The following fixes & improvements have been deployed for the Halloween Dungeon:

• fixed issue with Gravedigging not working with the gravestones
• fixed issue with jack-o-lanterns not respawning
• slight increase to chances of candy drops
• added overhead Time Left countdown display to the Halloween Champ spawn encounter to show how much time is left before the spawn expires; we may work on adding this to other encounters if this works well

Exciting news! The Halloween Lottery Vendor has now set up shop near the Halloween Vendor in Britain. Mark your calendars for the drawing on October 31st, and stay tuned as we share details about the prizes soon! Raffle tokens can be found on paragons.

The Halloween Candy hoarder vendor has been spawned near each town for you to spend your candy!

Animate Horse:

• Can now be used on mutilated corpses
• Fixed Stat loss when summoning from artifact
• Fixed owner bug when summoning from traded artifact

Animate Dead:

• Will now raise an undead copy of any mob
• Health, Mana and Stamina are based on Spirit Speak, Armor is (Spirit Speak / 10)
• They last 60 seconds, 30 if you have a Skeletal Steed
• If you have Skeletal Steed in fight, they will attack the same target
• There is a limit of 5 at the time and will trigger a 60 second timer

Combat:

• Changed Passive Wrestling to use Spirit Speak + Anatomy instead of Spirit Speak

Torpefy:

• This spell currently has a bug and we're investigating

Necromancer Updates:

These changes to the Necromancer are to align its mechanics more closely with Magery, aiming to encourage its wider adoption and acceptance.

• Fixed Cursed Crook for Herding
• Changed Haunt: Increased damage in PvE
• Changed Transfusion and Greater Transfusion:
  • Now they will heal percentage of missing health instead of total health
  • The lower the missing health the higher will be the heal
  • Heals are capped to (Transfusion/Great Transfusion): 50/100 in PvP/PvE, 75/150 for Pets
• Changed Noxious Decay:
  • 80% Chance of Greater Poison if Spirit Speak >= 80
  • 20% chance of Deadly Poison if TasteID and Poisoning = 100
  • Adjusted to scale Poison on Spirit Speak and Cure to use Forensic Eval only
• Changed Torpefy:
  • Removed single target and added AOE
  • Removed disarm
  • Will slow everyone within 10 steps radius
  • Does not affect the caster (Will affect pets)
• Defensive Spells:
  • Changed Death Ward to require only Forensic to 100 and not Spirit Speak
  • Changed Spiritual Touch to scale only with Forensic and not Spirit Speak
  • Changed Vampiric Touch to scale only with Forensic and not Spirit Speak
  • Changed Bone Armor to scale only with Forensic and not Spirit Speak
  • Changed Cocoon to scale only with Forensic and not Spirit Speak
  • Changed Contagion to scale only with Forensic and not Spirit Speak

If you come across any issues, kindly report them in game (/bug), or feel free to suggest in game improvements (/feedback) before jumping to conclusions.

Thank you and stay Undead! :)

• Undead pets skill cap has been fixed, they can now reach 900.
• New page about Undead Creatures has been published in wiki.

Greetings, Adventurers,

We're excited to announce a recent update that brings enhancements to your gear chests:

(1) Runic Shields' Magical Attributes: Your gear chest now preserves the magical attributes of Runic Shields! No more worry about losing those precious enchantments.

(2) Exceptional Quality and Maker's Marks: We've also made sure that GM exceptional quality and Maker's Marks are now safeguarded within your gear chests.

As always, your feedback is important to us. If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, don't hesitate to share them through in-game /suggestion or bug reports.

Happy adventuring!

Annual Pigment & Enamels (Donation Dyetubs)

We're excited to share our annual dyes lineup:

• Garnet Dyetubs: Available every year from December 25th to January 9th, aligning with Christmas and New Year celebrations.
• Azurite Dyetubs: Available from February 11th to February 26th.
• Ivory Dyetubs: Available from March 25th to April 9th, typically covering the Easter holiday.
• Red Obsidian Dyetubs: Available from June 1st to June 15th, marking the start of summer.
• Tourmaline Dyetubs: Available from August 11th to August 26th.
• Serpentine Dyetubs: Available from October 20th to November 5th, embracing the Halloween season.

