Greetings Citizens of Aria

The release of our most recent patch marks one of the largest in Shards Online to date since the release of Pre-Alpha 3 in December. If you are an alpha supporter and it’s been a while since you’ve logged in, there’s no better time than now! We will also be reactivating trial codes on Thursday for the rest of the week.

Our release delivers new content for adventurers, new abilities and skills, new tameable creatures, an improved new player experience and a wealth of quality of life improvements to our user interface. With the introduction of new resources and improved craftables, our new hireable player vendors allow Citizens of Aria to take part in a true player crafted item economy.

We also have exciting news to share with you regarding our new Immortal program and upcoming in-game events!

To celebrate our patch release and greenlight, we would like to invite former trial players back for another week in Shards Online. Trial accounts will reactivate Thursday, July 14th and players will have an excellent opportunity to explore our new content and participate in our Sunday event!

Explore the new depths of our raid dungeon The Catacombs, encountering new monsters, new mini-bosses and the final boss Death! New quests have been added along with many new weapons and items to be looted.

Citizens of Aria may now hire merchants, turning their homes into player run shops! Our in depth decoration and storage system allows for endless options in customising your shop front to suit your customers.

Crafting resources have also been expanded, allowing 12 new rare resources to be gathered and used to create advanced weapons and armour.

Master the necromantic arts with new spells including Void Blast, Soul Drain, Reanimate Skeleton, Summon Imp, and Grim Aura.

A combination of direct damage and summoned minions makes any master of this skill a force to be reckoned with. The higher your skill, the more minions you can control at one time (up to 3).

Become a master of a Young Dragon, the strongest tameable creature to be found in Aria.

• Improved New Player Experience
• Recruits of The Order – New Player Guild
• Redesign of the ability/skill interface
• Fully responsive UI functionality
• Improved character movement and collision

Check out this week’s Community Roundtable as Supreem joined members of the Shards Online Community in showcasing some of our recent changes:

Immortal player characters now inhabit the Shards of Aria. Immortals are GM and player characters who have achieved the Immortal status, dedicating their lives to the community and supporting new and current players. Immortals will be working closely with the Recruits of the Order new player system, our upcoming events and will be a source of information and guidance for players.
You will find Immortals regularly available in the Eldeir Village. Recruits of the Order may contact them via guild chat.

Coinciding with our latest release, we will be starting regular In-Game Events on the Shards of Aria server. We’re excited to start showcasing the dungeon mastering potential of Shards Online; roleplay nights, monster hunts, PvP events, dungeon crawls and more!

Our first event will be Sunday, July 17th at 3pm EST! We will be meeting at The Golden Lion and then heading into the Level 2 Catacombs!

Tuesday, July 19th 4pm EST – RP Night – The Golden Lion
Thursday, July 21st 7pm EST – PvP Competition – The Arena

You can see the full patch notes here: Patch Notes 0.3.4

That’s all for now, but it’s back to work on the next patch to bring more exciting features to Shards Online.

We hope to see you in Aria soon!