Updates

Make A Difference: World Toilet Day & Charitable Giving Report

November 1, 2016

As part of Portalarium’s founding purpose to promote good will and make a positive difference in the world, we have partnered with members of our community to contribute directly to charities as well as support charitable giving. It started a year and a half ago, when Wrath Phoenix approached the SotA team on behalf of RizeUp Gaming to participate in their inaugural Water.org charity drive and telethon. This event served to remind us of our founding purpose and inspire us to create our first Make A Difference charity items.

Throughout the past eighteen months, we have continued to participate in other community-driven charity events, either through promotion or with Make A Difference charity items. We wish we could do more, as this speaks to the core of our principles and values. As time and funding permit, we intend to expand our community-based charity participation over the months and years ahead.

And to that end, our next effort, in collaboration with Water.org, is centered on World Toilet Day. The UN has declared November 19th as World Toilet Day, with the mission statement of: “The aim of World Toilet Day is to raise awareness about the people in the world who don’t have access to a toilet, despite the fact that it is a human right to have clean water and sanitation.“

Water.org is a committed partner of World Toilet Day, as evident by their statement: “It’s time everyone everywhere has access to a toilet. Today 2.4 billion people don’t have one so they spend hours of their day searching for a safe place to go. Water.org gives people the tools they need to fund their own sanitation solutions because we believe it’s time for toilets for all.”

Water.org is celebrating #toilets4all the week of November 14th-19th. To help support the cause, we have created the Make A Difference Ornate Outhouse charity item! Not only is it a throne fit for royalty, but by purchasing this item, you are helping to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.

Make a Difference: Charitable Giving Report

Beginning with that inaugural Water.org charity drive in collaboration with Rize Up Gaming in May 2015, here is the latest information on how the combined charitable efforts of Portalarium and the Shroud of the Avatar community have performed over the past eighteen months.

Make A Difference Store

Portalarium created digital, in-game charity items for Shroud of the Avatar as a channel through which our community of backers can contribute to causes they support. For each of these Make a Difference charity items purchased, Portalarium will donate up to 50% of its share of the purchase price to the designated charity (see each item for percent contribution). By purchasing these items you get to have fun with them in Shroud of the Avatar, as well as make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves. To date, backers have enabled us to contribute an amazing $27,335 to the combined charities of Water.org, Autism Awareness (NAA & NAS), Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and various Blood Charities (see details below).

Thank you, Avatars, for being so virtuous!

Water.org

To date, we have donated $12,389 to Water.org, from contributions by our generous backers through purchases of the Wishing Well, Water Cloak, and /rain emote. Water.org is a nonprofit organization that has transformed hundreds of communities in Africa, South Asia, and Central America by providing access to safe water and sanitation. You can learn more about the projects your donation helps support here.

Breast Cancer Research Foundation

Starting with an amazingly generous donation by Shooter Jennings of his recently released album, Countach (and related items), we have managed to donate an incredible $5,807 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) through community purchases of the Countach Wax Cylinders, Countach Pink Dye, Countach Album Cover, Countach Phonograph, and most recently the Juggle Pink Lights emote for Breast Cancer awareness month. BCRF is an organization that works to achieve prevention, and a cure for breast cancer in our lifetime, by providing critical funding for innovative clinical and translational research at leading medical centers worldwide, and increasing public awareness about good breast health.

Autism Awareness

In another collaborative effort involving RizeUp Gaming and Game4Autism, our generous community has raised $4,846 through purchases of the Puzzle Pattern Cloak, Puzzle Tree Cloak, and Puzzle Tree Make A Difference charity items. We split these donations equally between the following two organizations:

The National Autism Association, headquarted in Portsmouth, RI, whose mission statement is “…to respond to the most urgent needs of the autism community, providing real help and hope so that all affected can reach their full potential.” The National Autism Association is a parent-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Founded in 2003, NAA is a parent-run advocacy organization and the leading voice on urgent issues related to severe autism, regressive autism, autism safety, autism abuse, and crisis prevention.

The National Autistic Society is the leading UK charity for people on the autism spectrum (including Asperger syndrome) and their families. They provide information, support and pioneering services, and campaign for a better world for people with autism.

Blood Charities

Through the sales of the Lord British and Darkstarr Blood Reliquary Bundles we have donated $4,293 to a host of blood related charities, including:

Shriners Hospitals for Children – Northern California
Children’s Cancer & Blood Foundation
Marie Curie – Terminal Illness Support
The Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas
Doctors Without Borders

Charitable Support

In addition to our Make a Difference store, we periodically support other fundraising efforts, like Movember, Extra Life, and community-driven events.

