Recent News List

Due to some server lag issues that we experienced during the original PVP Tournament preliminary rounds (which have since been resolved!), we're going to start from scratch and get another fresh bracket going.

Signup closes Saturday, 10/2/21. We will then get preliminary rounds under way, and as we approach the final four, schedule the main event finals, which will still include a battle royale!

Copypasta of event details/rules ahead: This event will be split into two parts, as follows:

1v1 Mounted Combat Tournament - Mounted players will face each other solo in rounds. Early rounds will involve the players coordinating with one another and meeting in world to duke it out. Results can be reported in the #pvp-event channel (access will be granted upon event signup). Despite being out in the open world, this will still be a 1v1 battle- please respect these rules or face disqualification. Players in the past have used free recording software to record their early stage duels to eliminate any potential problems, these also make great content videos for our game.

On the date of the finals, the final 4 will meet at the Colosseum and duke it out 1v1 until a winner is declared.

After the champion is declared, the field will be cleared and a free-for-all Royal Rumble shall occur. All contestants and any willing audience members will be placed in the arena, and only one will leave alive, no rules, last one standing wins.

Rules: -Only one player per human being may enter the competition -Player crafted gear ONLY. No magical (vanquishing, etc) gear allowed. Exceptional gear is allowed. -Looting strongly discouraged but not illegal (between contestants) -Only one mount per player, no ethereal mounts allowed -Tamers participating may bring only one pet in addition to their mount. -All items are able to be used. -Audience members may not assist contestants in any way or commit criminal acts against other audience members.

Prizes: -Trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the 1v1; and one trophy for the Royal Rumble winner

To sign up for the 1v1 tournament, go to https://event-signup.uo4.life/ sign in with your discord account in the top right, and complete the signup form. If you only wish to participate in the Royal Rumble, simply show up to the event!

• Removed the need to press escape after attempting to apply a bandage to yourself while one is already being applied or healing is not needed
• Fixed issue with Last Target option in the in-game macro system not working with some commonly used skills and skill objects
• Fixed issue with Provocation & Peacemaking timers not being reset with successful attempts when the mobs are already fighting/subdued
• Clicking any of the heal buttons on the group healthbar will now set the group member as your Last Target for use with macros or Bandage Last ability

Nightmares have been spawned in Britannia!

Rideable Pack Beetles have arrived in Britannia as a brand new tamable! These beasts are not only sturdier than horses, but are the only mount that also can act as a pack animal. While any player (even non-tamers) may control the beetle, tamers may find procuring one to be a bit tricky...

Lag issues should largely be resolved. We will continue to monitor the situation. Some players may experience intermittent issues based on their path to the server.

• Messages when bandaging others have been optimized to show accurate messages
• When a group member dies, other members in the group will be alerted
• Fixed an issue with toggling options on some backpack equipment (e.g. toggling a pickaxe to mine stone)

We're back online. Go play!

After next restart, if the owner of a pet is dead and the pet is attacked, the pet will defend itself.

During the next restart period (9am UTC 16th September) we will remain offline for up to 2 hours to perform extended maintenance.

Thank you for your patience.

We are aware of ongoing lag issues that some users are experiencing. At this stage, we are waiting for a core issue to be rectified at our host, at which time we will most likely move back to our original datacentre.

The latest advice is that they are working with their network equipment vendor to patch and resolve the issue. Unfortunately this seems to be taking an extended amount of time, however as soon as we are advised that this issue is resolved, we will in turn advise you all.

Apologies for this, it is out of our hands at this time. We know a few of you have suggested moving to an alternative host, however please understand that is not a realistic avenue for us at this time due to both the cost and time involved. We are not a simple 'single server' solution like a RunUO/ServUO shard.

An exploit which allowed players to place houses in areas not intended for housing has been patched. If you have knowingly used this exploit to place a house somewhere it shouldn't be, please be aware that it may be subject to deletion without notice. It is recommended you move your home immediately to avoid this outcome.

