Balancing & Improvements

This patch has been deployed to the live server, see most recent changes at the bottom of this post

Young Player Status changes:

• increased account-time-played-as-young threshold from 40hr to 72hr
• increased per-character skill total threshold from 350 to 600
• removed ending Young status when accomplishing 80 skill-points in any skill
• unchanged: killing monsters of a high rating still has a chance to cause Young to end, with warnings occurring prior

Rotating Dungeons:

• introducing a Weekly Protected Dungeon that will be randomly selected each week on Sundays at 9am UTC
• criminal actions are prevented in the weekly dungeon (thieves can still Steal objects from the dungeon's structures though)
• weekly dungeons have a 50% reduction in loot
• boss/sequential spawns temporarily suspended in the weekly dungeon
• the Daily Dungeon feature will remain active, and Daily Dungeon should never conflict with the Weekly Protected Dungeon, allowing players to choose between: more danger for more rewards (Daily Dungeon), normal danger for normal rewards (All Other Dungeons), or less danger for less rewards (Weekly Dungeon)

Lord's Boon (Hearthstone)

• introducing Lord's Boon, a hearthstone that is blessed & soulbound to their owner
• usable by innocent players, not in a faction, with positive karma (above 0)
• can be obtained by completing a quest which will involve killing monsters at the Graveyard and possibly other tasks; see Lord Seymour in Castle Britannia (West Britain)
• can be used to teleport to a town they have bound to, uninterrupted (except death), with a 1 hour cooldown
• use this inside of a town's inn to bind your spirit to that location for use with this hearthstone

PVP Balancing & Improvements:

• added temporary PVP Protection to innocent players as they Resurrect, allowing 5 minutes of invulnerability from other players (not monsters), and will be interrupted if engaging in combat, or looting a corpse that is not their own or their pet's; this protection will only apply to innocent players with NO murder counts
• added an upper-limit for post-death murderer restrictions, now capped at 72hr, previously unlimited
• increased aggro or threat generation against murderer or criminal characters by NPCs/monsters
• added a warning to PKs if they go to attack a player that has (a) died recently, (b) been murdered in the past 24 hours, (c) if the murderer has killed any player in the last 24 hours
• prevented murderers from using item insurance & prevented from equipping insured items, items will automatically be unequipped on login if they are insured
• prevented being able to give murder counts to members of the same faction, similar to being in a guild or group
• prevented AOE spells from damaging innocent players inside houses without line of sight (Earthquake, Chain Lightning, Meteor Swarm)
• added craftable Camouflage potion for innocent players to use to prevent being tracked by players for a duration; this will be interrupted if becoming criminal; can be crafted by Alchemists
• added "call for help" speech command for players to be able to warn other players in the vicinity of a nearby murderer
• prevented the "Loot All" option on player corpses, except for the owner
• changed Hireling NPCs to be able to be used in PVP only against PKs by Innocent players, but they cannot be hired by PKs
• balanced skills/stats for Hireling NPCs to be tougher in PVE, in return their damage has been reduced in PVP in order to keep them balanced; they also now have a periodic self-bandage ability (subject to change)
• reduced Tracking range for player & pet targets by 20%
• fixed Tracking hunting mode to avoid party/friends

Reputation Improvements (preparation for upcoming additions to reputation):

• we've aligned the ways in which one can gain & lose reputation from the Ultima codex
• you can now gain Fame by: killing murderer characters you are not associated with, completing a Season challenge, completing a Quest objective, completing an Escort Quest
• you can now gain Karma by: healing, curing or resurrecting players
• prevented Fame/Karma losses from actions against players or pets you associate with (own, group, guild, faction)
• you can now lose Fame when logging in if your character has been logged out for an extended period of time (7 days or more); this will only cause a small amount of Fame loss and is NOT scaled by the amount of time you were logged out

Updates for Feb 22nd, re-deployment of this patch:

New changes:

• Added "Dungeons Status" context menu to self to be able to check the Daily & Weekly dungeons at any time
• Players will now be able loot player and pet corpses that are half-decayed to better align with expected UO mechanics; note: player corpses turn to bones at the half-way point
• Increased player & pet corpse decay time by 10m, now it will take 40 minutes to decay in total, or 20 minutes to half-decay
• Improved Hireling Mercenary commanding
• Completing the Lord Boon quest will now put the Hearthstone in your backpack rather than your bank
• Removed chance for characters with Hiding to not reveal when looting corpses that are not their own/their pet to align better with expected UO mechanics and for balancing

Fixes:

