Greetings Avatars, 

Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 10 access for all backers at First Responder level and above (as well as those who signed up at PAX Prime and DragonCon*) begins this Thursday, September 25 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 10 access will end on Monday, September 29 at 10:00 AM Central Time. Starting today, you can begin installing and patching (see instructions below), but login will not be enabled until Thursday morning.

We are very excited for all of you to get into this release and start giving us feedback. As a reminder, approximately every three months we focus a release mostly on polish and that is what Release 10 was focused on. Despite that focus, we did manage to get quite a bit of new content in as well.

We also made changes to increase player population densities in the game because we observed players becoming more and more spread out as we added more scenes; especially scenes with player housing. Speaking of player housing, we also noticed many people claiming houses, but not actually using nor decorating them. To address both these issues, we reduced the number of scenes with player housing and we introduced costs to lot claiming and house deed purchases (deeds can be purchased from the bartender in Owl's Head). We also reduced the number of PVP arenas to only two. Hopefully this will concentrate the players in fewer areas, and increase the number of decorated buildings. See below for more details on these changes. 

We have also seen a slight decline in participation in each release, only offset by newcomers from partner promotions (E3, Alienware, MMORPG.com, etc.). So we are introducing a unique hat that can only be obtained by playing in each release and completing a quest.

Without further ado, here are the R10 deliverables, along with some extra notes and new deliverables in italics.

[Click here for the rest of the Release 10 Instructions]

 In celebration of the PAX and Dragoncon conventions this weekend, we are excited to announce that Release 9 is re-opening from 10:30 am CST Aug 29 thru 10:30 am CST Sep 1. Richard Garriott and Starr Long are representing SotA at Dragoncon while Chris Spears, Brandon Cotton, and Finn Staber are representing SotA at PAX. In the spirit of friendly rivalry, we've temporarily renamed the opposing teams in the PvP Castle Arena to PAX and Dragoncon. So, log into the game, make your way over to the PvP Castle Arena (at the starting point in Braemar), and join the side of your favorite convention. We'll report which convention was the overall winner in next week's update!

Please join us now in playing this Special PAX versus Dragoncon Edition of Release 9!

Release 9 Installation and Player Instructions

Release 9 Known Issues

If you have not backed the game yet, you will need to register and login at www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the “Pledge or Send Gift!” button in the right side-bar, and purchase a pledge at the $45 Adventurer level or above. For a limited time, you can get the Adventurer pledge for only $25 with the Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon.

[The following is from a SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]

Greetings Avatars,

Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 7 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, June 26 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 7 access will end on Sunday, June 29 at 10:00 PM Central Time. Starting today, you can begin installing and patching (see instructions below), but login will not be enabled until Thursday morning.

What an epic month this has been! We launched new pledge content, new pledge tiers, a stretch goal store, showed at E3 while at the same time we did not slow down one bit on getting this release done. In fact, this release we missed fewer goals and delivered more extra content than any previous release! In contrast, past E3 preparations for previous projects have lasted for months and included throw-away work for marketing purposes. This is a testament to how we are making this game, which, as you have seen from the E3 coverage, is something we feel as strongly about as we do the game itself. Of course a huge part of the “how we are making” is you, our loyal backers. Now the moment you have been waiting for: here are the R7 deliverables, along with some extra notes and new deliverables in italics.

