Updates

Update of the Avatar #226 – 2017.05.05: Telethon Weapons Update, Bloodriver Outskirts Update, Free Trial Test #3, Music Weekend Flash Sale, Lord British Interviews, Community Events, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

The Making of Bloodriver Outskirts (update)

SPOILERS: Players following the Path of Truth encounter the Elven village of Bloodriver massacred by vigilantes from Aerie. The elves have fled for their lives into the forests upriver and invaded the home of an Elven hermit who dwells in a ruin deep in the forest. They have set traps to protect themselves from the vigilantes who have pursued them here and are harassing them still. Elven soldiers from Vertas are arriving from the north to protect them while Aerie soldiers are streaming in from the south east to try and stop all out war between the humans and elves. We hope to have this scene live in Release 43.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Esteben “SorcerousSteve” Zaldivar]

Hey guys! SorcerousSteve here to give you another update on Bloodriver Outskirts!
As the map approaches its polish phase I’ll be preparing for spawning!

An ancient abandoned temple Pyramid deep within the forest.

Read more…


Community Spotlight: Novia Market – Player Town

This week’s Player Owned Town spotlight has me, ‘Berek’ as I go by in the community, travelling to the center of New Britannia to visit the bustling trade town of Novia Market.

Many of the fair towns in New Britannia have built a strong, steady popularity and long history. By contrast, I had heard rumblings of a young upstart of a community of 50+ merchant residents which seemingly had popped out of nowhere, in the southern hinterlands of Brittany called Novia Market.

I had seen flyers for Novia Market proclaiming each and every Sunday as a “promo day”, and it piqued my interest enough to start a short pilgrimage to the town. Upon reaching the entrance to the town, I was struck by two things: the hustle and bustle of the community, and an odd couple of gentlemen laying wait to greet me beside the town crier and banker at the entrance.

Read more…


Moondial Madness

From last week’s Update of the Avatar #225, we just put live in Release 41 an update to the Darkstarr Moondial! Have a look at all that we changed around the game’s moondials:

Recently we did some re-ordering of the celestial bodies in the heavens. Additionally there are now more game systems directly tied to the positions of these celestial bodies. For instance Town Sieges are directly tied to these. Due to these changes Richard “Lord British” Garriott has decreed that we update our orreries to not only accurately reflect these new sequences but also add the constellations in an outer ring. The first pass is to update the Darkstarr Moondial that players already own. We also created a new Silver Darkstarr Moondial that will only be available through our Referral program when that comes back online. Other variants that look very different from the Darkstarr versions will then be created including a craftable version (more mechanical in nature) and an Ornate version for the Add On Store that will come in a variety of sizes ranging from table top to a giant version that you can walk under!

The updated Darkstarr Moondial is live in Release 41. Stay tuned for updates on when the other versions will become available.

Read more…


R41 Postmortem Livestream – May 8th @ 3pm CT

We have been extremely happy with the community’s reaction to Release 41 so far, and want to hear more of your valuable feedback. Join us Monday, May 8th at 3:00 PM Central (20:00 UTC) on Twitch for this month’s R41 Postmortem Livestream!

Once you get a chance to check out Release 41, post your questions in the comments section below. Only one post submission per player allowed, and keep questions to 3 or less. This will allow us to get to as many questions as possible.

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

Follow @ShroudofAvatar to keep updated as the postmortem approaches!


FIXED: Blank Journal Issue (quests, tasks, etc.) Blocking Quest Progress (updated)

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

As of midday Saturday April 29 we discovered that the data on the server that contains the information for everyone’s Journals (quests, tasks, etc) is not loading properly. This means your Journal is suddenly blank and you cannot progress through your quests.

Our deepest apologies that this has happened and we are working as fast as we can to address it.

UPDATE (8 PM): Patch #599 implemented to fix blank journal issue. New song file issue with Patch #599 not allowing some songs to play, will fix this in another patch.

UPDATED (6 PM): We have found the issue and made a fix. The good news is no data has been lost. We will get a patch out as soon as we can.

 


Update of the Avatar #225 – 2017.04.28: Play R41 Now, Moondial Madness, The Oracle, Outskirts Updates, Community Livestream, Raffle Winners, City+ Property Flash Sale, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Play Release 41 Now!Release 41 successfully launched yesterday, April 27, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Read more…


Community Livestream – The Outskirts: Part 1

Community of the Avatar

What we’re about to show you is going to take two livestreams! For Part 1, tomorrow we will bring back Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski to show off the now live Solace Bridge Outskirts. Then Chris “Seawolf” Wolf and Damien “Puuk” Foletto will show you the upcoming Highvale Outskirts scene.

As we announced during the Spring Telethon, we are adding three new maps to the game that we are calling “Outskirts”. These scenes will be very close to the three starting scenes and players will go directly there after finishing those starting scenes. Outskirts will be very large scenes, similar in scope to some of our recent big scenes like Blood Bay. This will allow them to be large enough that players can base themselves in a single scene for adventuring, resupply for their first couple of hours without having to go through multiple scene loads, or having to use the Overworld.

One month from now (don’t worry, we will have livestreams in the interim), we will be talking about all three Outskirts scenes, including Bloodriver Outskirts!

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask your questions about these Outskirts scenes.


Release 41 Instructions

Starr_avatar

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

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 41 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, April 27, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 41 (R41) is another leap forward in progress with an incredible amount of new content (5 new scenes!) as well as a ton of balance and polish. The Path of Truth is now playable from beginning to end, including the twisted Halls of Artifice, Solace Bridge Outskirts now eases new players into the game at a much better pace, more gear can be placed as decorations, combat got lots of balancing including Taming, and Localization has resumed. Read more…


Upcoming Outskirts Scenes: Highvale and Bloodriver

As we announced during the Spring Telethon, we are adding three new maps to the game that we are calling “Outskirts”. These scenes will be very close to the three starting scenes and players will go directly there after finishing those starting scenes. Outskirts will be very large scenes, similar in scope to some of our recent big scenes like Blood Bay. This will allow them to be large enough that players can base themselves in a single scene for adventuring, resupply for their first couple of hours without having to go through multiple scene loads, or having to use the Overworld.

Each scene will have a small outpost that will include some shopkeepers, trainers, crafting stations, and a few quest givers (and no player housing!). The scenes will also include plenty of adventuring areas (forests, ruins, bandit camps, etc.).

From last week’s Update of the Avatar #224, we’ve introduced the second and third outskirts scenes! See the amazing screenshots below:

Read more…


New and Improved Store Purchasing Interface

This morning we updated the store purchasing interface with a new and friendlier design! For all items purchased though the ‘STORE’ menu on the main website, you now have an easier view of which transaction options are available with which to purchase items:

You will notice that we do not have Bitcoins listed as we did before this change. It was necessary to remove the option while we explore an improve compatibility with Bitcoin transaction processes and the new store interface.

Bitcoins will make a return! We do not have an exact date on this return just yet, but will let you know as soon as we have one to announce.