We took the holiday off from patching to allow players to enjoy the winter holiday event while we worked on the next big patch, and also enjoyed time off!
In 2026, we will adjust our patching frequency, from nearly every week, to just once or twice per month. The patches will be larger and we’ll have a test Tides server available for testing (some) patches before they go live.
The Story Continues!
When the shard launched, we had a short series of adventures through Snake’s Passage, players broken open the sealed tome of Khaldun, and were introduced to the Dark Arts Academy.
Starting near the end of January, leading into early February, the first major chapter of Tides of Power’s story will kick off. There are roughly 20 adventures spanning across most of 2026.
We have expansion feature patches, like Factions, Tensions at Sea, and the Lost Lands, built into the storytelling.
Patch 30 Notes
Hunter’s Mark Changes
- Hunter’s Mark will occur every other week, instead of weekly. This was our intention but we wanted to run through all of the dungeons once, before switching over.
- Hunter’s Mark Criers and Globes have updated language to better define when the current Mark ends, and when the next Mark will be made (if there is no mark currently).
- The Hunter’s Mark globe will be available later this year for players. It let’s you check the status from your house, boat, or bank box.
Hunter’s Mark Loot Table Changes
- We’ve shifted the Leather and Runebook dyes into the standard loot table in all dungeons.
- The special loot associated with Hunter’s Mark has been set to scale with a monster’s difficulty. The formula takes into consideration the monster’s skill total, stats, and AI (AI Mage vs AI Melee, etc).
New Dungeon Dyes
- Dungeon Hair and Facial Dyes. These rare dyes match the same hue(s) found on the special dungeon cloth.
- Dungeon Mask Dyes. These rare dyes match the same hue(s) found on the special dungeon cloth.
- Dungeon Backpack Dyes. These rare dyes match the same hue(s) found on the special dungeon cloth. These dyes can only be used on the backpack seen on your paperdoll.
Paragons
- Monsters have a small (2 to 6%) chance to spawn as Paragons (the rate is based on the monster’s difficulty). Paragons are bright yellow/gold in hue and have the (Paragon) next to its name. They are much harder than the standard version of the monster.
- Paragons can drop a special chest. The chest itself comes in a variety of hues and item IDs. The chest contains gold, high quality magic items, and a 50% chance of a map. The map is 1 level higher than the map the monster normally drops, meaning you can find Level 6 treasure maps in a paragon chest.
- Paragon have a chance to drop any Hunter’s Mark rares, even if the dungeon is not marked.
New NPCs
- Cultist Mages, Assassins, and Lumberjacks. These NPCs can be found lurking the Haunted Deadwood region of Yew. The assassins have a chance of dropping magic composite bows and the lumberjacks can drop the harvester axe.
- BOD Broker: The BOD Broker will let you trade in unwanted BODs and he’ll give you brokerage points. Once an hour, you can exchange 5 brokerage points for a new random BOD (from the skill of your choosing). Say Exchange to exchange a BOD or click on them and select Talk from the context menu. You can only redeem your points once per hour.
Additional New Items
- Special Hair Dye and Beard Dye: Alchemist NPCs sell “neon hair dye” from traditional Ultima Online.
- Greater Identification Wand: This item requires 90 itemID to use and helps the person identify all magic items in a container. These items will be introduced to the standard loot table and eventually craft-able with specialty rares.
- Appraisal Lens: This item requires 90 itemID to use and helps the person visually examine the contents of a chest. These have 25 charges each and can be purchased from the tinker for 50,000 gold. Use the item on a chest and the items in the chest become temporarily hued to the person who used the lens. This makes it easy to locate items with high quality modifiers, like Vanquishing. The colors range from Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue/Violet, with red being low modifiers and blue/violet being nearly perfect.
- Artisan Spyglass: This item requires 90 Arms Lore to use and helps the person visually examine the contents of a chest. These have 25 charges each and can be purchased from the tinker for 25,000 gold. Use the item on a chest and the items in the chest become temporarily hued to the person who used the lens. This makes it easy to locate items in need of a repair. The colors range from Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue/Violet, with red being almost broken and blue/violet being in perfect.
- Harvester Axe: This item is equipped and used like a hatchet. Instead of producing logs, it creates boards from each chop. This item is currently available on Ethereal Lumberjacks.
Updates to Existing Items
- Commodity Box Update: The commodity deed box (BOD reward) can be used while locked down, instead of requiring it to be secured. This will let you make larger commodities.
- Commodity Deed Update: We’ve expanded the commodity deed to allow additional items: banana, bananas, grapes, peach, pear, apple, watermelon, small watermelon, squash, cantaloupe, plum, slab of bacon, cheese wheel, cheese wedge, french bread, roast pig, ham, cheese pizza, sausage pizza, honeydew melon, yellow gourd, green gourd, ear of corn, turnip, sheaf of hay, raw ribs, raw lamb leg, raw chicken leg, raw bird, unbaked peach cobbler, unbaked fruit pie, unbaked meat pie, unbaked pumpkin pie, unbaked apple pie, uncooked cheese pizza, uncooked sausage pizza, unbaked quiche, eggs, easter eggs, cookie mix, cake mix, jar honey, sack flour, wheat sheaf.
- Sack Flour and Open Flour Sacks weighs 1 stone instead of 5.
- Tall House Add-ons (e.g. Ovens and Flour Mills) can be placed on any floor of your home now.
- Fixed a naming convention issues with wrapped nutcrackers.
- Krampus earrings can be worn by players now.
- Dark Arts runebook dyes are stackable when they spawn. Previous existing dyes have already been updated.
Crafter and BOD Updates
- Bowfletchers can now craft composite bows. These bows fire faster than existing bows, but do less damage. Damage range: 12-24. Speed: 27
- Cooks can now create sausages, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pulled pork sandwiches.
- Cooking BODs: Added a 2 Item LBOD for cooking (Hot Dogs & Hamburgers).
- Cooking BODs: Added Cocoa Butter and Cocoa Liquor to the 50 reward tier.
- Cooking BODs: The 550-Reward table items have been shifted down to 525 to make them achievable.
- Fixed a bug with Cooking BOD hues being incorrect.
- Fixed a bug where cooking did not include a maker’s mark.
- Fixed a bug with LBODs spawning proportions. Some LBODs were unnecessarily difficult to receive.
- Nutcrackers have been removed from the Cooking crafting table until next winter.
- Tailors can repair and offer repair deeds for leather items.
- Carpenters and fletchers can repair and offer repair deeds for wooden items.
- Changed the formula for itemIDs from mining. 95% of mining will result in big ore. Previously it was closer to 75%.
- The tinkering BOD reward, Pendant Necklace, is no longer considered an “armor” item and is no longer subject to taking damage. If you had an existing pendant (only a few people did), it has been replaced.
Updates to NPCs
- Orc Assassins have been nerfed slightly (reduced detect hidden, stealth, and hiding).
- Fixed a bug where savages and orcs attacking a pet would cause the Kinn mask or Savage paint of the pet owner to explode, even if the pet owner wasn’t the aggressor.
- Animal Trainers: Fixed a bug where purchased animals were not getting their bonded time set correctly.
- NPC Vendors have doubled their buying power (they have twice as much gold when they spawn or restock their gold piles).
- Vendors: Change the language NPCs use when buying your items to avoid confusion. The language about buying X items and providing Y gold to you wasn’t always accurate.