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

• Worn Armor
• The Making of Eastmarch (cont.)
• The Making of Penmawr Island (cont.)
• The Making of Tenebris Harbor (cont.)
• Monthly Livestream: Release 52 Missed Questions & YouTube

Worn Armor

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Starr “Darkstarr”]

When fighting low level humanoids you will often find rusty weapons as loot when you defeat them. Players have often asked “why don’t we also find rusty armor?”

Starting in Release 53 low level humanoids will start dropping worn armor which can be equipped or salvaged for patterns. These will come in all armor types: Plate, Chain, Leather, and Cloth.

Rusty Plate Armor:

 

Rusty Chainmail:

Worn Leather Armor:

Worn Cloth Armor:

Worn Cloak:

 

The Making of Eastmarch

Eastmarch is a village on the southeast coast of Drachvald near the Vauban pass. The famous song by the bard Iolo, “The Baron of Eastmarch”, was written about a baron of this town before the keep fell into ruin after repeated attacks from undead. In recent times the locals have been strengthening their defenses with watchtowers and patching up the ruined keep walls so that the keep can be used as a refuge during undead attacks.

[From a A Dev+ Forum Post by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf]

I have a few more screenshots as promised. The town of eastmarch will now show evidence of their struggle with the undead, without severely changing the aesthetic of the map as a place where people would want to live. There are several watchtower surrounding the town to give warning of undead attacks. The villagers have reinforced the defenses of the ruined barons keep, to use as a refuge in the event of an undead attack.

Because this map is fairly large, I decided to go with a split biome to make the area feel more diverse. The lowlands have patches of deciduous aspen forests, while the upper areas are home to more coniferous plants. The town’s main virtue theme is humility, which is represented by a shepherds crook, and I wanted to reinforce this theme, so the scene overall is a lot more open now rather than densely forested. You may come across a few grazing animals here and there.

Something I’ve always done when uncloning non-combat areas is included a few easter eggs for players to find, and I’ll be continuing that trend with this scene.

The Baron’s Keep

The Waterfall

A Countryside Ranch

A Watchtower

Chris Wolf
Level Designer

The Making of Penmawr Island

Penmawr Island is a Tier 4 island in the Bay of Storms in the South Paladis region directly south of Jaanaford. The island is a haven of pirates, plunderers, and bandits but the dock area has recently been overrun by undead.

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

Some more shots of progress on Penmawr Island:

Island Interior (lots of boars ’round these parts)

Pirate Cove 

The windward side of the island.. good place to play a melancholy shanty.

The Town

**note, ‘bandit’ guys will look different, Fletcher is making some more great NPC art this release (NO SPOILERS)

What’s this eerie ship run aground on the north shore?

Thanks for following our progress!

Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski
World Builder

The Making of Tenebris Harbor

Tenebris Harbor was once a thriving town on the coast of the Bay of Storms in the South Paladis region west of Jaanaford. The town has recently been attacked and taken over by pirates and plunderers who have burned down whole sections of the town. For the first few days of the release parts of the town will be on fire and the bodies of the residents will litter the streets but soon those fires will go out and the bodies will get cleaned up and the town will settle into the long term plundered and ruined state. This is a Tier 5 scene so be prepared for a challenge!

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Esteben “SorcerousSteve” Zaldivar]

Hey guys! SorcerousSteve here to give you the latest on Tenebris Harbor!

A wideshot of the Tenebris Harbor countryside, with the shipyard in the center.

The Tenebris Harbor Shipyard, a new galleon keel can be seen being built in the foreground.

The shipyard now littered with liquor bottles has become a base of operations for the pirate plunderers while on the left some of the shipyard staff can be seen hanging.

The Tenebris Harbor Banana Plantation

Looking north of the docks where the heaviest looting took place.

Fires dot Tenebris Harbor amidst the lush greenery of a once thriving port town.

The pirate galleon that brought the relentless waves of pirates can be seen off the Tenebris Harbor Coast.

Be sure to checkout Tenebris Harbor this R53!

Esteben “SorcerousSteve” Zaldivar
Level Designer

Monthly Livestream: Release 52 Missed Questions

[From a Forum Post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Here are the questions that we did not have time to get to during the R52 Livestream (which is also now on youtube). 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.

Please note I deleted some duplicate questions and also deleted any questions that we answered with the Q2 post or with the release of R52 or that we answered in previous livestreams. Also note that we are generally going to stop answering questions about “when?” as those are answered by our quarterly schedule posts and any other answers are going to be either “No ETA” or “soon” or “will update with the next quarterly post”.

