The server is back online. Thanks for your patience.

At 9am UTC on September 5th, Shards of Britannia will remain offline for up to 3 hours while some critical maintenance tasks are performed. Please keep an eye on #news in Discord in order to be notified on when the game is available again.

Thank you for your patience.

This is a reminder of the project's Vacation Hold policy for player houses. If you are in any position where you cannot get to the game for an extended time, whether it be military deployment, natural disasters, or something else please contact us, and we can consider your request to put your house into a Vacation Hold to prevent it from decaying in the normal timeframe.

The following upcoming changes are available for testing on our Test Center server:

Jousting Skill, Betting & Leaderboard:

• Added Jousting as a Secondary Skill which will have a chance to gain with each round & players' skill will influence the outcome of the round
• You can now enter a Bet Amount when choosing a Jousting partner (the initiator will choose)
• Bets will be settled automatically at the end of the round where losers pay the winner if they still have the gold available; rounds will be unable to start unless both parties have the gold to bet with
• Leaderboard added to keep count of wins & losses and total bets won/lost
• Note: There are 2 jousting arenas and the leaderboard placed at Vesper Crossroads, shown on the universal moongate as (Housing: Minoc/Jousting)

Cleaning Up Britannia vendors have been spawned around most of the Banks for spending your CUB points. Thanks for keeping Britannia clean!

The following upcoming changes are available for testing on our Test Center server:

Player Mail:

• introducing the new Player Mail system
• mailboxes placed in houses or rentals can be registered with a name & the mailbox will be assigned a unique 5 digit Address, which is attached to your account
• registered mailboxes are limited to 1 per account
• there's no limit to the number of registered mailboxes a house or rental property may have
• mailboxes may be moved with a house, but demolishing a house requires mailboxes to be first be released
• sending mail can be done by double clicking on your registered mailbox & searching for your recipient; from there you can compose a message with a Subject, Body & optional Attachments, and then a physical letter will be scribed & mailed to your recipient's mailbox
• sending mail costs 100gp plus 300gp per attached item, up to 3 items per mail
• sending mail with attached items allows you to use a Cash On Delivery option, requiring the recipient to pay for the items in order to retrieve them
• un-claimed attachments will be automatically returned to sender after 7 days if they are not claimed; and any items that have been returned-to-sender will automatically decay after 21 days if the sender does not retrieve them
• the registry has the following Privacy settings:
  • Public: Visible address on mailbox & public registry. Others can send mail
  • Unlisted: Address hidden on mailbox & public registry. Others can send mail if they know your address, senders have to type in your exact address in order to mail you. You can view your unique address from the Mailbox Menu
  • Private: Address hidden on mailbox & public registry. Others CANNOT send you mail, but you can still send mail
• players are able to block senders at any time from the Registry list or when reading a letter sent from someone, this ensures that the sender cannot send you any mail at all; Note: blocks do not persist when un-registering your address

Player Vendor Buy Orders:

• introducing Vendor Buy Orders for player vendors
• these can be purchased from Banker vendors
• How to use: Place this on your vendor and mark it as Not For Sale to begin using it. From there, you can target an item that you wish to buy from other players, and then players can sell you items by double clicking the Buy Order, up to a limit of your choosing. Funds will be used from your vendor's balance

2. What/how to test:

Mail:

Place a house & a Mailbox (can get placement tool & mailbox deed from Test Center - Housing vendor) 1) send mail to a mailbox in another region 2) send mail to a mailbox in the same region 3) try sending mail without attachment 4) try sending mail with attachment(s) without Cash on Delivery 5) try sending mail with attachment(s) & Cash On Delivery 6) make sure you can claim items for mail without a Cash on Delivery 7) make sure you can claim items for mail WITH Cash on Delivery and paying for it 8) try returning mail to sender (mail sent to you needs to have attachments) 9) try registering multiple mailboxes on one account 10) change your registration to Unlisted and try to send mail to that box from another account by typing in the Address of your Unlisted mailbox 11) change your registration to Private and try to send mail to that box, it should be impossible 12) try Blocking a sender and then try to send/receive mail from them (try from both sides)

Buy Orders:

1) place a vendor & place a Vendor Buy order on them (can get vendor & buy order from Banker vendor) 2) set the Buy Order to Not For Sale and then double click it to set it up 3) target an item, like a resource or object you can easily test with, and finish setting up the Buy Order by choosing a price per item you wish to pay 4) deposit some gold to your vendor to make sure they have funds to buy items 5) try changing the Limit on the buy order to make sure that works well

