First off, thank you to everyone who has participated in the Beta so far. This is just a general touching base of state of the game as well as updates on what else is planned.

Please continue to use these forums for suggestions and feedback, but especially the what we've outlined below as we want to make sure these core features are solid before we move into a more permanent game setting.

Now for those who are looking for things to focus on, or updates if you haven’t had time to play in a while, or maybe just lurking waiting for Main Launch, here’s some updates on current things going on:


Bugs

Thanks to everyone who's reported them and been patient through some of the crazier ones. We're relieved to have caught a lot of outlying situations that would've caused loss of progress for a player in a live setting and required significant work to restore.

We're continuing to monitor and squash them as we find them. We'll try to prioritize going through our backlog of posts to verify and clear out tickets, so if you reported a bug that's still not fixed, don't be afraid to ping us in the thread.

While the server has been relatively stable with minimal server crashes, but we're still nailing down client crashes: We think we've fixed the client's random black screen issues, but still chasing rogue freezes. If a freeze happens to you, try hitting ESCAPE to open/close the escape menu which should re-sync your client, and please keep reporting them as you get them to help us pinpoint what packet's misbehaving.

Also should your client crash, be sure to check in your installation folder under Ultima Online Icebound\ClassicUO\Logs to find any logs timestamped to the situation, and if there is one, please pass it along in the bug report.


Fatigue Loop

Fatigue has been adjusted a lot over the initial weeks to be less punishing for a long game session by incentivizing rest areas, etc. Based on anecdotal discussions, we think it’s in a much better spot, but we're continuing to monitor feedback on it. We have an overview of it on the Wiki Here and encourage you to look it over when considering feedbacking on this loop. 

If you find it's too hard or  too easy please let us know, but also please keep in mind that the beta playtest area is much smaller than the main map which these resources will be much further away from the settlement and much further spread out overall.

Combat

We're still feeling out what feels best on skills. We've standardized the stamina/focus cost, and we've added NPC damage bonuses tied to weapon quality as a first step toward gear progression. That said, we're still lacking some 100% abilities for weapons and would love your suggestions. The wiki is updated with current combat abilities, so if one is missing at GM tier, we need to land on something and are taking suggestions. 

Music Abilities: same as above, we're continuing to monitor feedback and tackle any bugs, along with flagging general balance feedback.

Utility/Support: not much beyond medicine has been explored, at least from what we've observed and discussed with players. Expect these to have limited or niche uses in Combat (but potentially major uses in PvP and counterplay), and we’re aware of the need to take a closer look at healing via medicine in PVE.

Sanity

While it's exact numbers are obscured to you, many players have noticed or experienced symptoms such as bursting into tears and similar effects. We need better data on whether this feels justified based on how you've been engaging with the game (murdering a lot), and whether it's properly inhibiting your combat enough to send you back to rest and recover.

!This is very important to think about, as it will matter even more later in the game’s development. Things that can result in the death of your character. We want to make sure the pace at which you accrue these conditions feels justified before we built out the system to introduce more complications!


Housing Rentals

Players have constructed some lodgings to provide player housing in form of tenement rentals. Well be trickling in decorative and functional housing addons as we go to better utilize these spaces. Expect some additions to Woodworking and Tailoring coming up for some furniture and linens to spruce up your rooms. These will likely be around the mid to high skills of those crafting trees, and some hidden behind combinations of skills (i.e. Metal Furniture)

Job System Improvements

Jobs are getting some TLC. Both as a gameplay loops for townies, and general offerings around the camp. A full writeup of what's coming can be found here of what to expect. 

Keep an eye on patch notes for this begin incorporated.

Discord Channel Updates

We're reorganizing channels and piping the forum into Discord to improve information flow and keep everyone better connected to the story. This also includes emergent roleplay tools like market bulletins and shift work notifications (think ‘doctor bells’ and similar), designed to connect players in game without as much out-of-character coordination.

Apologies in advance for the extra pings and notifications while we get things sorted, and be sure to take a look and mute/unmute according to your preferences as things get going.


STORY

Reminder that only mechanical progress (skills, items, etc) will be wiped from surviving characters after beta, but the narrative will not be wiped. There's real opportunity here to form relationships, alliances, and rivalries with the characters around you, ones that can carry forward into stories beyond Beta. We strongly encourage you to make use of this while you can. Your character's merits (or follies) may well become apart of the world lore. You can read up on all this in the Beta Information Post.

That said, the story's starting to take more shape as the player government starts to form and figures out the direction and vision for this camp. We've been scheduling in-game events to gather folks and discuss this and get things in motion, but now that people are in place to make decisions chosen by you, we’re hoping to sit back and support what you all do.

Will this be a temporary stop until they can find allies? A permanent spot to hunker down? Or will we all just waste away and freeze to death? And more importantly, will Biscotte finally be named Lord Mayor? You can hover over the boiler and see the coal supply in days, and when the coal runs out, so does the heat. 

And whatever direction you decide to go we’re good with. This is your warning if you've been passively waiting for others to determine your characters fate; if those active players don’t manage to solve the problem before Beta wraps up, every character currently in the world will be marked dead and won't carry over into Main.

But don’t panic yet, our end date is still not certain, we want to ensure we give everyone time to roleplay this out to a conclusion, giving us time to clean up remaining bugs, get more feedback, and test more systems and tools as they come up through roleplay. 

We'll be available to guide you on how best to coordinate and organize together in game towards solutions to these problems. But consider this your heads up: if you want your character to survive come launch of the real game, you'd best make sure someone's actually handling things.

You can catch up on the story so far HERE.


That's it for now! We'll keep the updates coming as things develop, and thanks again for a great Beta so far.