Version 0.3.4 of Shards Online should be live now, and Citadel Studios have released a lengthy set of patch notes for this update to their Ultima Online-inspired MMORPG. And because there are too many notes to easily excerpt, here instead are the top-level categories that list which areas of the game saw improvement:

• Player Run Merchants
• Unity 5 Upgrade
• Catacombs Lower Level
• Outlands Content
• Necromancy Skill – A combination of direct damage and summoned minions makes any master of this skill a force to be reckoned with. The higher your skill, the more minions you can control at one time (up to 3).
• New Manifestation Spells
• New Potions (Alchemy Recipes)
• Cooking Skill Improvements
• Mob Collision (Prototype)
• New Player Guild
• New Player Status
• Map Markers for Corpse and House
• Rare Crafting Resources – Ingredients for new equipment qualities
• New Equipment Qualities
• Outlands and Catacombs Maps
• Fixed issue where WASD movement would cause framerate lag in the catacombs
• All action commands (dancing etc) should now work again
• Characters now smoothly rotate when they turn
• Crafting skills now play an animation while crafting
• Torches and other light sources automatically turn off during the day
• Trees now have falling animation
• Animals with custom combat abilities will now use them in combat
• Slowed down loading wormhole animation
• You can now extinguish campfires
• Add delay to closing/opening doors
• Iron and Cobalt nodes will eventually decay if they can not be reached
• Blightwood can no longer be obtained from just any black forest tree. Blightwood trees are visually distinguishable.

Click on through for more details. And if you want to check out Shards for yourself, you can still pledge to support development of the game; a $40 USD pledge is sufficient to get instant access to the game.