We admit that headline kind of sounds insane, but those are just a few of the highlights coming out of Release 135 for Shroud of the Avatar, and we really cannot do better than what the patch notes from the game’s most recent updates already state. Here are a couple of the highlights verbatim:
- A recipe for a Hanging Potted Flowering Pink Azalea decoration has been added to housing decoration merchants.
- Added Animal Spawner, Cow to Pet Merchants.
- Updated Baroque Fountain to be placeable on daises.
- Rebuilt the Medium Lava Pool for testing. If this is effective, players may still encounter problems when fishing it while facing north.
Cows, potted plants, and laval fishing oddness aside, the patch has also made another round of updates to some of the MMORPG’s existing quests, applies a couple of adjustments to some player-owned towns, and cleans up the textures for multiple player dungeon build pieces. Needless to say this patch is a bit of an odd and random duck – but it is live.
Longtime MOP readers will know that Shroud of the Avatar is a controversial game in the MMO space. Kickstarted in 2013, the project has been criticized for cutting promised features, crowdfunding excessively, delaying Kickstarter rewards, obfuscating its corporate leadership and office status, and neglecting SEC filings legally required by the game’s equity crowdfunding. In 2019, Richard Garriott company Portalarium sold SOTA to its lead dev and all but exited the game. Press inquires were met with stonewalling and insults, and equity crowdfund investors were abandoned without notice or any semblance of accountability; moreover, the execs began touting a (failed?) blockchain MMO and a battle royale. SOTA itself does still have a tiny playerbase and is technically still receiving minimal development.
