Crafting, Skills, and Chaos: What's New in Shroud of the Avatar
Happy Friday, Avatars! The team at Catnip Games has been busy, and today's work log is packed with quality-of-life improvements, new skills, and a significant change to who can access the Chaos scene. Here's what you need to know.
Item and UI Polish
First up, a fix that will save you from a literal headache: item tooltips no longer "put you inside the item." Weapon and armor stats now read as the item's own, and if you want to see how your character stacks up, just hold Shift to fold your stats back in. Much better!
The Skills window also got a major upgrade with a new List view. You can now see every skill you've learned in one window, grouped by school with collapsible sections. Each school shows training status and a handy "Train All" button—a feature requested by MrChadwyck.
Skills and Progression
Specializations now change at a trainer or Oracle Confirmatory, and here's the best part: the school you set aside keeps its experience instead of draining away. No more losing progress when you want to try something new!
Skills are also getting their due recognition. Every tree awards its title at level 100, with new Elder and Legendary rungs at 150 and 200. There are also four breadth titles for reaching those levels across multiple schools. 46 of these titles have been sitting unused in the game data since 2013, and they'll grant retroactively at your next login.
New Spells and Combat Changes
Two exciting new spells let you leave your body and drive a creature! A full-strength Animal Charm lets you step into an animal you already hold charmed, and full-strength Summon Skeleton takes over your skeleton minion. Your body stays where you left it, awake to anything that approaches. Both ship switched off until the two-client pass on chaos is complete.
Enemies in combat will now take turns speaking instead of shouting over each other, and groups give one battle cry rather than one per creature. Kobold Mages are also the first creatures to support their group, buffing the kobold who is worst hurt—making their camps notably harder.
Other Fixes and Changes
Decoration scaling exploit closed: Stacked items can no longer inherit a resized parent's size.
Lot Deeds and Property Manager now teleport you to your own lots for one Teleport to Zone Scroll.
Potions, food, and drink scale to the level they were made for, with tooltips showing level and percentage.
Salvaging fix: No more stuck weapons in your hands when salvaging at a crafting table.
Chaos is now testers only: Logging in requires tester, VIP, dev, or admin access.
That's it for this week's update! Happy adventuring, and may your titles come quickly.
Summarized from Chris "Atos" Spears' work log at Catnip Games.