Updates

Homes of New Britannia – Decorating Contest

October 4, 2016

Get those creative house decorating ideas ready, Avatars! Show the community the curb appeal you can bring to a town as folk walk down the street, and the wonder in the eyes of those who step in to visit your cozy abode. Throw it all up on the walls for this contest and see what sticks!

As the contest progresses, each week on either Monday or Tuesday, we will announce on social media the latest submissions in a Facebook screenshot gallery. Peruse the screenshots there, or go to the forum submission thread to find coordinates to the homes so you can tour them in-game!

If you have questions about this contest, or wish to comment on a particular submission, please post in the official contest forum thread.

TAKING SCREENSHOTS

Use the following guidelines to ensure the best and most impactful screenshots:

Image count: Minimum of 3, Maximum of 8 total screenshots.
Image views: Must include a minimum of 1 outdoor screenshot, and if applicable, 2 indoor.
Resolution: Minimum of 1920×1080, and always in 16:9 aspect ratio (you can trim if necessary).
Quality: Use in-game settings to their maximum, no post-screenshot alterations allowed.
Set the stage! Other players and staged items in the shot are great resources.
Stand your ground! Must be of your own house and plot as the main focus of the scene.
Protip! Be mindful of the game time for the best lighting angles you want on the home, if any.
Remember! UI must be off (Key: F9), no post-alterations to the screenshot.

Submit all screenshots in a single post response to this forum thread. Deadline to submit is 11:59pm CDT on Sunday, November 6th.

Tickets for Release 34 Lot Deed Raffle

October 3, 2016

We are having our second Lot Deed Raffle in Release 34 and there will be another 675 Lot Deeds available. The drawings will be held on October 27, 2016 before R35 goes live and winners will be announced shortly thereafter. Deeds will be delivered in R35.

There are 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.

For those backers who do not yet own property, we are going to automatically enter you into the raffle! Anyone who has game access to Shroud of the Avatar, but does NOT yet own property at the beginning of Release 34 (September 29, 2016), will automatically be given a gift of 2 Raffle Tickets (1 for a Place Anywhere deed and 1 for a POT deed) to the R34 Raffle.

To receive your gifted raffle tickets, you need to log in to the game and obtain them from the bank.

Backers are not eligible for this gift if they have met the following criteria on September 29, 2016:

Own an Ancestor Pledge or above
Own a Viking 2-Story Row Bundle or above
Own a Kobold 2-Story Row Bundle or above
Own any quantity of Add On Store Deeds
Own any deeds won through previous drawings, contests, etc.
Winner of the R33 Lot Deed Raffle

Update of the Avatar #196 – 2016.09.30: Play R34 Now, Q4 Schedule, R33 Lot Raffle Winners, R34 Postmortem, Telethon, Inside Portalarium, and More!

September 30, 2016

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Play Release 34 Now!

Release 34 successfully launched yesterday, September 29, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Necropolis Polish
Estgard Polish
Bone Armor
Cooking and Food Expansions
Halloween Content
Daily Oracle Confessions
R33 Lot Deed Raffle Winners
R34 Free Lot Deed Raffle Tickets for Non Property Owners
Over 45 new Crafting Recipes
New Combat Skills and Spells
New Musical Instruments
New Emotes

…and much more

Release 33 Lot Deed Raffle Winners

September 30, 2016

Yesterday we had the drawing for our very first Lot Deed Raffle and we 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

Below is a complete list of the winners for the Release 33 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.

Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 34 Postmortem

September 29, 2016

Join us Tuesday, October 11th at 3:00 PM Central (20:00 UTC) for our monthly Hangout of the Avatar! The team will be chatting about Release 34 and looking ahead to Release 35.

As always, we will be giving out rare Lord British artifacts of immense power and glory, and answering your latest questions. For a chance to win an artifact, or to speak your voice on the latest game changes, be in Discord chat during the livestream. There will be multiple chances to win throughout the broadcast!

UPDATE! Livestream has concluded. You can now watch the archived recording on YouTube here:

Tweet with us @ShroudofAvatar to keep updated on the latest SotA livestreams and game news!

Release 34 Instructions

September 28, 2016

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings 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 34 access for all backers begins this Thursday, September 29, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Combat and Economic Polish and Balance:

Release 34 is our first chance since persistence to really analyze our current set of data and begin to execute major steps towards balancing and polishing Combat and the Economy.

