Avatar’s Update #318: Player Quest Livestream Today

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

News Announcements

Community Updates

Player Quest Livestream Today!

Another content packed weekly Community Livestream is this Friday February 8 at 4 PM CT on Twitch!

This week we are going to show the incredible work some of our players have done to create quests for our other players. Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski and Keith “Sannio” Quinn have started a thread in the forums where you can submit any quest or experience you have created in the game that you might want to have us show in the livestream. Be sure to include the starting point and some basic run through information.

This is the second Friday to earn the Release 62 Carnival stretch goals by making a purchase or by participating in the Rewards program!

  • ACHIEVED! $15K: Masquerade Mask
  • ACHIEVED! $30K: Carnival Colors (Purple, Green, Yellow) Cycling Dye Replenishing Box
  • $45K: Jester Mask Wand & Jester Mask Staff
  • $60K: Brewing Themed Basement Hatches
  • $75K: Formal Dress (Wedding Dress Variant)
  • $90K: Tuxedo Variant
  • $105K: Ballroom Dungeon Room
  • $125K: Jester Outfit

As usual we will be giving out prizes at 4:15 and 4:45! To be eligible all you need to do is either make any purchase in the store or log into the game and type “Let the good times roll” in the chat window (no purchase necessary).

Watch on Twitch this Friday at 4 PM CDT

Are You a Livestreamer?

Get this exclusive in-game Streamer Camera for being a veteran of our Livestreamer Program!

Lord Forged Items now Duke Dungeon Throne Room & Duke Heraldry Paver

not actual room

[Forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

In June of 2018 we posted an update concerning the Duke+ level pledge reward of a Custom Avatar Head. At that time we explained our reasons why this original reward was not going to be possible as well as the reward we were going to replace it with known as the “Lord Forged Items”.

Since that time we have received a large amount of feedback about that replacement reward which has caused us to pause on delivery of those rewards and consider other possibilities. To that end we have now decided to not deliver the Lord Forged Items because those visuals would not be unique nor would they offer anything unique for each Duke supporter.

Instead we are going to provide each eligible backer a new Duke Dungeon Throne Room. In addition Dukes will receive a unique Duke Heraldry Paver they can place on the floor of this Throne Room where they can truly customize the space with their heraldry.

Thank you again for your patience while we have worked to find a solution that is within our means. Please accept our sincerest apologies for not being able to deliver the original reward as promised.

Lord of the Isle Episode 2 Bundles

As one of the biggest and earliest supporters of Episode 2 you will be granted the largest lot deed in the land (Castle), the title Lord (or Lady) of the Isle, a tour of the Portalarium Offices, and dinner with the game leaders including Lord British himself! Only 24 of these unique bundles will be sold! 

Complete List of Rewards:

  • UPDATED: Lord of the Isle Place Anywhere Castle Lot Deed: Tax Free Forever (when placed in a POT) and Tax Free for 1 Year (when placed outside of a POT). Placeable on water as well as land!
  • Title: Lord of the Isle or Lady of the Isle
  • NEW: Unique Lord of the Isle Home (to be revealed later)
  • UPDATED: PLUS Choice of any 1 House currently available in the store
  • Castle Basement currently available in the store of your choice
  • Castle Wall Set currently available in the store of your choice (with enough for Castle Lot)
  • NEW: Unique Lord of the Isle Dungeon Room (to be revealed later)
  • 1400 Crowns
  • 999 Bank Slots
  • Pick 12 Prosperity Tools
  • 2 Unique in-game items (to be revealed later)
  • Early Access to Episode 2
  • Episode 1 Box and map signed by the team
  • 1 hour one on one with Chris for design discussion (via video-conference)
  • One real silver ring crafted personally by Lord British: Numbered 1 – 8
  • In-game version of the Lord British ring: Numbered 1 – 8 (including a place-able decoration version)
  • Tour of Portalarium Offices
  • Fine dinner and drinks with Lord British, Darkstarr, & Atos at a location TBD in Austin or NYC.

NOTE: Digital items that are currently available will begin delivery as soon as Release 62 (Jan 31). Other items will be delivered at a future date TBD.

NOTE: Travel costs NOT covered by Portalarium for Tour & Dinner.