From another account: 1) go to the vendor and double click the Buy Order 2) target the matching object in your backpack to try to sell it to the vendor 3) if the vendor has enough gold then you will receive gold and your items will be moved to the vendor

After your vendor has bought some items, go back to the owner account: 1) go back to your vendor 2) right click the Buy Order to choose "Claim Items" to gather the items that the vendor has bought

The state of the Test Center:

• Test Center is online and available with the following regions: Minoc, Britain, Shame
• a universal moongate has been added to the towns & dungeon for quick travel
• there are no existing houses placed & you should be able to place one
• added a few Rental Properties around Britain & Minoc for testing
• please discuss in Discord #test-center-chat and report bugs in-game as usual or in Discord

• Shards of Britannia Homestead Haven Lottery Has Begun!
• The Fishing Lottery boxes have had new items added.
• Limited Time Alert: Rare Hue Masks now at the Shame Dungeon Token Vendors!
• The Noble Coin Vendor is back with a range of fresh items.

The August Bazaar end-date is being extended from September 1st to September 15th. There's still plenty of vendor spots available, and they can be rented until September 1st.

The following Bazaar will be Autumn related as we enter into October, our favorite time of year!

We've reset the mining caves due to an issue where they did not clear their "currently in-use" state after players exited. We will continue to monitor for further issues

~~ The Yew Crypts & Britain Sewers regions are currently undergoing maintenance and their entrances have been temporarily disabled. Expected downtime is less than 2 hours ~~

The Yew Crypts & Britain Sewers regions are now open again

Some or all undead pets may have skills that exceed the normal skill-cap of 700.0 due to those pets gaining Spirit Speak and Forensic Eval which will prevent players from training their pets beyond a certain limit once they reach the cap. To work around this issue, we've updated the Skill Cap for Undead pets to 900 to account for the additional 2 skills being trained on them. Note: This may be subject to change in the future.

~~ We've received multiple reports of an issue with players experiencing delays with being able to perform actions immediately after region-transfers in some cases. We're investigating and working to resolve it as quickly as possible ~~

UPDATE: This is now marked as resolved

If you still encounter an issue where your pet(s) did not leave a Mining Cave with you then Stablemasters will retrieve any pets from inside mining caves for free until we resolve the root cause.

Shards of Britannia is no longer accepting Steam Account transfer requests.

If you are new or returning to the game, please create a new account following the instructions on our website: https://shardsofbritannia.com/play

If you already submitted a transfer, we are still working on processing the requests, but it may take some more time, so please continue to be patient and we will reach out to you via email when necessary. Batches of transfers are usually completed once a month due to the time it takes to complete them.

Please Note: If you recently returned to SOB and submitted a Steam transfer request, it may not be required. If you did not play on SOB prior to June 2021 then you will have no prior progress to transfer over, and thus you should continue playing on your new account(s)

We've deployed a few more hotfixes to try to improve some things.

Guards:

• fixed edge cases with Guards attacking innocent players/pets erroneously
• fixed Guards continuing to follow targets after they have died
• when players & pets resurrect going forward, the resurrector will have their current-target cleared to avoid accidentally attacking the being they are resurrecting & ultimately getting guard-whacked

Mining Caves:

• fixed issue with Mining Caves ejecting players too early
• fixed issue with pets/objects not being transported out of the cave when you leave
• added forges & lighting to the caves with a Mining Cave Tip sign; the sign explains that if you become over-encumbered in the cave, simply put excess resources on the ground and when you leave, the items will be transported to the entrance with you

Vesper Crossroads has been refreshed & new Jousting grounds have been added. Try jousting today! You can travel there directly now via the Ferrymasters.

The Bounty Hunter & PVP Leaderboard have been spotted on the south side of the West Britain Bank

The server is back online with the following updates applied: https://shardsofbritannia.com/news/pk-balance-pass-murderer-bounties-leaderboard-tracking-hunting-mode-dungeon-mining-mining-caves