We apologize for the delay in releasing the remaining hues this year. Our intention was to roll them out in a timely manner, but unforeseen real-life commitments took precedence. We're committed to ensuring that the original plans are honored, and as such, the next available enamel/pigment tubs will be the Serpentine Dyetubs from October 20th to November 5th.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

From now you will not be able to equip a ranged weapon if you have any spell loaded.

We've added safeguards to prevent innocent players from evading a PK and then committing suicide in order to give the offender Murder Counts even if they did not actually kill the victim. Please note: you immediately qualify to receive murder counts if you do ANY damage to an innocent player, however should they escape and intentionally die, the likelihood of the murderer being able to receive Murder Counts for that death are much lower or negated completely. If you are an innocent player and you intentionally evade a PK but then are still able to and proceed with giving them a murder count, this is now considered inappropriate and abuse of mechanics. Please don't abuse the game mechanics, it may result in punishment!

Starting from September 24th, dragon skull and zombie masks will no longer be available for purchase from vendors.

We've improved Player Buy Orders compatibility with commodity deeds, now you can simply set the target resource (example ore, boards) as your Buying item, and players can sell you the raw resources themselves or a filled commodity deed of the resources. If you have already setup any Buy Orders, please re-establish them by removing them from the sale and then re-adding it to the sale and double clicking it to target the resource you wish to buy.

We've fixed an issue causing the testing time-limits to still apply to sent mail by error, causing some attachments to be destroyed prematurely.

Don't worry, we have a record of these transactions and soon we will recover the items and have them sent back to the original owner for recovery.

Meanwhile, the root cause of this has been resolved and you can send mail safely again.

Many crates within Dungeon Deceit that were previously inaccessible due to being locked down or out of sight have now been fixed.

Mages with 80+ skill will now cast a brighter Night Sight orb over beings! 🪄

Player Mail:

• introducing the new Player Mail system
• mailboxes placed in houses or rentals can be registered with a name & the mailbox will be assigned a unique 5 digit Address, which is attached to your account
• registered mailboxes are limited to 1 per account
• there's no limit to the number of registered mailboxes a house or rental property may have
• mailboxes may be moved with a house, but demolishing a house requires mailboxes to be first be released
• sending mail can be done by double clicking on your registered mailbox & searching for your recipient; from there you can compose a message with a Subject, Body & optional Attachments, and then a physical letter will be scribed & mailed to your recipient's mailbox
• sending mail costs 100gp plus 300gp per attached item, up to 3 items per mail
• sending mail with attached items allows you to use a Cash On Delivery option, requiring the recipient to pay for the items in order to retrieve them
• un-claimed attachments will be automatically returned to sender after 7 days if they are not claimed; and any items that have been returned-to-sender will automatically decay after 21 days if the sender does not retrieve them
• the registry has the the following Privacy settings:
  • Public: Visible address on mailbox & public registry. Others can send mail
  • Unlisted: Address hidden on mailbox & public registry. Others can send mail if they know your address, senders have to type in your exact address in order to mail you. You can view your unique address from the Mailbox Menu
  • Private: Address hidden on mailbox & public registry. Others CANNOT send you mail, but you can still send mail
• players are able to block senders at any time from the Registry list or when reading a letter sent from someone, this ensures that the sender cannot send you any mail at all; Note: blocks do not persist when un-registering your address

Player Vendor Buy Orders:

• introducing Vendor Buy Orders for player vendors
• these can be purchased from Banker vendors
• How to use: Place this on your vendor and mark it as Not For Sale to begin using it. From there, you can target an item that you wish to buy from other players, and then players can sell you items by double clicking the Buy Order, up to a limit of your choosing. Funds will be used from your vendor's balance

Jousting Skill, Betting & Leaderboard:

• Added Jousting as a Secondary Skill which will have a chance to gain with each round & players' skill will influence the outcome of the round
• You can now enter a Bet Amount when choosing a Jousting partner (the initiator will choose)
• Bets will be settled automatically at the end of the round where losers pay the winner if they still have the gold available; rounds will be unable to start unless both parties have the gold to bet with
• added 10% House Cut (fee) for using Betting
• improved betting to charge players before the round starts to guarantee that the winnings are paid for; if for any reason the game is interrupted the wagers will be refunded to both players automatically
• fixed issue with some jousting actions being performed twice causing multiple messages to appear and other unexpected behavior
• fixed issue with time limit expiry not ending the game and ejecting players as intended
• added progress bar to display the time limit
• prevented equipping items to slots that are occupied by a temporary object (jousting spear & helmet) [we may expand on 'Jousting Gear' later]
• prevented casting spells whilst jousting
• prevented using Stuck option whilst jousting
• Jousting Leaderboard added to keep count of wins & losses and total bets won/lost
• Note: There are 2 jousting arenas and the leaderboard placed at Vesper Crossroads