RELEASE 7: June 26 - 29, 2014

• 3D Overworld Map System: We are switching our dual scale navigation system from the 2D version you have seen so far to a 3D version more like what we showed during Kickstarter. This initial release will mainly be about the visuals, so players will still be represented as markers and there will be no random encounters. Since this is first release with this version of the map it is missing many features including visible roads, hex grid, animating avatars, encounters, etc. (all of which you can expect to see in future releases).
• Player to Player secure trade: Did you discover something cool you want to give your friend? Need to share some potions with a party member? Did you craft something amazing you want to trade? Secure trade is the answer, and will allow you to make exchanges of goods between you and other players. Note that gold cannot be traded currently but that will come soon.
• Water Lots: We will be adding water lot functionality to the game. This includes 7 water based buildings including: Citizen Cabana, Edelmann Cabana, Knight’s Lighthouse, Lord’s Houseboat, Duke Island Castle, Baron Galleon, and Baron Frigate.
• NPC Collision / Responsiveness: We will be spending time on polishing NPC collision and general movement responsiveness to combat things like NPC standing inside you, spreading out when attacking, avoiding players while moving, etc. While we did some iterations on this in R7 we still don’t feel this is where it needs to be so we will continue working on this in R8.
• Animals: Currently all our animals (bears, wolves, etc.) are purchased assets and the skinning, rigging, and animations for them is not meeting our quality standards, so we are going to reskin and rig them so that we can redo their animations. Stag and Bear are now complete. Canines (wolves and dogs) will start going in Release 8.
• Player Housing Built-in Lighting: We have gotten consistent feedback that it is too hard to get player placed lights in the right configuration to really light the player houses. So starting with R7 we will begin placing built in lights (chandeliers, sconces, etc.) to provide a base lighting level for all the player houses. These lights will turn on and off just like regular lights and can be augmented with player placed lights as well. Long term these lights will be decorative objects that can be removed, moved, etc. but currently they are permanent fixtures.
• Scenes: A few new scenes will come online, including Player Towns on Islands (to feature water lots) and the first scene on the mainland (The Graff Gem Mines). We also replaced the entrance map to the Ravensmoor dungeon with a new map based on one of Stephen Daniele’s early concept pieces (see below). NOTE: The Lunar Rift in Owl’s Head now takes you to the Graff Gem Mines, NOT Kingsport. Also the Kingsport rift is disabled.
• Crafting: We will be adding more ingredients (spider silk, gems, precious metals, etc.) as well as instructions on how to do crafting in the recipe book itself. We also added images to support the instructions and themed them like medieval wood cuts.
• Lighting Fine-Tuning: We still have some work to do in order to get the balance right between bright day and dark night.
• Character Faces and Skins: We want to update at least one of the player faces and also do more polish work on the skin. While we are doing these upgrades to the faces we are deleting the old faces. For R7 this means you are limited to only one head type per gender.
• 64 Bit Build: For those of you running 64 bit OS on your system we will now release 64 bit builds (in addition to the 32 Bit Builds) so you can address more system memory. The good news is that we have a working 64 bit build. The bad news is that cloth simulation (cloaks) does not work and sometimes asset loading is slower than the 32 bit build (ironic!).
• Promotional Trailer: We were excited to be a featured game at the Plantronics booth at E3. In support of that and our continued fundraising, we released an updated trailer (our last one was at the 6 month mark) that shows off gameplay and provides a few sneak peeks of the intro cinematic. As mentioned in update 73, Bill Johnson, aka The Guardian, did the voiceover.
• New Pledge Rewards, New Pledge Tiers: On Friday June 6th we announced some new pledge rewards, some new pledge tiers and the Stretch Goal Store.
• Character Customization Blend Shapes: We added a new blend shapes system for customization that will offer an incredibly detailed variety of options for players. Our first example is with the eyes and that alone has 8 different parameters to adjust. We plan to add a new facial feature section every other release.
• Player Property Permissions: Player can now start setting permissions on their property so that other players can also decorate (among other things). This is the first pass at this feature so expect further refinements in later releases.
• New Target Highlighting: There were several circumstances where the targeting effect was not visible (NPCs standing behind counters for instance) so we are moving the effect to be a full highlight over the entire target. This is a work in progress so expect further refinements in later releases.
• NPC Behaviors: We put in the frameworks for two behaviors: schedules and using items. In Owl’s Head you can see both of these in action when night falls and NPCs go around turning lights on (or conversely at dawn when they go around turning lights off). You can also see it in the Clink when one of the guards opens the door for you. Note that these were just initial system work with a couple of examples.
• Borderless Window Mode: For those of you who like to multi-task you can now run the game in this mode which allows you to either have something else on a second monitor or alt tab between applications without logging out! Note that this option has to be set via the options menu in the launcher (cannot be set using the in game options screen)
• NPC Names and Chat Tabs: NPCs now spawn a separate chat tab when you talk to them to make it easier to follow their conversation when others are chatting around you. You also now have to learn NPC’s names through conversation versus you magically just knowing all their names without ever meeting them.
• Scene Names: The name of the scene you are in now appears underneath the compass. Should help in those “what map are you in?” questions we all end up asking each other over and over.
• Containers on Player Lots: Storage chests now work on player lots so you finally have somewhere to store items that you don’t wish to display. Chests can be placed just like any other decorative object.
• Linux Stability: We fixed some major stability issues with the Linux build which should make the penguins happy!
• New Player Houses: We added 19 new player houses this release including the water ones mentioned above plus row houses (two styles), Knight Marshall Keep, Tavern, and the Crafting Pavillion.

