Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #111

Greetings Friends and Fellow Avatars!

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

Raise the Underworld
New Pledge Rewards: Bank Slots
Receiving Pledge Rewards and Add-On Items in Release 14
Time.com includes SotA in Top 50 Most Anticipated Games of 2015
The Release 15 Grand Tour Silver Jester Carnival Mask
Limited Edition Jester Carnival Mask
Novia Overworld Work-In-Progress
In-game Community Weekend Events
This Week In The News
Upcoming Events

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPlAKIqUWAU?feature=oembed]

Otherside Entertainment launched their Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter campaign this Wednesday, February 4th. They got off to a great start and have almost reached half their funding goal in just a few short days!

As described last week, long-time friend and former Origin protégé, Paul Neurath, is rebooting the legendary Ultima Underworld games. It has been more than a decade long wait, but the stars have aligned and Paul has long last freed the rights to move forward with the franchise. We’re especially excited that, just as the original Ultima and Underworld shared a connection on backstory and fictional elements, so too will Shroud of the Avatar and Underworld Ascendant.

Additionally, Portalarium is teaming up with Underworld so that backers of both games can get special in-game items.

Here’s the description from the Underworld Kickstarter page:

Shroud of the Avatar Special Item

To celebrate our history with the realms of Lord British, we’re teaming up to prepare a special
item for backers who also support Shroud of the Avatar. Watch this space to learn more soon.

We’ll announce in an upcoming update what the special Underworld/SotA co-backer item will be, so stay tuned!

Be sure and check out the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter site, and if you are as excited about it as we are, then show your support and make a pledge to Raise the Underworld!

For more information on Underworld Ascendant, follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

New Pledge Rewards: Bank SlotsRelease 14 included Bank storage as a major new feature. For that initial release, we gave everyone a fixed bank size that could hold 1000 items. Starting with Release 15, initial bank size will be based on pledge level. The bigger the pledge the more bank slots you will start with. We came to the starting number by looking at the number of items a starting player begins with and then we rounded that up to the nearest integer of 5 and then doubled that number. This means you will start with a little more than double the number of slots you need. For our highest three tiers we increased beyond that by several orders. Current thinking is that players will be able to purchase additional slots with in-game gold (up to a limit) and expansions beyond that will be purchasable through the add on store.

Please note that the exact numbers for bank slots will be iterated on over the next several months, but we believe these numbers are a good first approximation. Over the next week we will add the numbers to each pledge so you can view on our website exactly how much you get with each pledge. Here, for example, are the starting bank numbers for Benefactor-era backers:

Receiving Pledge Rewards and Add-On Items in Release 14

As mentioned in previous updates, backers will start receiving their pledge rewards and Add-On items in-game when they log into Release 14, which launched January 28. For all the previous Releases the team would freely populate these reward items throughout the game for anyone to find. But those reward items are no longer be freely available. Instead, you will be able to find your Add-On items and the rewards included in your pledge tier at the new banks. In R14, there will be a banker NPC in every map where there is player housing because when you switch houses or unclaim a lot, all the decorations will go to your bank. In most locations the Town Crier is now also a banker.

Banks are local only. You can see your items in other bank locations (they appear in location tabs), but you can only access the items in the bank you are currently at. Pledge rewards are an exception to this and can be accessed from any location.

(NOTE: there are some Add-On and Pledge reward items that have not been built yet so you may notice some of your items not showing up in your bank. If you delete your character, all equipped and inventory items, including pledge reward items, will be deleted and cannot be recovered until the next wipe).

Time.com includes SotA in Top 50 Most Anticipated Games of 2015

We were excited to see Shroud of the Avatar included in the Time.com Top 50 Games for 2015 across every major gaming platform!

“These are the 50 most Anticipated Video Games of 2015. Check out the biggest games coming to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U and 3DS this year…” – TIME.com

Release 15 Grand Tour Quest Reward: Silver Jester Carnival Mask

Just as in our past several releases, the dev team are including a Grand Tour Quest in R15 designed to guide you through all the new content. Just in time for the Carnival season, you will be rewarded with a Silver Jester Carnival Mask when you complete the R15 Grand Tour Quest. This reward can only be unlocked during Release 15 (did someone say rares?), so be sure to log in to R15 starting February 26 and talk to all the Tour Guides!

Special Edition Jester Carnival Mask

In celebration of Carnival season, this Special Edition Jester Carnival Mask is available in the Add-On Store until March 31st! Get yours while they’re available!

Novia Overworld Work-In-ProgressFor the last few weeks we’ve been showing you glimpses of Abe Robertson’s work on the Novia Overworld. Abe’s been busy over the past week and has some updated images of his Novia Overworld work-in-progress (which we hope to include in Release 15):

In-game Weekend Community EventsOur amazing community has another great lineup of in-game events planned for this weekend. If you missed out on these player events during the previous Releases, we highly recommend you check some of them out this weekend. Here is the latest schedule of player events from the Avatar’s Circle Community Events calendar (http://avatarscircle.com/community-events/):

Saturday, February 7
9:00am CST – PaxLair Working Hours – Host Winfield (Valemark)
9:300am CST – All Player Towns Gathering – templates (PaxLair, Valmark; “/zone Winfield”; details)
11:00am CST – Church of the Dark Star – Saturday Service – Topic: Accountability – subset of Honor (PaxLair, Valemark)
12:30pm CST – MGT R14 Grand Tour Quest (Braemer, or “/zone Erik OConnor”)
2:00pm CST – Bear Tavern Brawl – Tag Team! R14 (Location TBD; “/zone Balec deCani”, or “/zone Archaon Avenguard”; details)

Sunday, February 8
5:30am CST – Explore Novia with royalsexy (Owl’s Head entrance)
7:00pm CST – PaxLair Meeting (Valemark, or “/zone Winfield”)
8:00pm CST – Fishing with Winfield (some lake or pond, “/zone Winfield”)

This Week In the News