The following upcoming changes are available for testing on our Test Center server:

Jousting Skill, Betting & Leaderboard:

• Added Jousting as a Secondary Skill which will have a chance to gain with each round & players' skill will influence the outcome of the round
• You can now enter a Bet Amount when choosing a Jousting partner (the initiator will choose)
• Bets will be settled automatically at the end of the round where losers pay the winner if they still have the gold available; rounds will be unable to start unless both parties have the gold to bet with
• Leaderboard added to keep count of wins & losses and total bets won/lost
• Note: There are 2 jousting arenas and the leaderboard placed at Vesper Crossroads, shown on the universal moongate as (Housing: Minoc/Jousting)

The following upcoming changes are available for testing on our Test Center server:

Player Mail:

• introducing the new Player Mail system
• mailboxes placed in houses or rentals can be registered with a name & the mailbox will be assigned a unique 5 digit Address, which is attached to your account
• registered mailboxes are limited to 1 per account
• there's no limit to the number of registered mailboxes a house or rental property may have
• mailboxes may be moved with a house, but demolishing a house requires mailboxes to be first be released
• sending mail can be done by double clicking on your registered mailbox & searching for your recipient; from there you can compose a message with a Subject, Body & optional Attachments, and then a physical letter will be scribed & mailed to your recipient's mailbox
• sending mail costs 100gp plus 300gp per attached item, up to 3 items per mail
• sending mail with attached items allows you to use a Cash On Delivery option, requiring the recipient to pay for the items in order to retrieve them
• un-claimed attachments will be automatically returned to sender after 7 days if they are not claimed; and any items that have been returned-to-sender will automatically decay after 21 days if the sender does not retrieve them
• the registry has the following Privacy settings:
  • Public: Visible address on mailbox & public registry. Others can send mail
  • Unlisted: Address hidden on mailbox & public registry. Others can send mail if they know your address, senders have to type in your exact address in order to mail you. You can view your unique address from the Mailbox Menu
  • Private: Address hidden on mailbox & public registry. Others CANNOT send you mail, but you can still send mail
• players are able to block senders at any time from the Registry list or when reading a letter sent from someone, this ensures that the sender cannot send you any mail at all; Note: blocks do not persist when un-registering your address

Player Vendor Buy Orders:

• introducing Vendor Buy Orders for player vendors
• these can be purchased from Banker vendors
• How to use: Place this on your vendor and mark it as Not For Sale to begin using it. From there, you can target an item that you wish to buy from other players, and then players can sell you items by double clicking the Buy Order, up to a limit of your choosing. Funds will be used from your vendor's balance

2. What/how to test:

Mail:

Place a house & a Mailbox (can get placement tool & mailbox deed from Test Center - Housing vendor) 1) send mail to a mailbox in another region 2) send mail to a mailbox in the same region 3) try sending mail without attachment 4) try sending mail with attachment(s) without Cash on Delivery 5) try sending mail with attachment(s) & Cash On Delivery 6) make sure you can claim items for mail without a Cash on Delivery 7) make sure you can claim items for mail WITH Cash on Delivery and paying for it 8) try returning mail to sender (mail sent to you needs to have attachments) 9) try registering multiple mailboxes on one account 10) change your registration to Unlisted and try to send mail to that box from another account by typing in the Address of your Unlisted mailbox 11) change your registration to Private and try to send mail to that box, it should be impossible 12) try Blocking a sender and then try to send/receive mail from them (try from both sides)

Buy Orders:

1) place a vendor & place a Vendor Buy order on them (can get vendor & buy order from Banker vendor) 2) set the Buy Order to Not For Sale and then double click it to set it up 3) target an item, like a resource or object you can easily test with, and finish setting up the Buy Order by choosing a price per item you wish to pay 4) deposit some gold to your vendor to make sure they have funds to buy items 5) try changing the Limit on the buy order to make sure that works well

