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

Game Development

• Making of Crooked Shank
• New Norgard Garments (cont.)
• R44 Postmortem Missed Questions Answered

Making of Crooked Shank

In Release 46 one of these scenes being updated will be Crooked Shank which is a mountainous area in the Verdantis region.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]

Whilst looking for an elven village in Forgotten Vale, I seemed to have misread my map, and stumbled upon a quaint human settlement tucked along a bend in the road. The locals kept their neighborhood very well tended, and while not excessively talkative, they were happy to point me to locations of note within their tidy little town.

This welcoming arch marked the entrance to the main, winding avenue through what the locals dubbed ‘Crooked Shank’. There seemed to be a lot of planting and construction, and truth be told, I could not really tell how old the town was.

At this point, I wandered into the lovely back yards of some of the inhabitants, and noticed they all seemed to share a penchant for gardening.

Then, the Mayor of Crooked Shank himself appeared and hurried me away for a visit in his home.

The mayor then directed me to the lovely Two Fountains Inn, further down the road, though he warned they might not have any vacancies, and thanked me for my brief visit. 

Thanks for following! More soon.

Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski
World Builder

New Norgard Garments (cont.)

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Fletcher “Scathanna” Kinnear]

Hello all! We wanted to give you a quick update on the Norgard NPC’s!

Fletcher Kinnear
Character Artist

R44 Postmortem Missed Questions Answered

The devs had 20+ pages of questions left unanswered after the R44 Postmortem! They posted them to the forums.

Here are the questions that we did not have time to get to during the LB Birthday Telethon. I tried my best to answer these (with help from the rest of the team) but some we just don’t have details yet to provide. I probably won’t have time to do any follow ups to these. The community did a great job assisting us this telethon to make sure we didn’t miss a single question. July is a crazy busy month for us with R43 just having gone live, RTX, Comic Con, and the Seed Invest campaign. So please forgive the brevity of some of my answers.

Also please note I deleted a bunch of duplicated questions and also deleted any questions that we answered with the Q3 Post or with the Release of R44. I also deleted questions that were super open ended, were super vague or were needlessly confrontational.

BayRidge: Regarding NPC Farming vendor and seeds changes (mandrake/nightshade). In this release stock seed selections were redone for Farmer NPC’s. For example mandrake and nightshade were taken away. What are the plans for the game mechanic to get nightshade and mandrake seeds now?
They are on still on other merchants, just regionalized so therefore not on every merchant. You just need to seek the seeds elsewhere.

Pleasedrivefast: with the last release, supply bags were added as a way to increase loot chances. Do you see any adjustments needed to the drop rate or loot tables within these supply bags?
When we first released them there was a bug in the percentage for the drop rates that we fixed so they should drop at a higher rate now. We will continue to evaluate if the drop rate needs to be increased.

Pleasedrivefast: In the Q3 2017 Update, could you clarify what UI improvements you’re updating aside from chat windows?
We make these calls quickly from release to release so no specifics that I can provide.

Jack102367: Can we get a toggle or arrow that will change all the skills in a particular tree to either Train, Unlearn, Not Train, or Maintain?
Good suggestion, added to backlog

Jack Knyfe: Can we get a third attack spell in the Water Magic tree?
Will consider but we don’t want every school to have full offensive capabilities because then all of the magic schools start to become the same.

Jack Knyfe: Will the website stores ever have the ability for guest users to send in-game gifts (from the various categories) to accounts without having to have an account themselves?
Unlikely.

Graham: Is Troll Fall meant to be a 360 degrees attack?
Yes but we likely need to look at the point where that attack is being applied.

Graham: Can we get craftable beer steins for oktoberfest
Good suggestion!

[Read More on SOTA’s forums…]