From last week’s Update of the Avatar #211:

North Drachvald Spur is located in the Sirens mountains in the Drachvald region in the northeastern section of Novia. It started as a clone of the Whiteguard Foothills and is getting rebuilt to go live as a new scene in Release 39.

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

Hey folks, today I will be sharing some screenshots from the uncloning of North Drachvald Spur. The area is home to a group of bandits who have been ambushing supply convoys using rock slides. The area will also feature the remnants of an abandoned mine, and a mysterious watchtower.

The terrain has also been reshaped to feature a ridge line of mountains to the east, which are present in the overworld map. The biome has been swapped for one inspired by the mountains of the pacific northwest United States.

Inspiration (Mt Rainier Washington)

The New Road

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From last week’s Update of the Avatar #211:

Right before we went persistent, we uncloned Xenos and made some modifications to it for specific plot points. However, we were not satisfied with the level of polish, so we are revisiting this scene and doing a polish pass this release. We hope to have this pass complete by Release 38. Xenos is on the island of Elysium, southwest of Novia, and is a critical juncture on the Path of Truth. This is the third update we have posted so far on this map.

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

And here we are folks,…the final post for Xenos before it goes live in the next build! We’re working feverishly on this (as you can tell by the hour of this post), and hope that you’ll enjoy what we have to offer…

Everything I had yearned to include in the scene has now been placed somewhere on the map, and at this point all that is left for me to do is proliferate them to all the various places they may go, and finish some final touch-up details on the landscape painting and foliage placement as decoration across the map… You’ll see examples of pretty much everything in the images of this last and largest post… We’ll begin and end near the city center, where you can see the festive area of the Forum. Beyond it you can catch a peek at the newest addition to replace a building that I had been struggling to figure out how to handle… Instead I used a suggestion from the Mad Hatter pertaining to a wonderful asset available on the Unity Store, which ended up perfectly fitting the theme of the scene, and tied in wonderfully to elements of the fiction pertaining to the mysterious Titan Boreus.We’ll see that building up close at the end of the post, but for now, let’s make use of the handy gondolas that I’ve placed at various locations throughout the scene… Initially, each will have two boats; one which will allow you to visit another gondola dock around the bay, and the second which will return to the one you just came from. Eventually, however, our plan is to have a single boat there which will take you to any of the locations on that scene map by merely choosing one from an entire list! Grand convenience!

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Greetings Avatars,

For Release 38, the Offline Mode save game format is changing to support new and upcoming gameplay features.

Here’s what you need to do in order to preserve your Offline Mode save games and characters:

• Patch your game client to Release 38.
• Load each saved game and then re-save. This will convert your save file into the latest format.
• If you do not convert your saved games during Release 38, your saved games (from releases prior to R38) may not load.

If you do not convert your saved games during Release 38, your saved games (from releases prior to R38) may not load in releases after Release 38. In other words we cannot guarantee the ability to load pre-R38 saves after R38.

Our sincere apologies if this change causes any disruption in your gameplay. We always make every attempt to avoid having to make these kinds of requirements of our players when we make changes like this. After very careful consideration, we’ve deemed this change, and the accompanying requirement, as necessary. Please note that this change will not affect the online game or characters in any way.

As a reminder, Release 38 starts on January 26 and runs through February 22.

Please let us know if you have any questions on this update!

Thanks,
Berek

From last week’s Update of the Avatar #210:

Brookside is located in the Drachvald region in the northwest of Novia directly south of Spite. It is the hometown of Samael and was overrun by the Undead armies of Anapa not long ago. Players will encounter this town when following their quests along the Path of Love.

Brookside started as a cloned scene using one of our PRT / POT templates based off of the Forest 02 POT template (a forested variation of the Grasslands POT template). In Release 38, it is being rebuilt with new flora, new atmospheric settings like permanent fog, a graveyard, and other unique features. 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.

This week instead of screenshots Esteben “SorcerousSteve” Zaldivar created a short video that shows a little bit of what it takes to build a map like Brookside. In the video, SorcerousSteve is working on Brookside Manor. He writes:

“The town of Brookside has a history of being overrun by the undead, it is a dark foggy town nested in pine forest filled with wary town folks and decrepit buildings. This abandoned manor, once a luxurious estate, now lies in ruins just north of Brookside, a remnant of the undead overrun. The locals are careful not to get too close…”