From another account: 1) go to the vendor and double click the Buy Order 2) target the matching object in your backpack to try to sell it to the vendor 3) if the vendor has enough gold then you will receive gold and your items will be moved to the vendor

After your vendor has bought some items, go back to the owner account: 1) go back to your vendor 2) right click the Buy Order to choose "Claim Items" to gather the items that the vendor has bought

The state of the Test Center:

• Test Center is online and available with the following regions: Minoc, Britain, Shame
• a universal moongate has been added to the towns & dungeon for quick travel
• there are no existing houses placed & you should be able to place one
• added a few Rental Properties around Britain & Minoc for testing
• please discuss in Discord #test-center-chat and report bugs in-game as usual or in Discord

• Shards of Britannia Homestead Haven Lottery Has Begun!
• The Fishing Lottery boxes have had new items added.
• Limited Time Alert: Rare Hue Masks now at the Shame Dungeon Token Vendors!
• The Noble Coin Vendor is back with a range of fresh items.

We've reset the mining caves due to an issue where they did not clear their "currently in-use" state after players exited. We will continue to monitor for further issues

~~ The Yew Crypts & Britain Sewers regions are currently undergoing maintenance and their entrances have been temporarily disabled. Expected downtime is less than 2 hours ~~

The Yew Crypts & Britain Sewers regions are now open again

Some or all undead pets may have skills that exceed the normal skill-cap of 700.0 due to those pets gaining Spirit Speak and Forensic Eval which will prevent players from training their pets beyond a certain limit once they reach the cap. To work around this issue, we've updated the Skill Cap for Undead pets to 900 to account for the additional 2 skills being trained on them. Note: This may be subject to change in the future.

We've deployed a few more hotfixes to try to improve some things.

Guards:

• fixed edge cases with Guards attacking innocent players/pets erroneously
• fixed Guards continuing to follow targets after they have died
• when players & pets resurrect going forward, the resurrector will have their current-target cleared to avoid accidentally attacking the being they are resurrecting & ultimately getting guard-whacked

Mining Caves:

• fixed issue with Mining Caves ejecting players too early
• fixed issue with pets/objects not being transported out of the cave when you leave
• added forges & lighting to the caves with a Mining Cave Tip sign; the sign explains that if you become over-encumbered in the cave, simply put excess resources on the ground and when you leave, the items will be transported to the entrance with you

PK Balance Pass

• Guards will now attack murderers on-sight, regardless of if they have recently committed a crime or not, with a chase & kill behavior rather than instant-kill, allowing a chance for the murderer to escape (instant killing from Guards still only applies to crimes recently committed) https://youtu.be/cMIGzj08GNg
• Townsfolk NPCs in Guarded areas will now react to murderers, regardless of if they have recently committed a crime or not, and cry for help (Guards will only actually react to crimes recently committed in this case though)
• the Repent option will be disabled after August 15th
• increased murder count time from 24hr to 72hr
• increased time limit for players to report a murder from 24hr to 72hr
• increased current-dungeon lockout for murderers post-death from 15m to 2hr (matches all-dungeon lockout time)
• increased current-region Hostile Actions prevention for murderers post-death from 15m to 2hr (matches region-lockout time)
• murder counts will now be tracked across your accounts, and for each 10 kills you have across all accounts linked to you, your post-death murder restrictions will have an additional 1hr added
• consolidated short & long murder counts & all existing long counts will be converted to a single 'murder counts' value
• cost to resurrect for murderers is determined by: all counts are worth 100gp per, plus any counts over 5 are worth 450gp per
• removed Upon resurrection, if a player's short term murder counts are more than 5 they will be reduced to 5. causing the cost to resurrect for murderers to no longer decrease immediately after resurrecting, the price will remain the same based on the level of murder counts
• added preventions for entering Britain Trading Post (West Britain Bank roof-top) for all murderers or criminals
• player corpses will no longer turn to skeleton when the player resurrects within the same region, providing for the full corpse-to-bones duration to occur before the corpse head can no longer be cut off
• aggressive beings will now give priority to murderer & criminal players; this will be mostly noticeable for beings that are not already in-combat

