Updates

Play Release 117!

August 30, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 117 goes live August 31st at 10:30 AM CDT.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 117 (R117), we offer challenges and coins. En Garde!

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 Player Guide and Known Issues for additional information on recent changes and upcoming fixes.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Courage Club: New Arena, New Challengers, New Rewards

Courage Club has gotten a series of improvements! Note that some of these were suggested and encouraged by players, but things got a little out of hand and we added some extra bells and whistles.

Courage Club is a secret fight club where avatars can prove their mettle by fighting several enemies, one at a time, in a small, private arena. There are Courage Clubs in Aerie, Central Brittany, Mud, Resolute, Valhold, and Westend; talk to the local guards to get a Courage Club Key and find a hatch to enter, generally near the guard offices.

After some heavy excavation, the Club has expanded its small boxy fighting pit into a bigger, rounder arena. This improved space has attracted more and tougher participants:

Previously, players would fight five enemies of random capabilities and ever-increasing threat and the last enemy was a champion with a unique name. Now, that’s Bracket 1! (You only need to complete Bracket 1 to receive the Banner of Valor. Also, completing or slinking away from Bracket 1 will now modify your virtue once a day, rather than only the first time.)

The NEXT three enemies, Bracket 2, are tougher, with a named and possibly uniquely-styled champion as the third opponent. Then there’s Bracket 3: three of the toughest competitors, with the final being a champion with a unique name AND appearance.

Remember to ransack the fallen: the defeated of Bracket 1 drop Courage Club Bronze Coins, Bracket 2 drops Courage Club Silver Coins, and Bracket 3 drops Courage Club Gold Coins. Make sure you collect them for a bonus reward! The referee will trade ten Bronze Coins, seven Silver Coins, and/or seven Gold Coins for a reward.

You can choose to trade the coins in for gold and experience once a day, as three separate daily quests, OR trade them for decorative versions of the same coins as often as you have enough: a Commemorative Courage Club Bronze Coin, Silver Coin, and Gold Coin. These coins are always slowly spinning on their edges and have a visual effect glow (but are not a light source).

(Known issue: for now, you’ll need ten each of gold and silver coins to trigger the turn-in for these commemorative coins, even though you only need to hand in seven.)

There are four new leaderboards to track these underground feats: a main one for Courage Club fight totals but also ones tracking fights against the final champions of each bracket.

Perhaps this is why the Oracle knows about Courage Club! If you participate in Courage Club and then ask the Oracle about courage, she might have some feedback on your performance. Who doesn’t like to watch a good fight? I wonder who she roots for…

Release 117 Patch Notes

Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 117 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R117 is a polish month. Polish, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R118 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 117!

Play Release 116!

July 26, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 116 goes live July 27th at 10:30 AM CDT.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 116 (R116), we offer intruders that are not supposed to be in the water and animals that are.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Something is Amok in Port Harmony Cistern!

Port Harmony’s underground cistern is at the heart of the Port Harmony water system. There are numerous pipes that run underground and all of them intersect within the cistern. It filters debris from their water, distributes clean water to certain locations, manages waste, and can even convert salt to fresh water. Its functions are a combination of small miracles! Lately, though, the water pressure has not been at the expected strength.

As the city’s Watersmith, Annora Jenkins maintains the canals and water management systems. If you’ve already completed all the tasks in Port Harmony that Jenkins needs help with, she will send you into the cistern to do repairs and find the cause of the low pressure. It might be sabotage! Who would do such a terrible thing?

New Creatures Spotted in Swampy Areas!

The warm spring has awakened some unusual creatures in East Sanctus Forest, East Veiled Swamp, Midras Ruins, and Tanglemire. The smallest of them seem harmless enough, but the larger ones are quite territorial!

From all reports, most frogs are green, but a few sightings of Red Poison Dart Frogs and Brown or Pale Frog Goliaths have been confirmed. It is even rumored that there are Blue Poison Dart Frogs, but that has not been verified as of this writing. Perhaps some ~~hapless wanderer~~ intrepid adventurer will ~~stumble across~~ track them down them in the coming months.

The tamers of New Britannia have managed to break Poison Dart Frogs to their will, but Frog Goliaths seem to be just too stubborn. Fortunately the chefs of New Britannia have stepped up and made alternate plans for them: general merchants in Tanglemire and Solania and a wandering merchant in Mistrendur now sell a recipe for fried frog legs.

At this rate, they’ll invade more wet areas soon! Perhaps someone should start a Cult of Anura just in case… not the chefs, though.

Play Release 115!

June 28, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 115 goes live June 29th at 10:30 AM CDT.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 115 (R115), we offer more words, floating beacons of menace, and birthday cake.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Lord British Birthday Bash: R115 Livestream

Join us on July 7th at 4 PM CDT for our annual Lord British Birthday stream! We will be talking about Release 115 and replying to questions both from the streaming audience as well as from the askadev postings and the devs will set out into the game world teaming up with players to go adventuring!

