WARNING: THIS GAME IS EARLY ACCESS. PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME VIA CROWD FUNDING, BUG TESTING, AND FEEDBACK. PLEASE ONLY PURCHASE IF YOU ARE ALSO PREPARED TO HANDLE PERIODIC WIPES, SERIOUS ISSUES AND INCOMPLETE CONTENT. PLEASE READ THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS PRIOR TO PURCHASE, MANY OF WHICH WARN YOU OF THE CURRENT UNFINISHED STATE OF THE GAME.
Please read this entire message, as well as the linked instructions and known issues. Thank you for being a loyal backer and follower of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 36 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, November 17, at 10:30 AM US Central Standard Time (16:30 UTC). Short Release: Normally our release cycle lasts approximately four weeks, giving us 3 weeks of development time and 1 week of polish before the release goes live on the last Thursday of the month. However, November and December have the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays which requires us to do our release earlier in those months. That only gives us 2 weeks of development time and 1 week of polish before we release. Major System Changes: We are making a lot of major changes to how the game works this release. Many of these changes are related to game balance, some are about making the game have a better pacing and reward cycle, while others are about making it so that greater effort and greater specialization will equal greater reward. In Combat, changes like the addition of Resistances aim to encourage players to vary the skills and spells that they use in order to maximize their effectiveness in various situations. In Crafting, changes to Discovery and the addition of Teachability is a first step towards making specialization in crafting more meaningful. Some of these changes are being tried as experiments (noted below). Through playtesting and feedback, we will determine whether we will keep them in the game and/or what tweaks we will make to these changes. We understand that some of these changes will be controversial, but we firmly believe they will make the game more healthy in the long term. A deeper dive into the reasons behind many of these changes can be found in a forum post made by Chris Spears. Graff Island: Graff Island is located in the Drachvald region in the Northeast region of Novia. Located across from Port Graff in the Spindrift Bay, this community is central to the gem trade of the region. It includes a factory that sculpts the gems for socketing into weapons, armor and other goods, as well as the home of the Graff family with their sprawling mansion. Originally a cloned scene based on our PRT/POT Forest 01 base template (aka “the PaxLair template”), it was rebuilt in Release 36 with completely different terrain and foliage types, along with adding the Graff family mansion and the Graff Gem Factory.
Elad’s Lighthouse: Elad's Lighthouse is also located in Spindrift Bay directly across the water from Brittany. It is home to Elad, who retired to the island after an illustrious career as Lord British's shipbuilder and lighthouse builder. As with many of our scenes, Elad's Lighthouse started as a cloned scene based on our PRT/POT Forest 01 base template (aka “the PaxLair template”). It always had the unique feature of Elad's Lighthouse, which will continue to be a prominent feature. However, it now also has unique terrain featuring dramatic cliffsides, a dockyard, lumber mill, and many other unique changes.
Midras Ruins (Open PVP): The Midras Ruins are one of the six ruined cities found in Novia that date back to the period in Novian history in which the Obsidian Order rose to power (as described in the Sword of Midras prequel novel by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott). The exact history of some of these cities has been lost to time, but it is rumored that some of them may have been abandoned before the rise of the Obsidians. Midras in particular is significant because it is the location of the Crypt of the Avatar. Note that all six of the ruins are Open-PvP zones. Midras started as a clone of the Opalis Ruins, but was completely rebuilt this release to have a unique layout and visuals. We especially focused on making sure the map had interesting setups for PvP conflict with plenty of space for hiding, escaping, ambushing, and skirmishing.
