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

• Corpse mutilate option optimized, double-clicking blood spatter will open corpse as expected, and can also right-click and choose Loot All
• Issue with commanding pets to attack groupmates or your own pets resulting in "they cannot be attacked" erroneously has been resolved
• Blessed objects will now be moved to the backpack if they are inside another container in your backpack when you die

We're investigating an issue with guards and will be down for a little bit longer.

Water definitions have been added to every town! In those areas:

• fishing should be possible around all of the towns now
• creatures will no longer spawn in water
• players will no longer be able to go swimming

Last chance to sign up for the pvp tournament! Signup closes at 4:00 AM UTC on the 28th (about 6 hours from this posting).

After the window has closed, all enrolled players will be added to a special event channel for prelims and a bracket will be generated randomly.

The server is temporarily offline due to an outage with the hosting provider. It was unexpected to have any downtime associated with this maintenance, but something has come up unexpectedly, so we appreciate your patience. We are monitoring the situation and will alert you as soon as the server is coming back online, or we know something further. <3

As many of you know we are working on development of a brand new factions system. We plan to release this new system in phases and we will be providing previews as development progresses. However, we do not want to hold up our players from fighting each other in factions PvP for this new system to be completed. So we have decided that today we are opening factions up for play! We will be providing new content to factions in phases. Today is simply going to be opening up PvP between factions. Keep an eye out for faction leaders looking for recruits!

The interactive map has now moved to:

https://map.legendsofultima.online

Please update your bookmarks! We have also updated the wiki.

Some of you have reported persistent issues with being unable to fully update the game client using the LOA Launcher. At this time, if the troubleshooting steps outlined here: https://forums.legendsofultima.online/d/46-legends-of-aria-launcher-troubleshooting do not help, then we would normally advise users to download the client using the "Problems with the launcher? Click here" link on the download page, but the latest build has not been published there yet. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working with CS to get it published as quickly as possible for those affected. Thank you for your patience

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.

• Campers must be dismounted throughout the entire build process.
• Camping now has additional chances to gain throughout the entire build process, and Adding Kindling/Logs give a chance too.
• Camping fail rates now have a 50% minimum that scales up with greater skill.
• Campers with 80 skill or greater now have a chance to recover materials when Destroying their camps.

"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 Auto Stack or Stack All option(s) was removed before the Britannia launch, but some people still had it enabled after the transition, even though the option was removed.

This feature has caused several client\graphical glitches in the past for people as items are moved around or consumed very quickly. The feature has been disabled in favor of preventing multiple stacks from accumulating in the first place.

Please let us know if you run into a scenario where multiple stacks of similar items are being added to your backpack when you wouldn't expect them to, and we will work to optimize any remaining cases.

Despise is temporarily closed. Cora and The Piper had an argument and made a real mess in there. It's currently undergoing a deep clean and will be available again shortly. I'd still wear a mask though.

• Ankhs should now resurrect Red players in the world.
• Buccs Den now has more Red Wandering Healers that are spread out across town.

• (QOL) Players that deliver the killing blow on a non-player mobile will automatically open the corpse backpack if they are within looting range.
• (QOL) New Right-Click Mutilate ability on non-player corpses will allow corpse pile micro-management by forcefully removing body piles while keeping the lootable backpack via the CTRL function.
• Using the Harvest ability before Mutilate is ideal, as Mutilate will now automatically open the corpse backpack too.
• Mutilate will also leave a bloodstain in the place of the body.

The Polymorph spell has been temporarily disabled while we work on the ongoing issues with it. Thank you for your patience, we'll advise when it is available again.