So now that it is clear what you can expect, we should also be as clear about what you should not expect:

• Combat: Combat does not yet include PVP, random dealing, decks, combos, or advancement.
• Performance: We have only done rudimentary optimizations and we do not yet have a full suite of performance fallbacks (LODs, etc.). This means the game will be quite slow on older machines, and due to memory usage, might be unstable in certain conditions (like densely decorated areas). With each release we will be doing further optimizations and adding to our fallbacks to improve performance.
• Crafting: The crafting system is in the game as a framework, but is still missing some key components like repair, events, and enhancement. Skill checks are also not in yet, so results are always 100% successful. Long term, the percentage chance to make items will depend on a myriad of variables and can result in a variety of results including: making the item desired, making a simpler version of the item that will need to be enhanced, or making a damaged version of the item that needs repair.
• Game Loop: Release 7 was a further iteration on our rudimentary game loop, but it is still very bare bones. Expect this to expand with each subsequent release but it won’t be truly complete until we hit Beta later this year
• Advanced Player Housing: There are some advanced features for player housing, including basements, home exterior decorations, and ceiling decorations that are not yet integrated. Expect to see these appear in future releases.
• Visual Quality: Efforts to improve visual quality are ongoing. We will continue to iterate on these until we have highly competitive visuals.
  
  
Here are links to instructions and known issues. Thank you again for your continued support. This is truly the most amazing community we have ever worked with and we are proud to be on this journey with you.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
aka Darkstarr
Executive Producer

P.S. Here is that skull dungeon entrance concept followed by a shot of it actually built in the game:





 



 P.P.S. First round of PVP is coming in R8! More details next week.

______________________________

[Join the Release 7 conversation in the public forums]

Release 7 Player Instructions

______________________________

 Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware's powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

If you were thinking of pledging your support to the development of Shroud of the Avatar, or upgrading your existing pledge, now's a great time to do it! Thru Lord British's birthday on July 4, 2014 we'll add an additional 10% to your pledge! Don't miss out!

For all new pledges or pledge upgrades that you purchase for yourself, or as a gift, between 12:00 am CST June 5, 2014 and 12:00 am CST July 5, 2014 we will add another 10% to your pledge!

For example, if you love the new Row House included as a bonus reward in the Ancestor tier and purchase the pledge for $275, we will add an additional $28 to your pledge account ($275 times 10% equals $27.50 rounded up to $28; our pledge package doesn't handle cents so we round up to nearest dollar).

[NOTE: The 10% bonus pledge won't show up in your account immediately. Give us about 10 business days after the end of the promotion period to tally everyone's purchases and add the bonus pledge to your account. The 10% Pledge Bonus is non-transferable and is not applied toward Add-On Store or Stretch Goal Store purchases]

Remember, You Will Need to Register on the SotA Website and Link Your Kickstarter Account to Play Release 7

Stay on top of all the latest game development news by registering on our website, https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com. And if you have not already done so, please be sure to Link your Kickstarter Account, so we can ensure that you receive all of your backer rewards as soon as they are ready to roll out!

[The following is from a SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]

Greetings Avatars,

Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 6 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, May 22 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 6 access will end on Sunday, May 25 at 10:00 PM Central Time. Starting today, you can begin installing and patching (see instructions below), but login will not be enabled until Thursday morning.

After Release 5, I posted about my impressions of that release and our decision to make Release 6 the inaugural, once per quarter release focused mostly on polish and iteration. As our first attempt at this kind of release, I am quite pleased with the results, even if many of them were behind the scenes. While we definitely made some forward strides on polish, we spent a significant amount of time on laying the groundwork for future work on lighting, terrain, texturing, item security, data security, combat balancing, visual effects systems, etc. All that groundwork will yield some amazing things in future releases, even if in the near term it isn’t the most visible of changes. Below are the original/revised R6 deliverables, along with some extra notes and new deliverables in italics.

