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

• Fixed issue with being unable to accept friend requests from the notification panel, optimized adding/removing friends in general
• Dragging resources/stackable items to the hotbar will now default to a "Command" button, bypassing the old "Resource" style button, preventing hotbar icons from saying "No Items Available" when there actually is items in your backpack
• Lumberjacking has been optimized to get a few more chops out of each tree
• Fixed issue with crafting favorites going to the wrong recipe or none at all
• Fixed issue with pets not casting
• Removed the macro interrupted speech when a target is not acquired
• Fixed issue with being able to over-stuff packhorses
• Tracking will now be interrupted by damage received and death
• Fixed issue with Guild security options being available when no guild is assigned to house
• Fixed issue with stacks of objects not responding to player split requests in some cases
• Fixed issue with stacks of gold being created over the stack limit size of 60k in some cases, like on monsters
• Potion kegs have been reworked, fixing the issue with potions being eaten & improving their general performance and behavior, like with auto-filling kegs when crafting potions & you may notice the right-click options look/behave slightly different than before
• Fixed issue with released pets names staying blue erroneously, they should go back to their wild name color (gray usually); they will also be aggressive once again

• 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.

We'll be doing a quick restart in about 30 minutes for maintenance. No downtime is expected.

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

• Dyes, used for changing the color of a dyetub, are now single-use and stackable
• Added looting rights as described at https://wiki.legendsofultima.online/e/en/notoriety
• Unused secondary skills removed from the secondary skill window, currently all of the secondary skills are under review and disabled
• Fixed issue with being able to sell more than vendors can afford when the bill of sale exceeds their budget
• Added vendor message letting users know how much gold the vendor has to spend when trying to over-sell; AIn the future we will work to make it more like UO where the vendor will buy what they can and leave you with what didn't sell, rather than block the transaction, making it easier to use for players
• Added missing resource counter UI update to vendor transactions
• Fixed issue with "Quick Loot" context menu option not working on items inside corpses
• Added 500ms cooldown between item-pickup actions to prevent spamming movement of items
• Added eating sound when eating food
• Updated Treasure Map window with new in-game map
• Removed "Stack All" options from containers, as these need to be redesigned
• KNOWN ISSUE: Barber NPC's buy window is not working, hopefully this isn't happening to other vendor types also

Public Service Announcement

• Please try not to abandon your pets, you will lose them if you do. They stay in the world if you log out if you don't stable them. Over time your pet will start to wander, looking for you, eventually releasing you from their control. <potential herding opportunity here?>

Changes from last 24 hours:

• Issue with not being able to steal from a stacked object resolved (requires another server reboot, sorry)
• Improvements to Trading, let us know if the trade acceptance issue proceeds or not
• Removed the ability to gain skills from scroll spell-casts
• Removed use-case options from runes
• UI/Window performance improvements, including reducing the amount of UI/window refreshes, you may notice a slight delay between window updates because of this, and even possibly a performance improvement
• Warg pets removed, we did not intend to spawn those in at this time and they are forcibly removed
• Removed Vendor Buy/Sell confirmation window popup

Changes from earlier:

• Moved Torch over to torch equipment slot instead of right-hand, does not affect old torches
• Treasure hunting temporarily disabled; working on setting up the locations still
• Pet AI issues resolved, was causing pets to not attack and maybe other things too
• Stablemaster minimum-range to check for pets reduced to improve pet summoning
• Added pet position validation when using 'follow' commands to assist with getting pets un-stuck while we work to improve the root cause
• Horses set to 0 taming difficulty, does not affect old horses
• Added some missing interruptions to Mining/Lumberjacking/Fishing to prevent performing other tasks while harvesting
• Resolved issue with bladed weapon target actions not checking for distance
• Fixed issue with trying to use food in places where it was inaccessible saying "you feel more refreshed" while also saying "you can't access that"
• Fixed issue with sometimes getting a backpack from corpses
• Fixed issue with trying to open corpses failing and not showing a container window
• Added notification and system message when being murdered to guide players to Reputation window to report the murders if desired

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!