Crown Store and Web Store Changes in Early 2019

[Forum post by Chris “Atos” Spears]

Greetings avatars! We shared a lot of information yesterday in our short live stream and it was both exciting enough and potentially confusing enough that it deserved a post in writing that people could read and absorb.

Our history is pretty well known and our “cash shop” has been with us since the start. For years it has been a burden in terms of public opinion, usability, and time consuming maintenance. When we compare ourselves to other live online role play games with a similar money model, we find that we are almost the only game in the entire crowded market that has a vast cash shop on a website and then almost nothing available in game for purchase. We also added premium currency long ago but never really made full use of it in game.

Time for that all to change! Within the next 2 releases we will move to a store model similar to 95% of the other games in the field. Our website will primarily only sell Crowns and rewards programs and possibly 1 single item for episode 2 access. There will probably be another small section that will be hidden for stuff like POTs and support.

All the items in the store will be available through the Crown Shop interface. From what we’ve been seeing, most players don’t even know this exists but if you look at the interface buttons in the upper right hand corner of the game, the second one in from the right is a Crown Shop. Click this and you can access a few dozen items from the game anywhere, without needing to talk to a merchant.
When we mentioned this during the stream I saw a few people scream, “No! The interface is slow and doesn’t show the items or have information!” They are right and that is why our biggest task with this switch is moving to a whole new interface!

We’re currently working on pulling all the information for items on the web store into the interface. Items will all include a detailed description, most will include a screenshot, and those that don’t will show the actual model for the item when selected.

Also, currently the in game crown shop is SLOW to load even with a small number of items. We are fixing this to prebake this data instead of loading it all from thousands of item definition and data files. This slowness was actually the reason we stopped adding items to the in game store for a while but a fix is almost ready to go live.

In addition to matching the features of the web store, by moving it in game we can improve it in a number of other ways as well. The web store has no good system for localization which means it is only available in English. The new crown store in game will be localizable just like any other in game text!

In game you will be able to filter and search and sort items. We will have items tagged for different categories so instead of clicking through pages and pages of goods and scrolling you can just click “Weapons” and “Elven” and it will show you just the items tagged with those! If you’re shopping for new lights for your house, just choose “decorations” and “lights”. We are also hoping to have other data in them so you can do things like show “Recently added” items or just “Sale” items.

To make sure existing players are aware of the in game crown store and go try it out, I’ll be adding a number of small “blessings” to the game. You’ll get one at random with any crown store purchase. I have about 25 different small blessings designed and it will apply one at random. These will last a day and will basically be shorter, possibly weaker versions of existing in game blessings or obsidian potions. We’ll probably keep these around until a release after the store work is finished to make sure people go and find the crown store in game since even the seasoned adventurers I talked to didn’t know it existed! I hope to have these live in a patch next week.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes our sales stay up longer than promised. Well some of that is due to us wanting to be nice to players outside the US who have time zone issues to deal with but the main reason is because currently it is complicated to turn on/off sales and only a few people can do it. The new in game system will be broken down to allow anyone on the team to turn it on or off and we’ll also be able to schedule sales to start and end.

So as for sales and pricing. This is another area where we’ve looked around and identified that we’re a bit off base on many prices. Part of this is due to us knowing we were doing big, week end sales and so we priced stuff higher than we should have. With this major transition coming up we’ll be adjusting many item prices down to somewhere in between the current price and the sale price.

Once the new store goes live we will have far fewer sales and they will be much smaller percentages off. Most items in the new store will be cheaper than the current full price store BUT when on sale, they’ll roughly the same or slightly higher than the current prices. There will be some exceptions to that rule but that is our general target. Going forward we’ll probably also do fewer or no “Everything is on sale!” type sales. This is largely done this way now because of the less than stellar system we use now to put stuff on sale.

So again, repeating again for clarity. New store prices will be adjusted. In general, new store prices will be lower than current full price store but slightly higher than current sale prices.

