Updates

Update of the Avatar #216 – 2017.02.24: Play R39 Now, New Scenes, Weapon Polish, Weekend Homes Flash Sale, Lot Raffle Winners, Telethon, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Play Release 39 Now!

Release 39 successfully launched yesterday, February 23, 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…


FIXED: WARNING: Do not attempt to use Eternal Patterns!

There is a bug that causes you to lose your Eternal Pattern when attempting to Reshape. Until you hear from us that this issue is resolved DO NOT use Eternal Patterns!

If you have lost an Eternal Pattern due to this bug please submit a support ticket to support@portalarium.com and we will replace it as soon as we can.

UPDATE: 8:20 PM 2/23/17 This is now fixed


Release 38 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

The latest Lot Deed Raffle was drawn with 50 lot deeds awarded to the following lucky winners. There were two raffles, one for each lot type:

  • Place Anywhere Deeds: 10 Total
    • Row: 5
    • Village: 3
    • Town: 1
    • City: 1
  • Player Owned Town Deeds: 40 Total
    • Row: 20
    • Village: 12
    • Town: 6
    • City: 2

Raffle tickets grant the holder a chance to win deeds of any size (Row, Village, Town, or City). Raffles will be held monthly (total deed 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.

This is another raffle where we limited winners to one deed per raffle type. Visit the forums to read more about this recent change.

Below is a complete list of the winners for this release’s 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:

Read more…


Release 39 Instructions

Starr_avatar

[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 39 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, February 23, at 10:30 AM US Central Standard Time (15:30 UTC).

Despite February being a short month and therefore Release 39 being a short release, we have a ton of new content in this release; including more story, new scenes, and major new systems such as Patterns, Town Blessings, and Magic Movers! Read more…


Update of the Avatar #215 – 2017.02.17: Clockwork Attack!, Town Blessings, Weekend Flash Sale, Rhun Ruins and K’rawl, Crafter’s Competition, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Clockwork Attack!

The City Kobolds defend their territories fiercely, and part of their defenses are an army of Clockwork beasts. Players have already seen some of these in previous releases including the Shock Monkey and Clockwork Dragon. In R39, the Clockwork menagerie expands to include Attack and size variants of some of our existing Clockwork beasts. The Clockwork Attack Dogs and Cats (who are mountain lion sized) are used by Kobold guard patrols to knockdown and tear up trespassers. The Clockwork Attack Ravens have confusion fields that make fighting them especially challenging. We will also introduce giant versions of the Shock Monkey that have stomp and throw attacks as well as a scaled down version of the Clockwork Dragon that works for interior spaces. Finally, there will be giant versions of the Oracle Flyers and Oracle Crawlers that shock and stun players who try to fight them.

In celebration of these new nasty clockwork beasts, all clockwork pets are on sale this weekend for 20% (see below for details).

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Kevin “UglyFist” Wells]

Hey everybody!

So, we’ve made some baddies out of our clockwork pets. These are definitely not pets. We’ve made them bigger, badder, and way deadly. These clockwork creatures are designed to take as much blood from you as they can with their razor sharp claws, teeth, spikes, and a bad attitude. The idea was to make them dark and stealthy. The models may be updated a bit here and there before I call them finished – but as they are, they are already bad news.

Check these guys out… Read more…


Spring 2017 Crafter’s Competition – Gear Design Contest

Fire up those kilns and ready your hammers! The Spring 2017 Crafter’s Competition has begun! This first event will be a Gear Design Contest with other events, possibly quarterly, kicking off throughout the year.

In the last contest segment we had you capture a fight with a boss monster in the game. To survive such an intensive fight, a great deal of armor and powerful weaponry must be wielded! In this follow-up contest, we want you to design the most powerful weapons and armor you can muster.

As we receive submissions, they will be announced on Twitter and Facebook with eventually a gallery of all submissions on Facebook. If we get enough of them, we may make this a regular quarterly crafting event!

