Updates

Update of the Avatar #207 – 2016.12.16: Play R37 Now!, Vauban Pass, LB on Exploding Dice, Raffle Winners, Numinous Gleann Spotlight, and More!

December 16, 2016

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Play Release 37 Now!

Release 37 successfully launched yesterday, December 15, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Release 36 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

December 16, 2016

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:

Community Spotlight: Numinous Gleann – Player Owned Town

December 14, 2016

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.

Release 37 Instructions

December 14, 2016

[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).

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

December 13, 2016

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

Beware the quicksand pits

Update of the Avatar #206 – 2016.12.09: Ardoris Polish, Making of Blood Bay, Community Spotlight – Aldwater Player Town, Obsidian Bundles, and More!

December 9, 2016

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Ardoris Polish

In Release 37, we are spending time on polishing the visuals for Ardoris and making them more distinct from the rest of the game. We had already given Ardoris a vaguely Asian theme but we wanted to push that further, so we purchased an Asian-themed asset pack from the Unity Asset store to provide us with additional assets for this purpose. Over the course of Release 37 and Release 38, we are going to propagate those assets (along with the new character assets we are building) throughout the Perennial Coast region to give that entire region its own distinct visual identity. You can expect to see similar treatment to start appearing in adventure scenes, other NPC towns, and PRTs over the next several releases.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Esteben “SorcerousSteve” Zaldivar]

Hey guys, SorcerousSteve here giving you a sneak peek at the visual improvements made to Ardoris this R37.

One of the major new alterations to the scene has been the addition of roads leading out to the East and West resembling those present on the overworld map. Alongside this new Asian architecture/foliage has been added to the scene in key areas.

Community of the Avatar Livestream – Clockwork Monkeys Strike!

December 8, 2016

Join us this Friday at 4pm CT for another Community of the Avatar livestream!

We will be kicking off the livestream with a special guest, Matt Schmitz, Lead Animator on the team! He will be showing the community in 3DS Max how the animations for the Clockwork Monkey were designed. This special pet reward was one of the stretch goals the community obtained during the Summer Telethon, and will now be added to the game in Release 37!

We will also be touring Aldwater, a PRT town which was recently spotlighted. Head on over to Aldwater before the livestream begins, if you want to meet us! Also, please contact Berek in advance if you are a resident of the town.

The fun begins live on Twitch at 4pm CT this Friday!

Community Spotlight: Aldwater – Player Run Town

December 7, 2016

This latest community spotlight takes a new twist in covering the first Player RUN Town (PRT) of Aldwater! 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.

In Shroud of the Avatar, we have three primary types of towns: Player Owned Towns (POT) (where a player owns the town and players can be evicted), Player Run Towns (we establish the town and some basic infrastructure, but the players ultimately fill up the space), and standard NPC towns like Brittany, Owl’s Head, Soltown, etc. that also are often part of a quest line. Up until this spotlight, we’ve been exclusively touring POTs.

Nestled along a busy stretch of the Perennial Coast in Novia, Aldwater is quite easy to find. The town is located right next to many famous towns and centers of commerce where new players take the first step on their journey through New Britannia. As I neared the entrance of the town (after paying a quick visit to the fine clothing shops in the bustling neighboring town of Ardoris), I immediately noticed the beautiful cliffs with extravagant mansions overlooking the bay:

I saw a great many curiosities in Aldwater that drove me to write down my tour. As I entered the town and began exploring the many cobblestone streets, I paused in front of someone’s house upon noticing a curious set of decorations on the front lawn…

The Making of Blood Bay (cont.) and Xenos Polish

December 5, 2016

The Making of Blood Bay (cont.)

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

A few more shots of Blood Bay progress:

Update of the Avatar #205 – 2016.12.02: Xenos Polish, Blood Bay, Telethon Success, Tips of the Avatar, Player Town of Bladewyke, Moustache Mania, and More!

December 2, 2016

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Xenos Polish

Right before we went persistent, we uncloned Xenos and made some modifications to it for specific plot points. However, we were not satisfied with the level of polish so we are revisiting this scene and doing a polish pass this release. We hope to have this pass complete by Release 38. Xenos is on the island of Elysium, southwest of Novia, and is a critical juncture on the Path of Truth. This is the third update we have posted so far on this map.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Scott “Scottie” Jones]

Hello again!

As we continue our Xenos work-in-progress tour, allow me to introduce you to the Lagoon of Pleasures by taking a bit of a stroll around its perimeter! Blocked off from the rest of the bay and the docks for larger ships, the Lagoon of Pleasures has as its “gates”; two large arched stone bridges that allow only smaller rowed craft through, such as gondolas or punts. As a result, the placid waters of the lagoon are perfect for lovers, poets, and merry-makers as they engage in idle pursuits. I imagined scenic shores lined with weathered marble terraces and colonnades, stone benches, and steps leading down into the crystalline lapping waters. So my goal was to draw inspiration from some of the works of Alma Tadema.