Our Alpha testers have been meeting each week to refine system mechanics and gameplay experiences. In our most recent session, we got our butts handed to us in the dungeon of Destard. In the remaining weeks of Alpha, we plan to gather a few more times and cover:
- Points of Interest: Group farming to test difficulty and respawn rates at POIs across Britannia.
- Survival Mechanics: PvP, ganking, and mastering the art of running for your life.
- House Placing Contest: Place a house in the craziest, unimaginable spot. Let’s see who can break house placement!
Beta Testing on Tides of Power
Alpha testing will end on January 25th and we’ll have a brief “player recess” before Beta will officially begin. We hope to begin Beta by the end of February.
Beta testing will be much closer to the real game. The Alpha QOL items, commands, or NPCs will not be present during Beta testing. In order to better simulate what the Shard will be like “as people join after launch” we are splitting Beta testing into two parts. Closed Beta, and Open Beta.
Closed Beta
The first half of Beta testing will be Closed Beta testing will only be open to those who have joined Discord before the start of Closed Beta. This will give these players a head start to establish roots in the Beta game.
Open Beta
Halfway through Beta, we will open Discord to everyone and anyone will be able to sign up and Beta test Tides of Power before our official launch day.
At the end of Beta, we will wipe characters and items from your accounts. However, your account name & passwords will be retained. You will use those accounts on public launch.
Reserve Your Spot!
If you aren’t already in Discord, you can join the waiting list by signing up at the bottom of the page. We send out Discord invites every weekend to anyone on the waiting list.
Abridged Alpha Patch Notes from 2025
A big thanks to Mark the Human Bard for many of the items below!
Housing & Loot Updates
- House friends, co-owners, and owners will have the option to remove themselves from homes when clicking on themselves.
- Master keys for new houses will unlock interior doors.
- The following monsters will always drop a specific magical item:
- Spectral Armour: Sword
- Tentacle of Harrower: Axe or Polearm
- Orcish War Chief: Axe
- Barlguga: Halberd
- Unsheared sheep drop “a bloody pile of wool”.
- Virtue Artifacts should no longer spawn when killing monsters.
- Jewelry and clothing loot are 10x more likely to be magical.
- Loot balancing among low and mid-tier monsters.
Skill & Spell Updates
- Improved the universal skill gain formula, which should improve difficulty scaling at a healthy pace and prevent a “gain wall” for certain skills in the 90s.
- Polymorph now offers a mongbat option.
- Reduced the max damage on 6th and 7th level spells.
- A bug with Mind Blast max damage has been fixed.
- Follower slots and summon dispel difficulty updated.
- The Summon Daemon follower limit bug has been fixed.
- Blade Spirits and Energy Vortexes will attack players, including the summoner.
- Magic reflect items have the same cooldown as defensive spells.
- Protection spell informs the enchanted player when it wears off.
- Tracking range is increased by 10 tiles. The new formula is 10 + (Tracking Skill /5).
- A player with 42 skill (NPC trained) will be able to track 18 tiles.
- A player with 100 tracking skill will be able to track 30 tiles.
- Spirit Speak now extends your current timer, rather than creating new, individual timers.
- Discordance, Provocation, and Peacemaking have 10 second timers on successful actions, and a 5 second re-use timer when you fail.
- Provocation will be considered an aggressive act against both targets.
- Barding range has been increased, allowing you to “wander” a little more from your barded creatures.
- The skill title for Animal Lore is now Zoologist, instead of Ranger.
- The skill title for Stealing is now Pickpocket, instead of Rogue.
Small Updates and Bug Fixes
- More items and mobiles have been updated to use the old font and hue.
- Being attacked while hidden while cause you to auto attack your aggressor.
- Additional Virtue gump and mechanics removal.
- Crafting lockable containers should work properly in regards to all lock-related mechanics.
- The ‘release’ command will work on summoned creatures.
- Addon repair deeds will display correctly in the carpentry crafting menu.
- Tamed creatures and hirelings will display green to their master.
- Taming previously tamed creatures will auto succeed.
- TillerMen will say the decay status of the boat when clicked.
- White Wyrms can now learn mass curse.
- Font style and color updates, making more (“most or all”) items use the traditional, classic Ultima font style (see below).