• Fixed murderers not being able to equip any items
• Fixed PVP prevention happening when trying to perform beneficial acts
• Fixed issue with not being able to complete the Lord Boon quest in some cases
• Fixed issue with adding to a stack of items not registering the new amount with the Quest tracker
• Fixed issue with Undead Crystals not stacking, not retroactive
• Fixed issue with Hearthstone not being bound on creation, retroactive fix for pre-existing items included
• Fixed issue with Weekly Dungeon spawns not being refreshed properly
• Fixed issue with un-hired hireling mercenaries attacking pets
• Fixed an issue with Karma becoming locked again after unlocking it, when gaining Karma but the total Karma remains below 0
• Fixed being able to drop backpack-bound items outside of the backpack
• Fixed issue with monsters being able to see over walls in dungeons in some cases

• Rare Royal Magic Sceptres with fireworks are now live in-game! Visit the Jester in Britain Castle to try out the fireworks! There are four different types: Lilac, Blue, Red, and Rainbow. Each one can be bought and/or found in different ways in the game, e.g., treasure chests, riddle tokens, fishing, and defeating bosses.

• Recharge crystals for these sceptres can also be found within the world. We have also added a personal jester vanity pet to the Jester vendor in Britain Castle, which can be bought with riddle tokens.

• Chuckles the Jester has hidden special riddles in all the towns of Britannia! Double-click on inanimate objects to try to find them for riddle tokens.

• New rare loot has been added to dungeon and deep water fishing.

This is a reminder of the upcoming annual dye sale of Azurite Dyetubs available from February 11th to February 26th as scheduled and written about earlier: https://shardsofbritannia.com/news/annual-pigment-enamels-donation-dyetubs

Thanks for supporting the project!

Our lottery official is now back at Britain Bank, ready to sell lottery tickets! Collect 10 raffle tokens from paragons throughout Britannia to purchase a ticket. The 1st prize will be a surprise one-of-a-kind mount, while the 2nd and 3rd prizes will remain a mystery.

Chuckles the jester has hidden special riddles in all the towns of Britannia! Double-click on inanimate objects to try to find them for riddle tokens. These tokens can be used to purchase items from the jester at Britain Castle. This event is ongoing, and new riddles will continue to be added until further notice.

• The chance to catch dungeon fishing rares has been slightly increased.

• You now have a chance to fish up a killer king crab while dungeon fishing, which can be killed for rare loot.

• New items can now be bought from Billy Bob, the pig farmer.

• The spider queen has undergone its final tweaks and is now fully operational! Gather your friends to try and take down this monster for fantastic treasures!

• We have slightly increased the chance for some of the fishing loot in the moat and added some new items.

• You can now attempt to destroy the Spider Queen's torture cages by double-clicking on them when you are trapped.

• An issue with the protection scrolls for the Spider Queen's torture cage that was preventing players from reapplying them has been fixed.

• The health and damage of the Summoner's dark guardians and strange gazers have been slightly reduced. This adjustment is part of our ongoing game balancing efforts.

• A new mount has been added as a 5-year veteran reward.

• Congratulations to the winners of the Christmas lottery! 1st: Lord God, 2nd: Loro Wenn, and 3rd: Sharky. We will be in contact soon with your prizes!

• Some items that can be stolen in dungeons have been fixed. Previously, players were unable to see these items in order to steal them.

The Map page has been updated to reflect the new world boundaries for boating: https://map.shardsofbritannia.com/

Edit: The map has been updated once more to add Yellow lines along the shared waterways/harbors in Yew/Skara, Britain/Cove, and Minoc/Wind. The following labels have also been added: Incomplete Area (off-limits), Castle Britannia, Yew Jails, Snowball Fight Arena

We've deployed the following fixes:

• fixed an issue with lag occurring, that is perceivable to all other players in the region, when players log-in or transfer regions
• fixed an issue with Mining Caves not being mineable

• Selection issues with the 4-year veteran ethereal spider mount have been fixed. You will need to re-log into the game.

• New Corrupted Dragons have now been added inside dungeon Destard
• For a limited time, you can now buy 5 noble coins from the vendor in Shame for 15 Dungeon Tokens

We've deployed the long-awaited sound and music tweaks, where we will utilize more of the wonderful tracks that Beekel composed for us, in addition to replacing many sound effects. Turn your volume up!

There'll be more to come in this area, however we hope you enjoy what we are able to provide today. Please note that as part of the patch, it was necessary to update two of our largest asset files, britanniamain and loudungeons - these will download on your next connection attempt. For anyone with slower connections, we apologise in advance!

• The animations for the 4-year veteran ethereal spider mount have been fixed.

• New items have been added to the moat fishing loot, and drop rates have been slightly increased.

The Item Fixer NPCs have a new option to fix Vanity Pet Cages that don't work when double-clicking them

New items added to the fishing SOS loot!

Castle Britannia, in West Britain, despite being unfinished, is now accessible to visitors!