October Changelog

New Changes

🎃 Halloween

  • Daily limit icon – when you reach a Halloween daily limit, a buff icon now shows which activity it is and how long until it resets at 09:00 UTC. Read more about these limits here: https://wiki.shardsofbritannia.com/en/halloween-2026/whats-new-halloween-2026#daily-activities-and-fair-limits
  • Pumpkin candy – the daily pumpkin limit was counting candy from pumpkin monsters before anyone killed them, so heavy smashers hit it far too soon. You'll be able to smash many more pumpkins before it kicks in.
  • Gravedigging candy – the daily limit was counting every grave at its maximum possible candy, so busy diggers ran out very quickly (and monsters from their graves carried no candy for anyone). It now counts what you actually get.
  • Drowned Boarders – boarders that nobody defeats now sink back into the sea after 10 minutes instead of riding your ship forever.
  • Halloween Pumpkin Seeds – seed tooltips now explain how to grow them in the new Pumpkin Patch, which opens on October 8th.

🎣 Fishing

  • 🏆 New: Halloween Fishing Contest! Every Sunday the heaviest haunted catch of the week gets a shout-out, and at the end of the season the top anglers win titles (Leviathan's Bane, Master of the Haunted Waters), the Leviathan's Lantern, hued fish trophies and rare candy, delivered at their next login.
  • 🎣 New: haunted fish dishes! Cook Ghostfin Chowder, Drowned Eel Stew and Pumpkin Carp Pie for 30 minutes of help against monsters. Details on the wiki.
  • 🎣 Bait icon – while the fishing rod in your hand has bait on it, a Bait icon now shows on your buff bar with the bait type and its catch bonus. No more checking the paperdoll!
  • Cursed Bait – each catch now gets its own 12% chance at the Halloween catches, and the bait is eaten less often.
  • 🌙 Night at sea – a moon or sun icon above the minimap now shows whether it's night while you're at sea, when the rarest Haunted Waters catches bite.
  • Haunted Waters – haunted catch tooltips now read "Fished up by [name] during Halloween 2026", and rare catches (sunken chests, relics, lanterns) now have a daily limit per household like other Halloween rewards.

⚔️ Combat & Creatures

  • No more surprise full heals – Drowned Boarders, and monsters and bosses in general, no longer heal back to full in the middle of a fight just because nobody hit them for a few seconds. They only recover once they've truly left combat.
  • Necromancer pets – undead pets no longer provoke harmless animals (chickens, boars, turkeys) into attacking them after a fight.
  • Transfusion – its cooldown now works as intended.

⛵ Boats

  • Boats – boats now sail straight through corpses in the water instead of being stopped by them. The corpse stays where it fell, so you can still loot it.
  • Fixed a bug where teleporting to your boat with its key (or logging in while aboard) could leave you swimming beside it, with "a strong current" dragging you to shore and your pets moved off the deck.
  • Fixed boats sometimes refusing to move ("something is blocking the way") when someone was standing in the middle of the deck.
  • Fixed items occasionally being refused when dropped onto a boat's deck, with a "You can't throw stuff into the water!" message.
  • Boat keys – teleporting to a boat in another region no longer shows the "doesn't seem to exist" message twice.

🧰 Items, Crafting & Vendors

  • Pillows – every pillow (furniture, packed and treasure-chest pillows) can now be cut into 3 cloth with scissors, one at a time or with cut-all.
  • Wooden Buckets – buckets from shipwrecks can now be chopped into boards with a hatchet, including the ones you already have.
  • Repair contracts – repair contracts from Halloween rewards no longer come out blank ("take this to a nil shop"). Use a blank contract and choose a trade, and it becomes a Grandmaster repair contract for that trade. Blank contracts already in your bags work too.
  • Weapon durability – some items re-rolled their maximum durability every time the game checked them, so a barely used weapon could suddenly claim it needed repairs. The "needs repairs" warning now also matches the tooltip ("Rather battered").
  • Vendors – fixed an error when an item sold out while it was in your shopping list.