Movember: The Movember Foundation’s mission: “The state of men’s health is in crisis. Men experience worse longer-term health than women and die on average six years earlier. Prostate cancer rates will double in the next 15 years. Testicular cancer rates have already doubled in the last 50. Three quarters of suicides are men. Poor mental health leads to half a million men taking their own life every year. That’s one every minute.Our fathers, partners, brothers and friends are facing this health crisis and it’s not being talked about. We can’t afford to stay silent.” Back in 2013 we created a Portalarium Movember team called Shroud of the Moustache and raised $1,680. We are doing it again with a new team called Moustache of the Avatar. Several of us will be growing moustaches (or hiking if we are Mo Sistas) in order to raise awareness about men’s health issues. Starr “Darkstarr” Long even shaved off his signature soul patch!
Extra Life: Last year our incredible community organized a 24 hour streamathon with a ton of events as part of Extra Life (an event that unites thousands of players around the world in a 24 hour gaming marathon to support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals). Community members including Browncoat Jayson, Amber Raine, the RizeUp Gaming crew, Lazarus Long, and Kazyn Phoenixfire all streamed the entire 24 hours and raised $832. Unfortunately due to the proximity of SotA Con and Release 35 we were unable to organize an event this year but we will be back for 2017!
RizeUp Gaming: Rize Up Gaming (www.twitch.tv/rizeupgaming) was founded in September 2012 with the intentions of curbing bullying, sexism, gender discrimination, and hate speech on all gaming platforms. Their goal is to promote fun gaming without negativity. Rize Up Gaming uses a staff of streamers to keep their channel running and to fundraise for many different charities throughout the year. As mentioned above, we collaborated with RizeUp Gaming for our first Make A Difference event, their inaugural Water.org Charity Drive. In addition to the Water.org and Autism Awareness charity drives, RizeUp Gaming has also collaborated with the Shroud of the Avatar community on the following charity drives (to name just a few):

Update of the Avatar #200 – 2016.10.28: Play R35 Now!, R34 Raffle Winners, Elad’s Lighthouse & Graff Island, Game Balances, Halloween Sale, and More!

October 28, 2016

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Play Release 35 Now!

Release 35 successfully launched yesterday, October 27, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Release 34 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

October 27, 2016

Earlier today we had the drawing for our second Lot Deed Raffle and awarded 675 lot deeds to lucky winners. There were two raffles, one for each lot type:

Place Anywhere Deeds: 75 Total
- Row: 40
- Village: 20
- Town: 10
- City: 5
Player Owned Town Deeds: 600 Total
- Row: 320
- Village: 160
- Town: 80
- City: 40

Raffle tickets grant the holder a chance to win deeds of any size (Row, Village, Town, or City). Raffles will be held monthly and we will have multiple winners for each lot size (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.

Below is a complete list of the winners for the Release 34 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:

Release 35 Instructions

October 26, 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 35 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, October 27, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Path of Love Polish

With Release 35, we have continued polishing the Path of Love storyline. Ardoris continues to be our main focus with lots of fixes, polish, and additions to the city and the quests leading from it. In particular, the Tower of Shuttered Eye is no longer a side quest, and has been fully incorporated into the main Path of Love storyline. It has also been better balanced to match the players expected levels at that point in the story. While we did make progress on the region specific clothing for Perennial Coast, even getting new NPC faces for several characters including Min Liang Tan, the region clothing will not appear in game until Release 36.

Roving Encounters

When we first unveiled Shroud of the Avatar in our Kickstarter, we showed Roving Encounters on the Overworld with flying Dragons and rolling gypsy wagons. We have finally returned to that original vision! No longer are encounters on the Overworld map hidden as random surprises over which you have no control. Now, the encounters are actual creatures that move about, and that you can choose to either engage or avoid.

Food and Water

With Release 34, we did a major overhaul to the cooking system, and we are continuing that with more recipes with higher level effects. We have also added the ability to gather water, and planters now indicate whether the plants have been watered or not. Finally, we have added more plants to agriculture which, when combined with water gathering and more gathered ingredients, makes cooking a much more self-sufficient profession than the previous implementation in which it relied much more on purchased ingredients. Read more…

Community Spotlight: Jade Valley – Player Owned Town

October 26, 2016

This week’s community spotlight features the Player Owned Town, Jade Valley! The upcoming Release 35 dance party (which starts this Friday at 2pm CDT) will also be hosted in Jade Valley. We will be livestreaming the last half hour or so of the dance party, leading into a new livestream event that officially begins at 4pm.

As told from a visit to the town by your community wood elf druid, Berek, Jade Valley is a unique town with many opportunities for new and experienced players to find a reason to visit. Close to Port Phoenix and several other player owned towns on the east side of the isle of Elysium, I saw a great many things across Jade Valley that drove me to write this spotlight.

Here is what I witnessed:

Jade Valley is very easy to find with many distractions to appease your adventurous spirit along the way. As I neared the town, nestled along the Twins Foothills in the southwest of Novia, the howl of the wind from the mountains threatened to rip off my cloak. Fortunately, as I approached the town’s entrance, the valley tamed the winds down to a nice breeze.

Mal Hari the town Govenor greeted me upon entering. He escorted me to the outdoor bar area, which had an amazing view of the coast. A group of fishing vessels were anchored there, bobbing up and down as the occasional wind gust came along.