A final thought: we see a LOT of repeat questions and requests. Please consider reading one of the other missed question posts, watching one of the previous livestreams, reading one of the transcripts, and/or reading our Post Episode 1 plan post before posting a question. Your question might have already been answered.

StarLord: Will European/Travian players be able to participate in the funding/flash sales/prizes?
STARR: We track all funds regardless of their origin when we do the stretch goals. So if you purchase from the Black Sun or the Travian site your purchase counts towards the stretch goal and makes you eligible for the rewards. Additionally we are going to make it so in the future the sales are synched and we are even considering having the be longer than just the duration of the livestream.

Dereck Visaard: Can we get Atos to sing or read a poem at the R52 livestream in his best falsetto?
CHRIS: NO….. Next question. 🙂

Oplek: What was the most surprising aspect of launch day to you?
STARR: How smooth it was and how much it felt like just another monthly release.

Oplek: Now that COTO prices are high, do you expect that COTO drop rates will increases?
CHRIS: We actually doubled the drop rate just before launch and I’m keeping an eye on it. I don’t believe the price would be affected much unless we had 10x more drop. The price is still fluctuating a lot with more players coming in and I’ll keep an eye on it but the current trend is actually downward after a slow climb for weeks leading up to release. I suspect this is due to lots of new crowns in the game from KS backers who wait until now to play.

The Lacedaemonian: what are your thoughts on dexterity possibly decreasing fizzle chance or fizzle chance while moving?
CHRIS: Hrm… I could see dex countering some of the fizzle from armor maybe or reducing the Armor multiplier. That is the thing that makes it harder to cast spells on the left half of the tree in heavy armor. I’ll think on it….

Barugon: Does the Backstab skill in the Subterfuge tree work with ranged weapons?
CHRIS: Yes!

Andrew Silverston: Can you please add a mechanic in an offline game to spawn a champion mob(s) after a few successful area cleanups (all mobs killed and area reset).
STARR: Interesting idea

Llorayne: Can we please STOP auto-attack from agro’ing a new target that isn’t attacking us?
CHRIS: This is a tough one because some want to just keep shooting as long as there are targets and others want to have to manually select every target. I’ve got a Jira to look into this already though and I’ll see if there is anything we can do

Eli: what’s the biggest thing coming for PvP this year?
STARR: Performance improvements, Castle sieges, higher resource yields in PVP zones, groups of groups, Guild Warfare polish
CHRIS: What Starr said plus BALANCE improvements and more counter options.

Ainanymous: Can we please kill watchers? If so, can we kill watchers to lower our virtue? I want a black shroud!
STARR: Hmm. They seem to be killable just fine to us…

Elnoth: Do mobs have attunement values? When you talk about attune and resist, that is all fine for PVP, but I’m wondering if attunement gives any PvE benefit with regards to defense?
CHRIS: They have attunement values that gets used for some spell effectiveness but only a few currently. They mostly have resists. If you want to see how they work, go fight an obsidian golem of any size!

Kl4nk: Would it be possible to show guild name of ppl when you target them. It’s hard enough to see who is enemy and who is allie…talking pvp here.
CHRIS: Agree and yes

Malikaia: How do you feel about the current targeting, sometimes it’s quite hard to see which target is targeted due to such similarity in the nameplate.
CHRIS: The highlight strength is tuneable but agree, there should be more of a tell in the nameplate as that is a little less immersion breaking.

Xadoor: Does Rapid Fire really need to be on a 15 second CD?
CHRIS:Yes! Even with that, it is one of the most popular skills. If I lowered that any more archers would just do Rapid fire 100% of the time.

Xadoor: Can we make dex more useful, bump up a bows native crit rate or at least give an archy skill to increase crit chance? Swapping str for dex is really painful as it is now.
CHRIS: Critical chance needs to not go much higher or it ends up removing the ability to defend. I’ve been considering increasing its contribution to generating misses.