PK Balance Pass

• Guards will now attack murderers on-sight, regardless of if they have recently committed a crime or not, with a chase & kill behavior rather than instant-kill, allowing a chance for the murderer to escape (instant killing from Guards still only applies to crimes recently committed) https://youtu.be/cMIGzj08GNg
• Townsfolk NPCs in Guarded areas will now react to murderers, regardless of if they have recently committed a crime or not, and cry for help (Guards will only actually react to crimes recently committed in this case though)
• the Repent option will be disabled after August 15th
• increased murder count time from 24hr to 72hr
• increased time limit for players to report a murder from 24hr to 72hr
• increased current-dungeon lockout for murderers post-death from 15m to 2hr (matches all-dungeon lockout time)
• increased current-region Hostile Actions prevention for murderers post-death from 15m to 2hr (matches region-lockout time)
• murder counts will now be tracked across your accounts, and for each 10 kills you have across all accounts linked to you, your post-death murder restrictions will have an additional 1hr added
• consolidated short & long murder counts & all existing long counts will be converted to a single 'murder counts' value
• cost to resurrect for murderers is determined by: all counts are worth 100gp per, plus any counts over 5 are worth 450gp per
• removed Upon resurrection, if a player's short term murder counts are more than 5 they will be reduced to 5. causing the cost to resurrect for murderers to no longer decrease immediately after resurrecting, the price will remain the same based on the level of murder counts
• added preventions for entering Britain Trading Post (West Britain Bank roof-top) for all murderers or criminals
• player corpses will no longer turn to skeleton when the player resurrects within the same region, providing for the full corpse-to-bones duration to occur before the corpse head can no longer be cut off
• aggressive beings will now give priority to murderer & criminal players; this will be mostly noticeable for beings that are not already in-combat

Murderer Bounties & Leaderboard

• added a PVP Leaderboard that shows Bounties, Vigilante Kills & Murders https://youtu.be/AXE6fml8O6I
• innocent players that attack a murderer before they die, that are from a different IP/Machine, will qualify to turn in the head of a murderer; the corpse & head will list the names of all players that qualify to turn it in, if any
• added Bounty Hunter vendor to turn murderer heads into for gold award, currently 100% of resurrection fee (subject to change)

Tracking - Hunting Mode

• added 'Hostile Players' & 'Innocent Players' target types to Tracking
• added new Hunting Mode option to Tracking https://youtu.be/vfyYSwZXpO4
• to use, open the Tracking menu, tick 'Activate Hunting Mode' and then fill in the radio button next to a Target Type (example: Hostile Players); you will begin automatically trying to acquire a target periodically and will begin tracking the first & closest target that is found
• Hunting Mode can be deactivated in the Tracking menu
• Hunting Mode requires at least 30.0 Tracking skill points to use

Mining

• Miners with at least 1 skill point higher than the required skill level to harvest metals above Iron will have a slightly higher chance to harvest them when finding veins

Dungeon Mining

• will provide 15% higher chance to find metal veins above Iron & 15% higher chance to successfully harvest metals above Iron
• will provide a chance at finding Rich Veins, normally can only be found by using a Prospector's Tool, these veins yield at least double the resources of a normal vein
• will have a chance to spawn Ore Elementals while mining

Mining Caves

• mining outside of a dungeon will provide a chance at uncovering Mining Cave entrances
• only the player that uncovers the cave can enter it (including pets)
• there is a 5 minute time limit to enter the cave, but after you enter you have 20 minutes to clear it out
• you can leave a cave at any time by right clicking oneself and choosing "Leave Mining Cave" but each cave will either have a Ladder to climb out from or a Cave-style exit to walk through
• should you die, or leave early for any reason, any objects, corpses, and pets will all be teleported to the cave entrance where you started to be recovered
• caves provide the same Dungeon Mining bonuses as detailed above & can also spawn Ore Elementals

Todo

• will add a 'Vigilante' NPC to go after Reds/Criminals, similar to the Assassin

Preview Video: https://youtu.be/zt6NxpfQIsA

Jousting (work in progress):

• Jousting arenas have been added South of the Vesper Graveyard at what we're calling Vesper Crossroads
• in the near future we will add a leaderboard and betting mechanics
• the outcome of the game is purely random at this time, we may add onto the system such as factoring the character's equipment or mount
• to use:
  • double click the 'Jousting' sign at one of the three arenas
  • no equipment is needed, except for a mount (any kind of mount will do)
  • target your opponent to request a jousting session
  • after both parties agree they will be teleported into the designated arena and after a few seconds they will be able to move, at this time both parties should run towards each other
  • once both parties reach one other the characters will automatically swing and attempt to hit their opponent, sometimes knocking them off their mount

Note: If you encounter any issues please report them using the in-game /bug command; if you get stuck for any reason please use the /stuck command or quick-travel. We will keep working on it as time permits! :)