Recent News List

• 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

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.

• Fixed issue with Security options not being added to containers being secured by anyone but the house owner
• Fixed issue with double-clicking house sign not refreshing the house in some cases
• Optimized spammy system message "the house has been refreshed"

• 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.

• 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.

• Players can no longer create Camps while inside Guard Protected towns.

• Non-Owners can no longer Destroy Campsites.
• Taking damage while building a Camp/Tent should break animations now.
• Dismount messaging fixed, and can no longer place/interact with Campfires while mounted.

• Added New Character Settings for Toggling Auto-Open of Killing Blow/Mutilate/Harvest under Combat Options.

• 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.

• 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're going to need to do an additional restart in about 20 minutes so that we can try to help some players who are unable to login. No downtime expected. Thank you for your patience as we try to get everyone in game again!

An issue with accepting trade has been resolved.

• Updated crafting window Repair button to show how to make a repair deed
• CAPTCHA improvements
• Fixed issue with some characters being unable to log in if they were previously unable to complete the transition from Celador
• Fixed issue with trees being "too far away" in North Minoc area
• Logging out in a dungeon will result in being teleported to Limbo when logging back in, if logging in 20+ minutes after logging out
• Marking runes is now possible inside Dungeons on Levels 1 except for Despise being able to mark on Levels 2 & 3
• The following actions are prevented around the nearby areas surrounding dungeon entrances, both interior and exterior:
  • gaining skills
  • marking runes
  • casting field spells
  • dropping objects

All town vendors have been made invulnerable for the time being while we work on updating their AI to be in line with Britannia-era combat mechanics and as such, they will be unavailable for snooping or thievery while invulnerable. Thanks for your patience while we continue to work on things

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.

All wandering healers have had their wanderlust reduced temporarily, until we can make them visible via map icons once again. The markers available via https://lou-map.herokuapp.com/ can be used to locate them.

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 Britain Sewers are now open. This is a young-only dungeon, and designed to be quite simple to survive and skill up in for new players.

Sounds from applying bandages as well as sounds from instruments will now only play to yourself while inside of town.

Due to another troublesome bug and an even larger player count (which we're not complaining about!), we will temporarily go to a 12 hour restart schedule to avoid a possible stability issue. We'll advise when we've squashed this one and change back to daily restarts.

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

After next restart, cut off heads should display the full resurrection value of the dead.

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