Good Evening Friends and Avatars!  On the eve of Pre-Alpha Release 9, I wanted to bring you the instructions for this new test because we have some fair bit of new things added and multiple patches that will need to be downloaded.  One word of warning – a few community members have told me that they needed to uninstall and reinstall the game as well, so if you have issues – do keep that in mind….

As always the instructions are also available in a forum post.  I hope you all get a chance to test some of the new additions.  Especially with some of the tweaks that have now come to combat in this short time from our last test period.

Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 9 access for all backers at First Responder level and above (as well as winners of the MMORPG.com R9 sweepstakes) begins this Thursday, August 21 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 9 access will end on Monday, August 25 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.

Here are links to instructions and known issues. NOTE: Mac and Linux users will have to completely re-install the client for this release. We apologize for that inconvenience.

We are incredibly excited to share this latest release with all of you. We continued to make major progress on combat with huge increases in content (50 skills, combos, reagents, consumables, PVP Team Games, etc.). At the same time we are steadily expanding the world with multiple new maps to explore and new creatures to fight.

Without further ado here are the R9 deliverables, along with some extra notes and new deliverables in italics.

RELEASE 9, August 21 – 24, 2014:

• PVP: We will add at least one more Open PVP scene and we will introduce some simple PVP rules / mechanics including scoring and the concept of teams.
  • Virtue vs. Chaos: There is a new arena in Ardoris that has a team versus team structure that includes a scoreboard and timers. Players can choose to play for Virtue or Chaos. Matches will last approximately 10 minutes. At the end of that time the team with the most kills wins and the score is reset.
• Combat Systems: We will be iterating and adding to the fundamental systems that support combat, including more secondary effects like bludgeons damaging gear. Magic will now require reagents to cast spells at full strength (current thinking is you can still cast without reagents but the effectiveness of the spell is reduced for each missing reagent). We will also be adding the ability to execute combos and we will add functionality to positioning and cover.
  • Reagents: Spells that are tier 3 and above in magic schools will now require reagents to cast. The fewer required reagents you have the greater the fizzle chance, the greater the focus cost, and the longer the cooldown timer, so keep your inventory full of reagents if you want to maximize your magic effectiveness. This is current design but may change based on gameplay feedback. Reagents can be purchased from all bartenders for now. Long term they will be found in magic shops, alchemists, etc.
  • Combos: The ability to execute combos by combining two glyphs is now functional along with 8 combos. Combos are created by dragging a glyph on top of another glyph which creates a new glyph in your toolbar. These include new icons that combine the source glyphs.
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• Combat Skills: For Release 9, our goal is to flesh out more of the schools of Water, Bludgeons, and Light Armor. We will also make a pass at adding innate skills to all schools.
  • 50 New Skills: We were able to complete 50 new skills including the addition of an entire new school: Tactics. NOTE: For reference we added 22 skills in R8.
  • Fire Magic:
    • Ring of Fire: Creates a targeted lasting flaming field that does area of effect fire damage
  • Water Magic:
    • Ice Arrow: Ranged ice attack with chance to slow the target
    • Shield of Ice: Buff that absorbs damage and resists fire
    • Ice Field: Debuff that slows multiple targets in an area around the caster
    • Summon Ice Elemental: Summons an ice elemental that does ice attacks
    • Icy Breath (innate): Increases power and duration of slowing ice attacks
    • Blue Blooded (innate): Increases Cold Resistance
  • Air Magic:
    • Dash: Buff that increases movement speed
    • Rapid discharge (innate): Increases stun effects of Air Spells
    • Well Grounded (innate): Increases electrical resistance
  • Death Magic:
    • Death mastery (innate): Life drains give more hit points
  • Life Magic:
    • Life Power (innate): Increases healing effects of life spells
    • Life Reach (innate): Increases range & radius of life spells
  • Earth Magic:
    • Obsidian Arrow: Ranged physical attack that can ignore armor
    • Earthquake: Causes earthquake around caster that does damage and has stun chance
    • Strength of Earth: Buff that increases strength
    • Earth’s Embrace: Buff that covers the caster in stone that increases damage resistance but decreases movement speed.
    • Attunement with Earth (innate): Increases strength and damage resistance
    • Sympathy of Stone (innate): Increases damage resistance and damage absorption
  • Sun Magic:
    • Enlightenment: Buff that increases intelligence
  • Focus