As we walked, I asked Governor Mal Hari…

Improving Roving Encounters

October 24, 2016

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Keith “Sannio” Quinn]

Shroud of the Avatar already has random encounters–you’ll be walking across the Novia or Hidden Vale overworld maps and, without warning, you’ll be teleported into a small encounter scene. We like the idea of running into unexpected threats on the overworld, but the “without warning” part is less than ideal… So, as of Release 35, we’re changing how random encounters are triggered.

You won’t be blindly caught by a Random Encounter anymore. We’re replacing that part of the encounter system with new overworld enemies who will trigger encounters when you get too close. These overworld enemies will be similar to the ones you’ve battled countless times in adventure scenes, except they can’t be engaged in combat. Instead, if you approach too close to the new overworld enemies and they see you, they’ll run at you. If they get next to you, you’ll be pulled into the encounter associated with them. For example, bandits will pull you into bandit encounters while wolves pull you into a scene full of wolves. Once you see the enemy, you can walk around it to avoid the encounter or run toward it to force the encounter. If the enemy has already spotted you and you’re quick, you can try to run away before the enemy catches up and keep the encounter from ever triggering.

Both overworld maps have encounters scattered about. They might be wandering in the woods, meandering along a shoreline, or patrolling along a road. Initially, we’ll be adding in common encounters like wolves, bandits, and undead. Over time, dragon encounters will return and we’ll include other rare situations like merchants.

Keith Quinn
Level Designer

Update of the Avatar #199 – 2016.10.21: Roving Encounters, Elad’s Lighthouse, Harvest, & Graff Island, Critical Hit Balancing, Gold Crown Merchants, and More!

October 21, 2016

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Roving Encounters

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Keith “Sannio” Quinn]

Gold Crown Merchants Update

October 21, 2016

For Release 35, we are expanding the number of Gold Crown merchants in the game and also increasing the goods they sell to include many more items from the Add-On Store. We are also going to add one or two items each future release that can only be purchased in game with Crowns. For R35, the Elven Globe Home and Medium Elven Tent will be those items only purchasable for Gold Crown Exclusives that are being added.

Elven Crown Home Merchant: This merchant will be located in the town of Vertas and will sell all the Elven homes and all the Add-On Store items that appear in the Elven Bundles (except Bundle exclusives like the Elven Wardrobes and the pets) . as well as a few exclusive items including the Elven Globe Home and the Medium Elven Tent.
Viking Crown Home Merchant: This merchant will be located in the town of Harvest and will sell all the Viking homes and all the Add-On Store items that appear in the Viking Bundles (except Bundle exclusives like the Viking Chests and the pets) .
Obsidian Alchemists: We will also be adding Fireworks (4 different assortments) and various dyes (including all the new magical dyes) to the Obsidian Alchemists to increase their inventory beyond the Obsidian Potions.

We are also creating a new web page that will list all the things that you can spend Gold Crowns on in the game, as well as locations of merchants. Stay tuned for that page to be revealed!

The Making of Harvest and Graff Island (Unclone)

October 20, 2016

The Making of Harvest

Harvest was a cloned scene using one of our PRT / POT templates based off of the Forest 01 base template (aka PaxLair). It is located in the Verdantis region in the Northwest region of Novia. It is getting rebuilt in Release 35 to show the plot specific elements of the Norgard occupation and also getting a heavily agrarian theme.

Note that when we un-clone these scenes we do NOT change lot placements. We only make cosmetic changes of building styles, terrain, and foliage.

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

Hey guys, SorcerousSteve here to give you an update on Harvest!

Harvest is located across the channel from Estgard. It is an area primarily focused on agriculture nestled along a red/yellow countryside that has recently come under occupation from Norgard forces. As an occupied town it has taken on some of the symbolism behind the color yellow and Norse influence of its Norgard conquerors.

Inspiration for Harvest was obtained from the Autumn Season and Upstate New York (Letchworth).

Community Spotlight: Serenite, an Oasis in the Desert – Player Owned Town

October 19, 2016

The third Player Owned Town spotlight kicks off with Serenite! We will be touring many communities and talking with their guilds and other groups in this series, all of which are open to be spotlighted on coming tours brought to you by Berek, your community wood elf druid.

Close to Desolis, I saw a great many things in Serenite that drove me to write this spotlight. Here is what I witnessed:

As I neared this oasis in the desert, along the coast of Grunvald, the searing heat of the desert made my plate mail feel like a pressure cooker. Serenite is very easy to find. It is the first community on the road when crossing the east reach gap just up the coast from Soltown. If you are standing in Brittany, just head toward the desert and look for the coast.

William the Governor greeted me upon entering Serenite. He escorted me to his modest but still impressive castle for a drink, as the desert heat had parched my thirst. Castle Serenite is nestled atop a hill overlooking the town.

The temperature in the region was warm but humid, a true oasis in the desert: