[Starr Long posted this on the forums today]
Hello Everyone,
Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 2 access for all backers at First Responder / Adventurer level and above begins this Thursday, January 23, at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 2 access will end on Saturday, January 25, at 10:00 PM Central Time. Starting today you can begin installing and patching (see instructions below), but login will not be enabled until Thursday morning.
We are happy to say that not only are we are going to deliver just about every single Release 2 item (except for Shopping) but that we also were able to put in some extras. Here are those deliverables again, along with some extra notes and the bonus deliverables in italics.
RELEASE 2: January 23 – January 25 2014
- Crafting: We will be opening up crafting for testing with more than 100 recipes. Chests full of crafting resources will be provided. Crafting will initially focus on refining and production for smithing, tailoring, and carpentry.
Shopping: Shopkeepers will be open for business for selling and buying.- Town 2: An additional municipality (likely village sized) will be open for business! Entering the swirling blue portal in the ring of stones will take you from one town to the other. We chose Kingsport for Town 2.
- List Inventory: For those who prefer spreadsheets to immersion. The inventory battle royale continues! Setting this option will change all containers into lists except for crafting tables (coming in R3).
- Character Customization++: Characters from R1 will be wiped, but you will now have even more options when creating your character! Now there are even more ways to look unique, including: facial features, scaling, and more content (hairstyles, head shapes, skin tones, hair colors, etc.) We were also able to include helmets and offhand items (torch and shield).
- Jumping: Tired of not being able to jump that fence? Well tire no more as we now have jumping. And not just any old jumping but player controlled height jumping. A quick tap on the spacebar barely lifts the player but holding down the spacebar allows the player to clear those pesky walls with a high jump. Long term jumping will use focus and will likely be affected by weight carried.
- Run Speed: Many of you commented on the slow run speed so we increased it by 50%, which feels much more satisfying. We will continue to tune this and balance it with an upcoming Dash skill that uses Focus as well as the Sprint buff in the Light Armor School of combat.
- Mac & Linux: OSX and Linux support is now working (with a few caveats). The game currently requires a two button mouse and while a trackpad technically works we are not fully supporting it yet. For Linux, Unity only officially supports Ubuntu so if you are running other versions it may not work.
- Recipe Log: We had originally planned to put crafting in R2 without a recipe log but quickly discovered how amazingly not fun that was. Discovery is great but not having any record of that discovery is just punishing. So we got in a recipe book that will track your recipes.
So now that it is clear what you can expect we should also be as clear about what you should not expect:
“Captain Bennis!”
