Release 6 - Player Instructions

Setup:

1. Download and run the SotAInstaller.exe here:

1. PC: http://goo.gl/KVYzpF 
2. Mac: http://goo.gl/YvMEAz
3. Linux: http://goo.gl/y8TGHi

NOTE: If you still have an install then all you need to do is patch, no need to re-install

2. We recommend having at least 4GB of free disk space on the drive you install to, though the game will only download about 850 MB of data.
3. We recommend you allow the installer to “auto-run” on complete.  On subsequent play sessions, use either the desktop shortcut named “Shroud of the Avatar” or the “Launcher.exe” located in your installed Portalarium directory to launch the game.
4. Once the launcher is finished, the game will start.
5. (optional) Leaving the launcher running will help us and others by providing some of your bandwidth to assist others in downloading the client.

Login:

1. Enter your registered www.shroudoftheavatar.com login information - If you are a Kickstarter backer and have not yet linked your kickstarter pledge to your account, you will not be able to gain access. If you have not backed the game yet, you will need to register and login on www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the "Pledge" button in the right side-bar, and purchase a pledge at the $45 Adventurer level or above.
2. Choose your play mode - Currently, the only valid options are Single Player Online and Multiplayer Online.
3. Click Enter Game to enter Avatar creation. The Avatar creation step by step process:

1. Enter a first name and an optional last name (only first name is required)
2. Select gender and adjust character proportions as desired
3. Click next
4. Adjust skin tone, eye color, head type, and facial features
5. Click next
6. Adjust hair color, hair style
7. Click create character

Menus:

• There is a master menu that will show up in the top-right corner of the screen when hovered over with the cursor which contains icons that can be left-clicked to perform the following actions-

• Crossed swords & shield: Access Avatar character information
• Bag: Open up inventory
• Gears: Options menu-

• Audio tab contains various options for audio control
• Video tab allows video and graphics setting adjustments
• Game tab contains options that affect in-game play
• Controls tab allows the user to rebind the key controls
• Quit will allow a user to quit the game

• Question Mark: Bring up help page
• Sealed Letter: File a bug report  (In-game version is disabled, will open a web browser to the bug forums)

Basic Controls:

• ‘W-A-S-D’ keys control Avatar movement
• Holding both left and right mouse buttons will move the Avatar forward
• Pressing the ‘SPACEBAR’ key will cause your Avatar to jump, the longer you hold down the ‘SPACEBAR’ the higher the Avatar will jump
• Swimming engages when the Avatar enters a deep enough water source and behaves like normal movement with two exceptions: the player cannot jump and combat is currently prohibited while swimming.
• NUMPAD ‘/’ key or typing /walk + ENTER key will switch the Avatar between running and walking modes
• “Num-Lock” is the default auto-run toggle button.
• Mouse movement + holding right click controls the camera view

• In the options menu (the gear icon in the top right menu) there is an option in the Game tab to invert the mouse look

• Decorative items, crafting components, and equipment can be moved via holding left click+dragging items to their new desired location and releasing the left mouse button.
• To wear equipment, open the character sheet (‘C’ key), drag equipment onto the display avatar or corresponding highlighted equipment slot and release the left mouse button.
• Items can also be equipped by dragging them onto the actual Avatar within the world

• To move items into a bag, open the bags inventory interface (‘B’ key) and drag items onto the desired bag followed by releasing the left mouse button to place the item within the selected bag

• Non-equippable Items will automatically be added to your top-most inventory bag if they are dragged onto the Avatar within the world

Avatar character management:

• ‘J’ key brings up the Journal. As your Avatar talks to the inhabitants of New Britannia important information and conversations will be noted here.
• ‘C’ key or left-clicking the crossed swords & shield icon in the top right menu will bring up your Avatar’s paperdoll and character information
• ‘I’ key or left-clicking the bag icon in the top right menu will toggle open/close your inventory bags

• To switch between inventory modes, open up the options menu (left click the gears icon in the top-right corner menu bar) and click the game tab, than the ‘Use List Inventory Mode’ check box.

• ‘N’ key displays the names of other players and NPCs over their head. This is not active by default.

• This also toggles NPC health bars and combat damage numbers. If names are hidden so are health bars and combat numbers.

• ‘O’ key opens emote list. Double left clicking on an emote activates it. You can also activate emotes by typing /<name of emote>
• ‘M’ key toggles the compass on and off.
• ‘K’ key brings up the skills selection menu. Only Adventure skills are implemented at present. Select a skill to see its skill tree on the right and select individual icons in the tree to add or remove skill points.
• ‘L’ key brings up your current skill list. From here you may drag skills to your hotbar for use in combat. Note that at this point you may change your skills at any time without cost in the skills section menu.
• “R” key opens the crating journal. You begin with a few recipes already known and any new ones you discover are recorded here.
• ‘F’ key brings up Friends List and Party List where you can add or remove friends and party members.