After next restart, vendors now have a "Set All To Max" option, which sets the quantity of all items currently in the bill of sale to the maximum amount the vendor has on hand.

An issue causing furniture deeds to be named "Unknown Furniture Deed" or "Blank Deed" has been resolved, and any existing deeds have been corrected & should now be showing their correct name. If you find any remaining cases of furniture deeds not showing their full name please let us know.

We are looking for ideas for the new Discord logo. Are you handy with Photoshop? We'd love to see what you can come up with. If you are interested in helping out and want to submit an image to be considered for the rebranding, please do so on our forums: https://forums.shardsofbritannia.com/topic/30/discord-logo-submissions Thanks in advance

General

• Fixed issue with stuck menu teleport to town option not doing anything
• Fixed issue with trade window reopening after a cancelled/successful trade
• Any open group healthbars will now reopen during login/region switch
• Fixed issue with not being able to open/use/invite to group in some cases after a group has been disbanded
• Fixed issue with guild tags become reserved if an error occurred during guild creation
• Fixed issue with guild tag not showing immediately after creating a guild
• Fixed issue with provoked beings idling in some cases after their target dies, until the effect wears off
• Using Loot All on your own corpse will now skip using Loot Bags to prevent your gear from being combined with actual loot
• Attempting to use kindling will now dismount you instead of warning you to dismount and causing your kindling to be lost

Crafting

• Removed empty Stone category from Carpentry for now since there's no active recipes in there
• Fixed issue with Craft Single/Multi/All buttons not working on some pages & fixed issue with All button overlapping with scrollbar
• Fixed issue with not being able to use crafting tools nested in another container in the backpack
• Fixed issue with double clicking inscription table always saying "you cannot access that"
• Fixed issue with not being able to use potion kegs outside of the backpack
• Crafting repair deeds will now put deeds directly in craft bags in your inventory

Pets

• Fixed issue with Loot All option on pack animals not working for owners
• Improved edge cases for pets immediately when they become tamed potentially causing criminal action to the last combatant
• Fixed issue with released/transferred pets not having their prior owner's affiliations cleared, like Faction icon

We're aware that multiple users are having issues with moving around\decorating with the new forge models. At this time there is no solution and it advised to release the forge and place it in it's desired location to avoid issues. You may find after moving it a few times that the /refresh command helps or leaving the immediate area and coming back, it may show the forge at the appropriate location again. Unfortunately this is a side effect of the game engine and not possible for us to resolve at this time.

• Fixed issue with previous target not being saved with fishing
• Fixed issue with double clicking someone while in warmode causing your paperdoll to open to them
• Added Prevent Dismount In Warmode option for helping to prevent accidental dismounts while in close-quarters combat
• Skip opening runebook window when adding recall scrolls to it
• Added Target Restriction: Ignore Manual Targets, this option will make it so Target Restriction only works with the new Target Nearest/Cycle Target option if desired allowing you to manually select any mob without restriction
• Auto-looting a corpse will no longer trigger group looting when no other members are nearby
• Group looting will now skip members that would cause criminal action for them to loot the corpse
• Improved some group system messages and window verbiage
• Adds "open group healthbar" context option for groupmates
• Fixed issue with group looting causing single stacks of items to pile up in the backpack

Forges in houses will be shrinking soon! If you have a forge in your house, it will be converted to the new style forge. We've also added two additional forge recipes for you to choose from. Note: If your forge was out of bounds you may need to release it and re-place it to bring the new model back into bounds.

This is a reminder to all that placement of objects outside the boundaries of your house foundation is not intended. Objects placed in this fashion are subject to removal, with a priority given to those that block access to land masses in any way.

Thank you for your understanding.

The stuck command menu has had another pass of improvements, adding an additional option, that can be used more frequently, and will try to move you out of stuck positions without teleporting far away, and also added an option to unstick nearby pets.

• 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

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.

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