Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Announcing the 15% Summer Bonus!
• Welcome Back to Solace Bridge!
• The Making of Brittany Estates
• The Making of Brittany Wharfs
• Polished Elven Fighter Armor and Mage Robes
• Prism In-Game Event: Remembrance of the 49 Victims of the Orlando Shooting Massacre
• SotA Con 2016
• Viking 2-Story Village Home with Dual Balconies
• 33 Day Countdown to Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 1
• The Sword of Midras SotA Novel for Hardcover, Kindle, Nook and Audiobook
• Upcoming Events
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back: Crowfall’s First Ever Telethon!

Announcing the 15% Summer Bonus!

If you were thinking of purchasing (or upgrading) a pledge or Player Owned Town before they expire, then now’s a great time to do it! Between now and the Summer 2016 Expiration Event: Part 2 (see below), we are offering a 15% Bonus on all purchases! Here are the details:

For all new purchases (including pledges, pledge upgrades, add-on items, player owned towns, player owned town upgrades, Make a Difference items, and service vouchers) between 12:00 am CDT June 24, 2016 and Midnight CDT (5:00 UTC) August 22, 2016, we will add an additional 15% bonus to your Store Credit! You can use your Store Credit toward additional purchases (which includes pledges, pledge upgrades, add-on items, player owned towns, and player owned town upgrades).

[NOTE: The 15% bonus is calculated every day at 1:00 pm CDT for any purchases within the previous 24 hours and added to your Store Credit account; Store Credit cannot be applied toward the purchase of Service Vouchers or Make a Difference items]

You can use the 15% Bonus to save on your next purchase! For example, if you have the $45 Adventurer pledge and really want to upgrade to the $90 Royal Artisan pledge, you would normally pay the extra $45 for the upgrade. But using the 15% bonus you can immediately save $5. To do so, you would first purchase $40 worth of Store Credit Gift Coupons (via PayPal, Amazon, Bitcoin, or credit card; excluding existing Store Credit) then use the “Convert to Credits” option on your account page to transform the Store Credit Gift Coupons into Store Credit. Within 24 hours an additional $6 bonus ($40 x 15%) would be applied to your Store Credit account, bringing it up to $46. You would then use $45 of your Store Credit to upgrade to the $90 Royal Artisan pledge.

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• The Making of Brittany Estates
• RizeUp Gaming’s 4th Annual Multiple Sclerosis Charity Drive, June 17-19
• Pledge Stats Update
• Womby & Friends Present: Incident in Skrekk (A Tour of Kobold Homes)
• 40 Day Countdown to Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 1
• Preorder The Sword of Midras SotA Novel and Audiobook!
• Upcoming Events
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Lace’s SotAWiki How-To Video
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back

The Making of Brittany Estates

NOTE: Brittany Estates is primarily comprised of City sized lots and is scheduled to go live in Release 32.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Richard “RrMatey” Matey]

Hey guys back again to keep you posted on the progress of another Brittany neighborhood. Brittany Estates is a gated community with lovely scenery and magnificent gardens. A great place to settle down and find that house or castle of your dreams.

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Preorder The Sword of Midras SotA Novel and Audiobook!
• HoBLotH III Community Event
• Royal Warrant Awarded to The Phoenix Republic
• Xounts Kickstarter: Shroud of the Avatar Special
• The Mysterious Chamber at the Confluence
• The Making of Brittany Wharfs
• 47 Day Countdown to Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 1
• Upcoming Events
• Community Activities
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back

Pre-Order Now: The Sword of Midras SotA Novel for Hardcover, Kindle, Nook and Audiobook

The Sword of Midras, by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott, is a revised and expanded version of the Blade of the Avatar novel (originally included in pledge rewards through May 31, 2015). The expanded The Sword of Midras includes four additional chapters not seen in the pledge reward version of Blade of the Avatar, extending and elaborating on key elements of the story.

The release date is June 21, 2016 by Tor Books. The Hardcover, Kindle, and Nook, versions are available for pre-order now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Release date for the unabridged audiobook version is July 12, 2016 with pre-orders available now at Audible.com.

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Release 30 Postmortem
• Brittany Wharfs
• Brittany Alleys
• Gold Crowns of the Obsidians Clarifications
• Revamped Founder Leather Armor, Benefactor Cloth Tunic & Founder Cloth Tunic
• Richard Garriott is Certifiable (on Twitter)
• Unity Onsite
• Austin Unity Developer Meetup: Worldbuilding with Finn & Esteben
• Updates to POT Pages
• Keep Stone Arena Basement
• Clarification on New Game Access Bundles
• Viking 4-Story Row House & Viking Wearable Bundles
• 54 Day Countdown to Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 1
• Upcoming Events
• Community Activities
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back

Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 30 Postmortem

Our first Postmortem with our new Community Manager, Berek, at the helm went great! Richard, Starr, Chris, Scott, Gina, and Matt chatted about Release 30 and provided a sneak peek at Release 31. A greadt deal of time was spent on the durability changes and the Gold Crowns of the Obsidians, and Berek fielded lots of questions and feedback from the original post and live in the chat-room; including the new Discord chat server! We gave out lots of prizes including store credits, an ISS challenge coin from Richard’s trip to space, 2 Shroud of the Avatar T-shirts, and even some new Viking items! Darkstarr even modeled his garb for the HOBLOTH 3 event going on down the road at Castleton. Chris then followed up with an AMA in Discord, where he answered a ton of questions that were later posted to the forums here.