Another big thing that we will be fixing during this time is our actual premium currency! While the $1 = 1 Crown thing is easy to understand, it does not give us the resolution we need to price things correctly. For instance, to match the cash shop, we would have to do things in full $1/1COTO increments. The resolution also means we have to make drops of them very rare.
When this change goes live, after the maintenance down time concludes, you will log in to find that all of your crowns turned into 100 crowns. This will happen in your inventory, bank, and even on decos. The decos will look like a single crown but when picked up, they will turn into 100. For Vendors, we aren’t sure which option we’ll use but we’ll either adjust your numbers on your vendor or, more likely, we’ll cancel out all your crown sales/purchase orders. In game, you will still see crowns drop but at 100x the rate of the current ones. This also lets us do things like sell dyes individually if we choose. Previously we would bundle all the cheap items together in large packs because we couldn’t do sales smaller than $1.

We’ll also be taking advantage of the new greater crown resolution to adjust our prices. While we knew what our targets numbers were before, we couldn’t actually get there because of rounding error involved with the low crown prices.

  • Price = Count
  • $10.00 = 750
  • $20.00 = 1600
  • $35.00 = 3200
  • $60.00 = 6300
  • $100.00 = 10750

Also, going forward do not expect to see many if any crown sales. We plan on moving crowns back to being the stable bedrock of our pricing structure and keeping the sales primarily in game. If do any crown sales it will only be for major events like Lord British’s birthday or the release of some major new content and will only be a small discount.

Also, we’ll likely make some small adjustments to the rewards program to make sure it stays the best exchange rate for buying crowns. I’ve had a few people point out that due to the crown sales, currently it is promised to be the best rate but you can actually get slightly better with a large crown purchase on sale. You still miss out on all the extra stuff so we still consider it a great deal but we’ll be fixing this going forward to live up to its crown promise.

One more exciting thing coming soon is the ability to upgrade deeds in game for crowns. The current plan is that you will be able to right click on a deed and get a menu showing you the cost to upgrade it. We plan on making it so you can upgrade for the price difference in the crown store. No trade deeds from the story-line will likely be upgradeable but remain no trade but we’re still evaluating that option.

Also, in case you missed the stream, the other exciting thing coming is the ability to purchase a permit for row house demolition. There will be a cheap option to turn a row lot into a an empty lot with no houses on it that can be used for whatever. We see this as a huge win for players who have their main lot but also have a row lot or two in storage from the storyline. Now you’ll be able to put down a row lot to turn it into a play space, crafting area, or a dedicated garden.

Wow, that ended up being a crazy long post! Lots of stuff to talk about. For those with short attention spans who just skip to the end, here is the tl;dr version:

  • Current crown target of $1 = 1 COTO will turn into $1 = 100 COTO
  • All your existing crowns will turn into 100 crowns
  • Many prices will adjust downwards to be between current and sale price
  • Sales will be smaller and fewer and for the most part

Thanks and you can look forward to these changes in the near future!

50% Items and 20% Crowns (Extended!)

We have extended our 50% off weekend holiday sale! To celebrate our final release of our launch year we are putting most items* in the store on sale for 50% off, our deepest discounts ever! We are also going to track the R61 Dark Winter Stretch Goals all weekend (versus just the traditional Friday noon to midnight)!

We also have extended our Holiday Crowns Sale! Some packages are discounted as much as 20%!

Release 62 Livestream (YouTube)

Our Release 62 Livestream was fantastic! We handed out a ton of prizes, including Avatars Radio mugs and shirts in honor of their 5th anniversary! We also showed off the new Duke Throne Dungeon Room and Tazar’s amazing GIGANTIC player dungeon he has assembled (along with some helpful friends). Then we had our first Fetid Water Fishing Contest in South Fetid Swamp!

Fishing Contest Winners:

  • Runners Up (2): Nautical Basement Entrance Eternal Pattern
    • Inara Dreygon: Sturgeon 2.3
    • Taikee Vetrae: Small Sturgeon 2.2
  • 3rd Prize: Gondola Water Decoration (digital) TIE
    • Vladimir Begemot: Alligator Gar 2.5
    • Elryin Silvertree: Alligator Gar 2.5
  • 2nd Prize: Obsidian Tower Village Water Home (digital)
    • Tialessa: Sturgeon 2.6
  • 1st Prize: Player Owned Town Village Water Lot Property Deed (digital)
    • Devian Loon: Large Alligator Gar 2.7

We also made progress on the Carnival themed stretch goals!