RELEASE 6, May 22 - 25, 2014:

• Visual Improvements: We really want to improve the quality of our visuals to a point that we feel competitive with modern games. To that end we are allocating time each release for some ongoing work. Here is just a short list of some of the things we are working on for Release 6 in the area of visual improvements:
  -  Lighting Fine-Tuning: With the switch to the new lighting model, we now have to retune our lighting levels across the board. Tuning and balancing the brightest day and the darkest night takes some time. It is a careful dance to get a strong contrast between well lit areas and dark shadows. We want light sources to mean something in underground areas and at night so they will be dark. This means having a torch and/or light spell handy is a really good thing. We also introduced tone mapping in R4 which is a technique that simulates your eye irising back and forth. This technique also requires careful tuning to get the brightening and lightening just right. Tune it too bright and we obviate the need for any light sources, tune it too dark and you won’t even notice it.
        - We went through about a bazillion different parameters over the last few weeks trying to get to that “just right” spot. Just yesterday, we hit on a combination of bloom with tone mapping that we think is going to get us the closest we have come yet. You can see the initial results in this build of this new combination. I think we are way closer but there is still work to do here.
  -  Shaders: Right now we use very simple specular and bump mapping shaders. We are going to investigate some other shader types including Relief and Detail that might create more details in our textures.
        -  Research into these new shader types ultimately led to a dead end but in the process we discovered and fixed some issues with how we were doing bump mapping on our terrain.
  -  Characters: We have several efforts in progress including getting our skin shader happy with the new lighting, polishing movement and combat animations, and fixing wearables sorting issues. After we get those issues sorted we can move on to making hair better but we are waiting for our transition to Unity 5 for that so we can take advantage of some new features there.
        -  We made some good progress here and got the skin happy with our new lighting, but we still think we can take it further. We also decided we need to completely replace the character heads because we felt they were just not attractive enough. This replacement is now being tested so they may or may not make it in during R6.
  -  Environment Art: For performance optimization we had originally kept the number of triangles in our buildings, walls, dungeons to an absolute minimum. Recent performance analysis suggests we are not bound by this constraint so we are going back through and adding geometry to some assets so that they will look better in lighting. For Release 6 we are focusing on Dungeon and Castle Walls to make them not be such flat planes.
• Player-to-Player exchanges
  -  The amount of work on changing how our item architecture works to secure the data was quite large. We really want this particular feature to be exactly what we say: secure. That meant in the end we couldn’t rush this in just one release cycle, it will take us two. In the meantime though we did create a temporary way for players to give each other things by just dragging the items out of their inventory and on top of the other player.
• Crafting: We now have specific animations and tools for each crafting table so we will replace the default animation in Release 6 with these specifics. We will also take a pass on alignment and sorting issues related to crafting tables. As a stretch goal we may try to add some more sound and visual effects to crafting and harvesting.
• Combat: Our first pass at abilities in R5 did not include secondary effects like stun, knockback, root, etc., nor did many of them have visual effects. And in some cases they didn’t work at all (I’m looking at you Light spell!). For R6, we will be finishing out those abilities and adjusting the casting animations to work better with equipped weapons. We are also fixing some blending bugs that prevented many of the weapon animations from displaying properly. Once we address all these issues, we can resume work on card combat, deck building and the death system for Release 7 and 8. We are also going to take a pass at better color coding for combat floaties. Finally we will work weapon sheathing and unsheathing functionality so that we can explicitly know if you are ready to talk or kill!
  -  We also added support for separating the upper and lower body in the animation system which lets the avatars move and attack simultaneously!
• Looting: We are making some architectural changes to how we create, store, and transmit data in containers (chests, corpses, player houses, inventory, etc.) that should fix some of the looting exploits, like the one where all players could loot the same corpse equally, and corpses could be looted multiple times just by exiting and reentering a scene. We are also going to work on fixing issues related to targeting a corpse.
• Emotes: We will be working on some improvements to emotes that include looping emotes (dancing, conversation, etc.). We will also make it so when you are chatting we will play the convo emote automatically.
• Dialog: We are going to do an overall sanity pass on all dialogue, making sure it meets our standards on quest accessibility, making NPCs respond to more things, and that as many responses as possible are accessible through the dialogue tree.
• Navigation: We will continue to iterate on the overworld map with more animations, texture improvements and party member locations when they are inside a scene. We are also going to introduce a standard visual for entrance and exit locations on maps. For now that will take the form of an archway.
  -  While we finished some of this work we had started before on the 2D map the bulk of R6 was spent researching tools for creating the 3D overworld style we are returning to that I posted about shortly after R5.
• Player Housing: We have added/updated 4 new player houses (1 Rustic, Updated Lord Founder, Lord Benefactor, and Baron Benefactor). As with R5 we will no longer impose a time limit on ownership. However we may reset ownership at some point over the weekend to allow more folks time to experience housing.

