Updates

Update of the Avatar #241 – 2017.18.08: Making of Crooked Shank, Norgard Garments, R44 Questions, Free Trial 5 Continues, Hiring Web Developer, Rent Flash Sale, Community Spotlight, and More!

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

Game Development

News Announcements

Community Updates

Making of Crooked Shank

We are focusing the next few releases on building the lower tier scenes near the cities along the paths of Truth and Courage. Most of these scenes have been clones of other scenes and will now be replaced with completely original scenes. In Release 46 one of these scenes being updated will be Crooked Shank which is a mountainous area in the Verdantis region.

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

Whilst looking for an elven village in Forgotten Vale, I seemed to have misread my map, and stumbled upon a quaint human settlement tucked along a bend in the road. The locals kept their neighborhood very well tended, and while not excessively talkative, they were happy to point me to locations of note within their tidy little town.

This welcoming arch marked the entrance to the main, winding avenue through what the locals dubbed ‘Crooked Shank’. There seemed to be a lot of planting and construction, and truth be told, I could not really tell how old the town was. Read more…


Community Livestream – Exploring Longfall Woods

Chris “Sea-Wolf” Wolf is coming back on the livestream this Friday to show you more of his latest design work! We will be kicking off the stream with Sea-Wolf driving the master build machine around the nearly complete polish work of Longfall Woods.

We are focusing the next few releases on building the lower tier scenes near the cities along the paths of Truth and Courage. Most of these scenes have been clones of other scenes and will now be replaced with completely original scenes. In Release 45 one of these scenes is Longfall Woods which is a heavily forested area near Aerie in the Longfall region.

For more about Longfall Woods, check out Sea-Wolf’s recent Dev+ blog update in the forums. Not a Dev+ member? You can either get access through Bundles in the store, or check out excerpts of his blog on any of the Weekly Updates.

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask questions about this scene:


Community Spotlight – Lake Cusabo Player Town

This week’s Player Owned Town spotlight has me, ‘Berek’ as I go by in the community, travelling to Lake Cusabo to visit this beautiful area in northern Novia.

After a hectic few weeks of work and outside activities, I realized that it’d been quite some time since I’d had a full day to relax and wind down from the travails of daily life. I made my way north from Central Brittany, past Brekken Bay, and onward toward the Serpent Spine foothills. As the road turned west, I arrived at the town of Lake Cusabo.

Upon entering the town, I was immediately greeted with the scent of fresh pine and the cool brush of a lovely breeze. Lake Cusabo sits high in the mountains, and the great majesty of the views from atop these mountains took my breath away.

Read more…


Update of the Avatar #240 – 2017.11.08: Making of Longfall Woods and South Paladis, Post Ep. 1 Plan, R44 Telethon Results, Kickstarter Rewards Update, Free Trial 5 Begins, Community Events, and More!

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

The Latest Game Progress

News Announcements

Community Updates

Making of Longfall Woods

We are focusing the next few releases on building the lower tier scenes near the cities along the paths of Truth and Courage. Most of these scenes have been clones of other scenes and will now be replaced with completely original scenes. In Release 45 one of these scenes is Longfall Woods which is a heavily forested area near Aerie in the Longfall region.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf]

Hey folks, today I’ll be sharing some screenshots of Longfall Woods, which is an adventure scene near Blood River. These dark woods draw inspiration from mythical forests such as Fangorn Forest from Lord of the Rings, or The Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter. In the scene, you can find a camp of vigilantes, a spider den, some haunted ruins, and a survivalist family of elves who have been hiding from the vigilantes.

The Woods

Read more…


Free Trial Test #5 – August 9-30th

We are excited to announce the latest test of our Free Trial system! These tests are invaluable for us in order to improve the New User Experience and the Free Trial System itself.

If you know anyone who may want to try the game for free, please send them to the Download Page.

Free Trial access during the game’s current Early Access period allows you to play the entire game in any of the Online modes with a few key differences in game play:

  • Free Trial Current Time Period: August 9-30th, 2017
  • The term (Visitor) is appended to your Character Name
  • Cannot give items to other players via Trade
  • Cannot purchase nor sell items via Player Vendors nor Public Vendors
  • No ownership of property nor use of lot signs
  • Cannot interact with public chests
  • Cannot move/interact with items on a plot even if they are given permissions
  • Cannot flag as Open PVP
  • Cannot gain nor do they create any ransom items when they kill or are killed in PVP (in Open PVP zones)
  • Character data may be deleted after Free Trial period is over if character is not upgraded to a paid account
  • Items purchased in the Add On Store cannot be accessed after the Free Trial Period is over unless you purchase Game Access
  • Cannot play in Offline Mode
  • Can only start on the Path of Love

You can still explore hundreds of scenes, talk with thousands of players, adventure through the opening quests, and gain experience and skills as you get used to the world of New Britannia! If you wish to continue playing after the free trial concludes, you can obtain an Early Access account here.

For when you get started in the Free Trial, we would love your feedback! We have opened up of our Release Feedback Forums. If you have a constructive comment about this release that will help the game to improve, please post it there. You can also say hello in the New Player Forum!

Have fun, and thanks for checking out Shroud of the Avatar in Early Access!