Read more…


Introducing Town Blessings

Greetings Avatars,

In Release 39 the first iteration of Town Blessings will be going live. Owners of Player Towns will have the ability to place 11 different Devotionals to the 8 Virtues and 3 Principles in their towns.

Each Devotional offers a different blessing and the power of the blessing is based on how many people live in the town. To receive a blessing you merely need to stand near a Devotional that has been placed in a POT (or NPC town). Players can only have one blessing active at any time so visiting a Devotional while another blessing is active will overwrite the current blessing. These Devotionals also attract the attention of the Cabalists and there is a chance that your town will come under siege if you have them placed (this will come online in R40).

Here is a list of the base level Devotionals that are included with each POT and the associated blessings (each one listed is a placeable decoration, see pictures):

  • Truth: Intelligence Buff
  • Love: Dexterity Buff
  • Courage: Strength Buff
  • Humility: Magic Resistance Buff and Fishing Bait Recovery Buff
  • Honesty: Focus Buff and Alchemy Buff
  • Justice: Fizzle Reduction and Cooking Buff
  • Honor: Focus Regeneration Buff and Agriculture Buff
  • Spirituality: Adventuring Level Buff and Fishing Level Buff
  • Compassion: Dodge Buff and Tailoring Buff
  • Sacrifice: Health Regeneration Buff and Carpentry Buff
  • Valor: Health Buff and Blacksmith Buff

Read more…


Community of the Avatar – Crawling To K’rul

Community of the Avatar

Join us this Friday at 4pm CT for another Community of the Avatar livestream!

Keith “Sannio” Quinn (World Builder/Level Designer on the team) will be back on the livestream, but this time with his partner-in-crime, Dan “PlagueOfLocust” Brennan! They will both be taking us on a tour of K’rul, an upcoming Blood Bay linked PvE dungeon set to go live in Release 39, as well as a secret connecting tunnel called K’rawl.

Ask your K’rul specific questions (up to 3 in one post) in the Comments section below for both Keith and Dan! During the livestream, also join us on Discord chat to win prizes and ask any other questions you have.

The fun begins live on Twitch this Friday!


The Making of Rhun Ruins with Developer Video

From last week’s Update of the Avatar #214:

The Rhun Ruins are one of the six ruined cities found in Novia that date back to the period in Novian history in which the Obsidian Order rose to power. (As described in the Sword of Midras prequel novel by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott). The exact history of some of these cities has been lost to time, but it is rumored that some of them may have been abandoned even before the rise of the Obsidians. Rhun was a city devoted to Compassion but has since been overrun with the undead. It is located in the Drachvald region in the northeast of Novia.

Rhun started as a clone of the Dysborg Ruins, but is getting completely rebuilt this release to have a unique layout and visuals. We are expressly focusing on being sure the map has interesting setups for PVP conflict, with plenty of space for hiding, escaping, ambushing, and skirmishing.

Read more…


Update of the Avatar #214 – 2017.02.10: City Kobolds, Item Reshaping, Upper Fortus, Rhun Ruins, K’rul Crawl, Kobold Flash Sale, Alienware Steam Giveaway, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

City Kobolds and Kobold Chests

In Release 39, we began work on what we are calling our City Kobolds. These are the Kobolds that live in Skrekk and other places like K’rul. They are much more advanced than anyone else in Novia and the source of almost all of the technology that you see in the game, including clockwork creatures and aether vibration amplifiers. City Kobolds use advanced armor and weaponry including chainswords, electric axes, gas guns, electric blunderbusses, grenades, etc.

In some cases, City Kobolds are friendly to players (depending on story elements) and there are rumors of City Kobold Merchants who sell rare Kobold technology to players. The other Kobolds players have interacted with until now have been what we call Village Kobolds, and will remain what players encounter in outdoor zones and small Kobold habitations. In Release 39, you will be able to find our first round of City Kobolds in K’rul. In Release 40 we will be updating Skrekk with City Kobold, including a new unique visual for King Kobarr.

Read more…