Malikaia: Please can you explain how crit works. With no visible value it makes it hard to build around.
Xadoor: Can you explain again how crit is calculated(both hit and damage)?
CHRIS: This is a HUGE topic that I have covered a number of times already. I think I cover this in the last tech talk video stream I did with Duke Violation. Short version is chance is based on dex, gear,and skills. For damage, instead of doing X to Y like a normal hit, it does Y to Y x Crit damage Multiplier. This is usually around 2 to 2.5 but with skills you can get it up to 3.5+. From behind attacks add to that multiplier as well. The base crit chance for ranged is Dex/400. For Melee it is Dex/1000

Elas: Can we get a lock on the combat bar?
CHRIS: I like this idea. Making a task for it. I’m use the hotkeys so I don’t notice this much but I know it can be annoying for mouse users.

Elas: Can the group list of players including yourself be unlocked so we can move it around the screen.
STARR: Yes

Ishel: Is there a plan to make it so that you are able to bind items to hotbars for quick access?
STARR: Yes

Llorayne: Can we PIN recipes at a crafting station to the top of the list, so we see them first?
STARR: Yes

Llorayne: Can we please get a REFRESH icon on the Map (M) window for the current zone?
STARR: Perhaps

Echondas: Thoughts on adding a few in-game hotkeys? It would be helpful to assign a keyboard shortcut to trigger text, or an emote.
STARR: Yes

Echondas: For consistency, consider extending the ctrl-key world map functionality for boat-accessed POTs to the other POT types and NPC towns -instead of mousing over the ‘i’ on the town name.
STARR: Will consider

Brass Knuckles: Could we get a addon store item that would allow you to port to another house you own with another item, id love quick travel from one of my houses to another, and i’m willing to pay for it.
STARR: Unlikely but will consider

Infernal: will you do a zombie merchant pattern for Halloween
STARR: Fun idea

Grape-Ape: Can we have the option to set recall and/or teleport to use an emote of our choosing?
STARR: Fun idea

Slegnor: Could we get craftable armour stands or mannequins so we can display suits of armour as if they were being worn? My Virtue armour doesn’t look so epic stuffed in a bag on the floor.
STARR: Yes

Xee: Can we get the Alchemy ring to work with Enchanting rather then Alchemy so it’s inline with the other crating perk items?
CHRIS: Yes

Bahamut Arc: As a main Tamer, i would love to see my Drake pet. Where our Drake? =)
CHRIS/STARR: Coming

Bahamut Arc: As a Pokemon lover, i would like to breed my pets to get a chance to have a stronger one. Can this work within Sota?
STARR: Unlikely but pet leveling and skill unlocking for pets is on our long term plans

Rufus: Will we be able to apply Approved Devices to multiple items of the same type (Banners, Shields) or are we limited to the Patterns and Eternal Patterns that we have currently?
STARR: Heraldry will only be able to be applied to heraldry patterns.

Rufus: Might we be able to copy Heraldic Patterns somehow, say perhaps with a Magic Printing Press, to make applying Heraldry to multiple copies of the same Heraldic Items possible?
Lord Andernut: How do we get more banners to apply our coat of arms to? Or apply it to equipment ie. for a guild etc.?
STARR: When we start selling non-Founder heraldry items you will be able to purchase more heraldry patterns. Founder heraldry items are meant to be rare.

Brass Knuckles: Can we get more craftable body part items to decorate blood bay lots?
STARR: We can consider

Infernal: textiles and milling have not gotten new craftables in a long time could you add some new rugs, banners and wood coverings to the schedule please
STARR: Yes

Titania: Can buy orders have increased quantities? The current 1,000 item limit makes it tough to deal in things like farmed goods. Can we also have a batch sale and order creation system be created?
STARR: There are performance implications for this so eventually but not now

HannahAlpenglow: Now that brewing is coming online, can you add a cooking recipe for pretzels?
STARR: Sounds logical

Kpopgurl: Could we get more Masterworks options for non combat school stuff? Like increased 3Stealth % on leather, or +Focus Regen on cloth?
STARR: Yes

Jiirc: Why can’t you turn skills a tier higher than the specialization skills to maintain?
CHRIS: Not sure, this should be allowed. Maybe you died a few times and it fell below 80?

Black Tortoise: Could you please elaborate on plans for the Cooking skill tree with food and drink and such?
STARR: Brewing and alcohol are the next priority.

Dereck Visaard: Can we please have additional craftable bleacher sizes/shapes, similar to walls and pavers, including short, medium, long, corner, endcap, left, right, and wedge? This will enable POT owners to create 360 degree arenas. Something similar to what was done in R52 for Northwood.
STARR: Yes

Xee: Could we have a deed merchant exchange where you can take lower deeds in numbers to upgrade into larger? example. 2 villages = a town , 2 towns = city etc? just a thought.
STARR: Unlikely

Tristano: Can we have tax free POT water lot bundles?
STARR: No, these were exclusively part of the Kickstarter pledges for Episode 1. Perhaps as part of Episode 2.

