• Optimized using weapon from hotbar to try to solve cases of being unable to equip a weapon while having a spell pre-cast saying "you are too busy"
• Fixed issue with lockpicking not updating decay of chests
• Fixed issue with toxicity statbar not hiding again after reaching 0
• Fixed issue with time differences between some regions causing differing levels of daylight
• Daylight extended to make nighttime happen slightly less often
• Fixed issue with pets not traveling with between some dungeon levels

• Fixed issue with "Set All" option on Town Vendors not setting the appropriate amount in some cases
• Player vendor "select location" option optimized, vendors should now teleport to the destination rather than try to walk to it
• Added new Stuck Teleport option with menu to pick a town; this option can be used once every 30 minutes, have to page for help if you get stuck more frequently than that so we can identify and fix stuck issues
• Shrines/NPC Healers in dungeons now require a minute between each resurrection
• Added missing updates to many criminal actions to check for the new confirmation settings and "prevent" criminal actions if desired
• Fixed issue with bonded pets being renamed to " corpse" in some cases
• Pet abandonment now uses in-game time instead of real-world time to determine when they become abandoned to help aid with pet losses due to server restarts or downtime
• Fixed issues with abandoned pets wandering mid-combat preventing them from fighting back
• Mobs will now automatically eject themselves from houses after a period of time
• Cleared "Transfer Bag" properties on existing bags so you can move the bag outside of your bank now
• QOL: prevented disarming when using the hotbar icon for a weapon that is already equipped, to prevent accidental disarming from tapping the wrong button (if players find that they still need a disarm ability we can accommodate)
• Optimized hiding check for nearby mobs LOS, will now ignore group/guild/faction members when trying to hide near them
• Corrected hiding failure speech from "you can't seem to hide right now" to "you fail to hide" while the former message will still appear if you are unable to hide due to combat or in LOS of other mobs
• Removed "Use R-Hand" button from appearing in the Q slot with weapons as it's no longer needed

We're back online. Thanks again for your patience.

Apologies for the delay, we are running a little overtime with the maintenance work. We will aim to be back online by 11am UTC (ideally before that!).

Hail citizens. We have some important news to share with you!

As you may be aware, this project started out as an experiment. It was unimaginable that it would grow into what it is today. To see where we've come today, let's take a quick look back at the history of the game and our project for a moment.

Starting out the game Legends of Aria was known as Shards Online, as some of you remember. Later it was re-branded to Legends of Aria, and more recently the platform is known as the Shards Engine, which makes this project possible.

After the game was re-branded to Legends of Aria, our project was just getting our test-server online and it was decided to use the name Legends of Ultima for the time being while we experiment with things and find our place as a project. This name wasn't originally intended to be used permanently, and admittedly it stayed around for longer than expected.

Today, the project has grown to a point where it is prudent to find its own identity, and as such we are excited to announce, the project will now be known as Shards of Britannia

This represents a new path forward as we progress into the future as a project on the Shards Engine with our new home in Britannia. What's next? We will be steadily working to replace branding across all platforms over time but will do our best to make the transition as seamless as possible. We hope that you are as excited as we are about the future and appreciate your support through these changing times.

Tonight's maintenance window @ 9am UTC (approx 1h 10 mins from the time of this notice) will be extended by up to an hour while we work on the 'lag' issues that are currently being seen.

Thank you as always for your patience.

Group Combat, Shared Loot

• group healthbars with heal/cure/bandage buttons
• group consent added to toggle allowing combat/looting between group mates & you will be asked if you want to consent when first joining a group
• group auto-loot sharing added, will distribute loot between nearby groupmates when using auto-loot on non-player-corpses
• group invite setting added to toggle allowing all group members inviting to the group without needing to be promoted

Criminal Action Confirmation

• now has 3 options: Allow Criminal Actions, Ask Me First, Prevent Criminal Actions
• change this setting in Character Settings under the Combat tab

Combat Target Restriction

• wiki page added: https://wiki.legendsofultima.online/en/combat#target-restrictions-new-feature
• allows players to restrict selecting mobs to a certain type like: All, Monsters, Players, and more
• added to character settings & can also click the top-right corner button next to minimap to quickly change this option, previously this button changed the Confirm Criminal Action toggle
• this option is meant to reduce misclicks when trying to select certain types of mobs in close encounters with lots of mobs
• example: if you set this to Monsters, then you will only be able to select Monsters when clicking mobs to target them for combat
• should not affect spell-targets or other item-based manual targeting, and will still be able to target mobs normally with those actions

General Combat-Related Changes

• using bandage self, bandage last or bandage button from group healthbar will no longer change current-target on use
• potion toxicity on self-healthbar will now only appear when toxicity is above 0
• when logging out in a house you have permission to or in a public inn, you will no longer be required to wait 2 minutes before timing out due to recent combat with non-player beings, previously attacking monsters or other beings would affect this
• added Enter Combat w/Spellcast option so that mages without melee skills don't have to toggle warmode after casting
• you can now see your guildmates/groupmates when they are dead, regardless of if they are in war mode or not

New Custom Client Actions

• Custom Client Action 3 is now Nearest Target option
• Custom Client Action 4 is now Cycle Target option
• both of these options work in conjunction with the new target restriction option
• these actions can be set to hotkeys under Settings -> Keyboard

Hotfix from today:

• resolved town vendors stealing people's money when trying to buy Used items from them
• town vendors should finally clear out their Used inventory regularly

Hotfixes/changes from last week:

• resolved not being able to give murder count to characters when dying from Poison spell in some cases
• poison will now fall off if the caster is a player and dies around the victim
• fixed issue with house sign not setting owner after transferring house sometimes showing previous owner or no owner at all

• Performance improvements.
• Destard's loot has been improved.
• Destard spawner density has been decreased.
• Some low end Undead monsters have had their loot slightly increased.
• Low end monsters in Despise have had their loot decreased.
• Wrong's loot has been improved.
• Ice Dungeon's loot has been improved.