• Type in a name in the search field followed by the ‘ENTER’ key to add a user as a friend.
• Select a friend from the list and left click Unfriend to remove the selected friend
• The Party tab allows you to invite other players, promote another player to party leader, kick a player if you are the leader, and leave the party.

• ‘H’ key will bring up the Blocked users list that will block any users from appearing within your chat window

• Type in a name followed by the ‘ENTER’ key to add a user to the blocked list
• Select a user from the list and left click Unblock to remove the selected user from being blocked

• ‘ESC’ key closes all open interfaces and brings up the options menu.
• /AFK puts avatar in AFK mode (sits down and AFK gets appended to name)
• The small triangle in the middle of the skillbar allows toggling between the combat and tools skillbars. The combat bar is for skills and spells used in battle while the tool bar is for resource harvesting tools and a few non-combat spells.

Interactive Objects:

• Interactive objects in the world (the cursor will change when hovered over) can either be interacted with by double left-clicking or picked up by left click + dragging the mouse. Some examples of interactions:

• Doors can be opened and closed.
• Chests can be opened and looted.
• Light sources can be toggled on/off.
• Ladders can be “climbed” (currently a teleport)
• Many objects in the environment can be picked up and looted by left click + dragging the mouse. Drop them on the Avatar or in an inventory window.

World Navigation:

• Upon leaving certain scenes or towns via the roads located near the entrance/exits, the Avatar will be taken to the world map. World map navigation works as follows:

• Single left-click a hex to move towards it. Travel speed will be affected by certain types of terrain
• Double-left click a hex to move to it and transition to its scene. Every passable hex contains a scene, though some are generic or placeholders at this time.

• Hold Right Mouse Button to pan around the map
• Mouse wheel controls zoom
• Fast travel between towns:

• To travel between Kingsport and Owl’s Head use the Lunar Rift located near the entrance to Owl’s Head or the Lunar Rift in the densely forested area of Kingsport.

• Party Members are visible on the world map..
• Entrances to the Throne of Bone dungeon and Owls Nest bandit hideout are now hidden inside wilderness scenes found in the same hex these scenes formerly occupied.
  

Adventuring with others (in Multiplayer Mode):

• Most scenes are shared by everyone in them. This includes most city, town, road, and wilderness scenes. It is possible to encounter Avatars not in your party in these scenes.
• Other scenes are specific only to your Avatar and members of your party. These are called Adventure Scenes. Examples are the Owls Head Bandit Hideout, The Clink, and Throne of Bone Dungeon at the south end of the Vale.
• If you are inside an Adventure Scene, you will only see players that are in your party. Other players will be placed in different instances of that scene.

Combat:

• Hostile creatures and NPCs highlight red when hovered over with the cursor and are surrounded by a red ring when selected. Neutral creatures have a yellow ring and may fight back if attacked or if certain conversation options are chosen.
• “Z” sheaths and unsheathes your equipped weapons.
• While hovering over a creature/NPC that can be attacked, double left-click to engage in auto-attack combat with your equipped weapon.
• While auto-attacking an enemy, double-tapping one of the WASD keys will perform an evasive roll.
• “T” toggles auto-attacking your target on and off.
• ‘TAB’ cycles your target through nearby enemies.
• ‘CTRL-TAB’ cycles your target through nearby friendly characters. (Handy for healing allies in a pitched battle)
• Enemies that are defeated and have loot for the Avatar will highlight the cursor bronze when hovered over and can be double left-clicked to bring up the loot window.
• If the Avatar drops below 0 health they will be incapacitated for a moderate time until they regain consciousness at full health. Allies can also use the Resurrect spell to revive you.
• Numbers indicating damage dealt and received appear over the Avatar and creature’s heads. These can be disabled with the N key along with health bars and nameplates.

Skills:

• Press the ‘K’ key to bring up the Skills menu.  
• Skills are divided into Adventuring and Crafting tabs. Right now only Adventuring Skills are present. (Though it is still possible to craft.)
• Adventuring Skills are further divided into Combat and Magic Skills. Select the Combat or Magic header to expand it and see the available skill trees.
• Any individual skill can be upgraded up to level 5. Upgrading a skill costs 2 points per level. Left click on a skill icon to buy a level and right click to remove a level and refund your skill points. Some skills require at least one level in prerequisite skills before they can be bought.
• Once purchased you can ready a skill by dragging its icon down to your hotbar.
• Press the ‘L’ key to show your list of purchased skills. Skills can also be dragged to the hotbar from here.
• Most skills require enough focus and the correct equipment to use. For example “Crushing Blow” requires a bashing weapon.
• Many skills and spells have secondary effects like stunning enemies, causing damage over time, or slowing enemy movement and attack speed.