Murderer Bounties & Leaderboard

• added a PVP Leaderboard that shows Bounties, Vigilante Kills & Murders https://youtu.be/AXE6fml8O6I
• innocent players that attack a murderer before they die, that are from a different IP/Machine, will qualify to turn in the head of a murderer; the corpse & head will list the names of all players that qualify to turn it in, if any
• added Bounty Hunter vendor to turn murderer heads into for gold award, currently 100% of resurrection fee (subject to change)

Tracking - Hunting Mode

• added 'Hostile Players' & 'Innocent Players' target types to Tracking
• added new Hunting Mode option to Tracking https://youtu.be/vfyYSwZXpO4
• to use, open the Tracking menu, tick 'Activate Hunting Mode' and then fill in the radio button next to a Target Type (example: Hostile Players); you will begin automatically trying to acquire a target periodically and will begin tracking the first & closest target that is found
• Hunting Mode can be deactivated in the Tracking menu
• Hunting Mode requires at least 30.0 Tracking skill points to use

Mining

• Miners with at least 1 skill point higher than the required skill level to harvest metals above Iron will have a slightly higher chance to harvest them when finding veins

Dungeon Mining

• will provide 15% higher chance to find metal veins above Iron & 15% higher chance to successfully harvest metals above Iron
• will provide a chance at finding Rich Veins, normally can only be found by using a Prospector's Tool, these veins yield at least double the resources of a normal vein
• will have a chance to spawn Ore Elementals while mining

Mining Caves

• mining outside of a dungeon will provide a chance at uncovering Mining Cave entrances
• only the player that uncovers the cave can enter it (including pets)
• there is a 5 minute time limit to enter the cave, but after you enter you have 20 minutes to clear it out
• you can leave a cave at any time by right clicking oneself and choosing "Leave Mining Cave" but each cave will either have a Ladder to climb out from or a Cave-style exit to walk through
• should you die, or leave early for any reason, any objects, corpses, and pets will all be teleported to the cave entrance where you started to be recovered
• caves provide the same Dungeon Mining bonuses as detailed above & can also spawn Ore Elementals

Todo

• will add a 'Vigilante' NPC to go after Reds/Criminals, similar to the Assassin

Preview Video: https://youtu.be/zt6NxpfQIsA

Jousting (work in progress):

• Jousting arenas have been added South of the Vesper Graveyard at what we're calling Vesper Crossroads
• in the near future we will add a leaderboard and betting mechanics
• the outcome of the game is purely random at this time, we may add onto the system such as factoring the character's equipment or mount
• to use:
  • double click the 'Jousting' sign at one of the three arenas
  • no equipment is needed, except for a mount (any kind of mount will do)
  • target your opponent to request a jousting session
  • after both parties agree they will be teleported into the designated arena and after a few seconds they will be able to move, at this time both parties should run towards each other
  • once both parties reach one other the characters will automatically swing and attempt to hit their opponent, sometimes knocking them off their mount

Note: If you encounter any issues please report them using the in-game /bug command; if you get stuck for any reason please use the /stuck command or quick-travel. We will keep working on it as time permits! :)

Holiday Decorations:

• It's Christmas in July! You can now place your Holiday-only decorations at ANY TIME! No more waiting until November/December to decorate festively. Merry Xmas!

Monsters/aggressive beings:

• monsters & aggressive beings will now give priority to murderers/criminals in terms of aggro; this will be mostly noticeable for creatures not currently being attacked

Bestiary update:

• added Bestiary tracking for kills completed via Provocation

Cleaning Up Britannia:

• to start, we are adding a 'Holiday' Cleaning Up Britannia event, and we may add a 'General' cleanup event in the future for non-holiday items
• can trash or throw-out prior-years holiday items in the 'Holiday' Cleaning up Britannia trash bin in exchange for Points to be spent at the Cleaning Up Britannia vendor
• only items 6 months or older will be accepted
• items that were transferred from Celador to Britannia are worth 4 points each & any Holiday items (6 months or older) are worth 2 points each & some items may have a higher value
• any qualifying stackable items, like prior years' holiday currency, are worth a fraction of a point per item
• future holidays will give players options to convert a part of their CUB points to the current year's holiday currency or they can be spent immediately for items on the CUB vendor, see below
• currently planned for sale on the vendor:
  • portable CUB trash bag for 1 point
  • 25k gold check for 25 points
  • Name Change Deed for 50 points
  • Pet Bonding Deed for 100 points
  • Clothing Bless Deeds (slotted) for 200 points
  • Ethereal Horse Statue (500 charges) for 250 points
  • Universal CBD for 450 points

Note: the vendor(s) will NOT be available immediately, we will instead do a soft-launch where you can turn items in and then in the near future [2-4 weeks] we will add the vendor, allowing some time to collect feedback & time for the team to review/revise/add missing inclusions, etc.

