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

• 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

Warriors, rejoice! The Colosseum has moved to its new and permanent location, an island just outside of Buccaneer's Den. While it will be used for PVP server events, it is also intended to be a general use area for consensual, non-faction PVP. Thus, the following rules will take effect in the area after the next restart:

1. Combat and murder actions will not flag as criminal on the island. You will not receive murder counts on the island.
2. If a red is killed on the island, their next immediate resurrection will be free. Short term murder counts will not reset, and the free res does not apply if you were killed anywhere but on the island.
3. You cannot mark runes at or recall to the island. Teleporters are up at Britain Bank and Buccaneer's Den moongate.

Full loot is in effect on the island, so tread lightly. For those brave enough, glorious combat awaits!

Cut off heads of murderers now show the fee the deceased paid to resurrect, to become glorious trophies for your display

*Torches should now occupy the torch slot and not unequip the right hand

*Killing/stealing from someone in town and looting with another multibox character should now be prevented.

The server will be coming offline for some extended maintenance @ 9am UTC on 28 July. https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/timezone/utc

The server will remain offline for up to an hour during this time.

Earlier today, we identified an economy breaking issue. While we won't go into full detail on this, what we can say in summary is that a small group of players leveraged an exploit. Our telemetry identified this and we acted as soon as we noticed it.

The end result is that group of players have immediately had their accounts banned. We do not tolerate this behavior and there is no recourse for it. The side effect of is the detrimental effect on the economy. Based on a lot of deliberations and investigations over the last 7 hours, we have concluded that the only way to 100% protect the economy and our game is to execute a rollback.

The time that we are rolling back to will be 16:00 UTC/12:00 US EST on June 23rd. This is roughly 30 hours of play time. We completely appreciate that this is a less than ideal circumstance, and as such would like to reward our players that obey the rules and play faithfully with an additional gift that you'll receive on your next login, as well as a reset of all power hour and level cap timers. In addition, power hours for the next 24 hours will offer double the gain chance that they usually do.

Rest assured we have also made (and thoroughly tested) additional changes that will go a long way to ensure that this does not happen again. We have also made improvements in terms of notification for this particular issue, so that on the off chance it DOES somehow happen again, the lag time between the action and the discovery of said action will improve significantly.

We, like you, are incredibly frustrated with this situation and have had to take time away from our jobs and families to try and put things back in order. We hope you understand our approach to this, and look forward to hanging out with you in Britannia again shortly.

We'll be coming back online within the next few minutes.

• Dyes, used for changing the color of a dyetub, are now single-use and stackable
• Added looting rights as described at https://wiki.legendsofultima.online/e/en/notoriety
• Unused secondary skills removed from the secondary skill window, currently all of the secondary skills are under review and disabled
• Fixed issue with being able to sell more than vendors can afford when the bill of sale exceeds their budget
• Added vendor message letting users know how much gold the vendor has to spend when trying to over-sell; AIn the future we will work to make it more like UO where the vendor will buy what they can and leave you with what didn't sell, rather than block the transaction, making it easier to use for players
• Added missing resource counter UI update to vendor transactions
• Fixed issue with "Quick Loot" context menu option not working on items inside corpses
• Added 500ms cooldown between item-pickup actions to prevent spamming movement of items
• Added eating sound when eating food
• Updated Treasure Map window with new in-game map
• Removed "Stack All" options from containers, as these need to be redesigned
• KNOWN ISSUE: Barber NPC's buy window is not working, hopefully this isn't happening to other vendor types also

• Fixed an issue that sometimes affected the ability to log in with a red character in Britannia
• Added a barber to assist with remodelling your hair, face, everything! The first visit is free. The barber/stylist will be in Sweet Dreams Inn in Britain
• After the next restart, the Limbo region will return. For those of you not familiar, if you are a ghost for longer than 15 minutes, you will be sent to this region. There are shrines available to resurrect you here, and then you can return to Britannia via the moongate.

Town NPC Changes

• Bowyers will now sell Bows, Siege Bows, and Heavy Siege Bows.
• Bowyers will now buy bows from players.
• Minoc now has an Armorsmith at the Forgery, a Bowyer at Warriors' Battle Gear, and a new Jeweler Shop named Gorgeous Gems.

Unidentified musical instruments will now properly identify

• Fixed an issue causing bosses to reset frequently under certain conditions.

• Added a black smoke fizzle animation for spells.
• Updated messaging for Starving skill/stat gains.
• Added Recall Sound/Animations to UseCharge on Runebook.
• Added animations to Tracking skill use for in tracking window and switching creature types.
• Fixed an issue with Campfire overlap by increasing distance between active campfires.
• Fixed an issue with Kindling no longer working after trying to place a campfire inside town.
• Updated messaging on Kindling use when Mounted, In Town, and near another Campfire.

• Added looting rights as described at https://wiki.legendsofultima.online/en/notoriety
• A previous issue with Looting Rights not keeping track of Bard damage has been resolved

• Added CAPTCHA to Mining, Lumberjacking, Fishing
• Private houses can now have 1 vendor
• Fixed issue with Max Vendor limit on houses being calculated incorrectly (if your house already has too many vendors, they may remain for now but you will be unable to add more)
• Fixed issue with clockwork golem (possibly other recipes) not crafting
• Fixed issue with the unfinished keg being treated as a container and causing items dropped to them to disappear
• Fixed issue with attacking a pet when the owner is hidden nearby causing the pet to flag crim and the owner to get guard whacked
• Fixed "drink" option existing on prized fish (does not affect old fish)
• Fishing outside of town now has a chance to spawn a snake
• Potent potion recipes removed since Gardening skill is not accessible right now

• Ethereal statue should no longer get stuck in your pocket if you cannot mount for one reason or another; if it does somehow get stuck, logging out completely and logging back in will move it to your backpack
• Fishing skill can no longer be gained above 70 while inside of town
• Fishing will no longer yield anything more than basic fish or loot while inside of town
• Plant harvesting amount has been adjusted and we will continue to improve spawns if needed
• An issue with clicking on a news notification from the list not opening the appropriate article
• Fixed system message showing when using runebooks referencing "a recall rune"
• Summoned creatures should now properly decay if they have lost their owners
• Fixed an issue with stealing from a stack causing multiple items to pile up in your inventory