed from the window selection menu.

Player Economy, Rewards, & Loot Changes:

• Black Cutworm now has a chance to drop from Tier 1 through Tier 3 cotton nodes.
• The Legacy version of the Ring of Jones no longer drops in sacks and has been appropriately replaced by the newer version.
• Maps no longer drop excessively in certain loot tables.

World, Quests, and Miscellaneous Changes:

• Spectral Mines: The Archlapin is dormant once again.
• Northern Grunvald Barrens and Desert Encounter: The Luminous Atavist has returned.
• Aether Creatures: Reactivated these creatures in all the usual places.
• The VFX for explosive objects in adventure scenes should now properly disappear after the item explodes.
• Calico and tabby cats can now be tamed and killed.
• Owl’s Head: Nob (and all horse trade specialists) will now only accept non-wooden taming necklaces when players have both non-wooden and wooden taming necklaces. Players who want to trade wooden taming necklaces should store any other necklaces in a safe place then return to the horse specialist for trade.
• Owl’s Head: Adjusted Todd’s data so that Myra’s name is spelled correctly when the two of them are chatting.
• Sequanna Colossus: Fixed an issue where some ladders teleported players into world objects or away from the ground level.
• Solace Bridge: Updated the collision on a large rockface, to better allow ore mining.
• Crafting Tutorial: Updated Edwin in Soltown, Gilda Metcalfe in Aerie, and Bledig deCani in Resolute with improved logic for accepting a leather helm.
• Devotional Caretakers: Improved the “Visit Devotional Shrines” quest so that players get their reward when achieving their last visit (rather than saying “banner” after the last visit).
• Ulfheim: Updated a cliff wall to ensure players don’t float along the edges.
• Well of Aldur: Fixed collision issues with several large rocks.
• Overworlds: Added one-time UI tips to Novia, Hidden Vale, and Mistrendur to let players know which overworld they have entered.
• Exit Archways: Added one-time UI hint about approaching the exit to the overworld.
• Necropolis Barrens: Fixed a typo in the “Give Another Dead Body to Davropos” journal.
• Tanglemire: Fixed a typo in Frida’s “job” response.
• Libris Ruins: Updated some props and the path grid to better accommodate the Redthorn Flowers.
• Kas Ruins: Reviewed all buildings and added collision where it was needed.
• K’rul: Added a door in the clockwork dragon room that automatically closes when the dragon approaches it.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Added a hint about the ladder related to the missing scouts. Added a platform with ladder on the northeastern side of the bivouac (near the bridge). Added tip/journal to many ladders/roots/vines for how to use them.
• Aerie: Added an update to Belana’s Loan Forgiveness Note to ensure only players at the correct quest stage can collect it, and that the task properly archives.
• South Drachvald Spur: Improved the compass markers for the Lucky Leather quest.
• Snow Mountains Road Encounter/Naughty Brats: Added one or two “Naughty Mimics” (tier 8 mimic chests) to appear in high-threat wave during months when Krampus isn’t available.
• Blood River Outskirts: Improved compass markers, responses, and journal text related to Alberic’s tasks to get evidence. The vigilante camp gates now use interactive locks to operate the external switches.
• Blood River Outskirts: Improved compass markers and journal entries for Alberic’s early “get evidence” tasks.
• Noreach: Sigrunn’s “Ask About Northern Curse” should clear after checking in with Pendro of Yew. If it doesn’t, it should auto-archive after changing scenes. If that fails, say “northern curse” to Sigrunn or Pendro to clear that task.
• Lost Vale: Improved the quest rewards from the skeleton and Anais.
• Lamech’s Bazaar and South Midmaer Way: Added collision to the rope bridge that leads to the airship in each scene.
• Master Trainers: The titles of all master trainers now follow the pattern of “Master <Skill> Trainer.”
• Obsidian Panopticon: Adjusted some NPCs on the top ring of the panopticon.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Both switches in an elevator pair will now properly reset.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Updated the middleman’s package delivery quest to better accommodate delayed package deliveries.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Added follow-up journal entry after completing the middleman’s original package delivery.
• Obsidian Panopticon: The blacksmith station now faces the correct direction.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Avatars without lockpicks may take a lockpick from a friendly prisoner no more than once a day.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Fixed an issue where a cliffside boulder had no underside.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Fixed several stuck spots.
• Obsidian Panopticon: Returning to the middleman with a prisoner note for a daily reward now shows a text label on the associated compass marker.
• Yew: Improved how Pendro clears the “Ask About Northern Curse” task.
• Braemar: Bridget Helvig now only provides a reward after the player reveals Veimor’s status.
• Braemar: Removed a invisible blocker that prevented players from approaching an exit archway.
• Crypt of the Avatar: Eris should now always recognize when players have the report she desires.
• Soltown: Numerous improvements have been made to Soltown to provide a better experience for new players.
• Stats for the Tier 15 Ice Elemental have been corrected.
• Blood River Outskirts: Adjusted the spawners for fungal enemies near Gus, including a reduction to their leash ranges.
• The Rise: The new areas of The Rise have received some improved visuals.
• The Rise: Several performance issues have been fixed.
• The bird population of Soltown has been reduced.

Player-Owned Town Changes:

• Arlia: Upgraded to City.
• Kookie Land: Added new village near Kiln in Novia.
• Lightbringer Isle: Upgraded to Teralopolis.
• Rampage Island: Added new Holdfast to Novia.
• Silent Ascent: Moved to Hidden Vale, north of Braemar.
• The Time Tunnel: Moved to Hidden Vale, near Kingsroad.
• Verat Chaos Decimus: Added Holdfast near Lord British’s Castle in Mistrendur.

Read more…

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Another amazing game release has arrived, Avatars! Head to Mistrendur and enter the Obsidian Panopticon, a brand new adventure scene added for Episode 2 Access holders! Also, The Rise adventure scene has been expanded significantly. Players will discover amazing new challenges whilst delving deeper into this sinister labyrinth! Artifact changes and balance have begun, and crafted gear items have received their initial round of improvements in an ongoing series of changes to increase the appeal of crafted gear! So many fixes and UI improvements are live, Avatars! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Obsidian Panopticon Revealed!
• Release 89 Patch Notes!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Support the Family of CatherineRose!
• Crown Store: Stargazer Lilies, Stacked Construction Timbers, Darkstarr Items & More!
• May Login Reward: Large Fancy Vase of Multicolored Lilies!
• R89 Subscriber Login Rewards: Xenossian Armor Leggings, Jewelry Box 3-Pack, Lily Vases!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

The Obsidian Panopticon Revealed!

Ready your weapons, and gather your spell components, Avatars! The Obsidian Panopticon has been discovered deep within the icy reaches of Mistrendur upon the easternmost island of Slangehodde. Available to Episode 2 Access holders, this ancient prison controlled by the Obsidian Elves of Mistrendur contains unspeakable dangers. Will you and your companions attempt to brave this newly-discovered location?

“Ruthless elves who still worship the Obsidian Eye dominate the eastern region of Mistrendur. Most of those who oppose them are slaughtered without mercy, but a ‘lucky’ few find themselves imprisoned in the elves’ Obsidian Panopticon. Hanging within a bleak, frigid canyon and surrounded by a frozen wasteland, the panopticon offers inmates only one way to escape: death.”

The Obsidian Panopticon is another fantastic addition to the ever-growing library of available Episode 2 content. As the year unfolds, more and more locations will be revealed, and more Episode 2 story elements and quests will be added to the game. In the coming weeks, additional loot items will become available in this new scene, to include new recipes for Imbued Gems which attach to crafted gear gem sockets.

We hope you enjoy this new adventure scene. So much more new content is on the horizon, so stay tuned!

Release 89 Patch Notes!

Below are a list of updates that are live as of Release 89 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! In our tick-tock development cycle, this is a new content, improvement and bug fixes month (a tock), with a slew of additional improvements and bug fixes inbound for R90. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 89!

Crafting, Decoration, Gear, & Consumable Changes:

• New durability standards have been applied to all newly created gear, whether it be an upgraded artifact or a purely crafted gear item. These new standards are a result of adding in the 50 durability formerly offered with exceptional crafts directly into the base durability values of each item.
  • Artifacts now feature slightly lower durability standards than crafted gear and will degrade about 10% more quickly.
  • Any newly crafted item, newly looted item, or newly combined artifact will feature the durability and durability damage multipliers as indicated below:
    • Artifacts:
      • Helm – 130
      • Chest – 200
      • Gloves – 130
      • Legs – 175
      • Boots – 130
      • Belt – 150
      • Back – 150
      • Ring – 130
      • Necklace – 130
      • 1H Melee – 150
      • 2H Melee – 220
      • Bows/Crossbow – 200
      • Shield – 150
      • Off-Hand – 150
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Plate – 2.7
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Chain – 1.8
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Leather – 1.3
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Others – 0.9
    • Crafted Gear:
      • Helm – 145
      • Chest – 220
      • Gloves – 145
      • Legs – 200
      • Boots – 145
      • Belt – 165
      • Back – 165
      • Ring – 145
      • Necklace – 145
      • 1H Melee – 165
      • 2H Melee – 240
      • Bows/Crossbow – 220
      • Shield – 165
      • Off-Hand – 165
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Plate – 3
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Chain – 2
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Leather – 1.5
      • Durability Damage Multiplier, Others – 1
    • Bone Armor:
      • Helm – 150
      • Chest – 250
      • Gloves – 150
      • Legs – 210
      • Boots – 150
• Exceptional crafting results now provide the following bonuses instead of +50 durability:
  • Weapons with critical/exceptional success now receive +2.5% (1-Handed) or +5% (2-Handed) bonus to Weapon Durability Effectiveness.
  • Armor and miscellaneous gear items with critical/exceptional success now receive +1% bonus to Armor Durability Effectiveness.
  • Shields with critical/exceptional success now receive +5% bonus to Shield Durability Effectiveness.
• Adjustments were made to base stats of crafted weapons to provide more uniformity across weapons within the same category. Also, crafted items received various stat increases to to become more competitive with artifact weaponry. In an upcoming continuation of balance work for artifacts to be revealed in R90 and R91, many artifact weaponry base values will diminish slightly.
• All existing artifacts that have tiers (Common through Legendary only) already present in player inventories and storage, are now considered “Legacy” artifacts. Their tooltip descriptions indicate instructions on how these items can be utilized going forward.
  • Legacy artifact tooltip descriptions are as follows: “This is a legacy version of this artifact, but it can still be equipped as is. To use this artifact in upgrade recipes, it must be salvaged to receive a low durability variant of the newer artifact version. That low durability variant can be used in upgrade recipes, and it can also be salvaged for Ancient Essences.”
  • The reason there are new versions of the same artifact (as well as all crafted gear items), is because if 50 durability was added to gear items already present in the game which had previously received an old exceptional bonus would receive an EXTRA 50 durability. And since artifacts are used in recipes to upgrade, to allow the crafting system to recognize matching artifacts for upgrade recipes, first the old Legacy artifacts must be converted to the new versions so the recipes can recognize that matching artifacts were in fact provided to the crafting table.
  • Old versions of Epic artifacts were not added to this Legacy salvage concept since they are not utilized in upgrade recipes. They will still salvage into essences as expected.
• Non-tiered artifacts such as Cabalist Hoods and Cabalist Weaponry, as well as items such as the Torch of Jerik, still feature the same salvage results as before and have yet been tiered. So if players wish to hold off salvaging these a bit longer, you’ll soon be able to combine them or salvage for components, but no new salvage results for these items were added.
• Artifact upgrade recipes now require Ancient Essences. Common to Uncommon requires 1. Uncommon to Rare requires 2. Rare to Legendary requires 4. Legendary to Epic requires 6.
• Rare, Legendary, and Epic Artifacts now yield fewer essences when salvaged.
• Artifact Balance (Initial):
  • Attunement values for Rings of Attunement have all been reduced, yet they’ve received an extra 30 durability due to the new standardized durability values.
  • The Attunement bonuses for the Ring of the Deep Woods have been realigned, and the penalty resistance reductions have been adjusted to mirror the bonuses within the opposite schools of magic.
  • Vexlyn’s Ember of Conflagration now has a reduced attunement bonus, the Intelligence bonus is now scaled with tier, the fizzle reduction has been normalized with wands, and the penalties have been reduced.
  • Thunder Branch now has a reduced attunement bonus, the intelligence bonus is now scaled with tier, the fizzle reduction has been normalized with wands, the Earth Attunement penalty has been reduced, and a Magic Glyph Focus Cost penalty (identical to the newly reduced Vexlyn’s Wand penalty) has been added.
  • Wand of Static Discharge and Wand of Undying Embers have had their penalties removed. The Fire Speed Bonus has been removed from the Wand of Undying Embers.
  • 9 Off-Hand items have been balanced to feature attunement and summon improvements only, though the Ankh of Sacrifice has retained its focus regeneration since there is no life summon ability available. Attunement amounts for all 9 Off-Hand items have been reduced.
  • The Ankh of Sacrifice and the Ankh of Wala have been converted to Off-Hand items and now only function in left hand slot. Both received large reductions in attunement bonuses to balance with their Off-Hand brethren and to prep for upcoming skill tree balance work.
  • Acara Shield’s Air Stun Effectiveness now scales with tier.
• Mundane items such as Rusty Spatulas, Beakers, Flasks, Jars, Ceramic Bowls, Paintings, Maps etc. can now be salvaged:
  • Quartz Chunk has been renamed to Quartz and added to many glass item salvage results. Quartz will be utilized in upcoming new recipes.
  • All mundane items now feature a tooltip description to indicate the uses for the item. An example would be, “This item can be sold, used as a decoration, or salvaged at a carpentry station for wood scraps, canvas fabric, or various other items.”
  • Mundane loot items have all received slightly increased gold values in case players still wish to sell these items, regardless of the salvage improvements.
  • Some mundane items available on NPC merchants have either been removed from merchants or have had their purchase prices increased to discourage mass purchase/salvaging of NPC merchant items.
  • A new crafting material known as “Bone Powder” has been added to the game which will be utilized in many upcoming recipe additions to the game. Bone Powder is obtained by salvaging various bones which drop as loot.
  • Many mundane items have had their names changed to better describe their appearance, to help differentiate them with other mundane items, and to provide more flexibility in how these items can be utilized for salvage or upcoming improvements to their purpose. An example of this would be, “Green Spice Jar” was renamed to “Jar of Green Powder” which affords more flexibility in salvage results since “powder” is less specific than “spice.”
  • Many mundane items missing from loot have been added to lower tier loot tables.
  • Several additional mundane items never before available to players have been added to lower tier loot tables.
  • Salvaging mundane items that are stolen yield slightly lower primary results, and a have a much smaller chance to provide special rare results. For instance, a stolen Green Cloth Bolt will provide 1-2 fabric scrap as it’s primary result, with a much less chance to provide items like threads and actual bolts of cloth, while the looted version provides 1-3 fabric scrap as its primary result and has a considerably higher chance to provide special salvaging results.
  • Gold and Silver Goblets now provide many more gold and silver scraps. Stolen versions of these goblets provide significantly less gold and silver scraps, but they are still worthwhile to steal if you happen to pass by one.
  • A small number of mundane items, primarily mugs, cups, and goblets, have been reassigned to mundane item salvage tables. This means these items now have a small chance to also provide interesting rare results when salvaged.
  • Small Ball of Clay has been added to the game and drops from salvage results for ceramic/pottery type items. A recipe will soon be added to the game which will allow these balls of clay to be combined into clay blocks. Additional uses for clay will be added to the game in future.
  • Many maps have been removed from bookseller merchants, but Imps now have a very significant chance to drop all maps. These are the maps that were recently added to crafting recipes to create framed versions. These maps now also have salvage options for wood pulp, with more interesting salvage results to come in the future.
  • Here is a list of all the mundane items that were addressed in this round of salvage love:
    • Beaker
    • Beaker Tongs
    • Black Striped Cloth Spool
    • Blue Cloth Spool
    • Boiler Glass
    • Bowl of Black Powder
    • Bowl of Orange Powder
    • Bowl of Red Powder
    • Bowl of Yellow Powder
    • Brown Cylindrical Jug
    • Brown Rounded Jug
    • Bucket
    • Candle in Bulb Base
    • Ceramic Cup
    • Ceramic Goblet
    • Ceramic Mug
    • Ceramic Pitcher
    • Ceramic Plate
    • Chamberstick Candle
    • Clear Pyramid Bottle
    • Condenser
    • Conical Flask
    • Diamond Cloth Bolt
    • Digging Shovel
    • Dirty Cutting Board
    • Dirty Rolling Pin
    • Dirty Wooden Spoon
    • Dotted Cloth Spool
    • Dragon Claw
    • Dragon Jawbone
    • Dragon Leg Bone
    • Dragon Rib
    • Dragonbone Throne
    • Empty Ceramic Jug
    • Empty Ruined Sack
    • Empty Test Tube Rack
    • Filled Beaker
    • Filled Boiler Glass
    • Filled Condenser
    • Filled Flask
    • Filled Glass Bottle With Stand
    • Filled Pyramid Bottle
    • Filled Round Bottle
    • Filled Small Square Bottle
    • Filled Test Tube
    • Filled Test Tube Rack
    • Flat Shovel
    • Flimsy Hoe
    • Green Cloth Bolt
    • Green Striped Cloth Spool
    • Jar of Green Powder
    • Jar of Orange Powder
    • Jar of Red Powder
    • Jar of White Powder
    • Large Ceramic Bowl
    • Large Flat Shovel
    • Large Pewter Bowl
    • Large Square Bottle
    • Maps (All 26 versions)
    • Mosaic of the Avatar
    • Oil Lamp Burner
    • Painting (Butcher Shop)
    • Painting (Ladies in Waiting)
    • Painting (Lakeside Sunrise)
    • Painting (Pastoral Village)
    • Painting (Portrait of a Gentleman)
    • Painting (Portrait of a Lady)
    • Pewter Cup
    • Pewter Jug
    • Pewter Mug
    • Pewter Pitcher
    • Pewter Plate
    • Pitchfork
    • Plow
    • Portrait of Envy Angel
    • Pristine Skeleton Rib Cage
    • Pyramid Bottle
    • Rectangular Bottle
    • Red Cloth Bolt
    • Round Bottle
    • Round Flask
    • Rusty Bowl
    • Rusty Deep Pan
    • Rusty Fork
    • Rusty Kettle
    • Rusty Knife
    • Rusty Ladle
    • Rusty Mug
    • Rusty Pan
    • Rusty Plate
    • Rusty Spatula
    • Rusty Spoon
    • Scale
    • Scythe
    • Short Ceramic Vase
    • Skeleton Hib Bone
    • Small Clear Square Bottle
    • Small Knife
    • Small Odd Skull
    • Small Round Flask
    • Small Square Bottle
    • Small Square Jar (Green)
    • Small Square Jar (Red)
    • Small Square Jar (White)
    • Small Square Jar (Yellow)
    • Square Jar (Black)
    • Square Jar (Blue)
    • Square Jar (Brown)
    • Square Jar (Yellow)
    • Square Shovel
    • Striped Cloth Bolt
    • Tabletop Candelabra
    • Tall Ceramic Vase
    • Test Tube
    • Test Tube With Cork
    • Trowel
    • Wood Bowl
    • Wood Plate
    • Wood Serving Bowl
    • Wood Serving Plate
    • Wooden Mug
    • Yoke
• Planting and watering only consumes a bucket of water 10% of the time.
• Crafted belts can now be enchanted and masterworked.
• Jar of Yeast Culture has been renamed to Yeast.
• Animal Bones have been removed from NPC merchants.
• The Belt of Control has received an improved tooltip description.
• The Fine Oak Furniture Set can now be placed upon castle walls and blocks or other decorations which allow it.
• Ancient Xenossian Plate Chest Armor is no longer tagged as “medium” armor. It has been changed to “heavy” as intended so heavy armor skills will function in conjunction while wearing it.
• The Cherry Blossom Dress pattern can now be applied to chest slot items, and it can now be placed as POT decoration.
• Uncommon Staff of Xen now properly indicates the tier in the display name.
• Rare Spurred Boots no longer provide a double focus bonus and properly apply 70 focus.
• Legendary Spurred Boots now properly provide the Mounted Sprint Speed bonus like the other tiers.
• Uncommon Spider Silk Belt now indicates the tier in the display name for this artifact.
• The female Shogun chest armor has been adjusted around neck/upper chest to mitigate stretching.
• Closed a gap in the neck on female Shogun and Dark Shogun chest armor pieces.
• Fixed an LOD issue with Saddle & Bags with Stand.
• All hot tubs can now be placed as POT decorations.
• Improved the store entry descriptions for string lights to indicate they will most likely need to be scaled down in size to fit in row-sized homes.
• Spring Fountain with Floating Candles once again has candles that light up.
• Renamed dungeon transition pieces for Stone Dungeon to Ancient Stone so the blueprint, the recipe, and the item match in nomenclature.
• Tooltip descriptions were added to all seeds to aid players with determining watering and harvest times.
• Crafting Stations and Printing Presses can now be placed upon other items such as castle walls.
• The Faerie Belt is now properly flagged as a premium non-artifact item.
• Mounts can now be used from the inventory even if locked.

User Interface Changes:

• The town lot listings window can now be assigned a hotkey and can be opened without visiting the town crier.
• The town lot listing window now features a column for house name (right-click your home’s icon in Property Manager to rename) and also indicates if the lot has a basement and dungeon placed. Displaying the custom names for homes should allow players to better advertise what is featured on their lot when other players view the lot listing window.
• The journal now features search functionality to filter for active and completed tasks. Also, sound and display issues have been fixed for the journal.
• The recipe book now features search functionality to filter for recipes.
• The quest turn-in interface now automatically filters for the quest item required.
• The /quit command now opens the quit menu.
• A large number of in-game maps have been improved.
• The non-combat bar can now have hotkeys assigned for in-combat use.
• The Deco Palette can now have a hotkey assigned.
• Culling of interior decorations in player houses can now be controlled more effectively in the options menu to aid with performance improvement.
• By holding a new hotkey, Ctrl-W, players will see which planting beds require watering.
• The Party User Interface has been significantly optimized.
• The Quest Task List UI has been lowered slightly to no longer interfere with the display of pet buffs.
• Buffs for party members will no longer show unless they are targeted. This should offer a modest performance improvement in busy party combat situations

Player Economy, Rewards & Loot Changes:

• All loot tables have been updated to ensure any creature, quest, or bundle providing an artifact, provides the new versions of the artifacts with updated durability.
• Shadow Bears and Shadow Wolves now have a small chance to drop the artifact spirit helm for their species.
• The Helm of the Wolf Spirit now only drops from high tier wolves, with the Destroyers having the most chance.
• The Helm of the Bear Spirit now only drops from high tier bears, with the Destroyers having the most chance.
• The Helm of the Stag Spirit now only drops on T10 stags such as the Noble Stag in Tanglemire.
• Destroyer boars no longer drop the Bear, Wolf, or Stag Spirit Helms, but they have a significantly higher chance to drop the non-species specific taming artifacts.
• Ghost Corpion loot in mass spawn areas has been reduced, but single spawn Ghost Corpion loot has been improved.
• Many Episode 2 creatures have received experience reward reductions.
• Major repairs now require 250 Crowns of the Obsidian instead of 100. This change was to encourage players to replace armor more commonly and to use the Major Repair feature less often.
• Fishing bait recovery now features a soft cap. Gains beyond a certain level will still yield some benefits but will never reach 100%.
• Public vendors now allow 50 items per player.