🩹 Buff Bar

  • Buff bar – fixed more buff icons that could stay on your bar after their effect had ended

Fixed a bug where bandage icons could get stuck on your buff bar and pile up in a row. This happened when a bandage was interrupted at just the wrong moment, or if you logged out or changed areas while bandaging. Bandage icons now clear themselves once the bandage ends, no matter how it ends. If you already have stuck bandage icons, they will disappear on your next login. If any other buff icon stays on your bar after its effect has worn off, please let us know which one. Hover over the icon to see its name.

Earlier Changes

Monster behavior

  • Monsters now turn back at the same distance every time instead of giving up at random.
  • A monster stays on whoever has done the most to it. A single hit from someone else, or a player walking past, no longer pulls it away. Tanks and pets hold aggro reliably.
  • Monsters that ignore you on sight keep ignoring you, and they always go for the nearest player first.
  • Monsters eventually forget players who stopped fighting them.
  • Healing only draws attention from monsters fighting the person you heal.
  • Fleeing monsters run away from you instead of in a random direction.
  • Idle monsters stay near where they belong.
  • Monsters that lose sight of you will look around for a few seconds before giving up.
  • Creatures left stranded far from home now return to where they belong once the area is clear.
  • Lord Grargh the Warchief no longer resets constantly and can be fought properly again.

Pets

  • Caster pets such as drakens now keep chasing their target instead of stopping to cast from out of range.

Factions

  • Fixed a bug where a sigil placed in a Sigil Holder could be returned to its town early, leaving a second copy behind in the holder.

Crafting and items

  • Your carried weight now updates correctly after milling logs into boards, and after anything else that changes the size of a stack, such as smelting, crafting or splitting stacks.

September Changelog

General Changes

  • Vendor Search stone will once again show prices to players after extensive discussion and a player vote, thanks to everyone's input and for trying out different ideas from time to time
  • We believe we've found another bug case with Faction Sigil stealing and have sent another patch. Most of it is under the hood, but one change you'll notice: stealing a sigil now announces publicly like it always should have — if you ever saw a town flip with no steal message beforehand, that was the bug. Please keep reporting anything that still looks off; the reports and screenshots are what let us find this one.
  • Vendor Search stone will no longer show prices to players to help discourage market price-fixing via the search tool and encourage actually visiting shops/exploration

Combat & Creatures

  • Further fixes to creatures jumping, sprinting home, or resetting mid-fight. Bosses now turn back at a consistent distance instead of an unpredictable one, and the Ancient Reaper will chase you a little further before returning to its roots.
  • Creatures already out in the world pick up these changes too. If you still see one jumping or resetting, please send a bug report noting where it happened.

Creatures have been getting stuck in fights, standing in place while taking hits, or turning and wandering home partway through a fight. That's fixed, along with a batch of related problems with how creatures decide to chase, give up, and choose targets:

  • Creatures will no longer lose interest in you while you are still well within their reach. Archers and casters were the worst for this.
  • Spellcasting creatures will finish what they are casting instead of being interrupted over and over.
  • A creature that gets hit while chasing will keep coming. Before, it would stop and never chase again.
  • Creatures can no longer get stuck fixating on something they cannot physically reach, such as a target on a boat or a rooftop.
  • A creature fought only by a pet will no longer fall asleep mid-fight.
  • Paralyze no longer leaves a target stuck in place when the effect is broken early.
  • Creatures that lose sight of you will take another look rather than standing and staring. Slipping past them is still possible.

New: while in combat mode you can click an idle creature to start the fight yourself, instead of waiting for it to spot you.

Factions: Town Sigils Town stones have been turning away sigil thefts and claiming no sigil exists, even when one does. This has been a frustrating one to track down, thanks to everyone who reported it.

  • The Steal Sigil option now appears only when the sigil is genuinely there to take.

  • When you cannot take it, the stone will tell you why rather than pretending there is nothing there.

  • Any town stone left in a stuck state will right itself shortly after this update. If there is a town that has been refusing thieves, go give it another try.

  • Fixed a case where dying while carrying a sigil could lose it outright instead of sending it home.

  • Due to player feedback, the new recipes can now be purchased from the carpenter

  • The Ice Dragon King will now accept all variants of the Skull Hood.

  • Added two new furniture items for carpenters to craft. They require recipes that can be purchased from a vendor.