Non-Tradeable & Quest Items Bankable: Items that are not tradeable (like Quest Items) can now be placed in your Bank. Note that they are still not able to be placed in other containers (chests on your lot for instance) to prevent exploitive workarounds to the no-trade flag. Magic Damage Types & Resistances: Starting in R36, there is now a more formal resistance system in place for players and creatures. Currently players can mostly gain resistances through gear, but skills and spells will appear in future releases to allow players to expand their resistances. The simplest way to describe how resistances work is to say they are Defensive Attunement. So if you have 50 Death Magic Resistance, that will counter the extra damage that a caster would get from having 50 Attunement. Finally, players who don’t want to use magic can have a way to resist casters! Creatures now also have Resistances. For simple, natural creatures, like bears and spiders, they will have a small amount of Resistance to all magic but generally be fairly easy to affect. Many of the more magical creatures have some very high Magic Resistances to specific schools. This means that if you were a player that only used a very limited set of skills on everything, you are likely going to have to change your strategy when fighting some creature types. As an example, Fire Elementals are almost completely immune to fire, and moderately resistant to all other types of magic except for water magic, which they have no resistances to. There are also a few creatures that are just highly resistant to most magic and will be difficult to kill now without the help of a weapon. For those who rely heavily on magic, this will make the game more challenging. There will probably be things you used to be able to kill that you can no longer kill. This is expected and just know that all other casters will be facing the same challenges. 40 Meter Requirement for XP Gain (Experiment): We have constrained Experience Point gain so that you must be within 40 meters of other members of your party. Previously, you just had to be in the same zone and this was being used as an exploit where low level characters would wait at the entrance of a zone while high-level players would farm the area to level the low-level character safely. Stack Limits on Effects: Support was added to limit the number of effects on targets. Most effects like Firebolt, Fireball, Rend, and others will have a max of 3 concurrent effects. This means 3 per spell/skill; not total. So, a player could have 3 Rends and 3 Firebolt DOTs on a target at once. Repeat castings of spells will remove the oldest effect first. Fizzle Chance Increased: The amount of fizzle added by Armor when casting Air, Death, and Fire spells was increased slightly. The multiplier for armor penalty in most spells in those schools went up by either 0.1 or 0.2. This means that your armor has a base 30% fizzle, your fizzle chance for those schools went up by 3% or 6%. This was done to help differentiate light and heavy armor a bit more. Spell Casting Interruption Increased: In R35, the only interruptions were from stuns and knock down effects. In R36, most spells have a casting window which is shown on screen. During that window, hits can interrupt spell casting. NOTE: This does NOT increase the time to execute a spell Skill Decay Increased: For the next few releases, we will be increasing the maximum accumulated decay incrementally. For R36, the max accumulated decay is 12 hours. For example, if a player has around a million total experience, a death after 12 or more hours of not dying will result in around a loss of 1250 xp. The lost xp will be deducted from skills not set to maintain or train. If skills are set to maintain or train, the lost xp will be deducted from their pooled experience first. Targeting Cycling Improved: We fixed a major issue in the target cycling code. Previously, it appeared to be picking the worst possible target first and then the best target second. This has now been addressed and the logic improved for picking stuff close to you over distant stuff. Beneficial Targeting Improved: When in a party and using beneficial spells(like healing or buffs), if there is no hard target set, then the caster will be the target. If you wish to cast on a party member other than yourself, you must now select them by clicking on them or using the F2–F8 keys to select them. We know that Healing Targeting can still use more work, but this is at least a much needed great first step forward. NPC Health Adjustments: NPCs that are caster types have had their health reduced dramatically and damage output increased. Melee types have had their health increased. The goal is to give players an incentive to go after casters and archers first. POT Overworld Population Indicators: The visuals of a POT on the Overworld will now update based on how many lots have been claimed relative to the size of the town, starting with a simple foundation and working up to the full set of buildings we have been using up until now. Additionally, we will show smoke in the chimneys and lights in the windows to indicate if there are players online in the town.
Holiday Content: We created lots of holiday content including Yule Trees, Stockings, Gift Boxes, Wreaths, etc. Some for the Add On Store and some are craftable in game.
Crafting Recipe Discoverability Limited (Experiment): Discoverability on Recipes is no longer universal to all recipes. Currently we have removed Discoverability from all but the lowest-level recipes. This, along with Teachability, is part of a larger effort to reward specialization and advancement in crafting by having different levels of rarity in the recipes. We will not be removing any recipes that players already have. Those will be grandfathered in. Please note that this an initial pass on which recipes should or should not have Discoverability. If there are any recipes you feel should have remained discoverable (and therefore also Teachable) then please feel free to provide us that feedback and we will consider it. Note that by limiting recipes this way and not making them universally available we can start to increase the value and power of components and items. Crafting Teachable Recipes: The lowest level and most common recipes can now be taught to other players, and even be re-taught. The next tier of recipes can be taught but not re-taught. However, some rarer recipes (like Bone Armor) are not teachable nor re-teachable. This is part of a larger effort to reward specialization and advancement in crafting by having different levels of rarity in the recipes. We will not be removing any recipes that players already have. Those will be grandfathered in. However recipes that you currently own cannot be taught without being repurchased. Crafting Socketed Ward Gems: Gems can now be cut into Ward Gems which offer Resistances to magic damage types (see Resistances above). These are socketed just like Attunement based Gems, so you now can choose if you want to increase Attunement (offense) or Resistance (defense) when you add a Gem to an item. Scaled Full Durability Repair Cost (Experiment): As part of our commitment to having a Player Driven Economy, we want there to be a real possibility of items wearing out while balancing that with an understanding that for very rare items (+16 crafted gear), players want a way to preserve them. In order to support both, we introduced repair with Gold Crowns several releases ago. The cost to repair was only a single Gold Crown, however, and an item could be repaired infinitely. This lead to a stagnation in demand once players got an “ideal” piece of gear. For R36, we are going to experiment with scaling the repair cost based on the number of times you have repaired the item. And much more including more recipes, new Unique NPCs, more story polish, combat balance, etc.! Click here for the complete R36 Instructions [And did we mention that you should read the negative reviews that warn you about the unfinished state of this game before you purchase? Don't buy this game until you read them!]