Bahamut Arc: Will we be able to build random houses with blocks soon?
STARR: No

Jiirc: The new vendor mechanic has the vendor sitting down after a ^period of time. Can we get more detail about how the mechanic works? What triggers a reset? Why 7 days? Any other information would be helpful.
STARR: We have increased this to 14 days. It happens if the vendor has not been interacted with by the owner.

Widsith: How about making the canvas series of furniture dyeable?
STARR: Yes

Dargalin: Can we have more than 8000 characters in a book please? I know it takes up space but 8000 characters kinda restricts the creative spirit a wee bit!
STARR: There are performance implications for this so eventually but not now

Dargalin: Can we have the ability to rotate house decorations on more than one axis?
STARR: Some already do.

Dargalin: Can we have guild stones, or a menu for easy management?
STARR: Yes

Cypher Black: Can we get the twice promised and twice forgotten champ spawn added to the Crag Foothills? (All tier 5’s were supposed to get these)
STARR: Yes

Datendrache: Any chance for adding different guild structures so there are more groups levels or types, configurable permissions, elections or non-dictator structures?
STARR: Yes

SmokerKGB: Can we get: “building a campfire” added, as a means of resting during night time, maybe getting a buff for doing so, maybe getting attacked by special night only critters which yield special resources?
STARR: Yes

Sir Grant: what will be the balance now regarding adding new content for this episode and development on episode 2?
STARR: Right now we are still focused on Ep 1.

Arnaeus Moonglow: Can we get vendor sitting down disabled if they are indoors? I put a lot of effort into decorating my tailoring shop and making it immersive and then the vendor sits if I don’t update stock for a few days and really ruins the aesthetic. She ends up hiding behind the counter top and you could easily miss her if you don’t have nameplates on.
STARR: In R53 they will sit in a nearby chair but we are not going to disable sitting entirely.

Scoffer Kada: does increasing your MAX resist for armour over 100% give you any benefit? i.e. 30 resist (Max120%)
CHRIS: No and this will get some tweaking in 53 to make sure people never get past 75%

Jack Knyfe: Now that we’ve launched, are we going to get a revised “Two Year Plan”?, or are the quarterly updates moving forward going to be the de facto way of knowing what’s to come?
STARR: We update this yearly in Q3

OpenEyes: For the livestreaming program, is it going to be Twitch only? Or open for those of us who do streaming on YouTube?
STARR: Any channel, no restrictions there. YouTube is as welcome. We are promoting Twitch in part as the main focus though.

Mia Sway: why when enchanting sun gemed wands do you get blistering ray on hit? that is for melee…. earth gets obsidian arrow damage on wand (quake on hit on swords and stuff) death gets deathray damage on wands (and leach life on swords)
STARR: Bug. Please write up

Mia Sway: do the cabalist in lost vale drop hoods and or weapons?
STARR: Yes but they drop them at a slightly lower rate than the cabalists in the sieges.

Scar face (skeggy media): can watering be changed to be like a crafting station so we can draw up to 20 buckets of water 1 at a time to save RSI?
STARR: Won’t be changed to be like crafting station but we already changed this to add skills for mass watering recently.

Ancev: Could we get a method to specify a masterwork or enchantment on an item .. perhaps at increased difficulty? I noticed that some stat enchantments aren’t available for certain items.. or maybe my skills aren’t high enough.. but a few examples might be +INT on masterwork for leather, or melee enchantments for wands?
STARR: Unlikely

Ancev: Could we get craftable cloaks or deco of the glowing symbols in Quell Shardfall?
STARR: Yes

Anvar: How much will extra character slots cost, will there be a limit and can we buy them for Cotos ingame?
STARR: Stay tuned for R53 when it goes live for costs. Will only be available on website, not for crowns.

Drew: Could we possibly get a simple dyeable hooded full cloak?
STARR: Headgear and cloaks have to be two separate items so a hood and a cloak have to be independent even when we make them look like they go together. But yes we can make something that looks like this.