  • Fixed a bug that made the obelisk tip unobtainable.

This one gets its own patch note! A potential fix for the issue will be available via the launcher shortly. Those of you that were affected, please give us some feedback. Ideally exit the launcher completely and restart it to get the patched file.

House Decay Timeline Extended

What Changed

We've permanently extended the house decay timeline for all players. Your houses now have 60 days of inactivity before they begin to decay, up from the previous 30 days. This gives you twice as long to manage your property without losing it to neglect.

Patron players get even longer:

  • Backer → Novice Patrons: 90 days (up from 60)
  • Apprentice Patron and above: 120 days (up from 90)

How It Works

The decay stages remain the same — your house still progresses through six stages before collapsing — but each stage now lasts longer. The full countdown is spread across a longer window, so you have more breathing room between logins.

Technical Notes

  • This change goes into effect after the next daily restart on Aug 28th
  • All houses (except Ageless and Condemned properties) will be refreshed to the new timeline on the next boot — no action needed on your part.
  • Rentals and faction bases are unaffected; they follow their own rules.

Get out there and build something — you've got plenty of time now.

⚔️ Vault Clean-Up Time

We're temporarily waiving vault retrieval fees to help you clear out your stored items.

Usually retrieving items from your rental property vault costs you 500 GP upfront plus daily storage fees — for now, it's completely free. Get in there and organize your storage!

This temporary waiver takes effect on your next login.

Launcher version 0.1.30 will be available shortly. In our last release, we introduced a feature allowing players to scale down the number of connections used by our launcher to download game files. This was designed for lower power PC's, slower internet connections, and consumer routers with small NAT tables that couldn't effectively handle bulk connections.

In this latest release, we automate that scaling behind the scenes to ensure players don't get failed download/retry messages and instead, the launcher will auto adapt and scale down connections as needed.

Hopefully this helps those users that were affected by this issue.

A new version of the launcher - v0.1.29 - will be available shortly. This version adds the following features:

  • Downloading of Unity assets now takes place in our launcher, rather than in the game client. Due to the multithreaded nature of our downloader, this should significantly increase the speed with which new asset files are delivered to you. The client path remains as a fallback.

  • Two new options in the 'Settings Cog'. One is the option to preload assets, on by default (supports the previously mentioned feature.) The other, 'Download connections', supports decreasing the number of attempted connections to support slow connections and older PC's.

If you're having issues with the launcher downloading files, please try decreasing this number. We suggest trying '4' instead of '16'. Once changed, click the run button next to 'Validate game files' just above it to restart the download process.

  • A lingering bug with the previous pet storage fix was tracked down and addressed. Please let us know if it reoccurs.

Please note this fix needs a server restart to fully deploy, and cannot deploy retroactively to pets that unstable themselves between now and the restart.

  • An issue with stabling pets should now be fixed. This should address the root cause of the issue, and also not charge players if the problem reoccurs. Please let us know if that is not your experience via the usual feedback channels.

Please note this fix will require a server restart to fully deploy, which will happen roughly 2.5 hours from this news post.

In addition to the requirement to reset your password (go to https://accounts.shardsofbritannia.com to do so) please note the following:

  • Exit your launchers unless you are on v0.1.26. You might need to do this from the system tray down near your clock. Right click that and exit
  • Make sure you go to https://accounts.shardsofbritannia.com and reset your password. Also if you were using MFA you'll need to re-add it
  • Make sure your launcher updates to v0.1.26 (you can see the version by clicking the setup cog in the bottom right once you log in). If it doesn't update immediately, exit it and try again.

Patch notes:

  • Fixed an issue where clicking the cross with 'Close to tray' off didn't result in the launcher closing. Note 'Close to tray' is still the default and will remain that way. Launcher needs to be active for you to stay logged in - that's a design decision to stop people kicking themselves out.
  • Linux native launcher updated to 0.1.26 as well. Working with some beta testers in the Discord thread. All going well, this will be promoted to live and available on https://shardsofbritannia.com/play shortly

Another small launcher patch is being pushed out. This one is just some inner stability fixes, nothing visible. You'll get prompted to restart when it's ready.

