Instructions for, and details about, Shroud of the Avatar Release 2 have been published at the game’s official website. As was the case last time, the post informs you of what to expect when you are able to log in to the game tomorrow:

RELEASE 2: January 23 – January 25 2014

• Crafting: We will be opening up crafting for testing with more than 100 recipes. Chests full of crafting resources will be provided. Crafting will initially focus on refining and production for smithing, tailoring, and carpentry.
• Shopping: Shopkeepers will be open for business for selling and buying.
• Town 2: An additional municipality (likely village sized) will be open for business! Entering the swirling blue portal in the ring of stones will take you from one town to the other. We chose Kingsport for Town 2.
• List Inventory: For those who prefer spreadsheets to immersion. The inventory battle royale continues! Setting this option will change all containers into lists except for crafting tables (coming in R3).
• Character Customization++: Characters from R1 will be wiped, but you will now have even more options when creating your character! Now there are even more ways to look unique, including: facial features, scaling, and more content (hairstyles, head shapes, skin tones, hair colors, etc.) We were also able to include helmets and offhand items (torch and shield).
• Jumping: Tired of not being able to jump that fence? Well tire no more as we now have jumping. And not just any old jumping but player controlled height jumping. A quick tap on the spacebar barely lifts the player but holding down the spacebar allows the player to clear those pesky walls with a high jump. Long term jumping will use focus and will likely be affected by weight carried.
• Run Speed: Many of you commented on the slow run speed so we increased it by 50%, which feels much more satisfying. We will continue to tune this and balance it with an upcoming Dash skill that uses Focus as well as the Sprint buff in the Light Armor School of combat.
• Mac & Linux: OSX and Linux support is now working (with a few caveats). The game currently requires a two button mouse and while a trackpad technically works we are not fully supporting it yet. For Linux, Unity only officially supports Ubuntu so if you are running other versions it may not work.
• Recipe Log: We had originally planned to put crafting in R2 without a recipe log but quickly discovered how amazingly not fun that was. Discovery is great but not having any record of that discovery is just punishing. So we got in a recipe book that will track your recipes.

And here’s what’s missing:

• Configurable Controls: We completely understand the myriad reasons why players desire the ability to play the game with different control schemes and we are working on providing that functionality, but it will not be ready until Release 3 at the earliest.
• Shopping: We originally planned to have the beginnings of the NPC section of the economy including currency (gold) and NPC shopkeepers. An unfortunate side effect of adding Jumping in was that it took away time from these systems which have caused us to push them out until Release 3.
• Crafting: The crafting system is in the game as a framework, but is still missing some key components like resource gathering, repair, and enhancement. We are also not doing any skill checks 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.
• Performance: We have only done rudimentary optimizations and we do not yet have a full suite of 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.
• Game Loop: Even though we have clearly stated that there will not be a complete game loop (adventure, loot, spend, craft, quest, etc.) until Release 4 there is still some expectation of those activities. For R2 there is just character creation / customization, NPC conversation, home decoration and the beginnings of crafting.
• 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 with the goal that by Release 4 they should all be present. While waterfront housing is not working yet, we wanted you to still be able to view the three waterfront houses we created so you will find them in Kingsport as static buildings that you can visit.

If you still have Shroud of the Avatar installed from Release 1, you’ll can just open the game client; it will grab the necessary patches right now, in advance of the game being opened to backers tomorrow. If you don’t have Shroud of the Avatar installed, you can grab the Windows version’s installer here; details about the OS X and Linux (Ubuntu, officially) releases will be posted here tomorrow. There are a few caveats and issues specific to both non-Windows builds; read through to the end of the instructions for details.

And if you just can’t wait, head on over to this early preview of Release 2 at Ten Ton Hammer, which focuses primarily on the crafting systems that will feature in the Release and the propagation of player-crafted items throughout the world of New Britannia.

Oh, yeah…they have some new screenshots.