Good Morning Friends!  Welcome to this biweekly Shroud of the Avatar update post from yours truly.  We have the following news items that I wish to cover today:

• Release 65
• Portalarium Deletes Thread after MassivelyOP Article
• No SEC Filing Yet
• GolemDragon’s Question for Our Readers

As always, leave your comments below as all of us here at the Ultima Codex appreciate your thoughts, questions, etc.

Release 65

Release 65 launched April 25, with backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s new content to explore, including:

• Attempt at more Performance updates, including an Updated Shader for Vegetation
• Tamed Pet Balance & Two more Young Dragons
• Stunned Targets can’t dodge attacks (how was this not already in the game?) and rooted targets have dodge reduced by half.
• Vault came out where devs will feature previous-expired items for a limited time availability.
• and other small items changes..

Portalarium Deletes Thread after MassivelyOP Article

Back on May 1st, Bree Royce at MassivelyOP did an update article on Shroud of the Avatar (SOTA).  She wanted to talk about tips that made their way in and wanted to give an update as Starr Long had returned comments back to them on the topics.  Interestingly, one of the items that came up caused some extra controversy as well.

Firstly, since my previous article on SOTA, backers have been in full force inquiring about the print copy of the Tracy Hickman “Blade of the Avatar” novel that was a promised as a Kickstarter reward. There have been more than one forum threads on this as well as tweet, reddit posts, etc. There is also supposed to be a signed copy version of it as well for those of us with pledges of $500 or more.  The last update from Starr Long was September of 2018, over 7 months ago.  Royce got an update from Starr Long which was, “At this time we do not have more information hence the lack of update.”  This rather disappoints me, but as Starr Long confirmed in the past on the SotA Forums, their communication has been subpar. As someone who has been in the business world for 20 years, even where there is no news to report, that is still news to report.

Royce also highlights something most of us have been discussing in the UDIC Discord server, the fact that Portalarium is late on the mandatory yearly SEC filing of their annual report. Because of the SeedInvest that Portalarium did, they are required to do this annual filing. Now Roycae was able to get a response from Starr Long on this in which he states, “We are still working with our legal and accounting firms on that information and will provide it where required when it is all finalized.”  This tells me that they probably filed for an extension, due to “bandwidth” and thus their inability to stay on top of this.

Royce also updated her article because one of the SOTA Forum threads she linked to in her article,  where backers were requesting an updated, was deleted.   Portalarium made this decision, which was unexpected to Royce, but one that I would go so far as to call “expected of Portalarium” and “unprofessional.”  From what I have been able to see from cached versions of the pages,from comments on multiple social media, and via DMs, the devs ignored the thread.  The fact this occurred after the Massively OP article was posted and gaining traction, plus it was pointed out that this happened not long after Starr Long himself was looking at the thread, further makes me believe it was a dev team member.  Based on past behavior be the devs, this isn’t surprising to me that they would do this.

No SEC Filing Yet

As mentioned above Bree Royce pointed out that Portalarium has yet to have their annual report filed with the SEC.  Looking at the search page for Portalarium on the SEC website, as of 3:15 pm Central time, there is still no filing available.  As soon as this is updated, I will be doing a post here on Ultima Codex.

GolemDragon’s Question for Our Readers

So I have done a few streams now of Outward on Twitch under my “non-GolemDragon” branding.  So far the game has been fun, difficult at times, but entertaining. After all, who doesn’t love to see me “derp”?  If people are interested, I would be willing to do a comparison of Outward and SotA in an upcoming post (maybe separate or part of one of the bi-weekly posts).  Personally, I find a number of elements in Outward to be very “Ultima-ish”, which makes me very happy. I want to leave it up to you, our wonderful readers.  Would you be interested in any info on Outward or not?  Regardless, I will continue to stream it as I have time and I will continue to make observations of things I like and things I don’t like (no jumping sadly).