Another quick launcher patch:

  • Directly addresses an issue where repeatedly failing to authenticate would result in 'invalid credentials' in the launcher, even when the right password was typed

Note that to address this issue, a button will appear in the launcher, directing you instead to our website to login - that login will also do a Captcha check which, if successful, will correctly log you in.

This launcher patch will appear on your launchers shortly after this message. Please restart your launchers when you can.

A small patch has been released for the launcher. If you don't immediately see the offer to restart the launcher with the patch, exit from the launcher and reload.

Fixes:

  • An issue where the launcher could sit at 'connecting to server' indefinitely
  • An issue preventing access to 'accounts.db' when the game client is installed in the \Program Files\ path on Windows

Your bound items are now protected from accidental loss.

✨ What's New

🎁 Automatic Item Rescue Soulbound, account-bound, and Patron reward items will no longer be destroyed when they would normally be lost. The server now catches them and delivers them safely to your bank instead.

This now protects items lost to:

  • 🏚️ Houses falling into IDOC / decaying
  • ⏳ Items left on the ground long enough to decay
  • 💀 Items left inside a monster corpse that rots away
  • ➕ Plus other cases of decay or deletion

Account-bound & soulbound items return to your account vault — claim them from any character the next time you open your bank. Character-bound Patron items return to the specific character they belong to.

📬 Rescue Notifications You'll get a message letting you know when an item has been saved so you know to check your bank. During big events like a house collapse, these are bundled into one summary so you're not spammed.

🗑️ Destroy Bound Item Need to get rid of a bound item on purpose? Right-click it and choose Destroy Bound Item. You'll always get a confirmation prompt first — no accidental deletions.

  • Web Map is now working as expected.

  • Web Map window is now draggable from the title bar

  • Journal logs are now exported in the game's log folder as txt

Tired of hauling multiple repair deeds or running back to town every time your gear breaks? The new Mobile Repair Kit is a portable tool that handles all your repair needs in the field!

What It Does

  • Repairs metal armor and weapons (Blacksmithing)
  • Repairs wooden shields, staves and clubs (Carpentry)
  • Repairs bows (Fletching)
  • Repairs cloth and leather gear (Tailoring)
  • Must be in your backpack to use
  • Charge-based system - each repair consumes one charge

How to Craft

  • Requires 100.0 Grandmaster Tinkering skill
  • 100% success rate to craft
  • Found in the Tinkering menu under Tools
  • Select your desired metal tier from the material picker (like crafting pickaxes)

Metal Tiers & Costs

Each Repair Deed consumed grants 1 Charge. ⚪ Iron: 5 Ingots / 5 Deeds ➔ 5 Charges 🟤 Copper: 10 Ingots / 10 Deeds ➔ 10 Charges 🟡 Golden: 15 Ingots / 15 Deeds ➔ 15 Charges 🟢 Verite: 20 Ingots / 20 Deeds ➔ 20 Charges 🔵 Valorite: 25 Ingots / 25 Deeds ➔ 25 Charges

*Requires 5/10/15/20/25 each of: Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Fletching, and Tailoring Repair Deeds

Valorite Bonus

  • Valorite kits repair equipment as if wielded by a Grandmaster craftsman, ensuring the highest quality repairs

How to Use

  1. Keep the Mobile Repair Kit in your backpack
  2. Double-click the kit to activate repair mode
  3. Target the equipment you wish to repair
  4. The kit automatically uses the appropriate repair skill
  5. Each successful repair consumes one charge

Craft once, repair everywhere!

This change will be live after the next server reboot

After the next reboot, existing mage bucklers that couldn't be repaired after the Inscription update should be fixed.

Faction Pillar Conflicts have received their largest update in years. Events are no longer locked to a single thirty-minute ruleset at a random site. Faction players can now configure almost every aspect of a match from their faction stone before it goes live, choose where it is fought, and pick one of three distinct game modes. Portals still open in major cities when an event starts, and the classic pillar arenas remain the battlegrounds — but how you fight there is now largely up to you.

