Map marker icons have had an optimization pass and have been re-enabled. Just a heads up that we may need to further optimize or change the way the map marker icons appear but will try this for now.

We believe we have finally squashed the outlying performance bug that was forcing us to restart every 6 hours. As such, we will be returning to our usual restart at 5am US EST/9am UTC.

As a result, this next restart will take slightly longer than usual. We apologise for this, however rest assured that after this, we expect smooth sailing.

Thanks for your patience during this bumpy few weeks!

We are back online. Please note, direct connections will no longer work. Connect by selecting our server on the community server screen. Thanks for your patience, as always.

• There's a known issue with some objects not being able to be unpacked in houses such as, but not limited to: cauldron
• There's a known issue with some objects being able to be placed outside of the house foundation/walls, or in the yard

Warning: It is not intended to be able to place objects outside of the foundation/walls of your house. If you have objects placed out of bounds they may be subject to adjustments to make them in-bounds, or in some cases removed if they are blocking pathways. The small front yards are intended only for vendors or a guildstone.

Reminder: the Small Workshop and Large Patio houses are temporarily disabled for fixing, and we will try to make them available ASAP

A bug allowing users to repeatedly magically lock dungeon chests for gains has been patched

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE FULL MESSAGE.

Firstly, thank you all for your patience during this trying time. During this last window of the game being online, we were working closely with our hosting provider to identify further options for mitigation of the DDoS attacks that we are experiencing, beyond what was already implemented. We are now working with them to enable what is necessary.

Please note that this may take some time, and at this time, we will not be bringing the server online again until these steps are in place.

Also please note that we are not going to discuss the mitigations we are putting in place in any way. That would be detrimental to our cause. Rest assured that we know what our next steps are and we'll continue to work through what needs to be done to eliminate this threat.

Thank you once again, and we hope to return to service as soon as we can. There is no ETA at this time, however we do expect this process to take at least 1-2 days. As always, keep an eye on #news for any further updates.

"Warriors! The Ritual Site locations and the Weaver Cave that were cleansed in recent days, have regained their former strength... We ask for your bravery once again. My great warriors, please hear me! Vanquish these vile creatures! Do not allow them to encroach on our lands!"

Ritual Site 1: https://imgur.com/XjZOegH

Ritual Site 2: https://imgur.com/S5nmsg4

Ritual Site 3: https://imgur.com/Ipmfexc

Weaver Cave: https://imgur.com/fcAbiWR

~Sir Jeffrey the Justiciar of Britain

• New "Fall Asleep" right-click ability on Tents grants the Camp/Tent Owner instant logout perk.
• The "Fall Asleep" ability only functions for the Owner when their Secured Campsite and Tent are close by.
• The "Rest" right-click ability no longer puts the player inside the tent automatically and instead plays a stretching animation as the stats buff applies, and the Rest ability works for all players.
• The "Rest" Stat Buff Duration now scales to Camping skill with a 20 minute Min, and a 2 hour Max at GM Camping.
• Updated tooltips throughout the camping process to reflect changes.
• Fixed issue with skill gains not firing throughout build stages.
• Buff icon display adjustments.

As you may be aware, earlier this week we identified several users involved in abusing some economic vulnerabilities that were discovered. At that time we had to roll back the server to recover from the impact and to protect our newly established economy.

After that incident occurred the players involved began to launch an attack on the LOU infrastructure (DDoS) causing our servers to become inaccessible. The players involved have since been banned and ejected from the community, but the attacks continue to occur occasionally.

At this time we are doing everything we can to prevent outages, but there may be times when the server will have to be brought down unexpectedly in order to recover.

We will be monitoring things closely to try and prevent downtime and loss of progress, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and support through our growing pains.

• Murder participants will now always get additional counts based on how many were involved with a max of 3 (for now).
• Blue players who are involved in a murder will not be subject to additional counts based on participants.
• Murder participants will now remain in combat for (participants * 2) minutes with a max of 10 minutes. This means they cannot quick travel until this timer is up.
• Blue players who are involved in a murder will not be subject to the additional combat timer based on participants.
• Murder count decay has been reduced to 24 hours in game time from 72.
• When a murderer decides to repent there will now be a server wide notification.
• Destard has had some loot re-balancing done.
• Wrong has had some loot re-balancing done.
• Some high end monsters have become more difficult to bard.
• Fixed an AI pathing bug when monsters are leashing.