As described in my forum post, we are making several changes to provide more gold to casual players. Those changes include Daily Oracle Confessions (500 gold), increased experience and gold rewards for Path of Love Quests, Outlander Tracking Program (100 gold per town), Mail Quests expansion, and First Bind Point reward.

Combat also received a lot of attention, with over 20 balance changes related to skills, taming, health / focus regen rates, and critical hits. We also added several new skills including new healing skills outside of Life Magic and new reactive skills. Read more…

Q4 2016 Schedule Update

September 28, 2016

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, our goal is to once-per-quarter post an updated schedule for our monthly releases. Even though these goals will likely change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to provide you an updated roadmap periodically.

Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback and use it to iterate improvements. This continues to benefit the game, sometimes with sweeping changes like the switch over to use-based advancement. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables in order to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

For the fourth quarter of 2016, we will continue to polish the Path of Love while moving on to the Path of Courage. We will continue to expand Crafting with focus on Cooking, Food, Agriculture, Alcohol, and Fishing in particular. Combat will continue to be balanced and will expand to include cover as well as a refactor of Damage Types and Resistances. Town Sieges and Roving Encounters will also come online to greatly expand our feature set.

As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers. Read more…

Save Your Offline Mode Progress!

September 27, 2016

For all those who play in offline mode, make sure that you manually save your game progress before the upcoming Release 34 goes live! If you do not save it manually, you will lose all progress, even with automatic saving enabled.

If progress is still lost after R34 goes live, you can revert your game to the previous build and recover the save. Then manually save from that point forward before patching again.

Save your offline progress now! R34 goes live on this Thursday, September 29th.

One Day Left to Claim Tickets for Release 33 Lot Deeds Raffle!

September 27, 2016

Over the next few months we will begin to distribute in-game Lot Deeds via raffles. These raffles will occur monthly. For the first month’s raffle, Release 33, we will be handing out 75 Place Anywhere Deeds and 600 Player Owned Town Deeds. Throughout each month, raffle tickets can be purchased from Home Decoration merchants in NPC and Player Owned towns. Raffle tickets are only good for one release.

R33 Lot Deed Raffle Winners: The raffle ticket drawing will be held right before R34 goes live, and we will announce the winners on Friday (September 30th) in Update 196 for the 675 Lot Deeds. The winners will receive their deeds shortly afterward.

As a reminder here is the breakdown of the lot numbers:

Place Anywhere Deeds (75):

Row: 40
Village: 20
Town: 10
City: 5

Player Owned Town Deeds (600):

Row: 320
Village: 160
Town: 80
City: 40

For the latest raffle numbers, click here.

Explore Housing in Hometown

September 26, 2016

In August of 2015, during Release 20, we responded to many requests from community members to be able to view a home in-game before they purchase it (either from the Add-On Store, Stretch Goal Store, or through a pledge upgrade) by building Hometown for the first time. Using the Island template, Starr “Darkstarr” Long built the town of Hometown on an island just off the southeast corner of Novia, near the starting town of Soltown.

Over many releases, Hometown morphed several times; changing biomes and becoming a community effort. Starting shortly after persistence in Release 32, we decided to take this back over as a developer effort versus a volunteer community effort. This was not an easy decision, but there was some negative perception around having players have access to the houses and decorations for “free”. So, rather than create unnecessary drama, we have just decided to take this back on as a dev effort.

Darkstarr has been feverishly placing the first sets of lots and houses on Live, and various team members will be claiming and decorating them as their own over the next several releases. Hometown is located off the southeastern coast of Novia, near Soltown (see map).

The dock area where you arrive includes links to all the other templates currently available so you can view those to see how they are all laid out. There is a large perimeter wall built with the White Stone Castle Walls that encircles the main flat area on the main island. All the houses in that enclosed area are available in the Add-On Store (ala carte or in in Bundles) or in-game (crafted or bought from NPC merchants). Everything outside of that perimeter wall is expired content.

The center of town near the main entrance is where you can find all of the various row houses. Directly behind them is Viking Avenue, which features all the Viking Bundle Homes. To the right is Kobold Quarter, which features the Kobold Bundle homes. And beyond that is what will become the Obsidian Section; featuring the Obsidian Bundle homes. To the left is the Elven area. The rest of the interior area is devoted to the various other home types and is roughly grouped by style (Adobe, Rustic, Shingle Roof, etc.).

Join us in Hometown to select your next house design to call home!