To schedule an event, use Activate Pillar Event on your faction stone. A setup window lets you pick duration, respawn rules, player limits, combat mode, base protection, mounts, bolas, and location. When you are ready, press Schedule Event for a Team Pillar or Free-For-All match using those settings. Capture the Flag is started separately with the CTF Mode button, which applies fixed CTF rules on top of your chosen duration, respawn, mount, bola, and location options. You must select a location before anything can be scheduled. The server also checks that enough players are online; team and CTF events normally require at least two factions represented, while FFA events can be scheduled when only one faction has members online, as long as the minimum total player count is met. A short countdown follows approval, then the announcement goes out and the portals open.

Duration and reward scaling now follow the length you choose. Team and FFA events can run ten, twenty, thirty, forty-five, or sixty minutes. Capture the Flag requires at least twenty minutes; if you had ten minutes selected for a pillar event and switch to CTF, the duration automatically bumps to twenty. Rewards scale with time, using thirty minutes as the baseline at one hundred percent. A ten-minute event pays roughly a third of that, a twenty-minute event about two-thirds, forty-five minutes one and a half times, and sixty minutes double. Team events capped at one player per faction pay twenty-five percent of the scaled amount on top of that. FFA gold payouts use the same duration scaling.

Respawn and stat loss can be set to Zerg (instant respawn, no stat loss), Fast (light stat loss and quicker healer cycles), or Standard (classic delay and heavier stat loss). This applies to all three modes. Player limits for Team and FFA range from Open (everyone can fight), Balanced teams (overpopulated factions may bench extra players as inactive standby), or hard caps from one-versus-one through five-versus-five per faction. CTF always uses balanced teams with a plus-one standby slot. Combat mode for scheduled pillar events is either Team battle, where only rival factions score kill credit and a faction wins by total points, or FFA, where everyone can damage everyone and the top individual player wins the announcement. Faction bases can be Safe, with guards protecting spawn areas as in classic events, or Open, allowing fighting inside enemy spawns. CTF always uses open bases. Mounts can be allowed or disabled; when disabled, players are dismounted on entry and cannot use mounts or ethereal mounts for the duration. Bolas can be allowed or turned off entirely. Locations include Spiritwood Outpost near Skara Brae, Vraal's Mausoleum near Minoc, Deep Forest Ruins in Yew, Samlethe Pass in Wind, and Dragon's Peak on Dagger Isle.

When an event goes live, faction members who enter the arena receive the Faction Event buff automatically if they are eligible. While under that effect you do not consume reagents, bandages, or arrows, though you must still carry them. On death you drop only magical equipment and volatile spellbooks. Recall and gate travel are blocked, skill gains are paused, and after a short delay you teleport to your faction's event healer, which resurrects on a timer depending on the respawn mode you chose. Bonded pets teleport with you; healers generally will not resurrect pets unless they are mountable. If death teleport fails, the /basereturn command sends your ghost and pets back to your faction base while you are dead. Players suffering event stat loss are not worth silver and cannot earn kill silver until it wears off. Under Standard respawn, expect roughly ninety seconds of reduced stats and slower movement, scaled by the selected preset. Factions with more active players than the smallest faction may suffer increased stat loss over time. If safe bases are enabled, enemies who enter a guarded enemy spawn are killed by guards; that protection does not apply in CTF or when open bases are selected.

A draggable event HUD shows the mode, faction standings, your kills, deaths, and captures where relevant, the options in effect, and in CTF the flag status including a respawn countdown when the flag is returning to the pillar. The plus button opens the leaderboard. When balanced teams are active and one faction is overpopulated, extra members join as plus-one Inactive standby. Standby players are in the event but cannot fight for score and cannot pick up the CTF flag; they are activated automatically when team sizes even out. Balance benching does not apply when fewer than three players are in the match. Please note that Minax characters are temporarily blocked from joining live pillar and CTF events, though staff may still spectate; this restriction may be lifted in a future update.

Team Pillar remains the default classic mode. Every thirty seconds the pillar ticks if at least two factions have active fighters present. One faction controlling the pillar earns two faction points and two individual points for nearby members. Two factions contesting earn one point each. Three factions present, or nobody holding the pillar, earns nothing. Kills steal a portion of the victim faction's points when that faction has points to lose, with the top damager credited on the leaderboard. Same-faction kills do not score. Kills between characters on the same machine do not score. Repeat kills on the same opponent within two minutes do not score, except in one-versus-one team events where that cooldown is skipped because there is only one enemy. Valid rival kills during the event pay kill silver through the pillar system rather than normal overworld faction payouts. The faction with the most points when time expires wins.