    • Mind Wipe: Discards all your current glyphs and deals you a full new hand (cannot fizzle)
    • Mind Lock: Buff that extends the life of the glyphs currently in your hand (cannot fizzle)
    • Consumption (innate): Increases the number of consumables (potions, food, etc.) you can put in your deck
  • Bludgeons:
    • Knockdown: Stunning Attack that also has chance to knockdown
    • Ground Pound: Caster strikes the ground sending out ripples of force that damages and stuns all enemies within radius around caster
    • Stunner (innate): Increases Stun effects with Bludgeons
    • Crusher (innate): Increases Damage with Bludgeons
  • Polearms:
    • Reach (innate): Increases range of Polearms
    • Defensive Positions (innate): Increases damage resistance when a polearm is equipped
  • Ranged:
    • Eagle Eye (innate): Increases accuracy with Ranged weapons
    • Range (innate): Increases range of Ranged weapons
    • Draw Strength (innate): Increases Damage of Ranged weapons
  • Shield:
    • Angles (innate): Increased damage resistance when a shield is equipped
    • Stand Your Ground (innate): Increase stun resistance when a shield is equipped
  • Tactics: We replaced Medium Armor with this school that combines some medium armor attacks (Trip & Brawl), off hand attack (aka dual wield) as well as general innate skills related to gear preservation, health, and stun resistance.
    • Offhand Attack: Quick attack with 1 handed weapon equipped in offhand. Note that because we moved this skill out of the Blades school so any 1 handed weapon can now be equipped in the offhand.
    • Offhand Defense (innate): Defense bonus when 1 handed weapon equipped in off hand
    • Hard Headed (innate): Increases resistance to stun, knockback & knockdown effects
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  • Light Armor:
    • Flurry: Buff that increases attack speed
    • Sprint: Buff that increases movement speed
    • Swiftness (innate): Reduces slug count from light armor and increases movement and attack speed when light armor is equipped
    • Acrobatics (innate): Increases damage resistance and sprint movement effects when light armor is equipped.
  • Heavy Armor: Note that chain is now considered heavy armor
    • Body Slam: Stunning attack that comes at cost of increasing damage to armor NOTE: armor damage not implemented yet
  • Combos: These include new icons that combine the source glyphs.
    • Shock Arrow: Aimed Shot + Discharge. Ranged attack that does area of effect electrical and physical damage with small stun chance.
    • Flaming Bash: Shield Bash + Flame Fist. Quick fire damage shield attack that has a chance to stun and a chance to add small fire damage over time effect.
    • Icy Thrust: Thrust + Ice Fist. Powerful Melee Attack which also freezes target to slow it down
    • Icy Puncture: Puncture + Ice Fist. Attack that ignores armor and slows target.
    • Fiery Decay: Fire Arrow + Death Ray. Ranged fire attack with chance to add a fire damage over time that is also life drain
    • Sawblade Sweep: Rend + Whirling Blades. Attack that hits multiple targets around the caster that also has a chance to add a bleeding damage over time effect.
    • Hamstring: Rend + Trip. Attack that causes target to be slowed and has a chance to add a bleeding damage over time effect.
    • Titan Smash: Knockback + Body Slam. Attack that deals a large amount of damage to a target and knocks them back leaving them stunned afterwards
• Scenes: Ardoris, the waterfront city on the main continent filled with canals and framed by two opposing castles, will now be available to players. Other adventuring scenes on the main continent will also appear. These new scenes on the mainland will be accessed via the Lunar Rifts which will now change destinations based on time of day. The player town island will now come in two additional density levels that increase the number of lots on those islands.
  • Lunar Rift: The Lunar Rift in Owl’s Head now transports folk to various locations on the main continent and those locations change based on the time of day. During the day it will lead to maps on the surface (Ardoris or Ferig’s Battle Camp), during the night it will lead to underground maps (Blackblade Pass or The Graf Gem Mines). The Lunar Rift in Kingsport is no longer functional.
  • Port Mirren and Estercove: The player town islands now have more lots in them with Port Mirren having the highest density.
  • Ardoris: The home of the Shogun Siranto and the Priestess Siri, who face each other across twin castles and a city of canals and mystery, and the ancestral home of Sequanna, the Titan of Love. This is the first initial release for Ardoris, and right now the castles are not yet open for travelers. Ardoris can be accessed via a boat in Kingsport or through the Lunar Rift in Owl’s Head.
  • Blackblade Pass: The enslaved Fauns of New Britannia spread rumors of Blackblade Pass. While most travelers must pass through the heavily contested Hilt, they claim that these ancient passages can be navigated from one side of the ancient lava scar to the other. If true, this passage might also run deep into lava pits, so explorers should beware the fiery depths and the rumors of Fire Elementals that lurk there!