As we grow in player count, we are tracking a performance issue that appears to be related to minimap icons (yes of all things.) We are disabling those and restarting to validate this.

We apologise for these teething issues, however we believe this will make a significant difference. We'll work on refactoring the minimap icon system and they will eventually return. In the meantime, use third party tools like http://lou-map.herokuapp.com/ to locate what you need. In particular, we'll have wandering healer locations up there shortly.

We are back online. We will be monitoring closely, however please note that if the issue that caused us problems earlier returns, we may have to go offline again at short notice.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

-- The Team

We are experiencing ongoing issues at our host as a result of a maintenance/upgrade window. We were advised there would be no impact to customers during this time, however clearly that is not the case.

There is no ETA at this time and you may experience odd behaviour or inaccessibility with the game or any of the related services.

Thank you for your patience. We will update you with more information as it comes to light.

Gameplay Notes

• All bosses have had their AI updated.
• All bosses have had their loot adjusted.
• Higher level bosses have had their loot greatly increased.
• Loot tables have undergone another balance pass.
• Spawning in Despise has been adjusted.
• Updated static collision.
• There is now a chance, scaled by monster difficulty, that young players will lose young status when killing very difficult monsters.

Notable Bug Fixes

• Staggering shot mount speed should return to normal after the effect has expired.
• Bandaging a ghost will no longer yield skill gains if the healer is below the requirements for resurrection.
• Attempting to cure poison will no longer yield skill gains if the healer is below the requirements for curing.
• Adjusted durability warning threshold.
• Move Speed should now always be recalculated on resurrection.
• Fixed a bug that caused aggression when taming a creature without a distance check first.
• Fixed an issue causing a criminal flagging when performing actions on yourself.
• You can no longer report yourself as a murderer.
• Fixed an issue causing bosses to continually reset.
• Fixed an issue causing titles to reassign when gaining skill.

Titles should now be fixed. Upon next login, you should be granted all missing skill titles.

We are still monitoring the issue of titles switching even when "Lock Title" has been selected- if you see this issue, please report it with /bug so we are able to triage. Thanks as always for playing!

The server is back online.

This morning was different. The air did not smell as sweet as it did. A sense of dread had encircled the citizens of Celador. Shopkeepers left their stalls, aimlessly staring into the skies. Children stopped playing on the streets and ran home to their kin. Dark storm clouds began a slow march over the horizon, as sudden wind gusts began whipping the hair of frightened folks in the streets of Britain.  The air bristled with a static electricity and a foul stench. The well waters turned black with pestilence.  Crops began dying as if poisoned by some unidentified force, and the birds and animals all fled in every direction until no wildlife could be seen.

Then it happened... something arose from the ground in the center of the City of Britain. It was too dark to perceive who or what it was, but the energy emanating from it was unmistakable.  A great evil. Someone or something has arrived…

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In preparation for the main event, all servers will be offline from 7pm US EST/11pm UTC Friday 18th June. Please keep an eye on #news for further announcements over the course of the weekend.

• Murderers who repent will now need to wait 72 hours to resume hostilities.
• Murderers will now need to pay 200 gold per long term count when resurrecting.
• Bosses in various high level encounters have gained new tactics and reinforcements based on the number of players engaging them.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause murder participants to not receive multiple counts.
• Ranged damage and healing will now produce more threat.
• Combat journal will now display entries in descending order.
• Combat journal will now only refresh when new data is available.
• Fixed a bug causing floating damage numbers to be reported twice.

We're going to need to do an additional restart in about 20 minutes so that we can try to help some players who are unable to login. No downtime expected. Thank you for your patience as we try to get everyone in game again!

We will remain offline during our next maintenance window (9am UTC Friday 3rd September) while we complete migration to one of our host's alternative data centers. During this time, all of our services will be unavailable.

This is due to our current datacentre experiencing some ongoing issues which are intermittently affecting our services. Rather than wait for them to be resolved by our host, we will instead work around the issues by moving to a different physical location/datacentre within their network.

Rather than provide an estimate, we'll update you on the progress of the change via Discord during the migration window. Thanks, as always, for your patience.