Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #78

by GolemDragon · Published June 20, 2014 · Updated April 20, 2015

Good Evening Friends and Fellow Avatars!

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

SotA Awarded “Best Indie MMO” at E3 2014!
Lord British Presents the Winners of the DnD1 Contest!
SotA at RTX!
Alienware Sponsors R8 Prizes & 1000 R8 Access Keys
Nerdist: E3 Field Report: Jessica Chobot Interviews Richard Garriott
The Map of New Britannia
Virtual Collector Reward: Puzzle Box
SotAwiki Guild Database
Pack Animals Stretch Goal
New Player Town: Metropolis
Ring of Stones Village Home
Through the Lunar Rift!
One New Britannian, Two New Britannians, Three…
10% Pledge Bonus!
Upcoming Events

SotA Awarded “Best Indie MMO” at E3 2014!

Lord British Presents yon Winners of the DnD1 Contest!

I, Lord British, am pleased to announce the winners of my Royal Challenge, the DnD1 Contest! In total, we had 24 Entrants, all of which performed admirably and have earned my utmost respect and gratitude for participating.

Out of those entries, the Team and I selected 6 finalists, three in each of the two categories; Best Native Web version and Best Unity Plug-in.

For the Best Native Web Version, the two runners-up are:

Darius Makaitus

Santiago Zapata

You can check out a video of Santiago Zapata’s entry here:

And the Winner of Best Native Web Version is…

Mundi King

For the Best Unity Plug-in Version, our Runners-up are:

Joel François

Sean Gailey

And the Winner of Unity Version is:

Richard Flemming

Both Mundi King and Richard Flemming will receive a $550 Citizen pledge, and our 4 runners-up will receive a $165 Collector pledge! Congratulations to our winners and my humble thanks to all of those who participated.

Lord British

SotA at RTX 2014!

Some of you may recall that Portalarium launched their Kickstarter campaign in March 2013 with a live broadcast from the Rooster Teeth studios in Austin, Texas. We’re excited to announce that Shroud of the Avatar will be showing at the RTX Convention hosted by Rooster Teeth, July 4-6.

Alienware is providing their kicka** X51 gaming rigs to power the game demos, and Plantronics is furnishing their awesome RIG headsets so attendees have an optimal game audio experience! If you’re a fan of Plantronics Gaming Headsets (like many are), then check out their Plantronics Gaming Facebook page, and if you like what you see then give them a “Like”!

If you’re at the convention then stop by, say Hi, and check out the latest version of the game (they are in booth #235)

Release 7 Re-Opens for RTX Weekend

The Dev team is re-opening SotA Release 7 during the RTX convention the weekend of July 4-6, so be sure and check it out if you can’t make it during the normally scheduled weekend access (June 26-29).

Alienware Sponsors 1000 R8 Access Keys and Prizes for R8 Players

During the four weeks leading up to SotA Release 8, 1000 members of the Alienware Arena Shroud of the Avatar Group will receive Weekend Access Keys to SotA Release 8, scheduled for July 24-27.

In addition, Alienware is sponsoring prizes to be given away randomly to players that log in to Release 8 during the weekend access period

Stay tuned to a future update for more details…

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]

Nerdist: E3 Field Report: Jessica Chobot Interviews Richard Garriott

The Map of New Britannia

Over the past seven months, many of you have painstakingly, and patiently, crafted the world map of New Britannia from the puzzle pieces we would reveal each week. The last puzzle piece was recently revealed, and today, for the first time publicly, we’re revealing the finished world map (without all the puzzle lines)! Enjoy!

Virtual Collector Reward: Puzzle Box

One of the recently announced new Virtual Collector pledge rewards is this elegant puzzle box. Once per week this box presents the player with a puzzle to solve. If solved the box will generate a random item (money, weapon, resource, etc).

SotAwiki Guild Database

Community member Violation has started a SotA Guild Database on the SotAwiki site. If you currently have a SotA guild we recommend you jump over there and enter your guild data into the database. Here’s the information Violation shared with us:

I’ve started a guild database on sotawiki that has a public API which is easily queried. A few examples of queries can be found on a sandbox page I created: http://sotawiki.net/sota/User:Violation/Guilds. Fenyx4 is the mastermind behind making everything appear correctly and he understands the API much better than I do; however, the basic principle is easy to see already.

I’m leaving it up to the players to add information (Example page, my guild, http://sotawiki.net/sota/Guild:Order_of_Vengeance) and I just released it to the public…so I expect it will take a couple weeks to get populated. I am planning on promoting this and ensuring it is a usable way to keep updated on what guilds are available and what playstyles they have.

Pack Animals Stretch Goal

This week the stretch goal store is adding Pack Animals. For this stretch goal, you will have access to pack animals to help carry all your valuable goods around the game.

