Focus Costs Get a Full Audit as Ships and Ship Homes Expand

The first weekly development update is now live on the Shroud of the Avatar news page on Steam, rounding up this week's changes and linking back to the work log. Here's what else happened on Halloween.

Skills and Magic Balance

A full Focus Cost Audit is underway, checking every skill's focus price against what it actually delivers. Fixed-cost skills are falling behind the growing focus pool, Fire Arrow is underpriced, while Shooting Star and Death Field are overpriced. On the defensive side, Life Warding has been retired with a full experience refund, and Magic Warding no longer weakens the heals a fighter receives — welcome news for anyone mixing magic and melee.

Ships, Boats and Ship Homes

The last two water ship homes, the Huge and Giant Pirate Galleons, now sail and lie at anchor outside Smokehaven's harbour. In QA, boats take damage and sink — slowing at a quarter gone, flooding at three quarters, and going under at zero — and ship houses can set sail from their lots with everything aboard and moor back again. Boats can now sail on every map with an ocean, with 57 more maps charted, including Port Harmony and Vertas.

Housing and Scenes

Door entrances now stand properly on the floor against the low walls of the Shogun Five-Story Palace (City) and both Shogun Ships. Turning toward the open cavern in the Sunless Barrens no longer halves the frame rate — a nice win for anyone exploring out there.

Store and Website

Steam Wallet purchases for Crowns and Episode 2 Early Access are built and waiting on the Steamworks setup and the account move. Meanwhile, the new website has a second address, shroudoftheavatar.online, to use while the .com transfer is pending.

Just for Fun

Wall Chess arrived at the Desk: race your king across the board against the Warden while walls go up and crumble between the squares.

Summarized from Chris "Atos" Spears' work log at Catnip Games.