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

For R50 and R51, all skill unlearning will return 100% of the experience that was spent on them. We made this change because of the major changes to combat math, ransom, and movement speed that some players might feel invalidate skills they invested in.

As a reminder here are those changes from the R50 Instructions:

• New Combat Math: We have made major changes to how combat math is calculated. We have done away with the old 0-100 system and replaced it with a weighted scale system. The vast majority of players will not notice any difference but high end players will likely notice that some of their tricks to completely avoid being hit will no longer work. Additionally, the attack roll is now split into multiple rolls which makes it possible to have a combination of things happen. For instance, it is now possible to parry a critical hit or get a glancing blow that you also block with your shield.
• Ransom Changes: We have made several changes and improvements to how ransoming items works that are gained in PVP (either through combat or pickpocketing).
  • Notification: You now get an onscreen notification that you have lost an item through PVP or pickpocketing. There is an intentional 5 minute delay before a ransom icon appears after being pickpocketed. As in life, you don’t often notice theft until it’s too late.
  • Duration Increase: The time to pay the ransom has increased from 2 hours to 24 hours, to give players plenty of time to gain their items back.
  • Valuation: Crafted items and artifacts are now worth much more when ransomed.
  • Item Selection: The way items are randomly selected for ransom has changed so that we only consider each item type once, so many small stacks of an item type only count as a single chance during the selection process (i.e. those of you that have been using many different stacks of items as “defense” are out of luck).
• Max Movement Speed Check: Effects that modify movement speed can only allow stack to a maximum of two. Additionally, their effects add together instead of multiplying each other as they did previously. This should fix the issue where stacking various buffs and artifacts with movement effects would produce insane movement rates.

In October of 2016 we created the Clasped Gauntlets Cloak for community events. 

“We believe very strongly that community events that extend into the real world are very important and we have always worked hard to support them. We have been considering for a long time now how players who attend these real world events can display their attendance inside the game.”

Any Shroud of the Avatar community event, of any size, is eligible to receive a base cloak for each attendee. The organizer will need to submit a request for approval and then once approved provide the number of cloaks needed and which of the organizer’s characters the cloak will be delivered to.

Large charity, wellness, or in-person real life events can also request a customized version of one of these cloaks with a unique color scheme (main color and trim color) and a custom name.

Since we started this program we have created over 15 customized versions of this cloak and awarded many more of the base version!

For Release 50 Fletcher “Scathana” Kinnear has created a new in-game craftable front clasp cloak that we liked so much we decided to make it an option that players can choose when requesting a community cloak! Check it out below:

Here is what the craftable front clasp cloak (without the clasped gauntlets) looks like in-game.

If you have an event that qualifies for a cloak, please email support@portalarium.com.