Player parties:

• Parties are currently limited to eight members
• Press the ‘F’ key to bring up the friends list, players can now be invited and managed through the party tab on the friends list
• Players can be invited to party with you if you are the leader of a party or if you are not currently in a party
• When invited to a party, a dialog will pop up that the player may accept or decline
• All party members are shown in the list and their status is listed, status includes: Leader, invited, member of party
• If the party leader disconnects or leaves the party, party leader status will be assigned to a new party member
• Party leaders can:

• Invite new party members to join
• Kick party members
• Make new party leader
• Manage invited members that have not accepted (uninvite)

• Offline party members will remain in the party, but their name will be greyed out
• HUD elements (displayed vertically in the top left corner) for the party include name, health, and focus of current party members
  

Trading with other players:

• Drag and drop an item over another Avatar to place it in their inventory.
• Both players will receive a message letting them know the item has been transferred.
• Secure trade is planned for a later update.

Player Housing:

• House Selection:

• Pressing or holding the ‘P’ key will signal available housing lots to display a visual beacon effect
• You can ask town criers or guards in Owl’s Head how many housing lots are available in their area, by asking them “how many houses are free”?
• To claim an available housing lot, walk up to the ‘For Sale’ runic sign and double left-click the sign to interact with it
• Lot ownership no longer expires and is now first come first served. Once a lot is claimed, no other player will be able to claim it or interact with it until you unclaim it or claim a different unclaimed lot.
• Once the housing lot is claimed, the owner may choose what house is displayed on the lot and, currently, is the only Avatar able to decorate the house
• Note: Changing the player house or unclaiming the lot will return any decoration to your inventory.

• Decoration:

• To decorate, make sure the avatar is within their claimed housing lot (lots are denoted by a runic sign post and only the owner of the lot may decorate) then left click+drag objects from the Avatar’s inventory into the world and release the left mouse button when the object is green to place it in the world. A red object will not be placeable.
• The ‘Q’ and ‘E’ keys will rotate the object during placement.

• Holding the ‘LSHIFT’ key while using ‘Q’ and ‘E’ to rotate will slow down the rotation for precision placement

• To remove decorations, left click+drag an item from within the world back into the Avatar’s inventory.
• Decorations will be removed when changing houses on a lot or unclaiming it..

• Permissions: Currently all lots are set to public permission by default which means other players can enter you lot but cannot decorate. Later releases will add permissions to control this (kindred, guild, friends, public, etc.)

Harvesting/Crafting:

• Resource nodes throughout the world can be harvested in two ways:

• Equip the required resource gathering tool and interact with the resource node through a double left-click
• Use the out-of-combat hotbar by first dragging a harvesting tool from the Avatar’s inventory to the out-of-combat hotbar followed by initiating the harvest by pressing/clicking the corresponding hot-key slot on the out-of-combat hotbar

• ‘R’ key opens the recipe log

• To see the known recipes for a particular category, left click the desired category
• Recipes you don’t have the components for will show up greyed out, each component you possess or recipe you can craft will show up bolded instead.
• If already at the corresponding crafting table and all ingredients are present, a crafting recipe may be double left-clicked to automatically add everything needed to the table for crafting the item.

• To craft an item, first double click the crafting table that corresponds to the item you wish to make. Once the crafting table is in use, drag each component (exact amounts only, use ‘CTRL’ to grab a single item from a stack) and the tool you want to attempt to craft with onto the crafting table from your inventory. Once all of the necessary components are placed on the table the “craft” button will highlight and an item will be created once it is clicked.

• Iron Longsword example crafting recipe:

• Iron Longsword (Blacksmith) - 1 Smithing Hammer, 1 Chunk of Coal, 1 Iron Longsword Blade, 1 Iron Hilt
• Iron Hilt (Blacksmith) - 1 Smithing Hammer, 1 Chunk of Coal, 2 Iron Ingots
• Iron Longsword Blade (Smelting) - 1 Smelting Tongs, 1 Blade Mold, 3 Iron Bars, 1 Chunk of Coal
• Iron Bar (Smelting) - 1 Smelting Tongs, 1 Bar Mold, 1 Chunk of Coal, 4 Iron Ore
• Iron Ingot (Smelting) - 1 Smelting Tongs, 1 Ingot Mold, 1 Chunk of Coal, 1 Iron Ore

• Chair Decoration example crafting recipe:

• Chair (Carpentry) - 1 Carpentry Hammer, 2 Wooden Board, 1 Wooden Pole
• Wooden Poles (Milling) - 1 Wood Rasp, 1 Wooden Board
• Wooden Board (Milling) - 1 Cubit Measure, 1 Wood Log

• All items can be removed from a crafting table by left-clicking the Take All button.
• Stacked Items (Crafting Ingredients): Moving a stack of items brings up a dialog asking how many you want to move. If you are holding down the ‘CTRL’ key when you click-and-drag a stacked item, you will remove only one item from a stack of items.

