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

Game Development

• The Making of East Longfall Wetland
• The Making of Elysium Mines (cont.)
• Soltown Inn Remodel

News Announcements

• Make a Difference: 2017 Charitable Giving Report
• Free Trial (aka Visitor System) Updates
• R49 on QA Server
• BrightLocker’s Crowd Equity Campaign Shroud of the Avatar Perks
• Community Wellness with the Meretz Fitness App
• Weekend Flash Sale: Cozy Up by the Fire
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• R49 Dance Party: Special Guest DJ Darkstarr
• Spotlight: Whyte Roc – Player Owned Town
• AERIE Fund Dev Crafting Competition & Charity Auction
• Contest: The Avatar’s Guide to Knowledge and Virtue: 1st Weekly Winners!
• Party: Portalarium Studio Grand Holiday Party – Jan. 12
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: The Saga of Lucimia MMORPG

The Making of East Longfall Wetland

We have been focusing many of our scene rebuilds (aka “un-clones”) on the lower tier scenes near the cities along the paths of Truth and Courage. These are all Tier 1 – 3 scenes that players encounter near the beginnings of their play experience. In addition to being rebuilt, we are also adding side quests to them.

In Release 49 one of these scenes is East Longfall Wetland (the companion scene to South Longfall Wetland). It is a swampy Tier 1 area directly east of Aerie in the Longfall region.

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

A few more scenes in East Longfall Wetland: 

Read more…

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

Game Development

• The Making of Elysium Mines
• Release 47 Telethon Items

News Announcements

• Release 48 Postmortem Telethon Results
• Moustache of the Avatar Movember Results
• BrightLocker’s Crowd Equity Campaign Shroud of the Avatar Perks
• Community Wellness with the Meretz Fitness App
• New Free Trial Continues! Runs thru Dec. 13
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• AERIE Fund Dev Crafting Competition & Charity Auction
• Contest: The Avatar’s Guide to Knowledge and Virtue
• Party: Portalarium Studio Grand Holiday Party – Jan. 12
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Denis Loubet Patreon

The Making of Elysium Mines

While digging some of the deeper tunnels for the Elysium Mines the Satyr miners discovered an elaborate labyrinth with two giant statues looming over the entire complex. Legend has it that the statues are of two brothers and one of the brothers killed the other and that deadly feud is the source of the undead haunting the maze.

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

Hey folks, I have a few screenshot of our uncloning of Elysium Mines. In our new version, Satyrs are looting and mining from and ancient labyrinthine city. The mines are also home to a horde of spirits and undead who serve the ghost of one of the “Twins” who’s spirit was trapped by his bother in the labyrinth. The visual inspiration for this mine comes from the Minoan City of Knossos in Crete, where the original Labyrinth from Greek mythology was said to have been. The glowing river is partially inspired by the river Styx, and is closely associated with the spirits wandering the labyrinth.

Due to feedback we received from our uncloning of other mines, I’ve decided to split this mine into two areas that will serve different player interest. The lower area of the mines will be resource rich, and comparable to the original mines. The upper areas will have more enemies, puzzles and traps, for players who want more of an adventuring experience. This scene is still a work in progress.

Read more…

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

Game Development

• Play Release 48 Now!
• Winter 2017 and R47 Telethon Items

News Announcements

• Release 48 Postmortem Telethon – Dec.1
• Release 48 Major Artifact Changes Clarifications
• Survey: Your Shroud of the Avatar Gameplay Experience
• BrightLocker’s Crowd Equity Campaign Shroud of the Avatar Perks
• Community Wellness with the Meretz Fitness App
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus Continues
• Russian Version Launch Sale Week 3: Home and Outdoor Decorations
• Livestream: Scottie’s Yuletide Gifts
• R47 Lot Deed Raffle Winners
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• Contest: The Avatar’s Guide to Knowledge and Virtue
• Party: Portalarium Studio Grand Holiday Party – Jan. 12
• Event: R48 Welcome Quest in Veritas Sanctuary
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Underworld Ascendant

Play Release 48 Now!

Release 48 successfully launched yesterday, November 16, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

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

Game Development

• New Low-level Mines
• Truth, Love, and Courage Armor
• Scottie’s Yuletide Objects of 2017
• Winter 2017 and R46 Telethon Items

News Announcements

• R47 Postmortem Telethon Results
• Movember: Moustache of the Avatar
• UO 20th Postmortem at GDC 2018
• Portalarium at SXSW 2018
• Free Trial Test – Nov. 1-15
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus Continues
• Russian Version Launch Sale Week 1: Wearables and Property Deeds
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• Halloween Contest Winners!
• Extra Life Charity Livestreams This Saturday, Nov. 4!
• WANTED! The Hispaniola Treasure Map Hunt
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Wasteland 3

New Low-level Mines

Until now all our mines have been Tier 5 dungeons making it impossible for low-level players to find high concentrations of ore. After many requests from the community and an intense roundtable at SotA Con Austin we have made the decision to add three Tier 2 mines to Novia. Each mine is located along one of the three paths (Truth, Love, Courage) approximately between the outskirts map and the starting town for that path. The mines are mainly sources of metal ore (iron and copper) with a very small occurrence of gold or silver (no gems).

The Making of Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine

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

Hey folks, I have some screenshots to share of the upcoming Tier 2 mine, Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine. This will be one of three low-level mines that are planned for this release.

This mine was once a primary supplier to local military units. After a collapse, it hasn’t been used in decades. Its recently been unearthed by Ebon Dawn humans.

The East Chamber Read more…

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

Game Development

• SotAMap Now Under Official Development

News Announcements

• R47 Postmortem Telethon – Nov. 3
• R46 Postmortem Missed Questions
• SotA Con Austin 2017 Recap
• Nightmares of New Britannia – Halloween Contest Extended!
• Cyber Monday Crown Bonus Continues
• Weekend Flash Sale: Trees, Bushes, Cacti
• Upcoming Events Calendar

Community Updates

• Event: Shooter Jennings Meet n’ Greet
• Extra Life Schedule and Livestreamers Needed – Nov. 4
• Mynwent Haunted House
• Resources: Players Helping Players
• Recommended Project to Support: Brightlocker CrowdEquity Campaign

SotAMap Now Under Official Development

[From a Forum Post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

Our original plan for maps in Shroud of the Avatar was individual hand drawn maps of various quality levels for each scene. These would be found, collected, quested after, etc. by the players and then could be used to navigate the world. We managed to implement a few of them but the scale of production involved in making them prevented us from staying abreast with the pace of the hundreds of scenes we were creating. They also failed to account for scenes with player housing that would dynamically change, sometimes dramatically.

Then along came the incredible tool, SotAMap, created by community member Jakub White and contributed to by other community members. Using a Google Maps type functionality, this amazing third party external application maps the entire world of Novia and allows POT owners to customize their town maps.

We liked SotAMap so much that we officially integrated it into the game in Release 40 back in March of this year. We quickly realized that this would be a fantastic solution to our problem of creating maps for every scene. After testing it out in the game for a couple of releases, we decided to approach Jakub about acquiring SotAMap so that we could make it a fully integrated and optimized feature of the game. We are very excited to announce that we have now come to a purchase agreement for SotAMap with Jakub White!

This means we can now proceed with a large list of changes that will improve the experience of using SotAMap. These will be broken up into two phases. We hope to have Phase 1 complete by the end of the year and Phase 2 by Launch.

Read more…