It has been nearly a year since the completion of Shroud of the Avatar’s Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, and Portalarium are in a mood to celebrate. In fact, they’ve already kicked things off, having held three (I think) “Deep Dive” Google+ Hangouts, in which the team at Portalarium have gone into depth (yeah) about a particular aspect of Shroud of the Avatar. The first one focused on Combat, Magic, and (Item, I assume) Affinity, the second on PvP and Death, and the third (held today) on Crafting.

Upcoming Deep Dives include Player Housing (tomorrow), the Single Player Offline gameplay mode (single-player Ultima fans wanting more information about Shroud of the Avatar’s single-player experience are advised to tune in), the Multiplayer game modes and how Instancing is handled, and Fishing (because of course) and Character Customization.

As well, Portalarium will be giving away an Alienware laptop and a trip to Austin and the Portalarium studio to a pair of lucky backers. I…gather that these are “no entry required” draws, in the sense that if you’re a backer of Shroud of the Avatar, your name is already in the hat (so to speak). Both draws take place on April 7th, the actual anniversary of the Kickstarter campaign’s end.

The 7th will also see Shroud of the Avatar backers allowed to log in and play “Release 4.x” of the game, for most of the day. A special 12-hour Google+ Hangout will also be held coincident therewith.

Personally, I’ll be happy to just be able to log in to Release 4.x at any point on Monday. That said, there really is something for just about everyone in this selection of events and topics, which is good to see. Hopefully more than a few Dragons tune in to the Single Player Offline Deep Dive; I know this is one area where Ultima fans (single-player Ultima fans, to be specific) have had a goodly number of concerns about the direction of the game and Portalarium’s ability to deliver on their promises.