Updates

Community Spotlight ~ The Caverns

This week’s Community Spotlight focuses on the efforts of Stile Teckel and his community hub, The Caverns;  “Dedicated to delivering ALL the news, to the fans and community, the way YOU
want to get it.”

cavernRunning since the SotA Kickstarter, The Caverns is a news blog and information site containing photos, forums, RP stories archive, links, and more. The Caverns contains linked articles and photos from up to a year prior to the Kickstarter with future plans to include streaming play tips and themed articles such as National Geographic style write-ups for SotA locations.  The Caverns’ primary goal is be a method of access to all SotA news including Portalarium announcements, game details, dev/artist bios, guild activities, community developments, and anything else SotA related. The Caverns publishes to multiple social networks so fans are able to get the news delivered using the tools they prefer. Additionally, Stile is continually on the lookout for guest authors to publish news from other community hubs or on themes of their own.

Read more…


Update of the Avatar #45 – 10/25/13: Unity Scene Jam #3 Winners, Story Sneak Peek, City Basements, Wizard Tower, Baron 3 Pledge, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Welcome to another edition of Update of the Avatar! Here’s what we have for you this week:

  • Unity Scene Jam #3 Winners
  • Story Sneak Peeks
  • City Basements
  • Wizard Tower Village Home
  • SWAG: More T-shirt sizes & multi-item discount
  • New Baron 3 Pledge
  • Recruit-A-Friend Promotion 6-Day Countdown

Unity Scene Jam #3 Winners

 

[Chris Spears narrates a walk-thru of the Scene Jam #3 Winners]

The Unity Scene Jam #1 challenge was to build an ancient lunar rift.  The second scene challenge took a step forward in time to when people retreated underground and created the catacombs.  For Scene Jam #3 we took another step forward in time to when people moved back to the surface and rebuilt villages and towns, so the challenge for Jam #3 was to build a village scene.

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Update of the Avatar #44 – 10/18/13: Lord of the Manor Home, Crafting Sigil, Story Sneak Peek #2, Avatar Outfits, Basements, Scene Jam Results, & More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Welcome to this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar! More cool stuff to share, including:

  • The Crafting Sigil
  • Another Story Sneak Peek
  • More Avatar Outfits
  • SWAG: T-shirts and Coins
  • Lord of the Manor Event
  • Lord of the Manor City Home
  • More Basements
  • Unity Scene Jam Results
  • Recruit-A-Friend Contest

The Crafting Sigil

SotA_Crafting_Sigil_ingame3

The Crafting Sigil displays the three rings of Crafting: Gathering, Refining and Production. Each ring contains five different skills. The innermost ring is the Gathering Ring and includes: Mining, Forestry, Agriculture, Field Dressing, and Foraging. The middle ring is the Refining Ring and includes: Smelting, Milling, Textiles, Tanning, and Butchery. The outermost ring is the Production Ring and includes Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Tailoring, Cooking, and Alchemy.

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Unity Scene Jam #2 Winners!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XR3usio65FU

Sorry for not getting these posted sooner but the machine we were using to build all the levels for viewing decided it was time to go to computer Heaven.  New machine built, levels all downloaded and tested. The Scene Jam #2 challenge was to help us create the catacombs!

Tons of great ideas and some awesome execution on the part of the participants.  There were a number of scenes that came in that were nearly to a quality bar that would let us just add creatures and drop them in the game which is truly amazing for a 48 hour jam. Next week we will do a hangout to go over some of the levels that weren’t in the top 3.

This was the first time we used the scoring system and it worked great.  The top three scoring maps were 93, 90, and 88…all so very close! And the winners are:

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Update of the Avatar #43 – 10/10/13: Combat Sigil, Story Sneak Peek, Basements, Druid Home, Bonus Rewards, & More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

We have some amazing stuff to share in this edition of Update of the Avatar!  We’re revealing the awesome looking Combat Sigil, we’ve added player housing basements (and included them as bonus rewards in the Citizen level pledges and up), we have more to show on the Druid Home, as well as a long-awaited sneak peek at a snippet of the story that Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott have been secretly crafting!

Combat Sigil

SotA_Combat_Sigil_Dungeon

Followers of the martial path use this mighty combat sigil as their symbol. The sigil shows the eight schools of combat that a warrior can follow. There are four armor schools: Light Armor (Cloth & Leather), Medium Armor (Chain & Scale), Heavy Armor (Plate), and Shields. There are four weapon schools: Blades (Swords & Axes), Polearms (Halberds & Spears), Bludgeons (Hammers & Clubs), and Ranged (Bows & Crossbows).

Stephen Daniele (lead concept artist) provided these different treatments of the combat sigil:

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We are determined to help Tracy and Laura get to the $55,00 Stretch goal where they will produce a set of three, linked Story Modules set in the world of Shroud of the Avatar, to be released exclusively to the backers of each project. To help reach this goal, Shroud of the Avatar and Sojourner Tales are excited to announce a very special offer to celebrate the final day of Tracy and Laura Hickman’s Sojourner Tales Kickstarter! We will award each and every Shroud of the Avatar Adventurer* who pledges to Sojourner Tales at the $20 and above level a UNIQUE Sojourner themed in-game item.

So jump on over to the Sojourner Tales Kickstarter campaign and make your pledge! Better hurry because today is the last day!

[*Adventure Tier is $40 for Founders, $45 for Benefactors.]