So now that it is clear what you can expect, we should also be as clear about what you should not expect:

• Combat: Combat does not yet include random dealing, decks, combos, or advancement. 
• Performance: We have only done rudimentary optimizations and we do not yet have a full suite of performance fallbacks (LODs, etc.). This means the game will be quite slow on older machines, and due to memory usage, might be unstable in certain conditions (like densely decorated areas). With each release we will be doing further optimizations and adding to our fallbacks to improve performance.
• Crafting: The crafting system is in the game as a framework, but is still missing some key components like repair, events, and enhancement. Skill checks are also not in yet, so results are always 100% successful. Long term, the percentage chance to make items will depend on a myriad of variables and can result in a variety of results including: making the item desired, making a simpler version of the item that will need to be enhanced, or making a damaged version of the item that needs repair.
• Game Loop: Release 6 was a further iteration on our rudimentary game loop, but it is still very bare bones. Expect this to expand with each subsequent release but it won’t be truly complete until we hit Beta later this year.
• Advanced Player Housing: There are some advanced features for player housing, including waterfront properties, basements, home exterior decorations, and ceiling decorations that are not yet integrated. Expect to see these appear in future releases. 
• Visual Quality: Efforts to improve visual quality are ongoing. This started last release with increases to our art staff (technical artist) and continued this release with tons of work on lighting and shaders. We will continue to iterate on these until we have highly competitive visuals.

Here are links to instructions and known issues. Thank you again for your continued support. This is truly the most amazing community we have ever worked with and we are proud to be on this journey with you.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
aka Darkstarr
Executive Producer

______________________________________________________________

[Join the Release 6 conversation in the public forums]

Release 6 Player Instructions

Release 6 Known Issues

______________________________________________________________

 Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware's powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

______________________________________________________________

Remember, You Will Need to Register on the SotA Website and Link Your Kickstarter Account to Play Release 6

Stay on top of all the latest game development news by registering on our website, https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com. And if you have not already done so, please be sure to Link your Kickstarter Account, so we can ensure that you receive all of your backer rewards as soon as they are ready to roll out!

 [The following is from a SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]

Hello Everyone,

Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 5 access for all backers at First Responder level and above, and those with Weekend Access Passes, begins this Thursday, April 24 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 5 access will end on Sunday, April 27 at 10:00 PM Central Time. Starting today, you can begin installing and patching (see instructions below), but login will not be enabled until Thursday morning.

We are happy to report that we were able to add a bunch of new content and features, while iterating on existing ones. However those deliverables didn’t quite end up matching our original goals. The sheer scope of getting skills working, while also responding to R4 feedback, made us radically shift focus for Release 5. Below are the original R5 deliverables, along with some extra notes and new deliverables in italics.

RELEASE 5, April 24 - 27, 2014:

• Combat and Magic Skills: Finally you will no longer be confined to auto attack now that a wide array of combat and magic skills will be at your disposal. To let you test out a wide variety of these skills we will give you a bunch of skill points to allocate up and down as you wish.
  35 (of 171) Skills: Here is the skill list for R5. Most of these are in a very simple first state so some of them are missing secondary effects, like movement (Trip, Tumble, etc.), speed (Ice Fist), etc.
  - Blades:
      - Thrust
      - Double Thrust ("double swipe")
      - Whirling Blades
  - Bludgeon:
      - Crushing Blow
      - Knockback
  - Heavy Armor:
      - Defensive Stance
      - Inner Strength
  - Light Armor:
      - Dodge
      - Tumble
  - Medium Armor:
      - Glancing Blow
      - Trip
  - Polearms:
      - Push
      - Puncture
  - Ranged:
      - Aimed Shot
      - Disabling Shot
      - Piercing Shot
  - Shield:
      - Deflect
      - Shield Bash
  - Air:
      - Gust
      - Discharge
  - Lightning Death:
      - Death Touch
      - Death Ray
      - Corpse Explosion
  - Earth:
      - Stone Fist
      - Root
  - Fire:
      - Flame Fist
      - Fireball
  - Life:
      - Heal Self
      - Healing Ray
      - Purify
      - Resurrection
  - Sun:
      - Light
      - Searing Ray
  - Water:
      - Ice    - Fist
• Linear Lighting Model: As part of an ongoing effort to improve our visuals we have have switched from gamma lighting to linear lighting. This makes a lot of the details in our textures more visible but it has required us to touch every shader, texture, lighting setting, etc. in the game. Note that this is still a work in progress.
• Add On Store Conversion (Website): Our backers now have the ability to convert their add on store purchases into credits that can either be applied to their pledge or used for other add on purchases (this feature available on website only).
• Weekend Access Keys (Login): We added functionality to support weekend access to potential backers
• Journal: Results of conversations with the characters in our world will now appear in your Journal. This should aid questing tremendously without going as far as exclamation points overhead.
• Crafting: We have increased the number of starting recipes to give players a wider array of recipes so that discovery can be more intuitive.
• Compass: Navigating through our scenes can be quite challenging so we have added an on screen compass to help guide you around .
• Overland Map Polish: We continued iterating on the overland map. We added panning and zooming, animating objects (waves, windmills, etc.) and visibility of your party members.
• Combat Floaties: For those of you craving more information about what exactly is happening in combat we have added combat numbers that appear overhead during combat if you have Names Overhead toggled (via the N key).
• Health Bars: Discerning status from the health dot alongside the name in R4 did not work for many of you so we have moved to a more traditional health bar.
• New Creatures:
  - Chest Mimic
  - Skeleton Archer
  - Satyr Mage
  - Satyr Archer
• Traditional Combat Shortcut Bar: While we are still heavily committed to card style combat we quickly realized when playtesting this very early version that we don’t yet have enough supporting features (deck building, skill locking, etc) in place to make it fun.
• AFK Mode: When you type /afk or you are idle for a while your character will sit on the ground and [AFK] will be appended to the character name
• New Vale Scenes: We shifted focus to more Vale scenes so we could create a more complete area of the game (replacing placeholder maps) versus proceeding to the main map. Player Housing: We have added 12 new player houses (4 Rustic, 6 Wood & Plaster, 2 Duke Castles) and as mentioned above we increased the number of locations that players can place houses to a total of 13. That raises the number of lots to around 600. With that change we have decided that for R5 we will no longer impose a time limit on ownership.
  - Kingsport Sewers: An intense adventure area under Kingsport infested with the undead!
  - Standard Scenes: No more placeholders!
      - Road through the forest
      - Road through the grassland
      - Road through the hills
      - Grassland
  - Player Forest Village Variation 2: We used this plus Forest Village 1 to create a total of 10 Player Towns on the Vale
• Player Housing: We have added 12 new player houses (4 Rustic, 6 Wood & Plaster, 2 Duke Castles) and as mentioned above we increased the number of locations that players can place houses to a total of 13. That raises the number of lots to around 600. With that change we have decided that for R5 we will no longer impose a time limit on ownership.

So now that it is clear what you can expect, we should also be as clear about what you should not expect:

• Combat: Combat does not yet include random dealing, decks, combos, or advancement.
• Performance: We have only done rudimentary optimizations and we do not yet have a full suite of performance fallbacks (LODs, etc.). This means the game will be quite slow on older machines, and due to memory usage, might be unstable in certain conditions (like densely decorated areas). With each release we will be doing further optimizations and adding to our fallbacks to improve performance.
• Crafting: The crafting system is in the game as a framework, but is still missing some key components like repair, events, and enhancement. Skill checks are also not in yet, so results are always 100% successful. Long term, the percentage chance to make items will depend on a myriad of variables and can result in a variety of results including: making the item desired, making a simpler version of the item that will need to be enhanced, or making a damaged version of the item that needs repair.
• Game Loop: Release 5 is a further iteration on our rudimentary game loop, but it is still very bare bones. Expect this to expand with each subsequent release but it won’t be truly complete until we hit Beta later this year
• Advanced Player Housing: There are some advanced features for player housing, including waterfront properties, basements, home exterior decorations, and ceiling decorations that are not yet integrated. Expect to see these appear in future releases.
• Visual Quality: Efforts to improve visual quality are ongoing. This started last release with increases to our art staff (especially in animation) and continued this release with the switch to linear lighting. Next steps include looking at different shaders we can composite (relief, detail, etc.), adding more triangles to meshes to catch light better (like the flat dungeon walls) , replacing animations that came with purchased assets (wolves, bears, etc.), revisiting avatar mesh proportions, skin shaders, hair, etc.

Here are links to instructions and known issues. Thank you again for your continued support. This is truly the most amazing community we have ever worked with and we are proud to be on this journey with you.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
aka Darkstarr
Executive Producer

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[Join the Release 5 conversation in the public forums]

Release 5 Player Instructions

Release 5 Known Issues

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 Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware's powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

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Remember, You Will Need to Register on the SotA Website and Link Your Kickstarter Account to Play Release 5

Stay on top of all the latest game development news by registering on our website, https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com. And if you have not already done so, please be sure to Link your Kickstarter Account, so we can ensure that you receive all of your backer rewards as soon as they are ready to roll out!