Your excitement has been encouraging! The team has been hard at work testing features, fixing bugs, creating new bugs, and editing the map. We’re on schedule to launch the shard sometime in the Spring of 2025.
Shard Test Schedule
Stress Test: Join us on December 1st at 3pm and again at 8pm (eastern time).
What to Expect at the Stress Test for Tides of Power
Our goal with this stress test is to push our server to its limits and ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible for future play. Extreme multi-clienting will be encouraged during the stress test. Even idling clients in-game for the test is a big help. For those who can be active, we’ll provide you with a wild hour that makes “server wars” look like kid’s play.
When players login, they will be in Delucia. Spread across Delucia are a collection of items, NPCs, and moongates. Players will be able to set their skills and stats to their desire after logging in.
Let me be clear: The stress test features are not an accurate representation of how Tides of Power will look or function.
We’ve gone out of our way to create an over-the-top, unnecessarily silly and equally fun playground to explore and to battle each other with some of the wildest magic items imaginable.
UPDATE: The stress test already happened!
Alpha and Beta Testing
Alpha Test: December 6th – early January.
Alpha testers will be helping us test the fundamentals of UO along with anything they want to play around with. Each Alpha tester will be “expected” to work through a list of tests as best they can. Alpha Testers will be receiving emails this week.
Nov 24 Update: Alpha Settlers have been upgraded in Discord. We had limited seats available for Alpha and have hit our cap.
Beta Test: Late February or early March 2025.
Beta testing comes with no strings attached. You can play the shard for a few weeks before our public launch without any special expectations.
Don’t forget to sign up for Beta if you haven’t already!
We’ll be wiping characters and items at the end of Beta, but you will retain your Beta accounts at public launch.
Late Fall Patch Notes Summary
Small Changes
- EVs now have a small chance of looking like a purple mongbat.
- Players can no longer use moongates while criminal.
- Players may now use checks in the bank to cover creating new checks. The banker will auto-adjust your existing gold and checks as needed.
- Players will be able to visit the prison, allowing them to “visit” those who have been jailed by Staff on Tides of Power.
Bug Fixes
- Animal Trainers should now have working paperdolls.
- Housing: Friends can no longer lock down or release items.
- NPC guildmasters will no longer take excessive gold and treat it as a tip.
- Random stealing will now alert you when the pack is empty.
- Players should no longer receive “double loot” in certain scenarios.
PVM
- Adjusted Dark Arts Academy monster difficulty.
- Spawn speed adjustments in all major dungeons.
- Decreased spawn in lower tier dungeons.
Crafting
- Blacksmithing BOD Change: Runic smithy hammers have been replaced with new home decoration items.
- Tailoring BOD Reward: We’ve added new cloth colors to the possible rewards for tailoring bulk order deeds.
- Tailoring BOD Reward: We’ve replaced runic tailoring kits with new house addons, including multiple carpet and rugs for player houses.
- Runebooks will use the new item ID.
During our first major expansion, BODs will be extended to alchemy, bowcraft/fletching, carpentry, cooking, inscription, and tinkering. You can expect additional house decoration and home add-ons to become available when the new bulk order deed systems go live.
Map Edits
- 3 new Faction Strongholds established. They are located in Britain, Skara Brae, and Yew Forest.
- POI & coastline refinements. You can view an updated map on the website now.
- Players can no longer escape the Orc Warehouse by running into dirt mounds.
- Structural changes to the Yew Crypt tunnels.
- Structural changes to the perimeter wall in New Magincia.
- Destard entrance has been moved.
- Fighting Pit added to the King’s Chamber in Covetous.
Alpha Testing QOL Features
- Alpha testers will receive a template selector for easy skill swapping during tests.
- Alpha testers will receive a portable trash barrel and a remote bank box.
- When an Alpha tester dies, an ankh will appear at their corpse, making it easy to resurrect yourself when testing.
Tides of Power Early Screenshots
This is just another glimpse into the unique world known as UO Tides of Power.
Tides of Power Discord Server
Our Discord will remain invite-only for those who have signed up for testing until Q1 2025.
If you know someone in our Discord and want to join us, ask them to DM Boomland Jenkins or Redjump for the invite. Otherwise, add your information to the form below and you’ll receive an invite later in the year.