  • ACHIEVED! $15K: Masquerade Mask
  • ACHIEVED! $30K: Carnival Colors (Purple, Green, Yellow) Cycling Dye Replenishing Box
  • $45K: Jester Mask Wand & Jester Mask Staff
  • $60K: Brewing Themed Basement Hatches
  • $75K: Formal Dress (Wedding Dress Variant)
  • $90K: Tuxedo Variant
  • $105K: Ballroom Dungeon Room
  • $125K: Jester Outfit

In case you missed the fun times here is the stream on YouTube:

Shroud of the Avatar Rewards Program

The Shroud of the Avatar Rewards Program lets you earn the best rate on purchasing Gold Crowns, AND receive rare stretch-goal items from our monthly livestreams! This program automatically enrolls you in the monthly livestreams (counts as the $5 minimum purchase) along with other perks.

For the low price of $9 USD per month you will receive the following:

  • 9 Gold Crowns of the Obsidians every month
  • Automatic Participation in the Monthly Livestream Stretchgoals (counts as the $5 minimum purchase)
  • Exclusive Title every 3 months
    • 3 Months: Keeper of the Faith
    • 6 Months: Keeper of the Word
    • 9 Months: Keeper of the Vow
    • 12 Months: Keeper of the Flame
  • Pick any Dye 12 Pack every 6 months
  • Pick any three of the 7 Obsidian Potions every month, including:
    • Potion of Capacity: Increases carrying capacity
    • Potion of Conservation: Reduces reagent use chance
    • Potion of Expedience: Swift gathering on all gathering skills
    • Potion of Precision: Increases Meticulous Collection to all gathering skills
    • Potion of Preservation: Reduces armor and weapon damage
    • Potion of Reclamation: Increases Salvage and Repair to all production skills

Upcoming Events Calendar

Feb 28, 2019 – Release 63
Mar 8, 2019 – Release 63 Livestream
Mar 8 – 17, 2019 – SXSW
Mar 18 – 22, 2019 – GDC
Mar 28, 2019 – Release 64
Apr 5, 2019 – Release 64 Livestream
Apr 25, 2019 – Release 65
May 3, 2019 – Release 65 Livestream
May 30, 2019 – Release 66
June 7, 2019 – Release 66 Livestream
June 27, 2019 – Release 67
July 25, 2019 – Release 68
Aug 29, 2019 – Release 69

Meretz: Win an Obsidian Tower Town Water Home

Win an Obsidian Tower Town Water Home & earn free SotA in-game items daily!

Whether you move a little or a lot, as a Meretz user you rack up valuable Meretz Points (MPs). The more MPs you have, the more stuff you can buy!

Think: in-game SotA goodies, Sweepstakes entries, Relics by Rild giveaways, and tons more. With Meretz, we launch several sweepstakes every month. This month, we’re giving away an Obsidian Tower Town Water Home – valued at $300! You can also enter to win a Relics By Rild $50 Gift Card and other cool prizes. AND, use your MPs every day for in-game items like potions and emotes.

What’re you waiting for? Download Meretz TODAY!

Project to Support – Avatars Radio

Avatars Radio is a community run and community funded radio station founded by community member Amber Raine. They air plays, music, sermons, speeches, and they organize the monthly release dance parties. You can listen to Avatars Radio on their website or through one of the Aether Amplifiers inside Shroud of the Avatar. Consider helping this community endeavor by supporting their Patreon!

“This station was created with the love of our community and fellow citizens in Lord British – Richard Garriott’s new world of Shroud of the Avatar. Our dream desire is to serve and share (simply by airing) communities work through the moon towers. We have an open welcoming of all submissions from our community. Talented musicians (be it instrumental, vocal, or mixer), poets, designers of station identifications and other sound bytes, or perhaps you have the face and voice for radio and would like to try your turn behind the desk as a DJ? This station shall always welcome the creative works of the community weighed over that of earthly!”

Resources – Players Helping Players

SotA_NewPlayerWelcome_Forum

The official SotA New Player Welcome Forum and the Player Created Resources Forum have the best player created resources for Shroud of the Avatar, whether it’s a Player Written Guide, a Video Walk-through, or a Wiki-type Website.

Visit the official Community Resources page for a complete listing of all things community.