We have to restart Release 56 and rollback to the game save state before we launched it this morning. We unfortunately skipped a step during the launch this morning and did not run a data migration for brewing which means that all brewing items might be in a corrupted state unless we rollback and relaunch. We apologize for the interruption.
UPDATE: The rollback and restart has been completed and the service is live again.
[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]
Avatars,
Please read this entire message, as well as the linked Player Guide and Known Issues.
Release 56 of Shroud of the Avatar goes live this Thursday, July 26, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).
Release 56 is the first release in which we focused on the current iteration of our Top 10 Priorities (from Q3 2018 post). We were able to address most of the items on that list in some fashion. We made strong progress on systems polish, bug fixing, performance, user interface polish, tier adjustments, and the rewards cycle.
Bug Fixing: We dedicated a significant portion of the release to working solely on fixing bugs and reducing our overall bug count. We addressed nearly 100 issues with over 50 of them highlighted in these notes including fixes to various scenes (typos, stuck spots, etc.), crafting fixes (including a major fix to how effects get calculated), and various user interface fixes. Read more…
Another content packed weekly Community Livestream is this Friday at 4pm CT on Twitch!
Sarah “Serafina” Dworken will give you all the latest news and then Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski, Keith “Sannio” Quinn and Chris “Atos” Spears will be showing off the Release 56 first playable version of the Obsidian Trials that has all sorts of cool new features! There is an entrance on the Novia Overworld near the east entrance to Nightshade Pass. Play sessions run every 10 minutes with one minute of preparation time between matches. During the match a poisonous boundary that deals extraordinary amounts of damage rapidly reduces the amount of playable area. If you are caught in the boundary you will die quickly so you must stay ahead of it. There is a lobby area where players go when they die during a match, prepare for new matches, and replenish supplies from a merchant. The lobby is where you can also spend the currencies you earn from playing in the Obsidian Trials. Making any kill during a match will earn you Obsidian Skull Coins which can be spent on consumables like unique potions and a unique teleport scroll locked to the locations of Obsidian Trials. Winning a match that includes at least 5 players earns you Obsidian Medallions which can be spent on Victory Emotes and Titles (eventually we will be expanding this to also include unique patterns, gear, and components). We also modified the PVP scoreboard to display the timer for the match, show numbers of players in the match, display the winner, and to reset for each match.
Watch on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT! Also join the community’s Discord chat to ask questions about what’s presented:
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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
News Announcements
Community Updates
The Reworking of Solace Bridge
As part of our Q3 efforts to improve the New User Experience we are separating the tutorials from the story spaces in the three starting areas (Solace Bridge, Highvale, and Blood River). We will be building a new focused tutorial space that the Oracle sends you to from the Confirmatory on the Isle of Storms that walks you through the game basics in a gated fashion (i.e. you cannot advance to the next room until you prove you can swing a sword). Once you complete all the tutorials you will return to the Isle of Storms and then resume your journey through the Lunar Rift to one of the three starting areas. Those areas are being polished to be more focused and tighter in their direction. We are also removing the tutorial elements and having them be almost entirely focused on story. In the case of Solace Bridge this means rebuilding it which we are excited to show you progress on in this week’s update. We hope to have all this complete by the end of Q3 (Release 58).
[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]
Here are some super early, in-progress shots of the new Solace Bridge space. We’re focusing a lot on the first three starter maps (Highvale, Blood River, and Solace Bridge (Not the outskirts)) in the next few upcoming releases.
Greetings Fellow Avatars! Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Game Development
News Announcements
Community Updates
Aether Creatures Sighted in New Britannia!
Astronomers across New Britannia have noted that the approaching comet has agitated the creatures of Novia and Hidden Vale, making many bolder and more ferocious. Rumors suggest that the aether surrounding the comet has been mutating some of the most powerful creatures into new monstrous variations. Explorers of the world’s most dangerous regions are reporting sightings of Aether Dragons, Aether Corpions, and even Aether Liches! Woe be to any unwary Avatar who stumbles into their path!
You are invited to another historical album premiere inside the realm of Shroud of the Avatar! Rolling Stone lists Shooter Jennings’ latest album: “Shooter”, which releases on August 10, as one of the most anticipated albums of 2018!
For his latest album, the follow-up to his adventurous tribute to Giorgio Moroder, Countach (For Giorgio), country-rock-electronica mad scientist Shooter Jennings looked to his outlaw lineage, cutting an album of stripped-down classic country in the vein of his dad Waylon and one of his heroes, Hank Williams Jr. He also returned to where it all began, re-teaming with Dave Cobb, who produced Jennings’ 2005 debut, Put the ‘O’ Back in Country – the first album the Grammy-winning Cobb ever produced too. Simply titled Shooter, the LP will be released sometime this year via Cobb’s Low Country Sound imprint on Elektra. Says Jennings, “It’s the most country album I’ve ever done.” J.H.