• Fixed an issue preventing players from trading houses saying there are vendors working out of it when there is not
• Added option to house menu for the plot owner to be able to collect commissions from vendors that have been rented to other players
• Switching house privacy state from Public to Private is now possible even if the house has 1 vendor working out of it

It's time! Housing will be launched at 10am US Eastern Time/2pm UTC on Saturday 24th July. Some notes for you all:

• To build a house, you'll need to visit an architect and purchase a house placement tool. These will be available at the mentioned time and not before
• Both gold and legacy tokens can be used to contribute towards the cost of a house
• Pricing for houses can be seen once you purchase a house placement tool
• We will work towards having previews of each house available on the wiki in the next few days
• Valid areas for house placement are generally flat, green grass. Use your minimap to check these more accurately
• Please note that housing will NOT be available in Britain and Minoc/Cove to begin with. This is to ensure we can maintain an acceptable level of performance in the short term. We will give advance warning prior to these regions opening up for housing
• Within the next 48 hours, we will also launch an additional region north of Minoc. This will add a significant amount of extra housing space
• In total, you will have three regions to choose from in which to initially place a house - Yew, Wind and "North Minoc". Below is a link to an artist's impression of these regions to assist you:

https://wiki.legendsofultima.online/images/housing-launch.png

Additional features:

• Guilds will be available, via purchase and placement of a guildstone at a house
• Housing vendors will also be available

Thanks for bearing with us while we worked against everything that's got in our way since launch. We would have liked to have housing kicked off sooner, however unfortunately it wasn't meant to be.

Happy house hunting!

As you may be aware, earlier this week we identified several users involved in abusing some economic vulnerabilities that were discovered. At that time we had to roll back the server to recover from the impact and to protect our newly established economy.

After that incident occurred the players involved began to launch an attack on the LOU infrastructure (DDoS) causing our servers to become inaccessible. The players involved have since been banned and ejected from the community, but the attacks continue to occur occasionally.

At this time we are doing everything we can to prevent outages, but there may be times when the server will have to be brought down unexpectedly in order to recover.

We will be monitoring things closely to try and prevent downtime and loss of progress, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and support through our growing pains.

As stated in our previous announcement https://legendsofultima.online/news/the-conclusion-of-celador Celador will be shutting down within the next 24 hours, and access to any remaining characters, items, and houses left in Celador will be lost.

We are aware some people have had issues going through the transition portal in Inbetween, so if you have any characters already in the Inbetween region, you will not lose access to them. We will work with those remaining on a case-by-case basis to get all stuck characters' transitions completed.

There is no specific time for the shutdown to occur yet, as it is subject to staff availability, but we will post again once we know more. Thanks!

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

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.

The production server is back online with the latest version. Please make sure to have the latest client installed. At this time it is advised to use the "Download Now" button on the LOA Dashboard https://legendsofaria.com/dashboard to download and install the game with, as the standalone download has not been updated yet. See you in game!

Note: A common issue with the patcher seems to be that it fails twice but after the 3rd try it completes the updates. If you see "Patch Failed" just try re-loading the launcher and it should fail one more time, and then by the 3rd run be ready to play.

Tip: Untick "Verify Integrity" in the patcher after you've successfully launched the game and confirmed you can play. This will skip the lengthy scan that occurs every time you open the launcher. Turn it back on if you have crashes or errors playing the game.

• 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.

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.

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

• Fixed issue with house security not working for Owners in some cases (you may need to release/re-secure containers if they are affected)
• Fixed issue with the Buccs Den/Minoc archway teleporters getting pets stuck
• Increased paralyze immunity duration
• Earth elemental spawn chance added to Mining
• Fixed issue with being able to use the Moongate in Limbo while dead, it's intended for you to resurrect using the Shrines first before leaving
• Fixed an issue with pre-written books not being useable
• Added tooltip to Guildstone to explain how to move it
• Fixed issue with being able to use crafting tools from the bank

The Paralyze spell now interrupts the victim's spell cast on success The use of an invisibility potion now breaks spell casts Skeleton Keys now properly open chests of any level regardless of lockpicking skill Carpentry kegs have been fixed and no longer produce deeds

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

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 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.