Merrik Dragon: will there be a way for players to decide what their Vendor will do to signify that the havnt been updated? (as in something other than sitting down)
STARR: Perhaps eventually

Merrik Dragon: is it in the plans to stop tamers getting agro when their pet attacks? as an archer i need my pet to keep the mobs attention so i can dps them
CHRIS: I will investigate. Right now they have no extra taunting so it is just the per attack value and per point of damage value. Pets attack fairly slow so these values are easy to overcome. Also, I’ll investigate to make sure there isn’t a bonus given to the pet owner on first agro.

Daxxe Diggler: Any plans to add new cooking skills to the tree in the near future? (This Quarter, next Quarter, next Episode?)
STARR: Yes

Aular: There are a number of skills not working (body slam) or that player feedback is that they are underpowered (Knights Grace). What skills are being looked at for rebalance/rework?
CHRIS:I hope to have 100% of skill bugs fixed this release. Technically I hope that most releases but trying to make time for it this release. Knight’s Grace will get some extra features this release as well.

Max: have you thought about changing the UI in some future?
STARR: Yes

Lord Andernut: Might there be larger sizes than Metropolis in the future? Megalopolis?
STARR: Never. The performance would be terrible.

Brogan Murphy: Has there been any thought into additional Player Vendor Patterns that change the vendor to other races, like Elves, Kobolds, or Undead?
STARR: Fun idea

Brogan Murphy: The tooltip indicators for Eternal Patterns being yielded upon salvaging on items are great. Can we perhaps get such a tooltip indicator on all the non-eternal Patterned items, like the weapons and armors that drop in-game so we know when something actually has a chance of yielding a pattern?
STARR: Yes

Amber Raine: will they ever make a pattern for the Chaos Spoon to be wieldable? ((for @Atos))
CHRIS: Why would you want to use it as a weapon and risk damaging it!?!? That would be like requesting to use the Mona Lisa as a shield!

Liz_the_wiz: can we get some “pavers” that turn land into planting spots? so we can put up like rose plant borders etc?
STARR: We have had a task in the backlog for a while to make planting rows that are just tilled dirt rows on the ground that can be placed.

Draugur: Is a set of Epic chainmail still going to be made? It’s the only set that doesn’t have one. (Cloth, Leather, Plate)
STARR: Yes

Falcon Rainfeather: Can we get a separate weapon tree for pugilism?
CHRIS: No

Vaddius Valerius: Any updates on Unity for Linux?
CHRIS: Still no fix for the key press problem and no fix for the map. We test every new build that comes out to see if they have backported the keypress issue and Undone continues trying to get the browser DLL to work on Linux.

Justice Darling: is there any way to stop a quest?
STARR: Not currently but you can right click on a current task and choose “Hide Task on HUD”

Scooby: With the updates to Unity in place, When will the increase to internal house item placement limits be increased so we can finish decorating our houses?
STARR: Not right now

Arlin: for crafting instead of ‘exceptional’ items could we get a scaling bonus to durability based on skill level?
STARR: Perhaps eventually

Papazaph: Will there be anything in carpentry for furnishings, or will it always be focused on weapons?
STARR: There are tons of carpentry furnishings recipes (chairs, tables, shelves, fences, walls, all the way up to houses). Perhaps you have just not found those recipes?

Temujin: Are there any plans on adding more combos to skill trees to bring other skill spheres more on par with the number of combos available to blades? (Don’t know if this has been asked/answered before)
STARR: Yes

Tailz Suvorov: Can we get some blank or silent wax cylinders in game?
STARR: Not sure of the purpose so would be hard to prioritize the request

Vematrox Lacus: Are there plans to adjust the recipe books so it can be alphabetical or searched?
STARR: Yes

Acaelus Fireharp: would it be possible to get reduced deck toggle times when pvp flagged? There are many high XP mobs in PVP zones and the builds used to fight these mobs are usually not ideal for pvp.
CHRIS: I believe these are pretty quick unless you’re swapping a lot of gear which feels like it should take some time. The time to switch is needed for balance with how our system is not class based but skill based and that bar is the only limit to how much you can use. The faster we make this, the more advantage the players with dozens of GMS will have over less experienced players.

Drake Aedus (on Avatars Radio!): Is there still a plan to have a “All The Grand Tour Hats” title? (aka Mad Hatter?)
STARR: Interesting suggestion

Turin: Can we get search or sorting in emote menu?
STARR: Yes

Turin: Idea: PvP only traps, murder holes, or some kind of benefit to players within their homes against players attacking.
STARR: Fun but wow the griefing!