Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

• Male Cloth Armor Revamps
• Reconnecting with Underground Scenes
• The Halls of Artifice (A Work In Progress)

Male Cloth Armor Revamps

As part of our rework of the Avatars we are steadily progressing through many of the clothing and armor items to improve their visual quality. We periodically update the progress of this effort.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Fletcher “Skullmuncher34” Kinnear]

Hey everybody! More revamps! This time I worked on cloth outfits.

Here is the Epic Cloth Chest Piece, Gauntlets, Leggings, and Boots:

Epic Cloth
by fletcherkinnear
on Sketchfab

Here is the Fortified Cloth Chest Piece and Leggings:

Cloth Outfit
by fletcherkinnear
on Sketchfab

Reconnecting with Underground Scenes

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Keith “Sannio” Quinn]

Hi, all! Every so often, Shroud of the Avatar adds a new underground area to visit: dungeon, sewer, mine, etc. They’ve mostly been stand-alone scenes, seemingly filled with random resources and randomly connecting to other underground scenes. As of this release, the randomness begins to go away as we start embracing a “grand underground plan.”

Below are the core elements of the plan:

1. Travel Within Underground Sectors: All shared, general-purpose underground areas will be grouped in “small” sectors. Many underground areas within a sector will connect other areas within the same sector. Travel across these connections is free and uninhibited.
2. Travel Across Underground Sectors: Connection passages between sectors are rare and always behind a locked door. Each door can only be opened by a key obtained from a single “key bearer” somewhere else in the scene. (Currently, these keys are reusable but, eventually, they will be single-use objects.
3. Cross-Sector Connection Passages: Connection passages will be underground scenes all their own. Although moderately sized, each will have a bounty of resources.
4. Smarter Resources: Distribution of harvestable resources is important, and what is common in some regions will be rare in others. This is true for both surface and underground areas.

Here are some changes related to our underground areas coming with of Release 29:

• Two cross-sector connection passages are being added to the game: Spindrift Passage and Paladis Passage. More such passages will be added in future releases.
• The Rise has moved to its permanent home under the Forsaken Vale in Verdantis. Its temporary connections to the western Novia underground scenes have been replaced with access points in Superstition Canyon, North Varisalla Foothills, Verdantis Mines, and Resolute Sewers.
• Underground resources have shifted a bit as we improve where resources can be found.

Spindrift Passage (shown below) tracks underneath the vast Spindrift Bay.

Paladis Passage (shown below) lies just below the surface of the Paladis Plains.

Keith Quinn
Level Designer
Shroud of the Avatar

The Halls of Artifice (A Work In Progress)

This is the continuing update on the progress on Artifice, scheduled to go live in Release 31.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Scottie Jones]

Wait! What is this?!?!? Having delved even further into Artifice, and sampled several other (somewhat more heinous) paradises (and the denizens that seem to enjoy them), proceeding through yet another golden doorway has caused you to materialize within a cobweb-covered dungeon corridor filled with the strewn bones of seemingly hundreds of poor, lost souls. The architecture here is confusingly reminiscent of so many of the ancient stone passageways that litter the underworld of the realms of Novia, and as you begin to wander through them you realize that every turn and twist feels like the last, and yet seems to lead to more and more such paths, winding away in every direction like some labyrinthine hell. The only lights here, except perhaps your own, are torches emitting pale blue flames and the ever-present profusion of even more golden doorways that now seem to taunt you, taking you to places you may not wish to go… As if to add to the confusion, tarnished mirrors that provide little in the way of reflection hang forlornly on the walls at every turn, and soon you begin to realize how so many could have come to die here,…alone,…in the perpetual twilight of this haunted place…   

Just as it seems this torture might never end, you suddenly find yourself back again in a place of relative comfort and refinement. What was that terrible maze,…someone’s twisted paradise? Surely not! Why would such a thing exist in the glorious Halls of Artifice? Perhaps it was just a fevered waking nightmare after all… Merely the result of too much euphoria in so little time. But what does time mean in a place such as Artifice?

Along the periphery of the comfortable chamber before you, chairs are arrayed around small tables, a few books rest on small shelves, and here and there a few bowls of fruit tempt the observer to come, sit, and rest. At the room’s center, beneath a recessed ceiling lit by an ornate chandelier, is a desk littered with books, scrolls, and an inkwell. Beyond the desk another set of bronze doors lay closed before you, but no locks seem to bar your way. Here you will be greeted by a functionary of this mystic place, and an apparent servant of he who occupies the royal hall beyond those waiting doors.

As you enter the lavish throne room beyond, you immediately realize something is wrong. Debris from the ceiling above litters the floor, several of the great columns which support that ceiling have fallen to ruin, and cobwebs formed by years of neglect cover almost every surface, creating the look of aged veils that drape the stained glass windows like ghastly shrouds. At the far end of the hall, a figure sits on a regal throne, ancient rot having left nothing behind of him except his very bones. This grand hall was meant to house hundreds of members of this apparent monarch’s court, and yet he sits alone, contemplating the crown that lays on a footstool before him, his empty sockets gazing out at you as you approach.

Regardless of anything else that might transpire in this chamber, you could wonder if this is what becomes of someone’s personal paradise when life has passed you by. Here this once mighty ruler sits, ruminating on the culmination of his reign, and the meaning of such power, for all time,…while the remains of his grand accomplishment rots and crumbles around him. Behind him, at the top of a small flight of stairs, yet another set of doors await, and beyond them, yet another golden portal beckons,…always beckons,…as you travel deeper and deeper into this place of eternal desires fulfilled…

Ah yes,…glorious Artifice… Why would you EVER want to leave…

I hope this finds you well…

Scottie ^_^