Release 2 Instructions Posted on Official Forum

Backers of Richard Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar will want to pay close attention to a new forum post on the official site. The SotA team is ready to unleash Release 2 on the world and, as such, have a few words of wisdom to impart to testers.

The list includes what players can and cannot expect in Release 2:

ELEASE 2: January 23 - January 25 2014

• Crafting: We will be opening up crafting for testing with more than 100 recipes. Chests full of crafting resources will be provided. Crafting will initially focus on refining and production for smithing, tailoring, and carpentry.
• Shopping: Shopkeepers will be open for business for selling and buying.
• Town 2: An additional municipality (likely village sized) will be open for business! Entering the swirling blue portal in the ring of stones will take you from one town to the other. We chose Kingsport for Town 2.
• List Inventory: For those who prefer spreadsheets to immersion. The inventory battle royale continues! Setting this option will change all containers into lists except for crafting tables (coming in R3).
• Character Customization++: Characters from R1 will be wiped, but you will now have even more options when creating your character! Now there are even more ways to look unique, including: facial features, scaling, and more content (hairstyles, head shapes, skin tones, hair colors, etc.) We were also able to include helmets and offhand items (torch and shield).
• Jumping: Tired of not being able to jump that fence? Well tire no more as we now have jumping. And not just any old jumping but player controlled height jumping. A quick tap on the spacebar barely lifts the player but holding down the spacebar allows the player to clear those pesky walls with a high jump. Long term jumping will use focus and will likely be affected by weight carried.
• Run Speed: Many of you commented on the slow run speed so we increased it by 50%, which feels much more satisfying. We will continue to tune this and balance it with an upcoming Dash skill that uses Focus as well as the Sprint buff in the Light Armor School of combat.
• Mac & Linux: OSX and Linux support is now working (with a few caveats). The game currently requires a two button mouse and while a trackpad technically works we are not fully supporting it yet. For Linux, Unity only officially supports Ubuntu so if you are running other versions it may not work. Also Mac & Linux are not yet patching so these builds are only available via direct download.
• Recipe Log: We had originally planned to put crafting in R2 without a recipe log but quickly discovered how amazingly not fun that was. Discovery is great but not having any record of that discovery is just punishing. So we got in a recipe book that will track your recipes.

Read the "cannot expect" half of the list on the Shroud of the Avatar forum.