Chat:

• Filters & tabs

• Each chat tab has a drop down menu to allow filtering of what that tab receives.
• New tabs can be created with the + symbol on the right side of the chat window.
• Unwanted tabs can be closed with the small X symbol on the right of each tab.

• Chat box controls

• To converse with NPCs or other players hit the ‘ENTER’ key to bring up your chat log. Type the text you want conveyed to the npc/players within the chat box, and hit ‘ENTER’ again to send the text, which also exits text entry mode (an industry standard we have adopted).
• To send chat directly to a specific NPC, select them with your left mouse button before sending a message. A blue circle will appear below the NPC.
• Double-clicking on friendly and neutral NPCs opens conversation with them, assuming you do not have a weapon equipped. In the future NPC’s may react negatively to people running around town carrying drawn weapons.
• An option has been added to click on known keywords in your chat window. Note that you will still need to use text entry for many options, such as answering questions and asking about things not explicitly mentioned in dialogue. This may be disabled (along with keyword highlighting) to enhance immersion.
• The chat log can be scrolled through by left click+dragging the slider on the right side of the chat window
• You can disable the requirement to hit Enter before each text entry in the Options menu
• You can click the thumbtack in the corner of the chat window to lock or unlock the auto-hide feature.  By default, the chat window auto-hides.
• To move the chat window, left-click + drag while the cursor is within the text receiving area.
• To re-size the chat window, left-click + drag the window borders as desired.
• A list of chat ‘/’ commands and their functionality (type in the command followed by any input, denoted below by a pair of  <>, and the ‘ENTER’ key to execute it. EX: /w LordBritish Hello - will send LordBritish a friendly private message):

• /leave - leaves your active party
• /friend <playername> - add player to friend list
• /unfriend <playername> - remove player from friend list
• /block <playername> - add player to blocked list
• /unblock <playername> - remove player from blocked list
• /w <playername>, <text> - send a private message to a player
• /r <text> - reply to the last private whisper you received.
• /p <text>- switch to party chat text entry mode
• /l <text> - switch to local chat text entry mode
• /loc - print the player location in world coordinates
• /bug <text> - copy a bug small bug report to the clipboard
• /stuck - reset the Avatar’s postion
• /follow - follow the targeted Avatar
• /AFK - Enter AFK mode.
• /<emote> - the emotes from the emote list may be entered as a chat command
• /visible hides the Avatar model from view. (useful for screenshots)

Shopping:

• Many NPCs now buy and sell things. You can activate the Shopping interface in a number of ways:

• Double-clicking an NPC will call up the Shopping interface window, if one exists.
• NPCs may also open up a Shopping interface window as part of a conversation. “What do you sell”, “Show me your store”, “What is for sale”, “What goods do you offer”, or the keywords “vendor” and “buy” will all work.

• You can buy and sell goods from an NPC using a tabbed interface and set quantities for purchasing/selling multiple items. You will be asked to confirm a transaction before it is completed.
• An Avatar starts with no gold, but will have a selection of crafting supplies and equipment. The best method to make money currently is to craft items and sell to vendors- see how much money you can make!

Bug Reporting & Misc:

• To report a bug, either left-click the sealed letter in the master menu or open up your chat log (‘ENTER’ key) and type in /bug followed by your bug report and the ‘ENTER’ key. This will copy your bug report and game information to the clipboard and bring up the SotA bug forum where you can paste the clipboard into a post for us to receive. Before posting in the forums please follow these guidelines: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IgbhfeXt8mTLZaY7cXGf3m-Pf-3BodoRK1-sVuHlHr8/edit
• The ‘F11’ key will take a screenshot of the game and save it to your installed SotA directory
• To find out the current position of the Avatar in game open up the chat log (‘ENTER’ key) and type in ‘/loc’ followed by the ‘ENTER’ key. This also copies out the location to your clipboard so that it can be pasted elsewhere as needed.
• The ‘Alt-F4’ key combo or left-clicking the options menu “Quit” tab will exit the game.