Greetings Friends! With what little information from the Dev Team Updates 289 and 290, I wanted to just wait and bring you a combined post.  Obviously with a focus on polish and Episode 2 preparation, there will be less major news coming from Portalarium.  As July comes to an end here is the final bits of new for the month on Shroud of the Avatar!

• The Reworking of Solace Bridge
• The Making of The Obsidian Trials (cont.)
• Release 56
• Global Visual Improvements

The Reworking of Solace Bridge

As part of the devs efforts to improve the New User Experience, they are separating the tutorials from the story spaces in the three starting areas (Solace Bridge, Highvale, and Blood River). They will be building a new focused tutorial space that the Oracle sends you to from the Confirmatory on the Isle of Storms that walks you through the game basics in a gated fashion (i.e. you cannot advance to the next room until you prove you can swing a sword). Once you complete all the tutorials you will return to the Isle of Storms and then resume your journey through the Lunar Rift to one of the three starting areas. Those areas are being polished to be more focused and tighter in their direction. They are also removing the tutorial elements and having them be almost entirely focused on story.  In the case of Solace Bridge this means rebuilding it. They hope to have all this complete by the end of Q3 (Release 58).

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

Here are some super early, in-progress shots of the new Solace Bridge space. We’re focusing a lot on the first three starter maps (Highvale, Blood River, and Solace Bridge (Not the outskirts)) in the next few upcoming releases.

(House will be on fire)

More to come soon! Thanks for following our progress!

The Making of The Obsidian Trials (cont.)

In Release 55 devs started work on the Obsidian Trials with an early testing environment. That early version had no entrance, no timed sessions, and no win conditions. In Release 56 devs had a first playable version with multiple features. There is an entrance on the Novia Overworld near the east entrance to Nightshade Pass. Play sessions run every 10 minutes with one minute of preparation time between matches. During the match a poisonous boundary that deals extraordinary amounts of damage rapidly reduces the amount of playable area. If you are caught in the boundary you will die quickly so you must stay ahead of it. There is a lobby area where players go when they die during a match, prepare for new matches, and replenish supplies from a merchant. The lobby is where you can also spend the currencies you earn from playing in the Obsidian Trials. Making any kill during a match will earn you Obsidian Skull Coins which can be spent on consumables like unique potions and a unique teleport scroll locked to the locations of Obsidian Trials. Winning a match that includes at least 5 players earns you Obsidian Medallions which can be spent on Victory Emotes and Titles (eventually we will be expanding this to also include unique patterns, gear, and components). Devs also modified the PVP scoreboard to display the timer for the match, show numbers of players in the match, display the winner, and to reset for each match.

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

Some more progress.. 

Lobby updated (Note the large red fog is now the exit to Novia, where the central column will transport you to the disc). 

Toxic boundaries moving in.

Play Release 56 Now!

Release 56 successfully launched yesterday, July 26, with backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s new content to explore, including:

• Global Visual Improvements
• Performance Improvements
• Tons of Bug Fixing
• More Unicorn Components
• User Interface Polish: Mail Expiration & Friends List Sorting
• Aether Creatures: Dragons, Liches, & Corpions
• Sidequests: Atavists of Purity & Shooter Jennings
• Obsidian Trials: Timers, Currency, Rewards, Win Condition
• Tier Adjustments
• More Recipes
• Decorations: Craftable Elven Furniture, Heraldry Throne & Round Table
• R55 QA Testing Incentive Winners
• R55 Lot Deed Raffle Winners
• …and much more!

Release 56 Player Instructions

Release 56 Known Issues