"We have found a place of great evil in the region North of Minoc. Trackers have informed us that a Northern Cave is filled with a monstrous and deadly Arachnid. We fear that this beast is linked to the creatures on the Peninsula. If they launch an attack on Minoc, we will be unprepared to defend against them. We beg you, find their nest and extinguish them. We will forever be in your debt warriors.”

~Julie the Artisan of Minoc

The server is back online and the shutdown of Celador has been completed. As previously mentioned, any characters, items, and houses that were left behind are no longer accessible.

If you have any characters remaining in Inbetween from the transition and have trouble progressing through the black portal, please send a help request and make sure your contact info (use /contactinfo command) is up to date so we can contact you back if no one is available to help immediately.

Thanks for your continued patience and support through the transition.

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

• Macro system re-enabled & window will now only show once instead of refreshing every time a macro repeats
• Issue with Stablemaster "Retrieve pet out of range" option has been resolved once more, this update was due to go out previously but mistakenly was not applied, now it is
• Issue with freshly tamed pets not attacking their targets has been resolved
• Fixed an issue with Young status not being ended when committing a criminal action
• Fixed issue with "your X will break soon" happening prematurely
• Prevented ability to resist beneficial spells, especially when casted on thyself
• Fixed issue with trees not regrowing in a timely manner in some cases

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.

• 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.

This evening we will be coming down for daily maintenance 15 minutes ahead of schedule. We will return to service at 5am US EST/9am UTC.

After this maintenance period, the server will restart once every 6 hours. We apologise for this, however it is a necessary step in order to ensure performance based on a very large increase in player count (thank you!) and a bug that we hope to resolve in the coming week. However, the restarts will now take 5 minutes instead of the 15+ that was the case previously.

You can check how long is left until the next restart by typing /nextrestart or /nextreboot in game. In this way, you can still plan your power hours etc. We will return to daily restarts as soon as we can.

Thank you, as always, for your patience.

• Can no longer mount while using a bola + bola target times out after 15 seconds if no target is selected
• Fixed issue with hitting escape after using a bola causing users not to be able to mount for some time
• Current target healthbar numbers will now update periodically
• Dead characters will automatically be set in combat mode during load
• Town vendors will keep only a small amount of used items after players sell things to them
• Nearby pets that are not attacking anything will automatically follow when owner dies
• Pet stable fees will no longer be charged until pet has been stabled for 24 hours or more
• Fixed issue with not being able to use "all aggressive" or "all passive" commands with pets, aka Pet Stance
• Help Requests are now attached to user accounts and will remain open when you log out/switch characters & if staff responds while you're logged out, you will be notified during next login of the response
• Added Events news type to News Window & Notifications
• Fixed issue with being unable to open someone else's paperdoll from a reasonable distance

Public Service Announcement

• Please try not to abandon your pets, you will lose them if you do. They stay in the world if you log out if you don't stable them. Over time your pet will start to wander, looking for you, eventually releasing you from their control. <potential herding opportunity here?>

Changes from last 24 hours:

• Issue with not being able to steal from a stacked object resolved (requires another server reboot, sorry)
• Improvements to Trading, let us know if the trade acceptance issue proceeds or not
• Removed the ability to gain skills from scroll spell-casts
• Removed use-case options from runes
• UI/Window performance improvements, including reducing the amount of UI/window refreshes, you may notice a slight delay between window updates because of this, and even possibly a performance improvement
• Warg pets removed, we did not intend to spawn those in at this time and they are forcibly removed
• Removed Vendor Buy/Sell confirmation window popup

Changes from earlier:

• Moved Torch over to torch equipment slot instead of right-hand, does not affect old torches
• Treasure hunting temporarily disabled; working on setting up the locations still
• Pet AI issues resolved, was causing pets to not attack and maybe other things too
• Stablemaster minimum-range to check for pets reduced to improve pet summoning
• Added pet position validation when using 'follow' commands to assist with getting pets un-stuck while we work to improve the root cause
• Horses set to 0 taming difficulty, does not affect old horses
• Added some missing interruptions to Mining/Lumberjacking/Fishing to prevent performing other tasks while harvesting
• Resolved issue with bladed weapon target actions not checking for distance
• Fixed issue with trying to use food in places where it was inaccessible saying "you feel more refreshed" while also saying "you can't access that"
• Fixed issue with sometimes getting a backpack from corpses
• Fixed issue with trying to open corpses failing and not showing a container window
• Added notification and system message when being murdered to guide players to Reputation window to report the murders if desired

An issue with not being able to leave your group in some cases has been resolved. Please log out and back in to receive the update, then try right-clicking your character and choosing Leave Group to try once more.

• Fixed an issue preventing players from trading houses saying there are vendors working out of it when there is not
• Added option to house menu for the plot owner to be able to collect commissions from vendors that have been rented to other players
• Switching house privacy state from Public to Private is now possible even if the house has 1 vendor working out of it