Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues Development Update

It’s quite difficult to keep up with all the frequent updates Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is receiving. Multiple weekly updates, community spotlights, and release notes fill the game’s official website.

And these aren’t just brief write-ups. For example, the latest Update #210 has its own table of contents and touches on a multitude of topics. While no final release date for the game has yet been announced, the progress is being steadily made and this particular update showcases the game’s new conversation window, describes the making of the town of Brookside, and talks about key and lock mechanics among many other things. Here’s a short excerpt:

New NPC Conversation Window
In Release 38, we are updating the conversation window used for interacting with NPCs to make it both more immersive and easier to use. For immersion, we are hiding almost all of the other interface elements, including all other chat and the hotbar. We are also placing the chat in the very middle of the screen where you are looking at the NPC in order to keep you focused on the interaction. We have also tried to keep the interface itself to as minimal as possible with very few borders and as much transparency in the elements as we can.

For ease of use, we are placing all the keywords in a toolbar at the bottom of the window. This toolbar will include every keyword you can use with the NPC including keywords relating to quests you are currently on and keywords learned from past conversations with that NPC. This saves you from having to scroll back to find keywords you might not remember. There will also be some hidden keywords to discover though, so exploration will still be rewarded. Above you can see the work in progress as of today.

[…]

Important Update to Keys and Locks in Release 38
As you adventure throughout Novia and the Hidden Vale, you’ll find that many keys now have a chance to break on each use.

Keys may have a good chance to break (such as the keys for the locked passages that interconnect underground scenes and the cages found in wilderness scenes throughout Novia), while others break about half the time (such as the key for the Kiln Cistern Alchemist’s Workshop), and some will never break (such as special keys required for quests).

When a key breaks, a message will appear in your chat window telling you so: “Your key (name of key) broke during use.”

If you use a lock for which you have several of the same key, only one key will break. (In other words, not all keys of that type will break, only one at a time.)

If there is ever a situation where more than one key type can be used to open a lock, the system will use a key that never breaks when one is available, otherwise it will use a key that has the greatest chance to break. (Note that we don’t have this situation in the game yet, but an example would be “Prison Cell A” opened by either “Key for Prison Cell A” or “Warden’s Key.”)