The event will kickoff through a series of quests that will appear in Release 56 which goes live on Thursday July 26. The quests will lead to the party at 7:00 PM CDT on July 31st inside Shroud of the Avatar, in the Player Owned Town of Ordinis Mortis. The first players to collect the clues and finish the quest will receive prizes from Shooter himself! Those prizes will include exclusive items with Shooter’s heraldry in the game (armor, brewing casks, etc), wax cylinders with songs from Shooter’s new album, and framed art of Shooter’s heraldry that they can decorate their home with. There will be a variety of festivities at the party, including a listening of the album through Avatar’s Radio hosted by DJ Darkstarr who will also DJ a dance party!
PRIZE UPDATE: To receive a prize you need to find the real shooter at the party, whisper him the secret phrase, have a subsequent brief chat, and then he will initiate a trade with you if he is satisfied with the discussion.
DIRECTIONS UPDATE:
We had an amazing Release 55 Monthly Livestream on July 6, just two short days after Lord British’s birthday! We raised an amazing $54,500 by the time we got to midnight and we got all the way to the Lord British Pavers stretchgoal! We were also able to give a nice sneak peek into Episode 2. However we have more to reveal about Episode 2 and Lord British really, really wants more items in his theme (not that he is jealous of how many Darkstarr items there are…). So we decided to have a Part 2 of our Release 55 Livestream!
We plan to go deeper on some of the Episode 2 features we discussed in the first livestream, like Item Affinity, but we also plan to tease some new information too! One of the new features we plan to discuss is a set of new building tools including dungeon creation (player property) and defense building (player property, castle defenses and control points). These are part of a larger effort to increase the community’s ability to craft their own adventures that includes existing tools like notes and signs but is also expanding with other new features like advanced container settings (locks, place/take settings, etc.) along with craftable/purhasable/placeable traps and spawners (spider eggs, skeleton crypts, etc.). When you put all of these things together your ability to craft adventures will be limited only by your imagination!
Last livestream we also did not get a chance to talk another cool thing coming for Episode 2 which is the ability to “un-nest” and/or transfer your Player Owned Town into the new lands! The time is nigh to start reserving your slots on the surface of the new lands beyond Novia! Lord British himself is doing that as well! His very own Lord British’s Castle will be on the new Serpent Archipelago.
All Avatars from around the world are welcome to join us in the livestream activities. We will be continuing the deep dives, answering questions, having sales, handing out prizes, and tracking towards stretch goals. In honor of our sovereign’s recent day of birth, this event’s stretch goals remain Lord British themed and we will be picking up where we left off so the next goal will be the Lord British Round Table!
LIVESTREAM SCHEDULE (Central Time Zone)
Monthly livestreams are on Twitch and include answers to your gameplay questions, world building tours, prize giveaways, sales on items, and more! Here is the schedule:
Another content packed weekly Community Livestream is this Friday at 4pm CT on Twitch!
Our weekly livestream in April where we showed off the music system was very popular so we are doing it again this week with even more details to show off! Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski will be on to play some instruments and walk you through how you can create sheet music by converting MIDI to ABC files, how music can be acquired from other players, how to use the radios and phonographs, how to use emotes to dance along with the music, and how to get your pets to dance too!
Watch on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT! Also join the community’s Discord chat to ask questions about what’s presented:
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Greetings Fellow Avatars! Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
News Announcements
Community Updates
Episode 2 Stretch-Goal Store
As revealed in the Release 55 Livestream we have launched the Stretch Goal store for Episode 2! These are stretch goals with rewards that can be used in the game now (or at least very soon)! When you purchase the item you will get it as an in-game reward immediately (or very soon if the item is still in progress), even if the stretch-goal is not met. These rewards are completely unique. They will not be sold in the add-on store, in-game nor as a bundle item. Once the stretch-goal is met we will begin work on the functionality for Episode 2 and all the items purchased would gain some function related to the goal when Episode 2 launches. For instance the foal from the Mounts stretch goal would grow into a horse that you could then ride. Each goal will have a progress bar underneath tracking the progress. General philosophy is that these items cost slightly more than equivalent items because they are linked to stretch goals. Read more…
Greetings Fellow Avatars! Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Game Development
News Announcements
Community Updates
Release 55 successfully launched yesterday, June 28, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:
