The May update newsletter for Shards Online has been released, and it brings news about a new (and dark) area in Celador (the main world in the game), the newly-implemented cooking skill, and other improvements the game has seen.

From the Project Lead

Hey everyone! I can’t believe another month has gone by already. And what a busy month we had. It was so exciting to see our Pre-Alpha Playtesters unleashed into Celador for the first time!

On the development side we have been tackling several fronts at the same time. The progress has been amazing.

The world builders have already moved on to Catacombs which is our first official “dungeon” shard. This is the map you guys voted on during Kickstarter and it’s looking awesome already. We will be showing off some of the Catacombs during our next Community Roundtable.

Our content and systems team is still focused on bringing you more stuff to do on Celador. The focus for the past week has been on the Eldier Cemetery. We have been adding some encounters and other things to bring the graveyard to life. There is a lunatic grounds keeper, ghosts you can talk to (if you can find a way to see them) and a giant demonic servant of Kho, the God of the Void.

On the player run server front, we are edging ever closer to getting the server into our Pre-Alpha Admins’ hands. After talking with quite of few, we decided it was best to provide the standalone shard server directly to them rather than trying to host it for them in our cloud. There is a variety of reasons for this but mostly it makes it much easier for the admins to play with the settings and mod files.

Website Revamp

While development on the game has been rolling along, we have also been quietly revamping  our website.  I probably don’t have to tell you, but you can check out the shiny new site in all its glory at shardsonline.com.  Super special thanks goes out toTara Bittler for all her hard work and the awesome redesign of the new site!

Playtest: The Graveyard Hunt

Our next playtest is scheduled for Saturday, June 6th at 2:00pm EDT and we have a special event planned for our Pre-Alpha Playtesters. A Hunt through the Eldier Cemetery.

This will be our playtesters’ first time exploring this region of Celador and braving its dangers. A horrible demonic entity that has taken up residence in the old Eldier Cemetery and has begun sending waves of undead towards the town.

The Cooking Skill

By cooking their food, players are able to obtain long term buffs through creation of their own recipes. Currently Cooking offers Regenerative bonuses to Health, Mana, and Stamina, but other effects are in the works.

Cooking requires you to have a fire, a cooking pot and ingredients. Adding additional ingredients can provide a buff, or an augmentation to a recipe. The more ingredients you use, the more filling the food will be and the better the bonuses you’ll get, although there are diminishing returns. Your Cooking Skill limits the number of different ingredients you can use, although not the quantity of each ingredient. However, the greater the quantities used, the greater the difficulty.

Ingredients can confer the following Augmentations to the finished product:

• Bonus Potency – Affects the amount of the Buffs applied by the food
• Bonus Duration – Affects how long the bonuses applied by the food last.
• Bonus Filling – Affects how full the food makes you.

If your final product has any bonuses, it will also have an associated duration and a measure of how filling the food is. This is important since you can only eat so much. If the food is more filling than you are able to eat, then you will be unable to eat the food.

Additionally, Citadel Studios have released a few screenshots of an area called The Misty Caverns; click on through and scroll down to check those out.