[From a forum post by Starr "Darkstarr" Long] Greetings Avatars, As we have stated previously, our goal is to once-per-quarter post an updated schedule for our monthly releases. Even though these goals will likely change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to provide you an updated roadmap periodically. Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback and use it to iterate improvements. This continues to benefit the game, sometimes with sweeping changes like the switch over to use-based advancement. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables in order to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in. For the fourth quarter of 2016, we will continue to polish the Path of Love while moving on to the Path of Courage. We will continue to expand Crafting with focus on Cooking, Food, Agriculture, Alcohol, and Fishing in particular. Combat will continue to be balanced and will expand to include cover as well as a refactor of Damage Types and Resistances. Town Sieges and Roving Encounters will also come online to greatly expand our feature set.
As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers. RELEASE 35, October 27, 2016

• Story: The Path of Love will continue to be polished with a focus on the Tower of the Shuttered Eye along with continued work on Ardoris. We will also continue polish on the Path of Courage.
• Multiplayer Combat Balance: A pass will be made through combat skills, creature stats, player stats, advancement rates, zone difficulties, and other values for continued balance of multiplayer combat. We may also create additional skills, spells, and combos.
• Player Towns & Player Housing:  POT Owners will now be able to select from a set of start points for their town. Also, new housing content will appear; including new Elven homes for the Elven bundles and Testing Incentive Program decorations. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
• Offline Reward Delivery: Reward delivery for Offline Mode will become available to players using this mode to play.
• Roving Encounters: Potential encounters (wandering merchants, monsters, etc.) will appear on the overworld for players to engage (or avoid).
• Crafting: Cooking, Food, and Agriculture will be the focus of Release 35, with one of the major goals being the reduction in reliance on purchasing ingredients from NPC merchants to cook food. This means increasing the number of plants in Agriculture and polishing Agriculture itself, including the addition of features like water harvesting. We also hope to add Alcohol recipes and Teachable Recipes. Finally, the visual effect for items that have been Enchanted or Masterworked will be redone.
• Character: Ardoris will be the first city where we begin adding region specific clothing (Japanese themed) for the residents, including unique armor for guards, clothing for citizens, and regalia for royalty. Work will also continue on Summer Telethon items, including Flaming Bagpipes and Firedancing.

• Story: Path of Love polish will continue but primary focus will begin shifting to the Path of Courage with special attention on Estgard. We also hope to have the new PVP area begin coming online with the town area first.
• Combat: We plan to refactor how Damage Types and Resistances work to better balance different weapon types, spell schools, and creature types against each other. This will also improve the variety of crafted items.
• Player Towns & Player Housing: Towns with player housing will now dynamically update their icon on the Overworld based on various data, including number of claimed lots and online population. Additionally we will continue to expand the Dynamic POT Tool set. Also Obsidian homes for the Obsidian bundles will come online. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
• Crafting: Crafting will be refactored to include the new Damage Types and Resistances. We will also add more Enchantments and Masterwork modifiers, including some related to Celestial Mechanics.
• Character: We will begin work polishing the Kobolds and updating them to better reflect their lore (much of the technology in Novia can be attributed to them). We will also work on the Testing Incentives Program Wearables and Summer Telethon items.
• Social: Guilds will now be able to form alliances with each other and we will be introducing a new default guild for all new players called the Outlander Guild.

• Story: The Path of Courage polish will continue with focus on Harvest and Resolute. We will also continue expansion of the new PVP area with the addition of the dungeons area. Finally, the NPC Conversation System will be getting a much needed refactoring and polish pass.
• Town Sieges: The first iteration of Town Sieges will come online where periodically you will have to fight through battle lines to get into and out of a town under siege by the 8 Obsidian Cabalists.
• Combat: The cover system will be introduced and will modify attack and defense values when you (or your target) are behind cover.
• Player Towns & Player Housing: The first iteration of Player Owned Town Blessings will go live where monuments placed in POTs will grant long term buffs whose power and/or duration will be based on the population of the town. Also, more Obsidian homes for the Obsidian bundles will appear. The ability to Rent Rooms in a player home will start to become available to homeowners. Additionally, work will begin on the first Static POTs. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
• Crafting: Fishing will get an expansion and polish pass. We will also expand weapon recipes to include more visual variants (Elven, Norgard, Obsidian, Kobold).
• Character: Valhold will be the second city where we begin adding region specific clothing (Viking themed) for the residents, including unique armor for guards, clothing for citizens, garb for merchants, and regalia for royalty. We will also begin introducing the first of the Obsidian Cabalists.

• Episodic Content: Shroud of the Avatar will consist of five episodes that will tell a series of virtue based stories created by Richard Garriott and Tracy Hickman. All supported by a series of prequel novels starting with Blade of the Avatar. Forsaken Virtues is the first episode (this is what you are purchasing access to).
  
• Single Player Offline Mode: Players will adventure through over 40 hours of story in an interactive world where their choices have consequences, ethical paradoxes give them pause, and they play a vital part in weaving their own story into the immersive world and lore surrounding them.
  
• Selective Multiplayer Modes: If you want to go through the story online you can play with everyone in a single world with three different online modes (Single Player, Friends, and Open).
  
