Greetings Friends and Fellow Avatars!

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

• Necropolis: The Halls of the Dead
• Underworld Ascendant: The Dark Elven “Kinsman” Buckler
• Verdantis Shardfall““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`
• Novia Overworld Work-In-Progress
• SotA Reaches 50,000 Backers!
• In-game Community Weekend Events
• This Week In The News
• Upcoming Events

Scene from the Necropolis Dungeon

Necropolis: The Halls of the Dead

Scott “Scottie” Jones has taken off his environmental artist hat and put on his world building hat for Release 15. In just a few short weeks you’ll be able to explore his new dungeon: Necropolis!

Long spoken of in whispers by the living, Necropolis is the final refuge of the souls of the restless dead. It is there that the Lords of the Undead have long made their home, and there must travel those brave Avatars who seek to unravel the mystery of why the dead make war on the living after many centuries of peaceful coexistence. Those who wish to traverse their dark halls must learn the secret language of the dead. Rumors abound of an underground river, a passage to some far away lands. Enter, Avatar, and have your character measured and learn from those who haunt its halls… but know that the Undead have no need of material wealth, and what they may ask in exchange for answers could be a dear price indeed.

As we described last week, our 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 at 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.

Last week we announced that we’re teaming up with Underworld Ascendant so that backers of both games will get a special in-game item. This week, we’re excited to announce the special item is a magical Dark Elven “Kinsman” Buckler!

This buckler, inscribed with the Dark Elven symbol, has a moonstone gem inset. If a player owns the buckler in both Shroud of the Avatar and Underworld Ascendant, then the moonstone will glow with the warmth of kinship. This signifies that the Dark Elven clans, though sundered between distant worlds, still are one. The Dark Elven Buckler is currently available in the SotA Add-On Store, and will soon be available as an Add-On on the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter page.

Otherside Entertainment is already at 70% of their funding goal for their Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter campaign, but needs your help to reach their goal and start working toward their stretch goals! Be sure and check out the Underworld 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!

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

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

Verdantis Shardfall

Scottie’s not the only one wearing a new hat for Release 15, Andy Cortez is also taking a break from creating environmental art assets and has been crafting a new map, the Verdantis Shardfall. This map is located on a marshy island off the west coast of the Verdantis region of Novia.

Novia Overworld Work-In-Progress

For the last few weeks we’ve been showing you glimpses of Abe Robertson’s work on the Novia Overworld. Abe shifted over to working in Unity 5 this week, so here are some updated images of his Unity 5 Novia Overworld work-in-progress (which we hope to include in Release 15):

SotA Reaches 50,000 Backers!

In celebration of reaching the 50,000 Backer Milestone, I recently posted these updated backer stats on our Dev+ forum:

The last pledge data published was in May 2014 and some of you have been asking for an update. We plan on releasing this new pledge data publicly in this week’s Update of the Avatar on Friday, but thought we’d give our Dev+ backers a sneak peek.

This first chart shows the change in pledge counts from May 2014 to Feb 2015. The data does not include Steam Early Access, Guilt Pledges, or unassigned pledges. Big jump in the number of Adventurer pledges and Founder pledges. And since we made it more affordable to own property by adding the new Row House property deeds to the Ancestor tier, it has almost tripled in the number of backers. We were also surprised to see the number of Dukes almost doubled (from 43 to 84) and Lord of the Manors increased by almost 50% (24 to 34)!

This chart shows the change in pledge revenue per tier from May 2014 to February 2015:

This final chart shows the current pledge data with the pledge counts as vertical bars and the dollar value of each pledge tier as a gold line. The Knight tier continues to lead in terms of pledge revenue, especially if you combine it with the relatively new Knight Marshal tier. Knights also led in our May 2014 data.

Pledges with property (Ancestor+) represent 9% of all backers and 61% of all pledge revenue. Pledges without property represent 91% of all backers and 39% of pledge revenue.

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 14
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: Power of Friendship (PaxLair, Valemark)
12:00pm CST – Welcome Quest R14.5 (NorthShire, or “/zone Dara Brae”)
6:00pm CST – Lovers’ Maze for Valentines Day (NorthShire, or “/zone Lollie”)

Sunday, February 15
5:30am CST – Explore Novia with royalsexy (Owl’s Head entrance)
2:00pm CST – Britannian Mining Company (BMC) Crafting Fair (Owl’s Head; details)
2:00pm CST – 4B PvP Melee Tournament (“/zone Net”)
7:00pm CST – PaxLair Meeting (Valemark, or “/zone Winfield”)
8:00pm CST – New Britannia Press Meeting (PaxLair, Avatar’s Circle Teamspeak)

Upcoming Events2015.02.26 – Starr Long delivers Keynote at ICPHSO’s 2015 Annual Meeting and Training Symposium
2015.02.26 – Release 15
2015.03.06 – SotA at PAX East
2015.03.10 – IGDA Austin Meetup at Tech Ranch
2015.03.13 – SotA at SXSW Interactive
2015.03.26 – Release 16
2015.04.03 – Duke & LotM VIP Design Roundtable w/Lord British and Portalarium Studio Tour
2015.04.23 – Release 17
2015.05.21 – Release 18