Combat, Skills & Balance Changes:

• The shield tree has a new passive skill, Ranged Defense. This skill will make shields significantly more effective against non-magical ranged attacks.
• Experience attenuation no longer applies to characters below adventure level 110.
• Combat block and parry are no longer capped at 75 and instead scale more slowly above that value.
• Most taming skills will advance more slowly, though they will not require more experience to level.
• Torpid Torment will now be used by many higher level enemy casters.
• The base skill in the subterfuge tree, Distract, will now start at level 40.
• A large variety of creatures now feature increased crowd control resistances.
• More creatures are now considered “hovering” which enables more resistance or even immunity to certain types of crowd control.
• More skills respect creature “hovering” to including Disabling Shot, Hamstring, Knockdown, Leg Sweep, and Trip.
• Many Episode 2 creatures have been reduced in power.
• Ghosts have gained several new abilities and also will move faster as they get closer to death.
• Spiders now have several ranged attacks and their webs now scale in strength with their level.
• Night Vision now has improved visuals.
• Draw Speed now features a soft cap.
• The Root spell can now dispel Shield of Air.
• Voice Training now has a unique icon.
• Obsidian Trials has been temporarily set to a Adventure Level and skill cap of 100.

World, Quests, and Miscellaneous Changes:

• The Rise Expanded: A new mysterious addition to The Rise has appeared. Little is known of the new area. Time to explore, adventurers!
• Guild and Player-Owned Town (POT) messages of the day now last for 1 year.
• Certain houses, such as glass storefront homes or pavilions, are not affected by interior decoration culling.
• As a performance improvement, tooltips no longer attempt to refresh each frame if the mouse has not been moved.
• Jaanaford: The “secret cow” now has a unique name and doesn’t have the same one as the cow in Owl’s Head.
• Brittany Estates: Added a mailbox to the south bank.
• Crypt of the Avatar: Improved how Eris recognizes when the player has the “Report from the Council of Might” in her responses.
• Soltown: Improved how Bentley’s “Return Key to Bentley” task archives itself.
• Crooked Shank: Improved how the journal tasks archive while investigating the mystery of Crooked Shank.
• Soltown: Geof now has a compass marker for when a player is bringing him an iron blade. Geof’s journal entry for an iron blade has been improved.
• Mistrendur: Added access to the Obsidian Panopticon.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Adjusted some props to allow for better access to a quest-related ghost.
• Soltown: Updated some of Jeanne’s responses about her missing necklace.
• Novia: Added a quest marker to the Northwest Blackblade Mountains entry for Avatars seeking the Bunker C Jelly in Bunker C.
• Mysterious Swamp: Updated the path grid to better accommodate the giant monkey automatons.
• Novia: Added highlighting for the Macsen quest to the Longfall Woods compass marker.
• Blood River Outskirts: Updated logic, journals, and compass markers for Gus the automaton’s “Corruption Junction” anti-druid quest.
• Blood River Outskirts: Stag spawns have been improved.
• Brittany Fields: Added a washer woman to a small house near the water.
• Etceter: Added a compass marker at the Bank of Etceter.
• Lamech’s Bazaar and South Midmaer Way: 3 ankhs were added to the airship.
• Etceter: The housing decorations merchant should no longer rush to close the bank door when it’s left open.
• Ferig’s Battle Camp: Improved Lord Ferig’s logic to help advance the “Free Sir Patrick” / “Speak with Lord Ferig” follow-up task.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Updated the compass marker data for Kinsey to ensure that the “Kinsey Needs Your Help” marker stops appearing at the proper time.
• Lord British’s Castle: Moved several spawn points for NPCs that were reported spawning within walls.
• Soltown: Improved logic in Abigail’s responses when talking about Charlotte. Also, improved Abigail’s recollection of the events at the start of the Battle of Solace Bridge.
• Blackblade Foothills: Fixed an issue where NPCs couldn’t fully walk across two bridges.
• Ardoris: Fixed typos in the keywords of Fiona FitzOwen.
• Braemar: Changed the “Bank and Town Crier” compass marker to “Town Crier” and gave the bank it’s own compass marker.
• Ardoris: Fixed an issue where several bottles were z-fighting with a table surface.
• Troll’s Bridge: Removed the special “random encounter” message when entering this scene and when the friendly NPCs that sometimes arrive after defeating the trolls.
• Blood River Outskirts: Avatars that learn the name of Zosimus will still see his trainer title.
• Spite: Shimzu now properly rewards Avatars who offer him a burial coffin before getting his quest to get one.
• Noreach: Added additional “safety” feature to Sigrunn’s tasks to speak to other NPCs, to help ensure they clear properly.
• South Drachvald Spur now features an in-game map.
• Added Player Memorial Obelisk to Brittany Graveyard.
• Gravestones in Brittany Graveyard are now less blurry.
• An NPC building roof in Kingsport should no longer distort with camera movement.
• The mount animation no longer plays twice when dismounting.
• Player Vendors that have become “stale” will no longer sit down.
• Necropolis Barrens: Fixed an issue that blocked some players from completing Davropos’s daily “dead body” turn-in.
• Necropolis Barrens: Players who already have a “dead body” when talking to Davropos about dead bodies for the first time will now get a reward if they accept his quest at that time.
• Necropolis Barrens: Fixed an issue where Davropos would give the wrong journal entry when offering the “dead bodies” quest for the first time.
• Well of Aldur: Fixed an issue with two transcribed letters which featured duplicate content. Both now have unique content.
• Braemar: Updated Bridget Helvig’s responses to help ensure she only gives out her banner reward once.
• Well of Aldur: Fixed a stuck spot that was between two fallen pillars.
• Owl’s Head: Created a new version of Farmhouse Ale (same basic stats as generic ale) and connected this new version Farmhouse Ale to Morton’s “quest” to obtain a drink.
• Object loading has been modified to improve loading performance of decorations in player towns.
• Spectral Mines: Added “piles of gore” to the Arch Lapin cave to provide additional means for players to obtain the bones required for the Arch Lapin quest.
• Highvale Outskirts: Fixed an issue where a large boulder was blocking access to some tunnels.

Player-Owned Town Changes:

• Lightbringer Isle: Upgraded to Gigalopolis.
• Merri’s Hideaway: Changed biome to Island 01 and moved to near Xenos in Novia.
• Mossrest: Added new Hamlet along the road south of Etceter.
• Nauvoo: Added new City near Solace Bridge Outskirts.
• Nivenshire: Upgraded to Municipality.
• Wakoku: Upgraded to Crossroads Village.

Read more…

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

So many changes, fixes, and improvements have happened in the game this round, Avatars! Loot improvements! New crafting recipes! New fish! Fixes, fixes, fixes! Head on into the game and experience it for yourself! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Release 88 Patch Notes!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Support the Family of CatherineRose!
• New Store Additions: Shogun Armor, Pink Dyes, Ambient Sounds, & Holiday Items!
• April Login Reward: Magical Pink Glowing Dye 12-Pack!
• R88 Rewards Program Login Items: Ancient Xenossian Chest Armor, Cherry Blossom Pavers, Cherry Blossom Dress!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Amanita’s Adventures
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Release 88 Patch Notes!

Below are a list of updates that are live as of Release 88 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! In our tick-tock development cycle, this is primarily an improvements and bug fixes month (a tick), with some new content coming your way for R89. This round has an AMAZING amount of changes! For new content, some new crafting recipes have been added that should give players many more things to gather, loot, craft, and sell between players. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 88!

Crafting, Decoration, Gear, & Consumable Changes:

• Added 12 “Young” versions of the ultra rare trophy fish to the game and added them to the fishing loot tables. These young versions are still considerably rare but players will be able to fish these with far greater frequency comparatively to their ultra rare and full-size versions.These new versions can be placed as deco but do not scale nor have trophy data and will appear as 25% the size of the smallest trophy version. These can be processed at the at the butchering station using the same butchering recipes their larger versions use.Their addition to the game will allow for less ridiculous amounts of fillets needed if only the ultra rare versions continued exist without their young cousins. These young versions will still provide a large number of fillets in conjunction with the “feed the village” concept based upon the scarcity of the young fish, which typically vary between 1% and 3% catch rates (far more common that the ultra-rare versions that can be converted to trophies.)Mundane fish catches were reduced in frequency slightly to accommodate the addition of these fish, and trophy version fish chances were in no way changed. In Release 89 and 90, players can expect these young fish to be convertible to a small trophy, but size scaling is not a consideration. Future plans to provide Drying Rack and Fish Pile decorations are in the works!The 12 fish types receiving a new Young Fish variety are as follows:
  • Alligator Gar
  • Dunkleosteus
  • Ichthyosaurus
  • Marlin
  • Mosasaurus
  • Pike
  • Plesiosaurus
  • Sailfish
  • Shark
  • Sturgeon
  • Swordfish
  • Tarpon
• Added 23 new food recipes to food recipe NPC merchants which focus upon use of underutilized ingredients. The food spreadsheet has been updated and will continue to be updated as food changes occur in the future.
• As an example, the Broiled Mackerel recipe adjusted to only require 1 fillet with 4 meals created instead of 2 and 2. Other low rarity trophy fish recipes were also adjusted in similar ways to increase their food recipe’s output.
• Added identifiers to the display names to every fish carcass to aid players in searching/filtering for fish in their inventories. Identifiers are either Lava Fish, Freshwater Fish, Saltwater Fish, or Fetid Water Fish. If just “Fish” was used as the identifier, then it can be fished in multiple water types. Also, the weights for each fish variant have been adjusted so that players can sort by relative weight and have SOME indication as to size comparisons, but these numbers are just estimates within the length ranges to provide SOME additional help with sorting. Future improvements could arrive at a later date in that regard.
• Exceptionals received slight tweaks, and tech has been implemented so future recipes can be tagged as grandmaster recipes. More details to come!
• Craftable belts have been added to the game!
• The Epic Lead Gauntlets had worse stats than the legendary, which has now been fixed.
• The Epic Quiver of Jealousy stats were worse than lower level versions. This has been fixed.
• Edelmann bird bath is once again functional.
• The Cowbell of Reaping will no longer show effects that are zero.
• Pets once again work in basements!
• Fish Masks now correctly disappear when a character uses a stealth ability.
• The Round Heraldry Shield now correctly accepts dye
• Fixed blue flame sconce and floor lamps so that they properly illuminate.
• The Aether Orb can now be enchanted.
• The Belt of Control has received an updated description in its tooltip.
• Fixed the level of detail for the moon magic shrine.
• Fixed a crafting and gathering error which appeared when the success chance was higher than 90%.
• Fishing rods no longer disappear when hiding a helm or cloak.
• The initial spawn points for the circling dragons have been improved. They should no longer initially spawn in the distance.
• Animal spawner decorations such as the carrots or bowls no longer float in the air.
• The Practice Dummy can now be placed as a Player-Owned Town decoration and “should” be usable by everyone even if the owner is not present.
• Perennial Coast Dragon Mask eternal pattern can now be applied to helm slot items.
• The new plumed helm pattern can now be applied to other helmets.
• Updated the store entry name for Plumed Plate Helm to Ancient Xenossian Plumed Plate Helm
• The inebriation effects from all alcohols was reduced to 15 seconds from 5 minutes due to player complaints of disorientation, but a generic red wine remains on NPC food merchants, and a generic ale was created and added for NPC food merchants that still retains the full 5 minute effect for those that wish to party it up.
• Farmhouse Ale, which provides a dexterity bonus, was removed from NPC merchants and its name was changed to Satyr Spirits and added to Satyr Archer loot tables.
• White Table Wine, which provides a spell critical bonus, was removed from NPC merchants and its name was changed to Kobold Spirits and added to Kobold caster loot tables.
• 1 Year Whiskey, which provides agriculture bonuses, was removed from NPC merchants and its name was changed to Elven Brandy and added to all elf loot tables.
• Trout has also been removed from NPC merchants like all other common fish. NPC fisherman and fish stall merchants now also sell 4 decorative fish.
• The red and swirly decoration fish have been fixed and no longer appear sunken into the ground.
• Mutton Stew has been removed from all NPC merchants and now is only available through crafting.
• All 3 varieties of tavern, innkeeper and barmaid now sell the generic red wine, the generic ale, as well as the 7 bread type starter foods (which are used in several of the new cooking recipes as well as the bread ingredient).
• Base Damage Resistance for Epic Plate Gauntlets adjusted to 5 from 2.
• Large, Medium, and Small Ruins now accept decorations upon many surface areas.
• The 5 paintings used for turn-in on the positive and negative virtue quest lines have been removed from merchants in anticipation of improved rewards for these quests.
• Corrected the display name of Pristine Skeleton Rib Cage.
• The Faerie Belt is now marked as Premium and Protect from Ransom since it is a store item.
• Improved tooltip item description to all 6 public cache container types to indicate public cache permission settings on these items allow any player to take items from these containers.
• Decorated Cupcake now shows on eating progress bar and on buff icon tooltip instead of Dyeable Cupcake.
• Bass with Peppers now shows on eating progress bar and on buff icon tooltip instead of Sauteed Bass.
• Salt Cured Obsidian Pork renamed to Salt Cured Obsidian Boar to match the name of the recipe.
• Corrected Darkstarr Fried Oysters to use 3 flood slots instead of 1.
• Obsidian Bacon Recipe is no longer teachable.
• Salt Cured Obsidian Boar recipe has been added to cooking recipe merchants.