End-of-event rewards for Team Pillar and CTF require meaningful activity in the match: at least two total kills across all players for team events, or at least one flag capture plus two opposing factions having been present for CTF rewards. If the gate fails, everyone is told that no rewards were given. Winning faction members receive faction coins and silver scaled by duration, with bonuses if your faction controls Cove. Losing faction members who earned individual points receive a participation silver payout. The top five players by individual points receive tiered silver bonuses if they meet presence and participation requirements; team mode requires sufficient combat involvement and, for top rewards, kills on multiple unique opponents (one unique opponent suffices in one-versus-one team events). The number-one player by points also has a ten percent chance at a rare faction pillar prize, but only on events scheduled for thirty minutes or longer. Presence requirements are fifty percent of the event for team pillar and twenty-five percent for CTF. Standby players generally do not receive win or lose payouts unless activated onto the fighting roster. You must still have the Faction Event effect when rewards are processed at the end.

Free-For-All mode removes faction victory. There are no pillar faction points and no kill point stealing between teams. Individual score comes from your share of damage on kills, and same-machine and repeat-kill restrictions are relaxed so scrimmages flow more freely. The top individual player wins the end announcement, with ties possible. FFA does not pay faction coins, silver, or the rare prize, but it now pays gold to the top five players deposited into your bank. At a full thirty-minute event the winner receives fifteen thousand gold, with second through fifth place receiving twelve thousand, nine thousand, six thousand, and three thousand respectively, following a five-four-three-two-one split. Shorter or longer events scale those amounts with the same duration multiplier used elsewhere. FFA requires at least two total kills in the match for any gold to be paid, and eligible top players must have scored points or sufficient combat participation and meet the twenty-five percent presence requirement. Scheduling an FFA event only requires one faction to be online rather than two.

Capture the Flag is a entirely new way to fight at the pillar. Use the CTF Mode button on the faction stone rather than Schedule Event. CTF uses balanced teams with plus-one standby, open bases, flag captures as the only scoring, no pillar control ticks, and no kill-based point stealing. Kills still matter tactically because they drop the flag, and rival kills during an active CTF now pay kill silver the same way team pillar kills do, without affecting capture points. The flag spawns at the central pillar. An active fighter uses the flag to pick it up, wearing it as a flag quiver on their back, and carries it to their faction healer base within capture range to score. Each capture awards ten points to your faction and to you personally. After a capture the flag respawns at the pillar after two minutes, with a countdown shown on the HUD. If the carrier dies the flag drops where they fell. If the carrier leaves the event the flag returns to the pillar after two minutes. Carriers can pass the flag to a teammate through the quiver's transfer target, but cannot mount, and sigil or siege key holders cannot carry the flag. Standby players cannot pick up the flag. To prevent solo abuse, the flag cannot be picked up or captured until at least two different factions each have one active fighter on the roster; the HUD will show when the flag is waiting for another faction. End rewards follow the same coin and silver structure as team pillar, with CTF-specific presence and participation rules tied to captures and roster membership rather than kill counts.

When an event ends, the pillar deactivates, healers are removed, rewards are calculated, leaderboards are shown, and the Faction Event effect remains briefly so payouts can finish before normal rules return. Staff who stop an event early end it with no rewards for anyone.

Whether you are organizing a quick ten-minute skirmish, a full-hour siege for maximum payout, a free-for-all gold hunt, or a capture-the-flag grudge match, the faction stone is now your war table. Rally your faction, choose your rules, and meet your enemies at the pillar.

A few minor updates that will go live after the next server restart.

  • Players can now bulk disenchant items in bags using the Item ID skill
  • Players with GM Item ID get a bonus to the amount of shard essence from disenchanted items
  • Tamed pets can now gain skill points in meditation

Couple of minor updates.

  • Sacred rune tomes (40 slot) are available on the donation vendor for 1500 points
  • 50% damage reduction when attacking from stealth with a melee weapon has been removed as this was a bug

Thanks folks