• Fixed an issue with the new Item Preview feature not working for players

Today's Hotfixes:

• Hedge Maze is now off-limits for quick travel, and you will not be able to mark runes inside of, nor will you be able to recall/gate to existing runes inside Hedge Maze
• Fixed an issue preventing digging for Treasure Chests from completing in some cases
• Fixed an issue with trying to create a guild not working in some cases; if for some reason the creation of a guild fails going forward, subsequent re-tries should work successfully
• Should be able to engrave items on your vendors now

Hotfix from earlier:

• Bonded Pet skill loss from death has been reduced from 1.0 points to 0.1 when being resurrected by a Player, or 0.2 when being resurrected by an NPC

• Slightly increased payout of fabled carrots inside egg nests & on vorpal bunnies
• Vorpal bunnies will now have a chance to spawn as Enraged which will be tougher and have a chance to drop some easter items and more carrots
• Easter Paragons are now enabled and some mobs, mainly in dungeons, will have a chance to spawn as a Paragon which will have chances to drop easter items and carrots
• Fixed an issue with Vorpal Bunnies spawning in water or out of bounds in some cases
• Fixed an issue with Easter Egg Nest riddle answers not being accepted in some cases
• Each Easter riddle will now only need to be answered correctly once per character
• Note: Most riddles accept multiple correct answers to account for spelling or gramma variations

We will do our best to setup an Easter Invasion that can be self-activated by players using an item bought from the Easter Vendor, depending on available time.

We've added a new Item Preview option to the Veteran Rewards and Vendor Buy windows. Clicking this button will open a container with the object in it briefly so you can see what you will receive. Large items like hearthstones may not appear completely inside the container, we'll try to improve that at some point also.

Just a reminder, anytime we post a deadline or a start time for something, it is always subject to change and you should expect there to be delays, always, but hope for the best. Our team consists of people from all over the globe, which may cause delays, and we are volunteering our free time, so we do our best within our means to meet deadlines.

For week-long events there is no specific time we will deploy and active the activities. Unfortunately Discord forces us to pick a specific start time when creating Events in Discord, and so usually we'll pick 9am UTC the day that we plan to start the activities. That doesn't guarantee that 9am UTC or any other time will be when the activities start, as we will make announcements within a few hours of the activities starting.

For week-long holiday activities you are not expected to be there at the time that the activities begin. Participation is welcome throughout the entire week, and this time is allowed for those that may not be around on the day of the holiday being celebrated.

Thanks everyone for your patience and support.

• Fixed an issue preventing house owners from removing individual friends or co-owners in some cases
• Fixed an issue preventing players from using public teleporters while holding a Faction sigil. You should now be able to use Public Moongates, Ferry Masters, and the Skara Brae Ferry (saying "cross") while holding a Faction sigil, but the use of the Recall spell & portals from the spell Gate Travel is still prevented

General

• Daily per skill skill-gain maximums have been re-worked. Assuming the caps are reached, it will now take roughly a week to GM a skill instead of around 12 days. In addition to the reduction in overall time, the scale has been adjusted so that the first cap encountered will be in the 80s. Previously this would possibly happen in the low 70s.
• Any existing skill caps will be reset once on login when this update goes live.
• The bonus towards skill gain chance for being well fed has been slightly increased.

Balance Changes

• Magic book durability loss chances have been slightly increased.
• Melee stamina damage has been adjusted so that it requires more unmitigated damage to incur stamina damage. This means that low end monsters will inflict even less stamina damage when heavier armor is used relative to high end monsters. The net effect of this is that wearing heavier armor vs low end monsters is less punishing on stamina now and overall stamina damage has been significantly reduced.
• The max stamina damage that can be inflicted in one hit has increased from 8 to 10 stamina damage.
• Unwavering Stance base stamina reduction bonus has been reduced to 10% from 20%. This is to account for reduction in overall stamina damage.
• Aegis stamina reduction bonus has been reduced to 20% from 30%. This is to account for reduction in overall stamina damage.
• Unwavering Stance has a new bonus to weapon accuracy that stacks for a weapon accuracy bonus of up to 30%. This effect is halved in PvP.
• The maximum weapon hit chance with unwavering stance in PvM has been capped at 95%.

Quality of Life and New Player Experience Balancing

• Vendor training skill max raised to 40 from 30.
• Starting stats raised to 100 from 80.
• Additional new player experience books added to starter gear.
• Players will now start with 1200 gold instead of 500.
• Low end monsters will now offer better rewards for new players.
• The amount bandages players start with has been increased.
• Some monsters will now occasionally drop small randomized reagent caches.
• Self bandage timer in PvM is reduced by 2 seconds, unchanged in PvP timer.
• Minimum skill required to cure poison reduced to 40 healing and anatomy in PvM only.
• A base weapon accuracy bonus of 5% has been added vs monsters. (This brings hit chance to around 60% when facing monsters with similar weapon skill.)
• Swordsmanship, Fencing, and Mace Fighting now have more chance to gain dexterity.
• Stat gain chance is now affected by active gameplay bonuses.
• Scribes will now offer to identify magic equipment for a 500 gold fee.