Player Economy & Loot Changes:

• Deed limits for all NPC towns have been lifted. Previously players were limited to 3 lots in any non-Player-Owned Town per account, now players may settle anywhere as often as they like!
• Wyvern Haunches have been lowered in gold value.
• Many of the low tier purple wyverns at Wyvern’s Roost in the Well of Aldur have had their loot amounts reduced. High tier purple wyverns and all white wyverns remain unchanged.
• The Troll Toenails daily quest starting in Tenebris Harbor now also rewards 3 servings of Kobold Spirits.
• The Rune Bag daily quest in Yew now also rewards 3 servings of Elven Brandy.
• The Thick Animal Hide daily in Highvale Outskirts now also rewards 3 servings of Satyr Spirits.
• The Ghost Corpion now has a significant chance to drop a Common Focus Battery Artifact, and Ancient Essence, and a decent amount of Corpse Wax.
• Drop chances for crocodile carcasses has been significantly increased on T5 versions.
• Hemlock Borer now has lowered gold value, but now drops from T1 through T4 pine trees, and T8 and above nodes have increased drop chances for this item.
• Emerald Ash Borers now have lowered gold value, but have been added to loot tables for T1 to T4 maple trees and increased drop rates from high tier maple trees.
• Black Cutworm now has lowered gold value, but increased drop rates from Cotton Bushes, with higher drops present on high tier nodes. Beetle Carapace also now has an increased drop chance on high tier Cotton Bushes.
• Significantly increased chances for Common Heart’s of Vrul to drop in Daemon loot tables.
• Increased chances for Common, Uncommon, and even Rare drops of Anapa’s favor across the lich loot tables, with guaranteed chances for at least a common version on the Lich bosses such as the bosses in the Ruins of Ravensmoor.
• The recipe and blueprint for “Transition Stone Dungeon to Ancient Stone” have been moved to the Bookseller vendor. Also the recipe for “Tomb Dungeon Entrance” has been moved to the bookseller. Now all dungeon recipes that can be purchased with gold from NPC Merchants should be available on the bookseller merchant.
• Brown Cap Mushrooms and Cinammon Bark purchase prices from NPC merchants have been doubled. Possible removal from merchants will come with R89, likely accompanied by an increase in drop rates from their various loot sources.
• 18 produce items used in recipes yet grown via agriculture have had their NPC Merchant prices doubled and sale to NPC Merchants prices halved. In R89, all 18 of these items will be removed entirely from NPC merchants to encourage more agriculture use.
• Changed Artifact values to be 125, 500, 2000, 8000, and 16000 based upon being Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, and Epic. Players will notice almost all Commons lowering in value significantly, and a good portion of Uncommons have dropped in value while others have increased in value. Lowered gold value of crafted artifact components as well, such as the rods and troll belt pieces, but increasing drop rates of these crafted artifact components was also implemented.
• Adjustments were made to artifact rarity especially in regards to the Common tier of artifacts. Future balance for all artifacts will be occurring throughout the next 2 releases, which will include a variety of power reductions and power increases. These changes will be accompanied by additional work related to how exceptionals function in crafting, new crafting components based from artifact salvage, new crafting components that are purely crafted from base resources, potential adjustments to many crafting components, and potential adjustments to the bonuses provided by the creation of the purely crafted base item (such as the initial weapon or piece of armor). The changes to the artifact drop rates and locations are as follows:
  • Increased gem fragment drops on Envy Angel’s wisps, and add a slight chance for the Savage Sash of Swiftness to drop from them, and a larger chance for the common version of the Ring of the Deep Woods to drop.
  • The Common Pirate Tricorn Hat of the Cap’n now has a much improved drop rate on the pirate captain in Tartarus, with a small chance to drop an uncommon or rare instead.
  • Increased drop rates for the Envy Bow on Envy Angel. Also, she now has a much better chance to drop a common quiver, with a small chance for it to be an uncommon or rare version.
  • Added the Common Ring of the Frogkin as an additional reward for completing the repeatable Ecology Researcher quest.
  • Added Common Ring of Life as an additional reward to Hyun’s daily in Necropolis Barrens.
  • Added the Common Ring of Cat’s Grace to the daily quest in Ardoris (5 Paintings) with Caravaggios Wolf as an additional reward.
  • Added the following Common version artifacts to the 4 dailies in Lord British’s Castle: Ring of Jones, Belt of the Brutal Butcher, Belt of the Patient Harvester, and Ring of Chrysopoeia.
  • Added Common Necklace of Civility as an additional reward for completing the repeatable Pilgrim Untimely Demise quest.
  • Added Common Ring of Death to as an additional reward to the Arch Lapin Bones daily quest.
  • Added Common Belt of the Ox as an additional reward to the Tanglemire Missing Bones daily.
  • Added Common Ring of Water to water and ice elemental loot tables, with increased drop chances for higher tier mobs.
  • Common Daemon Trident has been added to Daemon loot tables. They now have a much larger chance to drop the common version of the trident, though an uncommon or rare version could drop instead at a much lower rate.
  • Common version of the Shield of the Wicked King has been added to all Cabalist loot tables, with a significant chance to drop.
  • Added Common Shard of Night as a slight drop chance in the 9 hidden chests in Hilt Fortress. Also added a common version of this artifact as an additional daily reward to Skarde’s runestone daily in Spindelskog.
  • Added Common Ancient Two-Handed Sword to loot tables of Kobold fighters, with higher tiers having improved drop rates.
  • The Spider Queen in Spectral Peaks now has a greatly increased chance to drop a Staff of Xen, with a Common, Uncommon, or Rare version being possible.
  • Added Common Two-Handed Mace of Unsummoning to Satyr fighter loot tables, will increasing chances with higher tiers. Also added this common version of the artifact to the “Repair the Spirit Wheel” daily in Tanglemire as an additional reward.
  • Added Common Crossbow of Accuracy to Kaiser’s dragon tooth daily in Ulfheim as an additional reward.
  • Added Common Shield of Attraction to loot tables of non-pirate skeleton warriors, with higher tiers having increased chances to drop. Also added this common artifact to daily rewards for turning in the siege encounter Arcane Catalysts daily.
  • Added Common Vexlyn’s Ember of Conflagaration as an additional rare drop amongst Cabalist loot.
  • Added Common Thunder Branch to Air Elemental loot tables, with higher tiers receiving increased chances.
  • Added chance for Common Wand of Undying Embers to drop from Xavara and T15 Fire Elementals.
  • Added Common Wand of Static Discharge to pirate caster loot tables, with higher tier receiving increased chances.
  • Added Common Sword of Speed to Ebon Dawn melee loot, with higher tiers having increased chances. Also, the repeatable Bounty quest available in roaming encounters now offers a common version of this artifact as an additional reward.
  • Added Common Cutlass of the Swashbuckler to higher tier melee pirates loot tables, with the higher tiers having improved chances. Also, the Broochash criminal-requested shakedown daily quest now provides the common cutlass as a daily reward.
  • Added Common Thimble of Evelyn to Elven Archer loot tables, with higher tiers having a greater chance. Also added this ring to the daily rewards for the Sven the Hunter/Animal Hide daily in Highvale Outskirts.
  • Added Common Ring of Sun to Phoenix loot tables to drop at a significant rate. Also, a Phoenix will now always drop 1-2 talons. Also, the drop rates for the Ankh of Wala on the Phoenix have been increased, and a small chance to receive an uncommon and rare instead have been added.
  • Added Common Maple Band to plant creature loot tables (primarily PvP zone creatures). Also added this ring to Reaper loot tables at a smaller chance. Also, 1 of these rings can be obtained daily by completing a daily quest in Yew where Pendro wants a Boundless Forest Rune Bag.
  • Added Common Pax Ring as a reward for the Tenebris Harbor Troll Toenail daily quest.
  • Added Common Ring of the Mouse to all Faun loot tables, with higher tiers having an increased chanced. Also, the daily quest in Ardoris (5 Paintings) with Stephanie Broadmeadow will award a Common Ring of the Mouse each day.
  • Increased drop rate of Common Ring of the Obsidian on tier 15 fire elemental bosses, now also with lesser chances for an uncommon or rare instead. Also, added a slight drop chance for this ring amongst the 9 hidden chests throughout Hilt Fortress.
  • Added Common Ring of the Moon to Shadow animal loot tables. Also added this ring to the daily rewards in Elder Bodil’s quest in Tanglemire which takes players to Spindelskog.
  • Added Common Ring of Life to Destructible Crate loot tables, and added one as an additional reward to Esmerelda’s tea leaf daily in Highvale Outskirts.
  • Common Ring of the Lich Kind added to loot tables for Lich casters, higher tiers having better chances. Most lich boss casters have a good chance for a common, with a slight chance for an uncommon. Corrected display names for the upgrade recipes for this ring.
  • Common Ring of the Gambler added to loot tables for all tiers of melee pirates with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of Frogkin added to loot tables for all tiers of fungus creatures with increased drop rates on higher tiers. Green ones have a slightly elevated chance. The high tier ones in PvP zones have the best chance.
  • Common Ring of Fire added to loot tables for all tiers of Fire Elementals and Xavara with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of Earth added to loot tables for all tiers of Sand, Earth, and Lava Elementals with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of the Deep Woods added to loot tables for all tiers of Wisps.
  • Common Ring of Death added to loot tables for all tiers of Skeleton casters with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of the Cuttlekin added to loot tables for all tiers of Barrel Mimic with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of Jones added to loot tables for commoner corpses, barrels, and sacks.
  • Common Ring of Chrysopoeia added to loot tables of all tiers of Kobold Grenadier with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of Cat’s Grace added to loot tables for all tiers of Clockwork Cats with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of Brittle Brawn added to loot tables of all tiers of Obsidian Golems with increased drop rates on higher tiers. Also, additional Obsidian Chips now drop from Obsidian Golems.
  • Common Wayland’s Loop added to loot tables of all tiers of Kobold melee (non-brawlers) with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of Air added to loot tables of all tiers of air elementals with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common and Rare Lavalliere of the Lagomorph has been added to the Death Bunny Loot table. Each kill will always provide 1 version of the artifact, with a small perccent chance the version will be uncommon or rare.
  • Common Focus Battery Necklace added to ghost loot tables, with increased chances given to higher tier ghosts. Also, T5 and above ghosts will drop increasingly additional amounts of Corpse Wax. Also, T5 and above ghosts now have a small chance to drop an ancient essence.
  • Common Necklace of Civility now has a small chance to drop in destructible crates and guard corpses. Also, the Adventure Level Buff has been removed and replaced with +50, +100, +150, +200, +250 health and focus for Common through Epic.
  • Common Necklace of Common Precision added to loot tables of all tiers of pirate archers with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Halberd of the Sun added to loot tables of all tiers of melee bandits (to include Red Sash), which are T5 and below. Any bandits using a Bandit Leader loot table receive a significantly higher chance to drop a the common as well.
  • Adventure scene mountain trolls can now drop Common versions of The Ring of an Unknown BMC Member at a significant rate, and the uncommon version will drop slightly more often.
  • Common and Uncommon Zombie Skin Belt drops more regularly from the high tier zombies such as the slow walking ones in Tartarus. Common Zombie Skin Belts now also have a slight chance to drop from all zombies. The Creepy Dolly now drops more regularly from zombie children.
  • Common Spider Silk Belt has 100% chance to drop from the Spider Queen in Spectral Peaks with small chances for an Uncommon or Rare. All other T15 spiders have a small chance to also drop the common Spider Silk Belt. Venom, Spider Silk, Eyes, Legs now have increased drop rates on high tier spiders.
  • Common Savage Sash of Swiftness added to low tier Wisp Loot tables to drop at slight chance. Increased chances for Savage Sash of Swiftness to drop from high tier Wisps in Tartarus.
  • Common Slipshod Shooter’s Sash added to loot tables of all tiers of Ebon Dawn Archers with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Sage’s Sash added to loot tables of all tiers of Elven casters with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Belt of the Patient Harvester added to loot tables of all tiers of Fauns with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Belt of the Ox added to loot tables of all tiers of Kobold Brawler with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Belt of the Brutal Butcher added to loot tables of all tiers of Barbarian Archers with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Gauntlets of Lead added to loot tables of all tiers of Satyr Warriors with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Supple Gloves of Riding added to loot tables of all tiers of Nightmares and Unicorns with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Spurred Boots added to loot tables of all tiers of Nightmares and Unicorns with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Common Ring of Wisdom added to loot tables of all tiers of Satyr casters with increased drop rates on higher tiers.
  • Ringmaster’s Vest removed from the single Lich Archer loot table it was available in, and added to the loot tables of all Destroyer animals at a larger drop rate.
  • Added all rod pieces for Staff of Death to all Lich caster loot tables, with varying chance based upon tier of Lich. Rod 1 was removed from Daemon loot tables. Rod pieces also drop from 3 varieties of supply bundles (Yellow, Blue, Orange), which have not been adjusted.
  • Glowing Belt Buckle and Strip of Thick Troll Skin removed from Reaper loot tables, added to all troll loot tables at various drops rates depending upon the tier of the troll.
  • Added all rod pieces for Staff of Anarchy to Daemon loot tables. Rod 1 was already available on T15 Daemons, which has received an increased drop rate in line with the other additions. Rod pieces also drop from 3 varieties of supply bundles (Yellow, Blue, Orange), which have not been adjusted.

