Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #127

by GolemDragon · May 31, 2015

Good Morning Friends and Fellow Avatars!

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend. I am quite the happy lil dragon. I not only got to support a good friend this weekend, but I got to help out at an awesome out of town event. Yes this means today’s post is about 2 days late. But as all of you who are the amazing followers of those of us here on Ultima Codex know, supporting those close to us is virtuous. 😉

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

Play Release 18 Now!
Player Owned Town #2: The Open PvP Town of Vengeance
Support Avatars Radio on Patreon
New Basements

Play Release 18 Now!

Avatars Radio FireLotus Release 18 Party hosted by 4B on the island of Estercove. Check out more screenshots in the Release 18 Screenshot Gallery.

Release 18 successfully launched May 28, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, logging in, and checking out the new changes! Lots of new content to explore, including:

Vengeance: SotA’s first Open PvP Player Owned Town
Dynamic Creature & Resource Spawning
16 Improved Scenes
New Combat Deck Mechanic
Overworld Camera Changes
New Armor and Armor Variations
Astronomy & Calendar
New User Experience Revamp
…and more!

Check out the Release 18 Instructions update for detailed information about all the new R18 content.

The Grand Tour Quest
Just as in our last several releases, we’ve included a Grand Tour Quest designed to guide you through all the new content. You will be able to get the Bycocket Hat by completing the Release 18 Grand Tour Quest. This reward can only be unlocked during Release 18 (did someone say rares?), so be sure to log in soon and talk to all the Tour Guides!

And if you need a little help with the R18 Grand Tour Quest, The Mad Hermit has graciously provided this how-to video:

The Dev Team need all your help with testing the new patches, putting more stress on our multiplayer servers, and testing the new game content, so please join us in playing Release 18!

If you have not backed the game yet, you will need to register and login at www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the “Pledge or Send Gift!” button in the right side-bar, and purchase a pledge at the $45 Adventurer level or above. The basic Adventurer level pledge is also available on Steam Early Access.

Release 18 Player Instructions

Release 18 Known Issues

R18 Patch Notes

Thanks to all our community members that jumped right into Release 18 and started reporting bugs. As the team has already fixed quite a few of them and pushed out several patches. Click here for the most up-to-date Patch Notes.

May 29, 2015

Build Number 271: 11:00 AM

Fixes:

Fixed issue with plate boots showing up as red versus metallic
Fixed Renton Graff’s dialog issues
Fixed Marlene Graff’s dialog
Fixed Jeanne’s dialog in Soltown.
Fixed beard turning off with certain leather helms
Edited glow color setting to make shadow side of planets not glow unnaturally. Also, turned up emission on lava seams on moon core
Removed invisible wall and cleaned up decoration layers in Benefactor Lord home
Set oracle faction to be FriendlyToAll to keep it from being killed by npcs
Fixes to help with loading really full basements
Fixed gaps in Augmented Chain chest piece
Female guards now have their heads back
Fixed shield with missing texture in Ferig’s Battle Camp
Removed the coal mining nodes from Spectral Mines that didn’t actually give coal
Added collision to windows in Benefactor Baron house
Fixed eyes rolling back on female avatar when using /toast emote
Fixed sparkles not showing up on ore nodes properly
/zone is now interrupted by entering combat
Kobold Archers no longer holding bow backwards
Added more resources to Spectral Foothills and made sure they were all accesible
Fixed place where you could climb out of Spectral Foothills
Fixed non-interactive braziers in Solace Bridge
Pass through many maps to make sure all ore nodes are working properly (West Veiled Swamp, East Perennial Trail, Necropolis Barrens, Southern & Northern Grunvald Barrens, Savrenoc Stronghold, Deep Savrenoc Timberlands, Savrenoc Timberlands)
Combat Idle animations should no longer cause elongated neck on male avatars
Satyr Archer holding bow backwards
Reconnected the North Ravenswood scene on HiddenVale
Fixed issue that was causing other players to appear stuck in various animation loops
Fixed issue that may have been causing other players to be invisible
The following items no longer need be taken to a specific NPC but can be sold for the same value at any merchant: Animal Hides, Ectoplasmic Residue, Silver Ore, and Mystic Graff Gems.
Fixed damage numbers not showing up on resurrected Skeletons
Can no longer exploit the Morgan/Myra quest for infinite gold/XP.
Equipped wands and spyglasses should now animate properly in left hand
/follow will now properly deactivate Vanish spell
Fixed decoration layer issues in Founder Knight home
Fixed floating “For Sale” stones in Vengeance
Fixed issue where jump windup animation would not play
Secret door no longer rotated 90 degrees in Knight Benefactor Home
Back door now working in Knight Benefactor Home