The pack animal items available for purchase are a cria (baby llama), donkey foal, saddlebags house decoration:

Player Owned Metropolis

The Player Owned City wasn’t big enough for The Bear Tavern Guild, so at their request we’ve added the even bigger Player Owned Metropolis to the Add-On Store! Metropolis includes:

83,400 m² of player lots
A design session with the Dev Team to define details including:
- Name of Town
- Location: Roughly which quadrant of the map. (Exact hex will be determined by Portalarium, Inc.)
- Biome: Forest, Mountains, Grasslands, Swamp, etc.
- NPC Building Definition (inn, smithy, etc.)
- NPC names and stories
- Lot Selection: Determine which lots of which size you want. For example at this size:
  - 139 Village Lots
  - 123 Village Lots + 1 Castle Lot
  - etc.
X Keys to X Locked Lots:
- Keys equal to the number of lots chosen
- Owner of the keys can lock and unlock lots at will so they can actively control who gets to live there
- The key owner can evict an occupant and lock the lot using the key
- Players will still need lot deeds to claim the lots once the town owner unlocks the lots
Central Square with 15 NPC owned buildings
Add On Store Houses:
- 4 Add On Store Village Houses
- 4 Add On Store Town Houses
- 4 Add On Store City Houses

NOTES: Player Owned Towns do not include the lot deeds. There will be a path to achieve this in game via in game gold purchase but the ownership of the scene will incur a rental fee

Village Ring of Stones

Brand new in the Add-On Store is the Village Ring of Stones. For those of you looking for something truly unusual that makes a statement (or if you’re just really into Druids), then the Village Ring of Stones is just the thing for you! You may recognize this structure as the stones surrounding the Lunar Rifts in the game.

Get Your Village Ring of Stones Now for 50% off!

For a limited time the team is offering 50% off this home! Reserve yours (or send as a gift) at the Add-On Store!

Through the Lunar Rift!

These tales, told as a weekly series of journal entries written by Gina “FireLotus” Dionne, will feature the people and places of New Britannia and give you a bit of insight, and hopefully some inspiration, when creating your own stories while exploring the lands of Shroud of the Avatar.

The Body Count in Braemar

Of all the nearby settlements, Braemar has certainly had the lion’s share of loss and devastation since the darkness started spreading over The Vale. Flynn Gilson is the innkeeper over there, and I miss both our chats and his family recipe of brews. Saying that man has ale pumping through his veins isn’t far from the truth; his family has been brewing here in the Vale since the first pint was poured. And he used to export kegs of it all over the Vale back when the trade routes were open.

I still have a keg of one of his best that I only tap when something is weighing particularly heavy on me. It’s dark as pitch, with hints of cocoa; a classic dopplebock even if that’s not what they call them here. It’s smooth and strong and bold, even when I’m not. And it certainly helps soothe a troubled mind.

The last merchants to make it out of Braemar brought a lot more than kegs of ale with them, however. They brought monstrous tales of the long dead rising up and snatching the living from their beds. There had been rumors up until that point. Hunters going missing, travelers and bandits being taken if they strayed too far South, But if the stories are true, then this was the first full-on, organized siege these things had attempted. And it was all too successful, at least from their point of view.

They decimated the outer farmlands, snatching every man, woman and child from their beds while they slept. The only person left behind was a farmer named John… or maybe it was Thom. I’m not certain. But rumor has it that when he heard the screams of his children, he ran for cover. Now, I’m not one to judge, but it would take something unimaginably horrendous for a father to turn his back on his family, especially his children. I don’t know exactly what happened in that farmhouse, but whatever it was, it was the stuff of nightmares, I’m certain.

So unlike the undead around Owl’s Nest (what I like to call Nestor’s menagerie), this horde was well organized. And considering those they took were reportedly taken alive, I can only assume were also trying to grow their ranks. So, it’s fair to say that someone, or something, is at the helm, calling the shots. But two questions still remain. Who and why..

Read the rest of the story in the forums

One New Britannian, Two New Britannians, Three New Britannians, Four…

Several of our community members have pointed out that the number of New Britannians (registered members of the SotA website) has been growing at what appears to be an artificially rapid rate for the past several months, probably as a result of bots creating fake accounts. So last week, Tassilo Philipp (Mr. Mustache Man) hand-crafted a custom CAPTCHA process for SotA website account creation, which definitely slowed down the growth of new accounts.

Unfortunately, there is no totally safe way for us to remove potentially fake bot accounts from our database without accidentally deleting a real account, so we’re going to leave all existing accounts active for now.

Only 14 Days remain to get your 10% Pledge Bonus!

10PercentPledgeBonus_left_small 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! (Note: the original date started on June 6 but since we published the new reward information in the public forums on June 5 it was decided to start the pledge bonus promotion a day earlier)

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]