Combat, Skills & Balance Changes:

• The formula for calculating melee damage has been changed to use a bit more skill and stats for the calculation and a bit less weapon damage.
• Savage Sonata has had it’s critical hit effects tuned down. All bard skills are at 100% experience return on unlearning.
• Backing our the focus regen changes for shield of air for now
• Ring of fire cast time has increased by 0.5 seconds
• Fireball cast time has increased by 0.5 seconds
• Base focus cost increased from 12 to 15 for multishot
• Shield of Air adjustment to reduce dex effect. Previously the calculation was based on Skill Level + dex/5. This is now based on Skill Level + dex/6. Shield of air will get a major refactor in R89
• Damage in PVP is now on a slight curve. Hits up to 50 points will do slightly more than previous releases and hits over 50 will do slightly less.
• The math for how much focus a skill costs based on skill level and effect has been increased slightly. This will only be noticeable in the 100+ range
• The bonus from Fire Proof and Blue Blooded have been doubled
• The speed at which free attacks charge has been made slightly faster but the extra damage each tick adds has been decreased slightly. The expected result is roughly the same DPS but with a lower max hit.
• All Ranged Combat, Fire Magic, Bard, Air Magic skills allow for 100% XP return during the month of Release 88.
• Combat movement speed has been reduced slightly.
• Atonal Aria, Ice Field, Immolation, and Ring of Fire can no longer critically hit on the first tick of their damage-over-time effect.
• Psalm of Stagnation now uses the correct icon.
• Psalm of Stagnation no longer has a chance to fizzle.

World, Quests, and Miscellaneous Changes:

• The oceans and lakes of Novia are no longer Green. By player request, we’ll work on decorations for governors to place to let them change their water color. We’re behind on providing the weather changing decorations for Player-Owned Towns, but those should hopefully arrive in R89.
• Owlshead: NPC’s have been moved away from player lots so they harass players less while their at home.
• Fall damage has been adjusted to be far more forgiving especially for new players.
• Level of Detail for the Lord British throne has been adjusted so it doesn’t vanish at an inappropriate distance.
• A large number of the log errors in towns have been fixed to help improve performance and stability.
• A version of dungeon stairs now has the proper material applied.
• Collision on stairs in the Lost Vale have been fixed.
• The leaderboards have been fixed again!
• With the introduction of ambient sound effect decorations, the Crown Store is now capable of providing audio previews of these items.
• Hidden Vale: Removed access to POT The Fields of Misery from old location near West Ravenswood.
• Fixed a stuck spot in The Crags.
• Norgard Fens: Fixed an issue where a tree was floating above the ground.
• Lost Vale: Adjusted the collision for stairs near the center of the scene.
• Mysterious Swamp: Fixed an issue where the tier marker ribbons weren’t attached to the spikes.
• Sequanna Colossus: Corrected oversized and undersized ore nodes.
• Taenby Landing and all PRTs: Added discoverable entrances for all PRTs.
• Spite: Added a daily repeatable quest that allows players to turn in the “Burial Coffin” item for 3 Elixirs of Potency, a new unique potion only offered in this questline which provide 5% increased consumable effects.
• Necropolis Barrens: As a daily “quest,” Davropos the master trainer will request a dead body from experienced avatars or those who already have a dead body in their inventory. This quest provides 3 Elixirs of Longevity, a new unique potion only offered in this questline which provides 15% increased consumable duration.
• Blood River Outskirts: Updated text in the “Deliver Evidence to Bearfield” and “Give Phineas the Warrant” (formerly “Serve the Warrant”) journal entries.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Updated some of Kinsey’s responses to better account for her giving players the “Caregiver” title. Added a couple of climbable vines along the river.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Update the method by which the “Kinsey Needs Your Help” task auto-archives if the task remains lingering after completing.
• Ardoris: Fixed an issue with Damai’s responses that was causing a build error.
• Norgard Fens: Adjusted a rock to remove a stuck spot.
• Northwest Blackblade Mountains: Removed collision from the dangling “glow worms” prop and re-generated the path grid.
• Ardoris: Fixed a typo in Damai’s respones.
• Music: Added additional background music selections to several scenes.
• Solace Bridge Outskirts: Adjusted one of the exit archways to avoid blocking players who were trying to exit from some directions.
• Malice: Added safeguards in Malice to prevent players within the wrong quest stage from advancing prematurely and blocking their progress in the main storylines.
• Highvale Outskirts: Reduced the size of Phineas Drumplemouth’s walking path to be closer to his tent. Updated his early “hello” response to mention the “help” and “elf” keywords.
• Battle of Highvale: Added a safety feature to help ensure the “Find Word of Nena’s Charges” task archives even if the task lingers after completion.
• Soltown: Added a “safety” fix to Edwin’s “hello” response to help remove the “Create a Leather Helm” task if it lingers after completion.
• Seasonal Monsters: Envy Angel has been deactivated (in Necropolis Barrens) while the Arch Lapin has been activated (in Spectral Mines).
• Owl’s Head: Updated Myra’s special responses that occur if you badmouth her fish to better auto-archive the tasks related to her brother.
• Tanglemire: Fixed an issue where the “Deliver Wildflower” compass marker wasn’t appearing at Frida at the correct stage of the related quest.
• Soltown: Improved how Edwin the Tanner manages his crafting tutorial tasks.
• Well of Aldur: Moved 3 floating Aldurite Crystal formations to ground level. Updated the ambient wind sound effects.
• Tanglemire: Fixed an issue where some watery areas were too deep; all “shallow water” areas now share a consistent depth.
• Ruins of Ravensmoor: Updated the recommended tier for the “Find Roedberk’s Sarcophagus” task from 8 to 10.
• Ulfheim: Made adjustments to allow wave battles to reset when they aren’t engaged with any players
• Well of Aldur: Improved the safety feature for the “Get Professor Another Amulet” and “Deliver Amulets to Aeronaut?” tasks to help them auto-archive when appropriate.
• Elysium Mines: Adjusted a wooden barricade to allow players to walk through its large hole. Also, blocked a stuck-spot to one side of that barricade.
• Verdantis Mines: Fixed an issue with a silver ore node that couldn’t be mined.
• Daily Quest Rewards: Internal adjustment of daily quests has been implemented to make future work on these quest rewards more efficient.
• Lamech’s Bazaar: Fixed an issue where the difficulty teleporter wagon wouldn’t always display the alternate difficulty versions of the scene.
• Well of Aldur: Moved a treasure chest that was sunk into the ground to ground level.
• Sequanna Colossus: Fixed the collision on the statue of Sequanna and NPCs should no longer walk through its base.
• Ardoris: Fixed a typo in the journal for the shady art dealer.
• South Boundless Forest: Fixed a data mismatch which had Visna’s barks referring to herself as “himself.”
• Well of Aldur: Fixed an issue where the “Te amo in aeternum” amulet of testimony was linked to the incorrect content.
• Soltown: Added Hee-Jin Jun, a player vendor NPC, to the center of town.
• Initial updates to Brittany Graveyard has been implemented to create a Player Memorial Cemetery, with more updates to follow.
• Bug Brigade in-game titles have been adjusted for syntax.
• North Midmaer Way: An unreachable copper node has been fixed.
• Added and assigned a unique load screen to the Episode 2 Lord British’s Castle scene.
• Created a Crown Store sub-category for dungeon (adventure design) tagged store items in Recently Added so any new items with the Dungeon parent tag will show up in Recently Added as appropriate, such as the new sound effect player dungeon items.
• Added a note in each store entry for circling dragons to indicate they do not effectively function in cavern style Player-Owned Towns due to the altitude of flight.
• Lowered prices of the Ornate Public Cache Chest, the Resurrection Ankh, and the Resurrection Chaos items in the crown store.
• Added War Dance Emote to Crown Store Vault rotation.
• All dye store descriptions were updated to remove unnecessary verbiage from the web store transfer, and an explanation of how dyes function was added.

Player-Owned Town Changes:

• POT Silverdale Estates: Renamed from Obsidian Market and biome changed to Grassland 01a from Forest 01c.
• POT Haven Ridge: Upgraded to Town from Crossroads Village.
• POT Lightbringer Isle: Upgraded to a Megalopolis.
• POT Victory Peaks: Added new Hamlet to Mistrendur, in the southeastern mountains of the western island.
• POT Freyr’s Town: Added new hamlet southeast of Brittany.
• POT Ironhall: Upgraded to Town from Crossroads Village.
• POT The Fields of Misery: Upgraded to City from Village. Moved to south shore of Hidden Vale, near Ravensmoor.

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Significant changes to the Crafting System have been implemented! Players can now enjoy increased success and exceptional chances during crafting! The recently announced food and drink changes are live as of Release 87. Every food and drink consumable now has a specific purpose and each is scaled and balanced with all foods and drinks available. Also, 23 additional food recipes will arrive to the game for Release 88. For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Crafting System Changes!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Support the Family of CatherineRose!
• Weekly Update & Release Cycle Changes!
• Food & Drink Revamp!
• Additional Game Updates!
• New Store Additions: Circling Dragons, String Lights, Ambient Sounds, & Holiday Items!
• March Login Reward: Ceiling Green Paper Lantern String 3-Pack!
• R87 Rewards Program Login Items: Starrbot Emote, Smoke Chaos Emote, Plumed Plate Helm!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Amanita’s Adventures
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Crafting System Changes!

