Happy Memorial Day Weekend and Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Abe’s Desert Biome Template Work In Progress
• Play DND #1 on the SotA Teletype
• Release 18 Grand Tour Quest Reward: Bycocket Hat
• Twin Spire Manor City Home Now Available to PoTs and LotM Pledges

Abe’s Desert Biome Template – WIP

Abe Robertson has been reworking the Player Owned Town Forest Template that Michael Hutchison built to terraform it into a desert biome template. For comparison, here’s the initial Forest Biome Template he started from:

And here are a few work-in-progress images of the new Desert biome version, which will be available soon for selection in the Player Owned Town Submission form:

Play DND #1 Winning Entry on the SotA Teletype

There is a new teletype device available as a deco item in the the Add-On Store. This is a special teletype, in that by activating it you will be able to play Richard Flemming’s winning DND #1 game from Lord British’s Royal Challenge (see Update #78 for more details of the DND #1 Contest).

Here is a video of Richard Flemming’s winning entry from last year’s contest:

Release 18 Grand Tour Quest Reward: Bycocket Hat

Just as in some past releases, the team is including a Grand Tour Quest in R18 designed to guide you through all the new content. When you complete the R18 Grand Tour Quest you will be rewarded with a Bycocket Hat (commonly known as the Robin Hood hat). This reward can only be unlocked during Release 18 (did someone say rares?), so be sure to log in to R18 starting May 28 and talk to all the Tour Guides!

Twin Spire Manor City Home Now Available to PoTs and LotM Pledges

[From a forum post by Starr Long]

Greetings PoT Owners,

Earlier this year we began working on the PoT submission form which many of you have begun using. Winfield was helpful enough to create a first draft of the form and in it he noted that we simply listed “Add On Store Homes” in the descriptions of Towns without any further clarity. We quickly realized that this could be a issue because in the store different sized homes had different costs. It would lower the value of homes if you could select all town sized homes since they were more expensive than village or row sized homes.

So we decided to add clarity to the description and increase both the number and size of homes you could select as you moved up to a bigger PoT. In our pledges we have Row, Village, Town, and City lots so we just replicated those sizes in this plan and modified the descriptions on the website to reflect this change. We all reviewed the change and none of us caught the super obvious issue: we have NEVER had any city sized buildings in the add on store.

In fact we did not realize this was an issue until we were about to launch the PoT Submission Form last week. At that time we had to decide if we would revert to the original description or leave the newer description but strike through the word “City”. We chose the latter to maximize transparency. However we neglected to explain why we had to make this change. We should have taken the time to explain what happened and we apologize that we did not.

For now in order to fulfill our promise of city sized homes we are going to resurrect the original Lord of the Manor house and provide that as the City sized option you can pick from for your PoT. We will also be providing this house to all the Lords of the Manor as a bonus home since some preferred that layout to the current one.

We have also decided that because of our mishandling of this, as soon as we create more city sized homes, owners whose towns are Village sized or larger (which include city sized homes) will receive the new city sized homes as additions to their current selections instead of substitutions. This means, for example, that the owner of a Metropolis can earn up to 4 additional city sized homes (provided they do not select the original LotM home prior to the creation of new city sized homes). We do not yet have an estimate on when these new city sized homes will be available, but please note that these are the biggest and most complex structures to create, so it will be a while. Until that time, we ask your patience and understanding.

Starr Long
aka Darkstarr
Executive Producer

And so the team have informed us they have resurrected the original Lord of the Manor City Home (first revealed in Update #44) to make it available in the Player Owned Towns Submission form. They are also adding this house to all the Lord of the Manor pledge rewards (Royal Founder, Founder, and Benefactor), in addition to the Lord of the Manor house they already have. Even though this city house is listed as an Add-On Store House in the PoT descriptions and submission form, it will not be available for general sale in the Add-On Store. Below are a few images of that home.  Personally, I assume that there would be various homes of the village, city, and town sizes all in game using in game currency.  Personally I like not having too many things in the addon store.  I would rather make most items available through work in the game itself.  But adding it to the rewards is what the team have decided to do.  No big deal at all, just more side stuff that the team is working on.  I am just waiting on the chance for us to finally start to see and experience the story…