• Classless Character System: Vast customization options with hundreds of skills and spells in over 20 different skill trees.
  
• Skillful Combat: A new way to prepare and fight in an RPG by building custom decks of skills and dynamically activating them in combat.
  
• PVP: Consensual with Open PVP flags, zones, and Guild Warfare.
  
• Player Housing: Non instanced, finite, and embedded in the world with multiple group living options.
  
• Player Driven Economy: Deep crafting system where the best items are made by players and player items are the main source of loot found in the game.
  
• Pay Once to Play: No subscription fees. Each episode (released approximately annually) is a one time fee and everything in the game can be purchased with in game gold that can be earned (except for some exclusive backer rewards).
  
• Social: Full Guild System, Highly Active Community and Player Owned Towns.
  
• Crowd Sourced & Funded: Support the project by contributing content (and receive compensation) or by pledging (and receive exclusive rewards).
  
• Open Development: Players help shape the game by giving feedback on monthly early access releases, videos, weekly updates, blog postings, forums, chat, etc.

Current Version

• Housing: Purchase property and a wide variety of buildings to place there. These can be customized with hundreds of items (paintings, crafting stations, chairs, tables, food, plants, fountains, statues, lights, etc.). Players can also set permissions that allow them to share this property with other players. Higher level pledges begin the game with property and house deeds. (Find out more at www.shroudoftheavatar.com)
  
• Crafting: Gather and refine resources to craft a wide variety of objects including weapons, armor, potions, food, and furniture.
  
• Player Trading: Trade with each other for items or gold.
  
• PVP (Duels and Zones): Fight other players in Open PVP zones of the map or 1 on 1 duels in any location.
  
• Dual Scale Map: Explore the world by walking across a map (aka The Overworld) like old school RPGs with random and roving encounters mixed among named points of interest.
  
• Combat and Magic Skills: We have over 100 skills in a wide variety of combat and magic schools including Blades, Fire, Water, Life, Polearms, Shields, etc.
  
• Multiple Online Modes: Play how you want in one of two modes: Single Player Online or Open Multiplayer Online.
  
• Character Customization: Customize your character's facial features, hair style, hair color, facial hair, skin tone, and gender. Also express yourself with a vast array of different gear that when equipped shows on your character. (cloaks, armor, weapons, hats, tools, torches, etc.)
  
• AI Behaviors: Archers will try to maintain distance, warriors will try to surround you, Liches will summon skeletal allies, and villagers will turn on lights when night falls.
  
• Advancement: As you gain experience fighting and questing you gain levels which give you skill points that you can use with a trainer to purchase new skills or to raise your attributes.
  
• Hint System: Each time you attempt something for the first time a hint will appear with basic instructions (this can be disabled in options)
  
• Fully Interactive World: Every attempt is made to make the world respond to you. All the lights you see can be turned on and off, doors can be opened/closed/locked/unlocked, objects can be taken from shelves/tables/etc.
  
• Dynamic Lighting: Time of day changes as you play along with all light sources casting light in a realistic fashion.
  
• Summoned Allies: Certain schools of magic can summon allies including Ice Elementals, Fire Elementals, Liches, and Skeletons.
  
• Control Points: Grab control of Vertas Pass and see how long you can hold it against ever increasing waves of Dark Elves.
  
• Emotes: Express yourself with a wide variety of emotes including dances, bows, laughs, bows, yawns, etc.
  
• Guilds: You can form or join a guild
  
• Banks: Store all your gear and loot when it gets too heavy to carry around.
  
• Character tied to Pledge: All versions of the game (aka pledges) come with special rewards (gear, houses, titles, emotes, etc.).
  
• Player Owned Towns: Players can purchase and customize from templates their very own town.
  
• Player Vendors: You will be able to set up NPC vendors to sell the goods you have crafted or found adventuring.
  
• Player Made Books: Write your own book in the game and pay in game gold to have it published widely.
  
• Dye-able Gear: Customize your gear by changing the colors.
  
• Crowd Sourcing Create content for the game (music, sound effects, and art) and be paid for it.

Future Updates

• Story: A rich narrative that presents you with complex moral choices will come online closer to launch.
  
• More Scenes: Many additional scenes will come online including cities, dungeons, deserts, arctic areas, swamps, fortifications, battlegrounds, etc.
  
• Performance: Continued optimizations as well as sophisticated fallback routines will greatly improve performance.
  
• More Magic & Combat Skills: More skills will be coming including the Chaos Magic School.
  
• Localization: Support for multiple languages.
  
• More Creatures: More creatures along with multiple variations and new behaviors.

• OS: Ubuntu 12.04 or newer officially but most linux flavors supported
• Processor: Quad Core 2.4 GHz or fasterMemory: 12 GB RAM
• Memory: 12 GB RAM
• Graphics: DirectX 11 Compatible NVIDIA 960 / AMD 560Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 30 GB available space

• OS: Ubuntu 12.04 or newer officially but most linux flavors supported
• Processor: Quad Core Processor 2.8GHz or fasterMemory: 16 GB RAM
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: DirectX 11 Compatible NVIDIA GTX 1070 / ATI Radeon HD 5870Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 30 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: Performance significantly improved with an SSD