Crafters of New Britannia, take heed! Significant changes to crafting have occurred which will change the frequency of exceptional/critical results! Some of the upcoming changes to salvage are also explained below:

• Crafting success chance maximum has increased from 95% to 100%.
• Exceptional/Critical chance maximum has increased from 33% to 50%.
• Grandmasters now receive a bonus to Exceptional/Critical chance! This means having skills above 100 will continue to add to Exceptional/Critical chances up to the new maximum of 50% even when your base success chance has already maxed at 100%.
• One decimal point of precision is now displayed for each percentage.
• A variety of engraving kits have received stat improvements which will provide increased success chances to some crafting skills such as Agriculture, Alchemy, Butchery, Cooking, Smelting, Tanning, Textiles, and Fishing.
• Background work for improving salvage has begun, although these changes are not yet ready for player consumption. Players can expect GREATLY improved component “drop rates” from salvage in the future, though the gold values of components received from salvage will be reduced proportionally. Once this work is completed, more details will be revealed. These changes will enable subsequent development work such as increasing the number of items that can be salvaged, and improving what components are obtained when artifacts are salvaged. The aforementioned salvage changes will be tentatively applied throughout R88 and R89.

We hope you enjoy these crafting improvement items. Many more changes to crafting are inbound throughout the year, so keep your crafting tools at the ready, Avatars!

Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!

The weekly Community Livestream is Friday, February 26th at 4PM CT on Twitch! Join Chris “Atos” Spears and other members of the development team for a community 1-hour livestream!

To enter the prize drawings, type “love is in the air” into any in-game chat channel OR make a purchase on the website Add-On store. Please submit questions into Twitch Chat by inserting !question at the beginning of your text. Watch on Twitch, Friday at 4 PM CT!

Atos and other members of the Shroud of the Avatar development team go live very frequently on twitch.tv/shroudoftheavatar — be sure to get these channels on follow for notifications so you can join us right as we go live! Also, if you’ve missed our latest streams, check out our archive of content at our YouTube Channel. Like! Follow! Subscribe! Prizes!!!

Don’t forget to also join the Shroud of the Avatar team and community over at all our social media venues:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShroudoftheAvatar/
• Catnip Games Twitter: https://twitter.com/catnipgames
• Shroud of the Avatar Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShroudofAvatar
• Shroud of the Avatar Discord: https://discord.gg/GuBXakQ

Support the Family of CatherineRose!

Avatars! CatherineRose, a beloved member of our community, is going through troubling challenges as one of her family members is battling cancer. If you are able to, please lend their family support during these trying times. Even if you are not able to provide monetary assistance, providing well-wishes, thoughts, and prayers go a long way towards helping a family through such hardships.

An auction run by the Aerie Fund is underway! Interested players can bid upon a Lord of the Isle Bundle in this forum thread. For more information about the auction fundraiser, please also see this thread. All proceeds will go towards the GoFundMe fundraiser supporting Wendy Barry’s fight with cancer.

Also, Thradia with The Avatar Express, has posted information on the forums about portions of this fundraiser. Please see this forum thread for more details.

Weekly Update & Release Cycle Changes!

Through the years, Shroud of the Avatar has maintained an incredibly ambitious Weekly Update and Monthly Release schedule. Now, with 87 Releases behind us, ALL of which were published on-time, the development team has decided to greatly change how we provide game update information to players in an effort to free up more developer time for tasks which improve the game itself.

In the past, the team size was much larger, and therefore more members were available to work administrative tasks such as customer support, community management, and providing game update information. Now that each developer is also capable of working on in-game improvements, content, and bug fixes, we’re changing how we provide information to the players to free up developer time for additional game development.

With this in mind, these are some of the changes players can expect going forward:

• Weekly Updates: We no longer will be providing Weekly Updates. Most, if not all of the new game content advertised in these updates were previews of what was to arrive in the upcoming Release, which would later be duplicated in the monthly Release Notes. Even though players can expect occasional singular articles to be published throughout the month as the need arises, large amounts of developer time will become available for higher priority tasks that impact actual gameplay since we are not spending time providing duplicated information.
• Monthly Releases: Our monthly release schedule will continue, however we’ll be alternating what is provided by utilizing what we refer to as a “tick-tock” concept. The upcoming release for R88 will be a “tick” and primarily feature game polish, fixes, and improvements, while the following release will be a “tock” and feature more new game content. The polish month (tick) will feature highly abbreviated Release Notes, while the content month (tock) will feature more robust Release Notes similar to what has been provided up to this day.
• Patch Notes: To help players visualize what has changed in the game, improvements have been made to our methods for providing updates to the Patch Notes page. Since our work submittals already feature an internal requirement to describe the submittal, an automated method has been devised to export this data into a document that we can routinely paste into the page. As we continue to enhance this process, expect the notes to improve as the developers become accustomed to formatting their submittal descriptions in a more visually appealing and informative fashion.
• Community Events: Traditionally, we’ve spotlighted community events in our Weekly and Release Updates, which will be discontinued after this edition of the Release Notes. In the future, if we spot any new events posted by players in the event forums, we will instead post information about these events directly into the Upcoming Events page as we spot them shortly after the event ad was created by the player.
• Crown Store Articles: In the future, all New Store Addition articles will forecast the upcoming store items for the entire upcoming month. The current Vault items will no longer be advertised since the process is fully randomized and automatically occurs on a weekly basis. However, if players would like to see a full list of what could appear in the Vault throughout the year, we’ve recently provided this listing which will be updated as new items are added to the Vault rotation.
• Stream Schedule: NO CHANGES! We’ll continue to provide the Community Livestreams on our Twitch Channel on a weekly basis (sometimes more often), and we hope these streams continue to improve as we enhance our methods of sharing information.

By freeing up this additional time, we very much hope players enjoy the increased amount of content, fixes, and improvements arriving in the future. We will continue to make improvements to this new version of information sharing, and we’re happy to take feedback at any time about the information we share. So much more to come, Avatars!

Food & Drink Revamp!

For the virtual food and drink lovers in Shroud of the Avatar, a robust update to food and drink buffs has arrived! Through the years and prior to the introduction of the food channel system, many food and drink recipes have entered into the game, much of which did not feature significantly unique purposes or stats, or as the game progressed and players became more powerful, many of the low level foods quickly lost purpose. Eventually, players only expressed interest in a small portion of the food and drink recipes available. Well, all that has changed, gourmets of New Britannia! A revamp of nearly all food and drink buffs has arrived for Release 87!

With this update, an extensive effort has been made to provide a unique and specific purpose to every food recipe. Taking full advantage of the food buff channel system, buffs will now be completely related and balanced to how many buff slots the consumed food occupies. Standardized buff durations will be implemented based upon the slots occupied, and standardized regeneration rates will also be provided across the spectrum. Many buff categories will have at least 3 versions of the buff in amounts relative to the slots occupied, while other buff categories might only have a single offering.

For buff durations, most foods now feature either 1-hour, 2-hour, or 4-hour durations based upon the slots they occupy. Some older, powerful foods (e.g. Dragon Stew, Troll Spare Ribs, and Spicy Phoenix Bites) may deviate from this change and retain their larger durations. Food buffs will occupy one or more slots within the corresponding channel: 1-slot foods (other than starter foods) will last up to 1 hour, 2-slot foods will last 2 hours, and 3-slot foods will last 4 hours (to provide a bit of extra duration for those looking forward to a longer play session). Having useful and scaled buffs attached to 1-channel and 2-channel foods will provide players expecting a shorter play session far more options in which foods they ingest

Similarly, regeneration rates will be greatly standardized. A variety of foods are now categorized as defensive, and provide regeneration rates benefiting health over focus, while other foods are categorized as offensive and benefit focus regeneration more so than health regeneration. Of course, players can mix and match their food intake to provide any variation of buff balancing, so there is no requirement for a player to eat all defensive foods or all offensive foods. Mixing and matching is certainly allowable and encouraged.

6 foods are now also provided that feature increased regen rates as their primary function, so if players would prefer higher amounts of regeneration, they’ll have 1, 2, and 3 slot foods of both offensive and defensive varieties to incorporate into their buff choices.

With standardized concepts in mind, players will likely only need to consider the unique stats the food provides when shopping or crafting, since regeneration and flat rate health and focus provisions are uniform based upon the number of slots the consumable utilizes.

In the same fashion, each food now provides standardized amounts of additional health and focus. Defensive foods provide +25, +50, or +75 additional health depending upon the slots occupied, and offensive foods provide those same numbers to focus based upon the slots occupied. Also, 6 foods provide additional amounts of health and focus as their primary purpose, with 3 for health and 3 for focus being available and to scale with the number of slots occupied.

Players have also come to know that a significant number of crafted foods were also available as loot or can be purchased at an NPC food merchant. All of these items have been removed from merchants and loot to ensure crafting or trade between players is the sole source for every crafted food.

Starter foods have been notoriously useless since their buff durations were so miniscule (1 to 15 minute buffs usually), and their buffs provided little meaning to gameplay. Now, 8 starter foods have been identified and balanced so that all occupy 1 slot, and each feature the standardized regeneration rates and flat rate health or focus typically provided by 1 slot foods, however the durations for starter foods were only increased to 30 minutes.

Players will find these starter foods readily available in loot, for sale on NPC merchants, or even distributed as world decorations which can be stolen, but these 8 starter foods will not be crafted. However, all 8 starter foods will eventually be introduced into crafting as crafting components, so even higher level players can find them beneficial to utilize. Most will recognize the 8 starter foods as common items already available in-game:

• Lemon Bun
• Short Bread Loaf
• Slim Bread Loaf
• Braided Bread Loaf
• Bread Loaf
• Roll
• Sugar Cookies
• Wheat Bun

As foods were shifted into standardized categories, many “holes” were identified in regards to what buffs are available in the food system across the spectrum. To fill these “holes,” approximately 23 additional food recipes will be introduced to the game for Release 88 on March 25th.

All of these recipes will focus on using underutilized crafting components, and with these recipes only in prototype, there’s still plenty of time for players to provide input on recipe names and ingredients. The proposed names for the upcoming new recipes are as follows, and the names should provide players a significant hint as to what underutilized component will gain new purpose:

• Black Cutworm Cupcake
• Bone Broth
• Cinnamon Cake
• Coelacanth Chips
• Corpion Cake
• Dragon Egg Omelet
• Emerald Ash Egg Roll
• Entrails and Eggs
• Hemlock and Ham
• Ichthyosaur Fried Ice Cream
• Lard Bread
• Nut Butter and Ooze Sandwich
• Oozy Omelet
• Phoenix Fingers
• Pickled Plant Pollen
• Plesiosaurus Pie
• Pop Crackle Candy
• Shadow Slaw
• Shadow Snacks
• Shark Jerky
• Spiced Tea
• Tarpon Tart
• Trilobite Chomps

Food and drinks with crafting and gathering buffs are now greatly expanded, with no changes being provided to 1 Year Whiskey, 2 Year Whiskey, or 7 Year Whiskey. New buffs available across such recipes are as follows:

• Decorated Cake Slice: +50% Cooking Production Time Bonus
• Baked Pacu: +5 Fishing Range, 2.5% Bait Recovery, +10 Fishing Skills
• 25 Year Whiskey: +3% Meticulous Mining Chance
• Harvest Wheat Bear: +3% Meticulous Foraging Chance
• Obsidian Bacon: +3% Meticulous Field Dressing Chance
• Squirrel Stew: +3% Meticulous Forestry Chance

For pet foods, only one change is inbound which is for Fishy Nibblers. Formerly it provided an adventure level buff which is not useful for pet applications, and will instead provide an additional 250 Health to a pet. Also a pesky bug where the food could apply the buff to the character with no pet summoned has been fixed.