We will be starting the stream at our usual time, but we expect that the stream will extend past the usual length (more prizenings!)

More info is below.

The Great New Britannia Mapping Project Update

This month our team of cartographers has completed maps in South Paladis, bringing ten maps online. Next, we are sending our team into Quel and possibly mounting an expedition into the vastness of Verdantis. Though we have lost personnel there before, we will yet again attempt to document these lands.

Play Release 114!

May 24, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 114 goes live May 25th at 10:30 AM CDT.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 114 (R114), we offer a few new quests in Port Harmony and a few old beings who resent have been awakened.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Release Day Work Window Changes

[From a Forum Post by Ravalox]

Starting with this release, we will be taking the game server offline at 08:00 AM CT instead of 9am as in the past. This is mainly to streamline the time used for the work window and prevent our maintenance from extending further into the day when additional maintenance is required.

Shifting our work windows to start at 8am better syncs with our pre-scheduled database backups (preventing us from having to execute a second backup when we take the server down) and provides more time to perform any additional maintenance steps, including database migrations, while still returning the server to operation by 10:30 AM CT.

Our published work window will be from 08:00 AM CT to 10:30 AM CT, but we will bring the server back up as soon as work is completed if earlier than the end of the work window. This means that, for most release deployments, the work should be completed and the server restored to service by 09:30 AM CT instead of the usual 10:30 AM CT.

In the event we have a larger deployment, we will still advise the community of any extended outage times well in advance of the scheduled work day/time.
– Ravalox

Play Release 113!

April 26, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 113 goes live April 27th at 10:30 AM CDT.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 113 (R113), we offer the new scene of Port Harmony and newly-tameable reef spiders.

News Announcements

Community Updates

New Scene: Port Harmony

The Ministers of Port Harmony welcome all outlanders to their growing seaside community!

With direct access by galleon from both Novia and Hidden Vale, and acting as a cultural hub for all of Mistrendur, Port Harmony is a thriving New Britannian colony with something for everyone. Shop in our bustling dockside marketplace, stroll past the fountain in the nearby town square, wander into our charming residential neighborhoods, chat with our friendly residents, or just relax on a lazy gondola ride in the canals. Our Virtuous city offers many of the amenities of the largest southern communities, including a hospital, a New You pavilion, and a militia that keeps everyone safe both inside our borders and out in the surrounding territory.

So what are you waiting for? Come to Port Harmony, your home in Mistrendur!

Port Harmony is a new Tier 8 adventure scene, available to Episode 2 players, featuring a large city with merchants, crafting stations, and quests.

2023 Roadmap Update

So far we are pretty much on track to keep the roadmap schedule.

The one item we have a delay on is implementing Unity 2021. We are now in process of migrating servers and applications to new Virtual Machines as well as adding new internal build and Dev/QA environments. This will eliminate the process bottleneck we currently have and allow for the parallel development work on our current Unity 2018 platform and Unity 2021 until it is ready to be deployed into production.

The first phase of our Treasure Map system is currently in development. Devilcult is doing a great job of prototyping the maps and setting up the tech and systems that we will need to move forward with more advanced features.

As detailed farther down in these release notes, we are in the final push to get the in-game scene maps completed. There is still much work to be done to catch up but we have met our commitment to ensure that any new qualifying scene released will have a map on day one. Work on the SotaMap server is still on the schedule as well but is blocked by server and infrastructure updates being done to our website datacenter. This will be an ongoing project and updates will be provided as we reach the next stage.

Episode Two work continues and is progressing beautifully! Sannio (Keith Quinn) has created a unique and bright town in Port Harmony that will greet players as they first arrive on Mistrendur. Sannio has outdone himself again!

Look for more roadmap updates at the end of June!

– Ravalox

Play Release 112!

March 29, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 112 goes live March 30th at 10:30 AM CDT.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 112 (R112), we offer a preview of Port Harmony, where is not appropriate to throw eggs at your friends.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Sneak Preview: Port Harmony

Port Harmony is not yet open to Outlanders, but Sannio has provided a few preview images.

Release 112 Patch Notes

Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 112 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R112 is a polish month. Content, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R113 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 112!

Play Release 111!

February 23, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 111 goes live February 23rd at 10:30 AM CST.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 111 (R111), we offer wildlife: fish to find and keep in fishtanks and new Brigade bugs to collect.

Please note that the incremental client patch going from build 1633 to 1635 may not apply correctly on Windows clients. This is a known issue. If this occurs, the game client will apply the core patch from 0 to 1635. We will publish the patch as soon as possible after R110’s closing so players may begin downloading and applying the update immediately.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Go Fish and Catch a New Friend!

Devilcult has created a set of fish tanks that can house several species of new pet fish which Sannio has scattered throughout New Britannia. A craftable fish bowl is a magical watery habitat perfect for one fish and three larger tanks in the Crown Store can each host multiple fish as well as one of a pair of decorative accessories to give them an appealing underwater world. More tanks, accessories, and fish are planned for future releases!