Known Issues:

Planets will stop rotating randomly
If your video drivers are out of date characters will appear as if they are covered in triangles.
Some cities are experiencing performance spikes
Some assets create flash bulb like sparks on screen
The screen may go dark unexpectedly in some cases. If this occurs, you can open the video options and turn off Tone Mapping as a temporary fix.
Many pledge, add on, and stretch goal items have not yet been built and/or do not yet have tech support. These will not be complete until later this year
The update to Unity 5 caused a host of general texture and lighting related issues, and not all of these have been resolved.
Distant tree billboards may have a white outline that is especially noticeable at night, and some trees may shimmer with white at night.
Skin tone will sometimes not match properly on different parts of the body
Unity 5 engine bug: Terrain is not accepting shadow casting lights and terrain lighting shows up on grid vs. radius
ALT key can no longer be bound. This was necessary to re-enable quick self cast with ALT
Unity 5 Engine Bug: Objects in the foreground sort incorrectly against objects in the distance like trees and the horizon

[Complete Patch Notes…]

Player Owned Town #2: The Open PvP Town of Vengeance

As soon as PvP was introduced in SotA Release 8, Duke Violation and the Order of Vengeance Guild hosted the very first PvP tournament in Shroud of the Avatar on July 24, 2014. Here’s a screeenshot and excerpt about those first tournaments from Update of the Avatar #84:

The Order of Vengeance Guild hosted multiple tournaments starting on Thursday, July 24th and continuing through the weekend. The tournaments were held on The Brave Coast player island. Vengeance members procured two boats, a light house, and a Knight’s Keep across the pond from Lord British’s castle. The fights occurred on the beach with spectators watching from the bow of the boat.

The Order of Vengeance (along with other PvP-friendly groups such as The Bear Tavern, BMC, etc.), have been instrumental in helping evolve combat and PvP in SotA. As a member of the Order of Vengeance, I have enjoyed supporting them in this endevor despite my lack of time to be in-game. Thus, when the dev team introduced the ability for Player Owned Towns to be flagged as Open PvP in Release 18, they chose Vengeance as the first PoT to test that functionality. Additionally, it allowed testing the Desert biome template that Abe Robertson adapted from Michael Hutchison’s original PaxLair forest biome template.

The player town of Vengeance is located at the northern end of the Grunvald Desert:

Vengeance is hosting many PvP events during Release 18. See the In-Game Community Events section below for all their events scheduled this weekend.

Below are a few screenshots of the desert town of Vengeance, but first, there’s this message and runic scroll that Duke Violation posted in the Release 18 Event forum: Player Town: Vengeance – Quests!

Hail Avatars,

I have found this stuck on the wall of my website! I wanted to share it with you… it seems to be important in some way! Take note: this will only be viable information in the player town of Vengeance!

Support Avatars Radio on Patreon

We want to give a special shoutout to Amber Raine, founder of Avatars Radio (AR), for the selfless labor of love she pours into keeping AR on the air, keeping it fresh, recruiting and coordinating a host of awesome DJs to entertain the entire SotA community, in and out of the game!

AR’s very first broadcasts were in December 2013, with random streaming for those hanging out in IRC. Their first actual air date as an official, legal, licensed and royalty paid station was January 31st, 2014, during SotA Release 1. AR’s About Page describes their purpose thus:

This station was created with the love of our community and fellow citizens in Lord British – Richard Garriotts’ new world of Shroud of the Avatar. Our dream desire is to serve and share (simply by airing) communities work through the moon towers. We have an open welcoming of all submissions from our community.

Sharing the talents of the community as well as that of the Terrestrial in your events, parties, and celebrations. Avatars Radio also carries a news cast to keep you up to date on what is happening in your world!

Amber and her team go to great lengths to provide awesome programming for all of us, but it comes at a cost. As SotA continues to grow in popularity, bringing in more and more players, the number of Avatars Radio listeners also increases, and the music royalties they pay through stream licensing continues to increase. Amber and her team started a Patreon site to help offset the cost of keeping Avatars Radio on the air.

If you love listening to Avatar’s Radio, now’s your chance to help Amber and her team keep it on the air! For more information, check out the Avatars Radio Patreon site and all the cool rewards they offer their patrons.

New Basements

For those of you that wish to expand the Stone basements that were included in your village, town, city, keep, or castle pledge rewards, we have added 5-story versions of those basements to the Add-On Store.

Village Stone 5-Story Basement