Utility foods are also being introduced which either provide additional carry capacity or skill learning bonuses. The foods will be distributed throughout loot, the crafting system, and many can be obtained from a replenishing confections platter periodically available in the Crown Store Vault. Also, the confections platter can now be utilized monthly to receive 4 of these items. These initial utility foods will be as follows:

• Bacon (Crafted, +25% Encumbrance Carry Capacity)
• Decorated Cupcake (3% Grey Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Elderberry Cream Cheese Sugar Drops (10% Yellow Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Petit Fours (25% Blue Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Thumbprint Cookies (100% Orange Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Slice of Lord British Birthday Cake (Looted in Lord British’s Castle, +100% Skill Learn Bonus)

Very close attention will be paid to the scarcity of components for all food and drink recipes. We realize some of the components are obtained from exceptionally rare drops such as dragon eggs, phoenix talons, sharks, and rare lava fish, but a “feed the village” concept will be utilized when players craft food recipes containing scarce resources. The scarcer the components, the output for the recipes will be increased proportionally. For example, fishing a shark out of salt water is very rare, but, when you do? You’ll be able to “feed the village” in a sense and make many food items to utilize or trade.

Maintaining the scarcity of the drops will still allow trophies and other rare items to keep their value, while providing a modicum of excitement knowing these drops will also provide very significant food output at a crafting table. Balancing of these outputs may take some time to normalize through future game patches, but ultimately we hope they settle upon output levels which makes the food or drink very viable for routine and affordable use. Players can expect scarcity adjustments to go live on R88, with perhaps some patching in during R87.

There were a small number of food and drink items which provided magical resistance bonuses directed at a particular school of magic. These buffs will no longer be available with food or drink consumption, and will instead be provided by various potions being introduced into the alchemy system sometime in the future.

With development time during 2021 being strongly focused upon balance and fixes, this initial work in the food system is only the beginning. Players can expect similar work to address imbalances in other game systems, with uniformity and standardization concepts to be applied throughout. Ultimately, when each side system is balanced, subsequent efforts for balancing can be appropriately applied to the skill trees themselves knowing that all side systems feature an already balanced array of available buffs and categories.

Also, we realize some players could be significantly inconvenienced when their favorite foods or drinks have been adjusted to provide different buffs amounts, durations, regeneration rates, health, focus, slot numbers, or even a shift into an entirely new buff category. We implore with the community to please understand the importance of these balancing efforts and to work with us by providing constructive feedback and suggestions.

For those wishing to participate in feedback for the upcoming changes, please do so in this forum post. Please understand that all adjustment passes are not yet complete, the potential changes to recipe difficulty or output are not complete, and the team is very interested in hearing feedback from the community.

We hope players come to enjoy the expanded food buff system. Our efforts aim to provide an improved crafting, gathering, and buff selection experience while also affording a much larger breadth of useful food and drink recipes throughout the game. More balance efforts will be introduced in coming months, so stay tuned!

Additional Game Updates!

Below are a list of additional game updates that are live as of R87. This list is generated from an automated process which captures description information from our routine work submittals. We’ll be working to improve the formatting of these descriptions in the future, but using this automated process allows for us to truly capture every change as well as saving considerable amount of developer time. Please be patient with us as we work to improve this process.

• Fixed an issue with fireplace recipes
• Adjust drops  for T10 and T15 reagent resource nodes
• Adjusted gathering chances and added GM bonus
• Refined gems and jewels may now be fractured
• Damage sources that do less than 1 point of damage will no longer break stealth
• Sap will now require a melee weapon (not ranged)
• Auto attacks will no longer target a stealthed player. Active attacks/spells will have a greatly reduced attack angle and distance
• Scenes may now show custom backgrounds for the load screen
• The Breach will now have more air elementals that spawn faster
• Vrul will no longer be attacked by undead
• POT Lightbringer Isle: Added new metropolis north of Brittany
• POT Greymorn: Added new POT northwest of Brittany
• POT Haven Ridge: Upgraded to Crossroads Village from Village
• POT Jagged Hold: Changed biome to Forest 01b and upgraded to Municipality
• Blood Bay: Players that can survive at the top of either volcano may find it possible to do some lava fishing
• Overworld Boats: Added better LODs to some boats used in the overworld scenes
• Kobold Expeditionary Camp: Improved some kobold commander responses and improved how a related task archives itself
• Well of Aldur: Updated the reset settings for a treasure chest
• Well of Aldur: Added a minor jumping puzzle
• Ardoris: Improved the logic for the Students of Virtue quest. Added compass markers
• Grunvald Shardfall: Adjusted NavMesh data to improve how NPCs move through the scene
• Northwest Blackblade Mountains: Jumping into the well that leads to Bunker C will auto-teleport the player to that location
• Hills Encounter: Created a new “dragon” scenario that can appear on all three overworlds
• Owl’s Head: Updated some logic for the quest from Morgan to discredit Myra. Added compass markers
• Shaminian Hills: Adjusted temple architecture to block players from squeezing through certain tight holes
• South Majestic Forest: Updated stairs on Preben’s house to better accommodate NPC walking
• Spectral Mines: Fixed an issue that prevented an ore node from being mined
• Middle Downs: Fixed a stuck spot on a mound
• Eastmarch: Fixed typos in responses from the devotional caretakers
• South Hinterlands: Fixed a rug that was poking through a wall
• Well of Aldur: Fixed an issue with missing collision on a wall
• Tanglemire: Updated tiered resource nodes (cotton, garlic, trees, ore, and mandrake) to ensure they are all tier 10
• Maple Trees and Pine Trees: Adjusted the LODs to stop a “split” from appearing at close distance
• Ruined Keep: Adjusted a section of the terrain where trolls were having navigation issues
• Wynton’s Folly: Players selecting the East Entrance option when entering from Hidden Vale will now arrive at the correct location
• Obsidian Keep Tops: Updated the collision at the top of these custom prefabs
• Snowy Tundra Encounter: Added a floating crystal node to the ground
• Well of Aldur: Fixed several collision issues. Blocked off a “stuck spot”
• Soltown: Improved the method of archiving the “Tell Abigail About Charlotte” task when talking with Abigail
• Bunker C: Fixed a stuck spot in the lava pool
• Solania Catacombs: In the daemon chamber, added teleporters that are active only when the wave battle is not ongoing
• Highvale Outskirts: Updated some of the doors in the monastery. Updated some of Esmeralda’s responses
• Jaanaford: Players will now “unlock” Thibodeaux’s name when she shares it with them
• Novia: Added a compass marker at Kiln for the “Ask About Bonesteel in Kiln” task
• Brookside: Players entering from the lunar rift will now unlock the town crier compass marker
• The ONBE title will now include a Dame option
• Fishy Nibblers no longer applies to the character when a tamed pet is not available
• Adjusted Confections Platter to monthly
• Slice of LB Birthday Cake no longer labelled as Premium nor No Trade since being introduced to loot at LB’s Castle, but will have a chance to drop in PvP
• Improved tooltip descriptions for Shrines by adding mention of attunement bonuses provided
• Fixed typo in Citrine (Unrefined Gemstone) display name.
• Increased spider eye drop amount T8 through T15 spiders
• Disabled Shrine size scaling. Enlarged buff fields for each Shrine and recentered so rotating Shrines does not affect availability of buff field
• All 3 of the new off-hand artifacts (15 items Common to Epic) now properly display female characters
• Significantly increased drop rates of taming artifacts on destroyer animals
• Added an additional loot table for destroyer animals to have increased amounts of hides, suet, and entrails
• Heart Heraldry Shield pattern should now properly apply to items
• Improved loot drops for Envy Bow and Quiver
• Reworked visuals for the Ankh of Sacrifice and Ankh of Wala fto include the new shrine visual effects
• Added a small chance to get the Shrine of Gaiaism recipe to Sand Elementals
• Well of Aldur: Added splash screen to load scene info
• Well of Aldur: Some improvements to unreleased nested scene.
• Jotungrund: Creating and improving unreleased showy expanse scene.

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Food and drink changes are inbound for Release 87, hungry adventurers! Expect every food and drink consumable to have a specific purpose and each to be scaled and balanced with all foods and drinks available. For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Food & Drink Revamp & Balancing Inbound!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Support the Family of CatherineRose!
• New Store Additions: Flowerbeds, Blank Ornate Scrolls, & Valentine’s Day Items!
• New Vault Round!
• February Login Reward: Fancy Vase of Multicolored Roses!
• R86 Rewards Program Login Items: Valentine’s Day & New Year Theme!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Amanita’s Adventures
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Food & Drink Revamp & Balancing Inbound!

For the virtual food and drink lovers in Shroud of the Avatar, a robust update to food and drink buffs is inbound! Through the years and prior to the introduction of the food channel system, many food and drink recipes have entered into the game, much of which did not feature significantly unique purposes or stats, or as the game progressed and players became more powerful, many of the low level foods quickly lost purpose. Eventually, players only expressed interest in a small portion of the food and drink recipes available. Well, all that is about to change, gourmets of New Britannia! A revamp of nearly all food and drink buffs will arrive on February 25th for Release 87!

With this update, an extensive effort has been made to provide a unique and specific purpose to every food recipe. Taking full advantage of the food buff channel system, buffs will now be completely related and balanced to how many buff slots the consumed food occupies. Standardized buff durations will be implemented based upon the slots occupied, and standardized regeneration rates will also be provided across the spectrum. Many buff categories will have at least 3 versions of the buff in amounts relative to the slots occupied, while other buff categories might only have a single offering.

For buff durations, other than some deviations in regards to some of the older powerful foods such as Dragon Stew, Troll Spare Ribs, and Spicy Phoenix Bites, almost all foods will feature either 1, 2 or 4 hour durations based upon the slots they occupy. 1 slot foods will last 1 hour, and 2 slot foods will last 2 hours. 3 slot foods will last 4 hours to provide a bit of extra duration for those looking forward to a longer play session. Having useful and scaled buffs attached to 1 and 2 channel foods will provide players expecting a shorter play session far more options in which foods they imbibe.

Similarly, regeneration rates will be greatly standardized. A variety of foods are now categorized as defensive, and provide regeneration rates benefiting health over focus, while other foods are categorized as offensive and benefit focus regeneration more so than health regeneration. Of course, players can mix and match their food intake to provide any variation of buff balancing, so there is no requirement for a player to eat all defensive foods or all offensive foods. Mixing and matching is certainly allowable and encouraged.

6 foods will also be provided that feature increased regen rates as their primary function, so if players would prefer higher amounts of regeneration, they’ll have 1, 2, and 3 slot foods of both offensive and defensive varieties to incorporate into their buff choices.

With standardized concepts in mind, players will likely only need to consider the unique stats the food provides when shopping or crafting, since regeneration and flat rate health and focus provisions are uniform based upon the number of slots the consumable utilizes.

In the same fashion, each food will provide standardized amounts of additional health and focus. Defensive foods will provide +25, +50, or +75 additional health depending upon the slots occupied, and offensive foods will provide those same numbers to focus based upon the slots occupied. Also, 6 foods will provide additional amounts of health and focus as their primary purpose, with 3 for health and 3 for focus being available and to scale with the number of slots occupied.

Players have also come to know that a significant number of crafted foods were also available as loot or can be purchased at an NPC food merchant. All of these items will be removed from merchants and loot to ensure crafting or trade between players is the sole source for every crafted food.

Starter foods have been notoriously useless since their buff durations were so miniscule (1 to 15 minute buffs usually), and their buffs provided little meaning to gameplay. Now, 8 starter foods have been identified and balanced so that all occupy 1 slot, and each will feature the standardized regeneration rates and flat rate health or focus typically provided by 1 slot foods, however the durations for starter foods were only increased to 30 minutes.

Players will find these starter foods readily available in loot, for sale on NPC merchants, or even distributed as world decorations which can be stolen, but these 8 starter foods will not be crafted. However, all 8 starter foods will eventually be introduced into crafting as crafting components, so even higher level players can find them beneficial to utilize. Most will recognize the 8 starter foods as common items already available in-game:

• Lemon Bun
• Short Bread Loaf
• Slim Bread Loaf
• Braided Bread Loaf
• Bread Loaf
• Roll
• Sugar Cookies
• Wheat Bun

As foods were shifted into standardized categories, many “holes” were identified in regards to what buffs are available in the food system across the spectrum of slots and categories. To fill these “holes”, approximately 23 additional food recipes will be introduced to the game for Release 88 on March 25th.