New Bug Brigade Rewards

Ravalox has created a set of new rewards for the Bug Brigade which, together with this month’s new subscription reward item, will allow delivery of rewards to those who’d blown through all the previously-scheduled ones. These plaque-mounted insects are of a size to scare off any of their more-lively cousins! Each can be placed on horizontal or vertical surfaces seperately or in an upcoming display case.

A selection of the new insects shown wall-mounted on five wooden plaques

Release 111 Patch Notes

Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 111 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R111 is a polish month, but the fish just wouldn’t wait any more! Polish, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R112 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 111!

Play Release 110!

January 25, 2023

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 110 goes live January 26th at 10:30 AM CST.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 110 (R110), we offer a roadmap for 2023, a couple of new craftables, and more new event trophies.

News Announcements

Community Updates

State of the Game and Roadmap for 2023

The Road Ahead: A rider with a red cloak at the beginning of a winding road through a meadow

Happy New Year and welcome to 2023! This past year has certainly been a roller coaster for many of us, and Shroud of the Avatar (SotA) is looking forward to a much better new year.

In 2022, we added lots of Episode 2 content, including Grusk, Grusk Factory, Vikland, and Vikland’s Obsidian Valley adventure areas. We’ve also made many improvements, including offering many new items in our in-game store, removing the Heritage (“account bound”) flag from all store items, and adding a new Emote Hotbar to the UI. On our website, we’ve restored our “Make a Difference” Store — 20% of any purchase from our website charity store will be donated to the charity associated with each category. Shroud of the Avatar supports Water.org, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Breast Cancer, Movember, Children’s Miracle Network of Hospitals, and Doctors Without Borders. Our “Make a Difference” Store can be found here.

Continue reading in the forums

New Lava-Fishing Trophies

To add to last month’s treasure-hunting trophies, Ravalox has made a shiny new set of trophies for lava-fishing contests! Details on requesting them for your events are here. (Thanks, Diablotine!)

Different smoking lava fish spinning above pedestals topped with gold, silver, and bronze

Release 110 Patch Notes

Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 110 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R110 is a content month, but some of the content was snuck in early last month with Vikland’s Obsidian Valley. Polish, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R111 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 110!

Play Release 109!

December 14, 2022

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 109 goes live December 15th at 10:30 AM CST.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 109 (R109), we offer a hidden Obsidian valley behind a maze of tunnels in Vikland.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Explore Vikland’s Obsidian Valley!

Hagen’s personal tragedy has left a mystery: the most intrepid Avatars exploring Vikland can now solve the puzzle of the Obsidian Cave and venture into the tunnels beyond the locked door. The most clever and resilient ones will make their way completely through the catacombs and enter into a mysterious Obsidian Valley.

Elevator in the tunnels under Vikland

A View Across the Obsidian Valley

New Treasure-Hunting Trophies

Ravalox has made a shiny new set of trophies for treasure-hunting contests! Details on requesting them for your events are here.

Differently-colored treasure chests spinning on pedestals

Release 109 Patch Notes

Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 109 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R109 is a polish month. Content, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R110 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 109!

Play Release 108!

November 16, 2022

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Release 108 goes live November 17th at 10:30 AM CDT.

Welcome! The Catnip Games development team marks this monthly release of Shroud of the Avatar with new content and improvements. For Release 108 (R108), we offer a way to get rid of premium items you don’t want and a better way to dance in celebration after.

News Announcements

Community Updates

Place Emotes in the Hotbar!

The noncombat hotbar filled with color-coded emote icons

Emotes can now be placed in the non-combat hotbar. An icon has been created for each of 278 emotes and, if the player has tooltips enabled, each emote’s name will appear when hovering over the icon. Each has color-coded curtains to help differentiate similar ones by group:

Red – Story/Main game/Seasonal/Quest
Yellow – Telethon/Crown Purchase
Blue – Pledge
Countach Pink – Make a Difference
Green – Meretz
Grey – Obsidian Trials
Gold – Seedinvest
Purple – Unique/Limited-time
Iridescent Pink – Ultra-special

A dedicated (optional) emote bar is on the way in a future release.

Discard Unwanted Items Into Garbage Bins!

Almost all items, including ones normally restricted from deletion, can be removed from the game using this new item. NOTE: Quest Items cannot be deleted, even this way.

To use the garbage bin, drag the item to be deleted onto the bin. Only one item at a time may be deleted and there is a confirmation pop-up box for each.

These are publicly available: they have been added to many NPC scenes (listed in detail in the patch notes below).

If you wish to purchase your own from the Crown Store, it can be placed on either a player lot or on POT land (POT placement requires Steward or Governor access).

Garbage Bin

Release 108 Patch Notes

Below are a list of the updates that are live as of Release 108 in the game of Shroud of the Avatar! R108 is a polish month. Polish, additional improvements, and bug fixes are inbound for R109 next month. We hope you enjoy the changes that are live today as of Release 108!