Updates

From Release 37.5: New Water Houses, Shogun Houses, Shogun Wearables, and New Emotes!


Just before the holidays we released a major content patch that included new homes that can be placed on water lots, new wearables and houses from our upcoming Shogun Bundles, and new emotes players can learn in the  game. Have a look below at what was added!

  • Shogun Wearables: These outfits were originally developed for the city of Ardoris and will be featured in the upcoming Shogun bundles. You can purchase these in the Add On Store and when molds launch in Q1 you will even be able to craft limited numbers after purchase.
    • Ardoris Guard Armor: This samurai inspired armor consists of 5 pieces including chest, helmet, gauntlets, boots, and legs.sota_ardoris_guard_armor_front
    • Ardoris Shogun Armor: Shogun Siranto who co-rules Ardoris from the Palace of the Mountain wears a version of this armor that players can now also wear. It comes in 4 pieces including chest, helmet, gloves, boots and legs.
    • Ardoris Priestess RobesPriestess Khasi who co-rules Ardoris from the Palace of Winds wears these elegant robes and elaborate headpiece that players can also now wear. It consists of two pieces including robes and a headpiece.sota_ardoris_priestess_outfit_front

    Read more…


Happy New Year from Shroud of the Avatar Team!


We hope that all of you have had a most joyous and festive holiday season thus far! As 2016 draws to a close, we wish to share our most heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for your generous support, and even more so, for the profound sense of belongingness that this remarkable community fosters in us all. There is no greater value than being able to share this extraordinary journey with you.

The entire Shroud of the Avatar Development team wish you the Happiest of New Years!

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Update of the Avatar #208 – 2016.12.23: Q1-17 Schedule, Brookside, Perennial Polish, Blood Bay, Water Homes, Shogun Items, New Emotes, Floral POT, and More!


Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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


Starr_avatar

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

Q1 2017 Schedule Update

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, we intend to publish quarterly schedule updates for our monthly releases. Even though the goals outlined in these schedules are likely to change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to periodically provide you with an updated roadmap.

Our priority continues to be to deliver new content to our backers each and every month so that you can give us feedback that will help us iteratively improve Shroud of the Avatar. This collaborative process continues to benefit the game, and often results in sweeping changes such as the switch over to use-based advancement. As you have seen in previous releases, the flexibility inherent to this process means that we sometimes push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

For the first quarter of 2017 we will be putting the finishing touches on the Path of Love while moving on to the Paths of Courage and Truth. We will continue to expand Crafting with the additions of molds for visual variations as well as polishing Agriculture and Fishing. Combat will continue to be balanced and will be expanded to include cover as well as a refactor of ammunition. The user interface will get several polish passes including refactoring of the conversation system and tutorial as well as an overall improvement to visuals and usability. We will also continue to give each region a visually distinct appearance, from the Shogunate beauty of the Perennial Coast to the Viking starkness of Norgard and Verdantis.estgard6

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The New Britannia Carolers – Creative Writing Contest!


Sing along with us! The contest is simple and fun – for the next two weeks, from December 20, 2016 to January 3, 2017, we want to see what songs, poems, and other holiday stories you can come up with that are related to Shroud of the Avatar. Can include videos too if you like!

When you have something you wish to submit to the contest, post it in This Thread! You are allowed to edit your submission up until the end of the contest on January 3, 2017.

THEMES

Similar to the house decorating contest, we will be judging entries based on the following themes:

  • Most inventive…
  • Romantic theme
  • Holiday theme
  • Adventure theme
  • Character/NPC theme
  • PvP/Combat theme
  • Town/Scene theme
  • Funny TIP (see below for details)
  • A surprising theme! (please keep it clean and to the Community R&G)

Also like the house decorating contest, if a theme doesn’t get any entries, we will remove that theme and add a second winner to a theme that has multiple entries up for consideration.

Do not copy from existing copyrighted works! These must be original writings or video works. Please limit entries to no more than 800 words and 3 pages with up to 4 images (if you need imagery), or 3 minute videos or less. Shorter is usually better, so don’t feel you need to max out these limits!

YOUR FUNNY TIPS!

Thank you community for submitting over 400 loading screen tips so far! We need more though! This time we want your funny and witty tips. They should still be useful, accurate, and factual, but with a funny or witty twist added to them.

Learn about the tips initiative and how to submit yours here.

PRIZES

Each theme winner will be awarded $20 worth of in-game credit, as well as the 2016 Winter Holiday Soundtrack – Wax Cylinders (digital) store reward! Perfect for replaying those holiday tunes well into the 2017 new year.

Have fun being a creative writer, Avatars!

RULES & GUIDELINES

Since this is a value based contest, a committee of judges will be formed at Portalarium, and any tie breakers will be resolved by the committee. Any disputes or disagreements in the community on who ultimately won will NOT be tolerated as an open discussion in the forums. Please PM Berek in the forums instead.