Notice: These details are subject to change

We've added a simple Bestiary option to characters when right-clicking a player character, that will open a menu listing all of the monsters the character has been recorded killing. For now it's just for fun, but we may add on to this in the future.

UPDATES:

• consolidated Bestiary entries by monster/being name to eliminate duplicate entries (for example multiple entries of "ogre lord")
• added Bestiary tracking for pet kills, now when you kill a monster/being with your pets the kills will be tracked in your Bestiary (not retroactive)

Updated to Character Reflections regarding Undead status:

• added Undead status to character reflections
  • Undead status will now appear in each reflection's description
  • when you save a new reflection it will save your current Undead state with the reflection
  • pre-existing reflections prior to this patch will be Undead = Nay
• added ability for characters that are currently Undead to add the Undead flag to already-saved reflections (cannot be undone)
  • look for the skull icon button on the left of the reflections list

The Item Insurance patch has been deployed to the live server and the details are outlined here: https://wiki.shardsofbritannia.com/en/item-insurance

State of the Test Center:

• currently ONLINE & available for everyone to connect to it at test.uo4.life:5002
• only Minoc & Shame regions are online
• /editequip command enabled for quickly modifying equipment items
• added testing vendors to Minoc Bank
• added crafting benches to Minoc Bank

NOTICE: These changes are currently only available on the Test Center for testing purposes & are subject to change at any time

Dungeon Mining:

• can now mine inside of dungeons for a 10% (now 25%) higher chance to receive metals above Iron
• 🆕mining in Dungeons provides a 10% bonus to the chance of finding a Rich Vein which yields more metal than usual

Item Insurance:

• right click a qualifying item in your backpack to Insure it (no stackables, no containers, no blessed/cursed)
• cost based on item factors starting at as low as 150gp and as high as 30k+ for some items, depending on the item's properties
• gold is consumed immediately, one-time
• upon death the item stays with you
• if you die to a player, they get 50% of the insurance fee in gold coins added to their backpack
• optional Auto-Renew (this can be toggled in character settings): upon resurrecting you are charged for all of the insured items in your backpack again, unless you cannot afford it all, then any remaining items become uninsured
• 🆕players are limited initially to 3 insured items per characters with the option to upgrade to a max of 8 slots currently (subject to change)
• 🆕upgrading the insured items limit for your characer will cost 20k to start, doubling with each upgrade
• 🆕players are prevented from moving insured items outside of their backpack/paperdoll

Cleaning Up Britannia - Holiday Items:

• can trash or throw-out prior-years holiday items in the Cleaning up Britannia trash bin in exchange for Points to be spent at the Cleaning Up Britannia vendor
• only items 6 months or older will be accepted
• items that were transferred from Celador to Britannia are worth 4 points each & any Holiday items (6 months or older) are worth 2 points each & some items may have a higher value
• any qualifying stackable items, like prior years' holiday currency, are worth a fraction of a point per item
• future holidays will give players options to convert a part of their CUB points to the current year's holiday currency or they can be spent immediately for items on the CUB vendor, see below
• currently for sale on the vendor:
  • portable CUB trash bag for 1 point
  • 25k gold check for 25 points
  • Name Change Deed for 50 points
  • Pet Bonding Deed for 100 points
  • Clothing Bless Deeds (slotted) for 200 points
  • Ethereal Horse Statue (500 charges) for 250 points
  • Universal CBD for 450 points
• 🆕we will also be adding a generic Cleaning Up Britannia trash system to offer points in exchange for other non-Holiday related items like common treasures

NOTICE: These changes are currently only available on the Test Center for testing purposes & are subject to change at any time

Please keep an eye on #test-patch-notes for the most up-to-date info