And a good time with the community and great feedback were not the only things the team took away from the hangout. One of the things this Post Mortem helped us realize was that many of the questions posted were repeated requests for information about when certain features are going to be coming online. We noted that, though many of those questions could be answered by reading the Final Wipe & Lot Selection post, the information was not as easily accessible as it could be. So, we pulled the basic Road Map out of that post, updated it, and made it it’s own post.

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Play Release 30 Now!
• Hospitaller Refueling Stations
• Release 30 Postmortem Invite
• Brittany Alleys
• Name Reservation
• New Cloth Tunic, Polished Cloth Doublet, & Viking Helm
• New Tropical Island PoT Template & PoT Templates Page
• MMORPG Previews: Release 30’s Big Changes
• Gold Crowns of the Obsidians
• Tax Free Player Owned Town Lot Deeds (Bundles Only)
• Viking Row House Tax Free Player Owned Lot Bundles
• 61 Day Countdown to Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 1
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• In-game Community Events
• Upcoming Events
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back

Play Release 30 Now!

Read more…

[A SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]

Greetings 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 30 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, May 26, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

The pace of change as we approach Final Wipe and Lot Selection continues to accelerate as we make our final few, but quite impactful changes and additions to Shroud of the Avatar. Release 30 is full of these important changes, and includes large additions to the story, reworkings of the crafting system, and refinements of the new targeting mechanics we introduced in R29.

The statue of Grannus in front of the crumbling Valhold Castle

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Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• New Female Avatar
• Kiln Cistern (a work in progress)
• Final Duke Tour & Round-table
• New Community Manager: Berek
• Spring Telethon Rewards
• Shroud of the Avatar Wax Cylinder Soundtrack Volumes 2 & 3
• Ornate Iron Wall Light 3-Pack
• 68 Day Countdown to Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 1
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• In-game Community Events
• Upcoming Events
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back

New Female Avatar

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Kevin “Uglyfist” Wells]

Hello again everyone. First, I want to give many thanks to the community for the flattering and constructive feedback from my last post about the male avatar update. It was a great experience and totally made the work feel worth it with all the positive feedback.

It’s player character polish debut time again, and I’m very excited to say that the female avatar has been updated. Much like the male avatar update, I started from scratch and built and integrated the character over a two-release period.

With this update, the idea was to take what we had, and without completely changing the aesthetic, remake the art in a way that improves the quality but doesn’t completely change the look and feel with which players are already so familiar. Basically, the goal was to keep the female avatar looking as she was before, but with more polish and bit of a push toward an athletic look.

Also, as with the male avatar update, I have to give thanks to Matt Schmitz and Fletcher Kinnear for helping me get this new character working well with animations and all the many equippables.

I hope you guys love it and I can’t wait to hear back from everybody.

Read more…

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• **** UPDATE: Summer 2016 Expirations ****
• The Halls of Artifice (A Work In Progress)
• The Making of Brittany Fields
• Elad’s Lighthouse
• Revamped Headgear
• The Bear, the Bare, and the Maiden, Faire (a Community Event)
• Balloon PoT Connections
• Silver Serpent Pendant Available in a Variety of Metals
• Community Resources – Players Helping Players
• In-game Community Events
• Upcoming Events
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back

**** UPDATE: Summer 2016 Expirations ****

In order to give our backers the opportunity to upgrade their pledges once they’ve experienced the game post-wipe (see Final Wipe and Lot Selection milestone), we have decided to split the Summer 2016 Expiration Event into Two Parts!

Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 1

• At Midnight CDT (5:00 UTC) on July 27, 2016, we are expiring the homes and basements from the Ancestor, Edelmann, Knight Marshal, Lord Marshal, Duke, and Lord of the Manor 2 pledges. We are also expiring new Player Owned Towns (upgrades of existing POTs will continue to be available). All other rewards (including tax free property deeds) that are currently available in the remaining pledges will continue to be available. The final wipe of all game data will also occur at Midnight CDT (5:00 UTC) on July 27th. To commemorate this momentous milestone, we are holding a 12-hour Summer Telethon Part 1, starting at 12:00 pm CDT (17:00 UTC) and running right up to the Final Wipe at Midnight CDT (5:00 UTC).

Summer 2016 Expiration Event, Part 2

• At Midnight CDT (5:00 UTC) on August 22, 2016, we are expiring ALL remaining pledges, including: Adventurer, Founder, Royal Artisan, Explorer, Ancestor, Edelmann, Knight Marshal, Lord Marshal, Duke, and Lord of the Manor 2. To commemorate the final expiration of all remaining pledges, we are holding a 12-hour Summer Telethon Part 2, starting at 12:00 pm CDT (17:00 UTC) and running right up to the Final Pledge Expirations at Midnight CDT (5:00 UTC).

Read more…

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• The Making of Valhold (Castle Interior)
• The Halls of Artifice (A Work In Progress)
• The Making of Brittany Fields
• Merchant Outfit Revamp + Fortified Cloth Gloves & Boots
• The Spring Festival of the Avatar Telethon Results
• Shroud In The News: Richard Garriott and Personal Rapid Transport
• Summer 2016 Expirations
• New Kobold Furniture, Pavers, Streelamps, and Gazebo
• In-game Community Events
• Upcoming Events
• Backer Shipping Addresses
• Recommended Projects to Back

The Making of Valhold (Castle Interior)

This is the continuing update on the progress on Valhold. Valhold is scheduled to go live in Release 30.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Richard “RrMatey” Matey]

Hey guys, I have returned to Valhold after creating the Crypt of the Avatar scene. So the last thing that needs to be completed for Valhold is the interior of the palace. This section of the game is a solo instance and will change depending on the story points of the game. So here are some screenshots of the interior.

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