Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues Post-funding Update: Combat Sigil, Story, and More

In the latest update to hit the official Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues website, the team at Portalarium provide us with a closer look at the warrior-focused combat sigil, a few story elements, player home basements, and more. A fistful of paragraphs:

Followers of the martial path use this mighty combat sigil as their symbol. The sigil shows the eight schools of combat that a warrior can follow. There are four armor schools: Light Armor (Cloth & Leather), Medium Armor (Chain & Scale), Heavy Armor (Plate), and Shields. There are four weapon schools: Blades (Swords & Axes), Polearms (Halberds & Spears), Bludgeons (Hammers & Clubs), and Ranged (Bows & Crossbows).

…

Sometimes constraints can lead to some of the most interesting ideas. Case in point: cutting holes in terrain and expanding player houses.

There were two features we discussed wanting for Shroud. The first was the ability to cut holes in terrain that would allow us to make transitions to underground areas seamless from the surface. The second was the ability to expand / modify player houses. After a week of technical exploration of various tools we determined that for several reasons (performance, amount of world building time required, etc.) cutting holes in terrain was just not going to work for Episode 1. This means that for Episode 1 going underground will require a teleport / map load (we promise to make them fast!). Don’t worry though! The interiors of buildings (including player houses) will still be contiguous and not require map loads.

We also read the thread about player housing customization and we agreed with the general consensus that it leads to very inconsistent visuals. We also thought that because of the limited number of lots in the game most people would only be able to have one lot (and therefore one house) at any given time. In the case of most individuals this would not be an issue but for some individuals and for some groups (i.e. guilds) this limitation might be stifling.

So then we realized if we have teleports to underground areas could we not use those to allow players to expand downwards underneath their lot? That is when the idea of player basements appeared. The idea would be that you could basically add another story (or multiple stories) below your house!

Let us know what you think of this idea and we will consider pursuing it further.