We recently combined in-game help requests with feedback reports, so when you send a help request it will go into the same stream as the rest of the feedback. We've also updated the Discord Support Threads channel, adding the ability for you to create new support threads on your own, if you require assistance. It's always best to report issues in-game when possible, but if you do need more help please see the instructions in #support-threads to start a ticket. We'll do our best to reply to tickets as quickly as possible. Thanks!

To celebrate Easter, we will be hosting an Egg Hunt throughout Britannia! Find eggs and break them open and collect Fabled Carrots (or other surprises), which can be spent at the Easter Vendor in exchange for some neat gifts! We hope you have time to log in and participate and have some fun. See you there! See the details of this event: https://discord.gg/CuwaP9sbep?event=963864006546841680

Check out the article that was recently published on The Ultima Codex about Shards of Britannia: https://ultimacodex.com/2022/04/check-out-shards-of-britannia-an-ultima-online-themed-community-server-for-legends-of-aria/

Thanks to WtF Dragon from Ultima Codex for checking us out and spreading the word, we appreciate you!

The weekly Lottery system is temporarily disabled while we work to improve it. Recently there has been a trending issue with the server crashing immediately after someone buys tickets, we will work to resolve this issue and bring it back online. Thanks for your patience!

• Added a confirmation pop-up when resurrecting pets, owner must be nearby to confirm (this is to address griefing of res-killing pets to cause skill loss to them)
• Stablemaster may confirm twice when trying to res pets until the next server restart occurs
• Prevented stabling dead pets, must resurrect them first

We've published a Public Board on Trello showing some of the things we're aware of, working on, and considering. Check it out at https://trello.com/b/571SiY7d

We're excited to announce that Hoax has joined the team! Hoax, as some of you know, has recently contributed to the rebranding efforts of our project as well as the amazing new video trailer! Hoax will be helping with more video related tasks, Unity asset design and more! Please give Hoax a warm welcome to the team and thanks for offering to share your free time with us! <3

• Mining has been added to Dagger Isle mountains
• SOS maps are now enabled for Skara Brae and Dagger Isle regions

Recently some members of the community have started an advertising campaign for the project. Thanks to those of you that have spent time on or donated towards that campaign!

We have, however, asked those involved to allow the team to control the ad campaigns. As such, the additional Patreon page that was created by the community will cease to operate.

We will begin funding more advertising, as we have done in the past and have planned for the future, using the existing Patreon pledges. If you wish to contribute more for advertising you may edit your existing pledge, but it may not be required at this point in time.

Thanks again to all of you for your continued contributions and for your enthusiasm & passion for the project. <3

Maintenance is completed earlier than expected and the server is coming online now. Thank you again for your patience.

The server will remain offline during the next maintenance window for up to an hour while maintenance tasks are conducted. Thank you for your patience.

General Changes:

• Reduced price of Commodity Deeds
• Added "Prevent Unequip From Hotbar" option to Character Settings; un-tick this if you have trouble un-equipping objects from hotbar icons

General Fixes:

• Fixed issue with not being able to remove map waypoints
• Improved some spawns, especially dungeons, to help avoid monsters getting stuck
• Prevented trading For Sale items directly from player vendor
• Fixed an issue with dropping a stack of Shimmering Essence onto a magic book causing the whole stack to be consumed instead of just 1; now only 1 will be consumed as intended
• Fixed an issue causing the Prevent Dismount in Warmode option to not work (you may need to re-enable this in Character Options)
• Fixed an issue causing some produce/cooking ingredients (vegetables) to be the incorrect weight; now they should be 0.2 stones per unit
• Switched the dog's model back to wolf for now since there are animation problems with the model that was being used previously
• Fixed an issue with Trash Cans not emptying automatically & add floating speech to indicate when they are emptying

Sacred Runebook & Spellcasting Fixes:

• Added a target request when using Mark option on Sacred Runebook
• Improved Sacred Runebook window layout
• Fixed an issue with using a Runebook ability sometimes causing subsequent spell casts to auto-target erroneously
• Fixed an issue with Runebook Charge chance not being calculated properly for Sacred Runebook
• Fixed an issue with using Sacred Runebook charges erroneously consuming reagents and mana, as well as checking against Magery skill; now Sacred Runebook charges will not attempt to consume reagents or mana, nor will they check for Magery skill

Arena Fixes & Improvements:

• Added confirmation pop-up for leader to start the duel once everyone has clicked Ready
• Added pop-up reminder when clicking Ready to check the Restrictions; please make sure you are starting a duel with the proper settings for your character's skill set!
• Added Duel countdown HUD
• Added Duel Info context option to self-right-click to inspect the details of the duel after it's started
• Fixed an issue with not being able to use the Agility spell in duels
• Fixed issue with Duel Time Limit setting not being obeyed
• Prevented teleporting outside of the arena during a duel
• Prevented using Stuck option during a duel
• Prevented using Ethereal Mounts during a duel if Mounts are not enabled in the Duel Restrictions
• Prevented casting during Duel Countdown
• Prevented performing beneficial acts on opponents during a duel

• Fixed an issue with delays to occur sometimes after switching regions preventing subsequent actions or teleports for several seconds
• Fixed an issue with ethereal mount statues getting stuck in the internal pocket when dismounting until the next log-in