Avatars,

Please read this entire message, as well as the linked Instructions and Known Issues. Join the discussion of this update in the forums.

Thank you for being a loyal backer and follower of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 43 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, June 29, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 43 contains both a huge amount of new content and a major improvement in performance that will generally improve everything about playing the game (and I do not exaggerate). Framerates have been improved in every scene, doubled in some! This really will make playing the game feel so much better in every way. Additionally, one of our biggest and most complicated scenes ever, Blood River Outskirts, goes live this release. Three scenes got completely rebuilt and four more scenes got major polish passes. Finally, we are expanding the mail system to allow player-to-player mail as well as expanding and balancing the Offline Economy!

On top of all this new content, we also launched our SeedInvest Crowd Equity campaign to raise funds for our commercial launch later this year. Speaking of later this year… stay tuned tomorrow for our Q3 Schedule Update to find out what we will be working on for the next three releases!



Performance: The programming team spent three weeks focusing most of their efforts on improving performance. We looked at every aspect of how we run the game to find everything that could be changed to improve performance. We are happy to report that we made significant progress! Frame rate is getting very close to where we want it to be, and is now almost double where it was previously (our long term goal is 30 fps on minimum spec. computers playing in Ardoris). Load times are also better, but there is still more work to be done.



Story: The Path of the Oracle continues to expand greatly with two more Colossus scenes: Sequanna Colossus & Boreas Colossus. We have also improved the Path of Truth by adding Blood River Outskirts, which is the zone that new users are sent to directly after Blood River Massacre. This scene makes extensive use of the Factions system introduced in Release 42. We are also now directing players to move back and forth between the three paths so that their level stays on pace with the challenge of each path. Additionally, several scenes were rebuilt, polished or expanded, including Celestis, Libris Ruins, Graff Gem Mines, Isle of Storms, and Crypt of the Avatar.





Offline Economy: Merchants in Offline Mode now have a different “Buy Price” for player-crafted items than merchants in Online Mode. This allows players to sell crafted goods for a profit to NPC merchants in Offline Mode. Additionally, Merchants in offline mode now have an additional stock list that will eventually include all items from the Add-On Store, Pledges, Bundles, etc. In Release 43 many of those items are now listed for sale and more will be added over time.

I want to express a huge amount of gratitude to our Dev+ backers who tested all of the items below on the QA server and uncovered lots of bugs. They also provided editorial feedback on this post. They are a big reason that this post actually matches what is in the game and that it is easy to read.

While we are getting closer to launch, we are still in a constant state of change. We do not yet have all of the in-game systems needed to inform players about these changes, and to help them to explore new content and systems. This means we rely mostly on this message, and the linked Instructions and Known Issues to convey the current game state. We regularly have to answer questions or filter bug reports because some players elect not to read this valuable information.

By taking a few moments to read through this information, a great deal of our time and efforts can be redirected to focus on new “unanswered” questions and addressing critical issues impacting each release. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to review this post and for all the truly valuable feedback you continue to provide.

Also, remember that while we are providing new content with each release, our community is working overtime to make new events for you to enjoy. Be sure to check out a couple of the event calendars run by our community members (via in-game book or the player-run website: Avatars Circle). You can also get the latest official events on the Main Website.

Without further ado, here is a list of what you can expect to see in Release 43.

Key:

Plain Text: The original plan for the Release deliverables. We intentionally preserve the original text so that our backers can compare plan versus actuals.

Italics: Extra notes and new deliverables.

Strikethrough: These are items that did not make the release (but are still planned).

RELEASE 43, June 29, 2017