Release 44 Postmortem Mini-Telethon

** $67,500 **

Telethon Funds Raised



Telethon Stretch Goal Rewards:

  • ACHIEVED! $10,000: Oracle Eye Sparklers
  • ACHIEVED! $25,000: Oracle Eye Mirror: Home decoration with the Oracle Eye on top
  • ACHIEVED! $35,000: Oracle Eye Helmet: Fencing Mask with Oracle Eye painted on mesh like the Obsidian Cabalist masks
  • ACHIEVED! $50,000: Oracle Eye Throne
  • ACHIEVED! $65,000: Oracle Cable “Wings” + /juggleoracleeyes

Greetings Avatars,

Traditionally our Telethons have been held quarterly and lasted 12 hours (and in some extreme cases 24 hours!). While these lengthy telethons allowed us to cover a very wide range of subjects, they also led to a bit of meandering at the end due to fatigue (and maybe a bit of overindulgence). Recently we had a much shorter telethon (6 hours) for Lord British’s birthday, discovering that we spent more time answering questions and remained much more focused and alert. Your response was also quite positive in both pledges and feedback after the telethon!

So, starting with Release 44, we are going to experiment with extended Postmortems that are also Mini-Telethons. This will increase the frequency of our telethons to monthly but also keep them short (4 hours). We are confident that this will both allow us to focus more time on development while at the same time provide a higher frequency of direct interaction with you, our community.

Since this is a shorter telethon we want to make sure as many people can participate in the stretch goals. We are going to extend the amount of time that your purchases can be eligible for the stretch goals to be 12 hours from 12:00 PM CDT to Midnight. NOTE: We will still stop tracking towards stretch goals at the end of the telethon at 7:00 PM CDT, but everyone will have another 5 hours to spend $5 to get the stretch goals.

We hope you find this change an improvement! Now, onward to this telethon’s details!

TELETHON SCHEDULE (Central Time Zone)

Telethons are livestreamed on Twitch and include answers to your gameplay questions, world building tours, prize giveaways, sales on items, and more! See what we have planned below beginning at 3pm CT on August 7: Read more…


Update of the Avatar #239 – 2017.04.08: Etceter and South Paladis Scenes, Norgard Garments, Travian Partnership, Portalarium is Hiring, R44 Telethon, Dragon Con & PAX, Trailer Contest, and More!

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

The Latest Game Progress

News Announcements

Community Updates

Etceter Polish (cont.)

Etceter was cloned from Kingsport originally and while we made significant changes to the scene to make it unique we still felt it needed more polish. It also needed more obvious visual references to the historical locations mentioned in The Sword of Midras (the prequel novel written by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott). Additionally after building Xenos we established a characteristic Greco-Roman ruins look for that region of the world and we wanted to propagate that look to nearby towns. For instance Aerie now has a “Little Xenos” quarter.

Since Etceter is the main port that takes you to Xenos it only made sense that it should have some strong influences from that style.

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

Having finished my part of the polish pass for Etceter, I wanted to share some of the final results for the areas I haven’t had the chance to showcase to you fine folks yet…

Read more…


Community Livestream – Etceter Revisited

Scott “Scottie” Jones, Senior Environmental Artist, is coming back on the livestream this Friday to show you more of his latest design work! We will be kicking off the stream with Scottie driving the master build machine around the nearly complete polish work of Etceter scene.

SPOILERS: Though little has changed near the common entrance into the scene, passing through the town will eventually lead to the primary crossroads, where the port-side commerce and housing district (seen on the right) gives way to the richer estates that once belonged to the wealthiest privateers (seen up the rise of the hill to the left) who made their fortunes when the Etceter Crag Mines were at the height of production! From here we can get a better view of some of the newest points of interest I’ve added. – Scottie

For more about Etceter, check out Scottie’s recent Dev+ blog update in the forums. Not a Dev+ member? You can either get access through Bundles in the store, or check out excerpts of his blog on any of the Weekly Updates.

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask questions about this scene:

P.S. – We are experimenting with the Facebook Event feature. Join the invite and see others that will be playing the game tomorrow!


Travian Games and Portalarium Partner for Shroud of the Avatar as it Reaches Story Complete Milestone

AUSTIN, Texas, July 31, 2017 — Portalarium®, an Austin, Texas based game developer, and Travian Games, a Munich, Germany based publisher and developer, are pleased to announce today a formal partnership to bring Shroud of the Avatar™, the much-anticipated fantasy role-playing game from legendary game designer Richard “Lord British” Garriott to Europe, South America, Central America, the Middle East and North Africa. Travian Games will be coming on board as a partner immediately as Shroud is moving closer to the game’s commercial launch later this year.

“We were looking for the best upcoming MMORPGs in our industry as well as a strong cultural fit, so we are truly excited about the opportunity to work with Richard and the Shroud of the Avatar team on bringing another great game to our community,” notes Lars Janssen, CEO of Travian Games. “Portalarium’s vision is very similar to ours and we believe this is the start of a long-term relationship between our two teams.”

“Europe has always been a strong market for the Ultima games so we wanted to be sure we found the very best partner who could who truly understands what we wanted to accomplish with Shroud,” explains Richard Garriott.

“Travian Games is that partner because they really understand community and development which has allowed them to build a huge base of millions of players.”

To date, backers of Shroud have logged more than three-million hours of game testing, and the latest update, Release 44, now permits backers to complete the entire Episode 1 story, from beginning to end.

Read more…


Update of the Avatar #238 – 2017.28.07: Play R44 Now, Dragon Polish, Grannus Colossus Update, Dev+ Asset Packs, R44 Mini-Telethon, Dragon Con & PAX, Trailer Contest, Community Events, and More!

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

The Latest Game Progress

News Announcements

Community Updates

Play Release 44 Now!

Release 44 successfully launched yesterday, July 27, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Read more…