All of these recipes will focus on using underutilized crafting components, and with these recipes only in prototype, there’s still plenty of time for players to provide input on recipe names and components. The proposed names for the upcoming new recipes are as follows, and the names should provide players a significant hint as to what underutilized component will gain new purpose:

• Black Cutworm Cupcake
• Bone Broth
• Cinnamon Cake
• Coelacanth Chips
• Corpion Cake
• Corpion Cutlets
• Dragon Egg Omelet
• Emerald Ash Egg Roll
• Entrails and Eggs
• Hemlock and Ham
• Ichthyosaur Ice Cream
• Lard Bread
• Nut Butter and Ooze Sandwich
• Oozy Omelet
• Phoenix Fingers
• Pickled Plant Pollen
• Plesiosaurus Pie
• Shadow Slaw
• Shadow Snacks
• Sharkfin Soup
• Tarpon Tart
• Trilobite Chomps
• Turkey and Sinew Chewies

Food and drinks with crafting and gathering buffs are to be greatly expanded, with no changes being provided to 1 Year Whiskey, 2 Year Whiskey, or 7 Year Whiskey. New buffs becoming available in R87 across such recipes are as follows:

• Decorated Cake Slice: +50% Cooking Production Time Bonus
• Baked Pacu: +5 Fishing Range, 2.5% Bait Recovery, +10 Fishing Skills
• 25 Year Whiskey: +3% Meticulous Mining Chance
• Harvest Wheat Bear: +3% Meticulous Foraging Chance
• Obsidian Bacon: +3% Meticulous Field Dressing Chance
• Squirrel Stew: +3% Meticulous Forestry Chance

For pet foods, only one change is inbound which is for Fishy Nibblers. Formerly it provided an adventure level buff which is not useful for pet applications, and will instead provide an additional 250 Health to a pet.

Utility foods are also being introduced which either provide additional carry capacity or skill learning bonuses. The foods will be distributed throughout loot, the crafting system, and many can be obtained from a replenishing confections platter periodically available in the Crown Store Vault. These initial utility foods will be as follows:

• Bacon (Crafted, +25% Encumbrance Carry Capacity)
• Decorated Cupcake (3% Grey Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Elderberry Cream Cheese Sugar Drops (10% Yellow Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Petit Fours (25% Blue Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Thumbprint Cookies (100% Orange Bundles or Replenishing Confections Platter, +25% Skill Learn Bonus)
• Slice of Lord British Birthday Cake (Looted in Lord British’s Castle, +100% Skill Learn Bonus)

Very close attention will be paid to the scarcity of components for all food and drink recipes. We realize some of the components are obtained from exceptionally rare drops such as dragon eggs, phoenix talons, sharks, and rare lava fish, but a “feed the village” concept will be utilized when players craft food recipes containing scarce resources. The scarcer the components, the output for the recipes will be increased proportionally. For example, fishing a shark out of salt water is very rare, but, when you do? You’ll be able to “feed the village” in a sense and make many food items to utilize or trade.

Maintaining the scarcity of the drops will still allow trophies and other rare items to keep their value, while providing a modicum of excitement knowing these drops will also provide very significant food output at a crafting table. Balancing of these outputs may take some time to normalize through future game patches, but ultimately we hope they settle upon output levels which makes the food or drink very viable for routine and affordable use.

There were a small number of food and drink items which provided magical resistance bonuses directed at a particular school of magic. These buffs will no longer be available with food or drink consumption, and will instead be provided by various potions being introduced into the alchemy system sometime in the future.

With development time during 2021 being strongly focused upon balance and fixes, this initial work in the food system is only the beginning. Players can expect similar work to address imbalances in other game systems, with uniformity and standardization concepts to be applied throughout. Ultimately, when each side system is balanced, subsequent efforts for balancing can be appropriately applied to the skill trees themselves knowing that all side systems feature an already balanced array of available buffs and categories.

Also, we realize some players could be significantly inconvenienced when their favorite foods or drinks have been adjusted to provide different buffs amounts, durations, regeneration rates, health, focus, slot numbers, or even a shift into an entirely new buff category. We implore with the community to please understand the importance of these balancing efforts and to work with us by providing constructive feedback and suggestions.

For those wishing to participate in feedback for the upcoming changes, please do so in this forum post. Please understand that all adjustment passes are not yet complete, the potential changes to recipe difficulty or output are not complete, and the team is very interested in hearing feedback from the community.

We hope players come to enjoy the expanded food buff system. Our efforts aim to provide an improved crafting, gathering, and buff selection experience while also affording a much larger breadth of useful food and drink recipes throughout the game. More balance efforts will be introduced in coming months, so stay tuned!

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

The time has come, Avatars! So many fantastic community members have shined in the past year, many of which have never received recognition for their hard work and dedication. Well, now the recognition program is back! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Community Recognition Program Returns!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Support the Family of CatherineRose!
• New Store Additions: Blank Ornate Scrolls, Awnings, & Valentine’s Day Items!
• New Vault Round!
• February Login Reward: Fancy Vase of Multicolored Roses!
• R86 Rewards Program Login Items: Valentine’s Day & New Year Theme!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Amanita’s Adventures
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Community Recognition Program Returns!

Greetings Avatars! This is a very important week in New Britannia. For many years, the developers of Shroud of the Avatar have routinely awarded titles, plaques, and medals to outstanding community members in a way to thank them for their hard work and dedication. This program has lapsed this past year, but now it is back!

Lord British and the Royal Court of New Britannia will be presenting awards to various recipients during today’s Friday Livestream. Wash that troll blood off your hands, put on your ceremony finery and meet us at Arabella’s Castle at 4PM CT if you would like to attend within the game. Also, please join us today for the Friday, February 12th Livestream at 4PM CT on Twitch to congratulate new award recipients as we broadcast the ceremony.

For those that are unfamiliar with the program, here is a breakdown of the 3 awards to be routinely provided to exceptional community members and organizations:

• Order of the New Britannia Empire (ONBE): The ONBE is awarded to individual community members of Shroud of the Avatar. Lord British bestows this medal upon stellar community members for their positive contributions to the game and community. The community nominates these outstanding individuals for their efforts within a wide variety of supportive activities such as: creation of player resources, community leadership, new player support, and much more! Recipients of the ONBE are awarded the Knight of New Britannia title, an actual medal to wear outside of the game, and a digital version of the medal to display within the game.
• DarkStarr Medallion of Chaos (Chaos Medal): This award is given by DarkStarr to “chaotic members” of the Shroud of the Avatar community. Unlike its virtuous counterpart, this award is given chaotically to community members whom DarkStarr deems worthy at in-game events. As one would expect, there are no rules or guidelines in how Darkstarr determines the recipients, but we assure you, with the chaotic forces at his disposal, he puts much consideration and effort into selecting the recipients most deserving. Recipients of the Chaos Medal are awarded the Chaotic of New Britannia title, an actual medal to wear outside the game, and a digital version of the medal to display within the game.
• Royal Warrant: The Royal Warrant is awarded to outstanding community groups for their positive contributions to the game and community. Players nominate these outstanding groups for their collective contributions to projects, group activities, community events, and more. Recipients of the Royal Warrant are awarded an actual plaque to display outside of the game, and a digital version is also provided to display within the game.

More information will be released about the recognition program in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

The developers of Shroud of the Avatar will be making some changes to the fishing tourney events which we have held weekly for the past 40 weeks, and we’ll be introducing 2 additional developer community event concepts. Lots of fun and prizes inbound! For those wishing to participate in any community activities, upcoming one-time and recurring community events have been announced! Be sure to also review the Players Guide and Known Issues list for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes. Now, let’s see what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

News Announcements

• Upcoming Developer Community Events!
• Latest News Q&A Friday Livestream!
• Support the Family of CatherineRose!
• New Store Additions: Wooden Awnings, Arrow Groupings, Water Lilies, & More!
• New Vault Round!
• February Login Reward: Fancy Vase of Multicolored Roses!
• R86 Rewards Program Login Items: Valentine’s Day & New Year Theme!
• Streamer Rewards Program
• Bug Brigade & Testing Directives
• Upcoming Release Dates

Community Updates

• Community Events & Resources
• Project to Support: Amanita’s Adventures
• Project to Support: Shard RPG
• Project to Support: Shadow of Valhalla
• Project to Support: Dragonfight
• Project to Support: Avatar Express
• Resources: Players Helping Players

Upcoming Developer Community Events!

During the next 3 weeks there will be major changes to the Weekly Catnip Games Fishing Tourney, and we will be adding two additional events in hopes to capture interest of a wider player base. What? Not everyone loves fishing? Hard to believe, but worry not non-anglers of New Britannia! Two additional event varieties will be coming soon to a Community Events page near you.

• Monthly Screenshot & Video Contest: A new screenshot and video contest will be fully announced during the upcoming week which will feature a large number of valuable prizes. The focus will be for players to submit creative or informative screenshots and videos of content introduced to the game during the latest 3 monthly releases.
  • Videos must be of 720p quality or greater and posted on a popular social media outlet, and images must be in 1920×1080 resolution and hide the UI. All submissions must be embedded into responses in an upcoming forum thread which will appear in the community events and screenshot forums early next week (where we’ll also be taking feedback about the contest).
  • The full contest details will be posted in the forums next week. The event will officially start on the day of Release 87, and initial subject matter considered must feature R87, R86, or R85 content items.
  • The prizes will be as follows:
    • 1st Place Video: Player-Owned Town Town Lot Deed
    • 2nd Place Video: Player-Owned Town Village Lot Deed
    • 3rd Place Video: Player-Owned Town Row Lot Deed
    • 1st Place Screenshot: Player-Owned Town Town Lot Deed
    • 2nd Place Screenshot: Player-Owned Town Village Lot Deed
    • 3rd Place Screenshot: Player-Owned Town Row Lot Deed
  • Winning entries will be posted throughout our media venues, and each winner will also receive a Master of the Arts in-game title. As long as submissions feature content of the 3 spotlighted releases, they will be considered during each month they remain eligible.
• Monthly Rare Item Bounties: In 2 weeks, we will announce a new bounty type event which encourage players of Shroud of the Avatar to seek rare drops throughout two designated scenes which will be identified monthly. One scene will be PvP and coincide with the fishing tourney PvP location. The other scene will be PvE and differ from the fishing locations.
  • All prize decisions are still being finalized, but will be appealing enough to attract players to these scenes. For the developers, these item bounty events will be very informative and could provide valuable insight into leaderboard improvements in the future. Also, as players adventure in these scenes, we will be attempting to provide targeted loot improvements to the spotlighted scenes based upon player feedback.
  • The event details will be posted in the forums prior to R87 so players can prepare, and the official start date of this event series will be on the day of Release 87. Also, Master of Collections and Master of Mayhem titles will be provided to the PvE and PvP winners, respectively. More details to come, Avatars!
• Catnip Games Fishing Tourney Changes: To be fully announced on the day of Release 87 (February 25th), the fishing event will be changing to a monthly format. We’ll be increasing the number of scenes in which the event will take place, and the prizes will be adjusted. We will continue with the weekly tourney as designed until release day, but full details about the upcoming changes will begin to appear early in this forum thread so players, governors, and stewards can prepare. Please post suggestions in the same thread, and they will be taken into consideration.

We look forward to your feedback as we release the details for each event in the coming weeks. The commencement of these events on the day of Release 87 should provide an additional and interesting mix of community activities available to players going forward.

Also, we’re likely to discontinue the provision of participation trophies for such events and use this developer time for loot improvements and bug fixes. Instead, we will deliver rewards to random non-winners so even players with small amounts of available time to participate will still have a significant chance to win something. To encourage more spin-off events, we will be offering a larger variety of trophies to event holders upon request (each trophy available will be announced as well), so that they may distribute them to participants of their spin-off contest according to their unique rule sets.

Get your fishing poles, weapons, and cameras ready, Avatars! So much more is coming your way in 2021, so stay tuned!

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