• New Creatures: Several new creatures will come online including a new mimic and an Ice Elemental, as well as variations on existing creatures (liches, kobolds, etc.).
• Crafting: Durability and Repair will come online.
  • We made the call for R9 that getting more skills in would give us more testing data than adding durability and repair. We are currently targeting R11 for this functionality.
• Overworld Animating Avatars: Players will now see their avatars (along with their party members) animating on the overworld map.
  • Currently the overworld is a separate and different kind of scene from all our other scenes. That means all functionality like chat, inventory, animation, etc. needs to run in two different modes: one of the overworld and one for the game scenes. We are in the process of changing the overworld into a scene just like our regular scenes which will unlock a ton of functionality that we currently have to duplicate. Unfortunately this is a very large task that will take more than one release to get functioning.
• Intro Cinematic: We are making an animatic version of the intro with narration by our very own Bill Johnson (aka The Guardian).
• Character Customization: At least one new facial feature will come online. Additionally an update to how we handle hair and facial hair will add layers, transparency, and animations.
  • Nose and Ear Customization: We added morph target sliders for noses and ears. Cheeks and jaws should come online in R10
  • Hair: The good news is we have a good solution identified for how we want to handle layers and transparency for hair. The bad news is we did not get the solution until very close to the end of the release. For now only the mohawk hairstyle is using this new solution. In R10 we hope to replace all the “plastic” hair as well as add animation support for longer hair.
• Minimap System: Tired of getting lost in Owl’s Head? Well you can now rejoice, for in R9 you will have maps (as inventory objects) that when used will bring up the map of the scene you are in and mark your location on it. This will be the first iteration of the minimap system, so only a few maps will be available.
  • Many major locations in the game now have maps for them (Ardoris, Braemar, Kingsport, Owl’s Head, and Ravensmoor Dungeon). All characters start with these maps. Long term maps will have to be purchased, traded, crafted, or looted.
• Consumables: The consumable system is now online which opens up the ability to have potions, scrolls, food, poisons, etc. In Release 9 there are heal and focus potions that each new character starts with. Additional magic potions can be purchased from bartenders for now. Long term they will be found in magic shops, alchemists, etc. Potions are used by dragging them into your deck from your glyph list or directly into your toolbar in “locked mode”.
• Books (premade): There are now books with content in them including game instructions, known issues, Fire Lotus Journals, Combos, and some player fan fiction as well. The instructions and known issues will be in every characters starting inventory. The other books can be found in bartenders shop inventory for now until we place them elsewhere in later releases.
• Default Decks: We now start each character with most skill points spent and 3 decks prebuilt including Ranged Magic, Blades, and Hybrid (mix of Blades and Magic).
• Player Lot Item Limits: One of our biggest performance challenges is performance on player lots when there are large of decorative items on them. Additionally without item limits that vary based on lot size and house size we are missing an element of progression when you upgrade your lot and/or house. Note that items inside containers (ex. chests) do not count against this limit and instead will be limited by the container’s encumbrance limit (when encumbrance and weight come online).
  • Lights: Light radii of shadow casting lights can no longer overlap each other
  • Exterior Limits: Each lot size has a limit of how many exterior items it can support. This number will include any items placed on the exteriors of structures including balconies, roofs, exterior facing walls, etc. This is a fixed number per lot type. Lights have an independent limit since they are so costly.
    • Row: 5 objects + 1 Light
    • Village: 400 objects + 6 Lights
    • Town: 700 objects + 8 Lights
    • City: 1000 objects + 12 Lights
    • Keep: 1400 objects + 16 Lights
    • Castle: 2000 objects + 20 Lights
  • Interior Limits: Each house has a number of interior items
    • Row: 350 objects + 6 Lights per floor
    • Village: 400 objects + 10 Lights per floor
    • Town: 1000 objects + 16 Lights per floor
    • City: 2000 objects + 30 Lights per floor

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

• 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 9 is a further iteration on our rudimentary game loop, but it is still very bare bones. For instance there is no character advancement. 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 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 again are the links to instructions and known issues. NOTE: Mac and Linux users will have to completely re-install the client for this release. We apologize for that inconvenience.

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