Anyone attempting to subvert the contest in any way is subject to an immediate suspension and disqualification from the contest. Inappropriate/Vulgar submissions are prohibited and will also result in immediate disqualification.

  • Submissions containing any of the following are considered inappropriate:
  • Sexual content or references
  • Disparaging race/gender/group of people
  • Drug/alcohol abuse
  • Death/suicide of persons real or fake
  • Graphical bugs
  • Depicting the state of the game in a negative manner

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON, PLEASE SEE COMPLETE RULES FOR OTHER RESTRICTIONS. THIS IS A SKILL-BASED CONTEST. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. AFFIDAVIT OF ELIGIBILITY / RELEASE OF LIABILITY / PRIZE ACCEPTANCE AGREEMENT MAY BE REQUIRED.


Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 37 Postmortem


UPDATE! Livestream has concluded. You can now watch the recording on YouTube here:

Original Announcement:

Join us Tuesday, December 20th at 3:00 PM Central (21:00 UTC) on Twitch for our monthly Hangout of the Avatar! The team will be chatting about the upcoming Release 37, the recent holiday events, and looking ahead to what’s going on in the next year!

As always, we will be giving out rare Lord British artifacts of immense power and glory, and answering your latest questions. For a chance to win an artifact, or to speak your voice on the latest game changes, be in Discord chat during the livestream. There will be multiple chances to win throughout the broadcast!

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Release 36 Lot Deed Raffle Winners


Yesterday we had the drawing for our latest Lot Deed Raffle and awarded 170 lot deeds to lucky winners whom are being announced today. There were two raffles, one for each lot type:

  • Place Anywhere Deeds: 20 Total
    • Row: 10
    • Village: 6
    • Town: 3
    • City: 1
  • Player Owned Town Deeds: 150 Total
    • Row: 80
    • Village: 40
    • Town: 20
    • City: 10

Raffle tickets grant the holder a chance to win deeds of any size (Row, Village, Town, or City). Raffles will be held monthly (total deed numbers will vary each month). Place-Anywhere Deed raffle tickets are more expensive but will have fewer deeds in each raffle than POT raffle tickets, which are more affordable and will have many more deeds in each raffle. This means your chances to win a POT deed are much greater.

This is the first raffle where we limited winners to one deed per raffle type. Visit the forums to read more about this recent change.

Below is a complete list of the winners for this release’s raffle. Winners can claim their deed(s) simply by logging into the game and claiming rewards at any bank.  A reminder that you may have received multiple deeds to claim if you received tickets for a guild or other group.

If you wish to review all of your account rewards outside of the game, you can do so by going to the Account menu on the main website and then selecting the ‘Special Rewards’ tab in the page menu.

Listed below are the winners:

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Community Spotlight: Numinous Gleann – Player Owned Town


Today’s community spotlight explores the metropolis of Numinous Gleann. Adjoined to Ardoris, the city of Love in the South, you will discover that Numinous Glenn is but a nice weekend trip from many other nearby towns.

We are touring all kinds of towns and talking with guilds and other groups throughout this spotlight series, brought to you by Berek, your community wood elf druid.

Entering from the main bridge, I saw the prominent Statues of the Virtues guarding the town center. Just beyond the statues was a farm of greenhouses for as far as the eye could see. Already in awe of the great sights I was witnessing, I knew I was going to enjoy my time here.

As I walked across the main bridge, I was greeted by a Town Crier, who welcomed me to Numinous Gleann and quickly introduced me to govenor Frederick Glasgow.

Frederick escorted me to the the town’s common crafting area, located in the shadows of the Statues of the three Virtues. The members of the Numinous Gleann Merchant Society are just a few steps away under a row of awnings and ready to assist everyone that comes on by.

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Release 37 Instructions


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

Avatars,

Please read this entire message, as well as the linked instructions and known issues.

Thank you for being a loyal backer and follower of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 37 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, December 15, at 10:30 AM US Central Standard Time (16:30 UTC).r37_instructions_v2

Performance: It has been far too many releases since we focused on issues related to performance, so we made the hard decision to push out some work on features in order to focus most of our programming team on performance. We have made a wide swath of changes that have improved just about every aspect of performance, including install size, load times, frame rate, and stability. We still have much work to do, and large cities with lots of characters and decorations can still cause some machines to struggle. Read more…


Making of Blood Bay (cont.) and Ardoris Polish


The Making of Blood Bay

Blood Bay is going to be an Open PVP area with two NPC towns, player housing, adventuring areas, and entrances to underground adventure areas. It is going to be a testing ground for several systems that will, in turn, propagate to other parts of the game if successful. We hope to have a first iteration of this map live in Release 38. We showed the scene during the Telethon and talked more about how we hope to have certain systems working. This is the third update we have posted so far on this map.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]

Blood Bay continued:

South shore housing area

blood-bay-9

Beware the quicksand pitsblood-bay-10

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