Android only this time, and all of it is about one thing: getting updates to you at all.

• 📶 The Android download is about nine times faster. The game was using Android's built-in networking, which is fine for small requests and poor at pulling down something the size of the game data. Measured on a Samsung tablet, same Wi-Fi, same file: 3.5 megabits before, 32 after. First-time setup went from over half an hour to under four minutes.
• 📦 The Android app is now 66 MB instead of 978 MB. It had been carrying the game art twice over — once packed inside the app and again unpacked onto your tablet, about 3.3 GB of space for 1.6 GB of data. It now downloads the art once, the same way the iPhone and Mac versions already did. If you already have the game, nothing is re-downloaded: your data stays exactly where it is and the update just gets a great deal smaller.
• 🔍 Why this matters more than it sounds. Updates that size were quietly not arriving. One of our own tablets sat three days and three releases behind, plugged in, with 90 GB free. Nearly two thirds of the bug reports we receive turn out to come from a version that is already behind — which is why some of you have reported things that were fixed weeks earlier. This is the fix for that, and it is the reason this release exists.

Windows, Linux and iPhone/iPad get this build too. The Mac App Store version is unchanged for now — it went out yesterday and will catch up next week.

— Steven ⚔️

Mostly one window, which turned out to be working against you in three different ways at once. Two of these arrived from the same player in the same evening.

• 🔒 The Skills window closed when you tried to change a lock. Setting a skill to raise, lower or locked takes two or three taps on the same little arrow — and tapping three times in the same spot is also how you close a window on a tablet. The close gesture was winning. It now ignores taps that land on something you are actually using, and the arrow has a far bigger target, because it sat right on the edge of the scroll where fingers naturally miss. That close gesture was a trap on every window with a control you tap more than once, not just this one. (Sno)
• 📜 Scrolling the skills list threw skill cards everywhere. Dragging a skill name onto the screen makes a shortcut card, and the window decided that was what you meant the instant your finger moved at all — so a swipe pulled cards out instead of scrolling, and which way you swiped changed what you got. Up and down are the same gesture now: swipe to scroll, pull sideways to make a card. The list also jumped mid-scroll, because starting a swipe on a category heading collapsed the whole category out from under you. (Sno)
• 🏰 Stuck on the castle roof. The top of Britain Castle is one flat level with no step down anywhere along it, so once you were up there, you were up there. /unstuck was no help either: it looks for somewhere safe at your own height, and up there it found more roof. It brings you back down to the ground now. (Grimm Ravenclaw)
• ⚔️ The Bushido and Ninjitsu ability book did nothing whatsoever. Not one control in it worked — choosing an ability, using it, turning the page. It looked entirely normal, which is the worst kind of broken. Nobody had reported it; it surfaced while chasing the skills window. "Dig Here" on treasure maps was dead for exactly the same reason, so treasure maps are usable again too.
• 📱 The character screen now tells you when a newer version is out, and where to get it. Several reports this month were things fixed weeks earlier, and there was no way for anyone to know. iPhone is supported now, not just iPad.

Quick Commands → Report Bug attaches a screenshot, your location and now your version automatically. Two of the four fixes above came from one player pressing it twice in an evening.

— Steven ⚔️

One fix, but it had been quietly ruining inventories for a long time and nobody could quite put a finger on it.

• 🎒 Reagents weighed far more than they should — and so did arrows, bolts, bandages, boards, hides and leather. Anything bought from a vendor was handed a default weight of one stone per item, whatever it was actually supposed to weigh. You buy reagents a hundred at a time, so a single restock of all eight was adding eight hundred stones against a carry limit of under four hundred. That is why your pack felt full when it plainly was not. If you are already loaded down with them the weight corrects itself the moment your character loads — you do not need to drop anything or buy it again. (Dash Darklighter)
• ⚖️ The same fault ran the other way too. Armour and weapons bought from a vendor weighed almost nothing — a plate chest is meant to be fifteen stones and was one. New purchases now weigh what they should. Gear you already own is deliberately left alone, because quietly making your armour heavier could leave you rooted to the spot and unable to move.

Worth admitting: this is the third time this exact fault has been fixed. Twice before it was patched precisely where it was reported — first gold, then reagents. This time every purchasable item in the game was checked against what it is supposed to weigh, and sixty-nine of them were wrong. Same mistake as the crafting run a few days ago: fixing what was named instead of the whole category.

Quick Commands → Report Bug attaches a screenshot and your location automatically. Three releases this week came out of that button.

— Steven ⚔️

Six more, all from reports sent in this week. Android, Windows, Linux and Mac are live now; iPhone and iPad are going out through TestFlight.

• 📖 The spellbook wouldn't take scrolls. You dropped a scroll in, the book showed the spell, and casting still told you that you didn't have it. The game was checking a different spellbook from the one you'd written into — it remembered the first book it ever saw and never looked again, so once that memory went stale nothing you inscribed counted. Reported three separate ways in one afternoon, seventeen times in total. (Dash Darklighter)
• ⛏ Trapped underground, and the rescue made it worse. He spent his evening wedged in a cave. The rescue that's meant to free you was moving him one tile — into the wall he was already stuck against — and then doing it again every twenty seconds, forever. It now looks for somewhere you can genuinely stand, and /unstuck will take you back to Britain if there's nowhere closer. (Dash Darklighter)
• 🧥 Armour that wouldn't go on. Some pieces just refused to leave the bag, with nothing on screen to say why. It turned out half the wearable items in the game — every hat, most clothing, all the jewellery, boots — could get into a state where the game no longer knew where they belonged on your body, with no way back. Fixed for all of them at once rather than one at a time. (Knightreaper)
• 📜 The starter guide told you the wrong thing. It said to tap your dagger to pick it up. Tapping stopped picking things up a good while ago — it selects now, and you press and hold to pick up — so following the instructions exactly left you stuck on that step with no way past. Not a broken dagger: a broken sentence, in four places. (Knightreaper)
• 💰 Splitting a stack in the bank did nothing. Hold a pile of gold, choose how much to take, tap confirm — and the dialog would close having moved nothing and said nothing. (Radask)
• 🔍 Reports now record your version and what the game was doing. Not a fix you'll see, but the one that will make the rest faster.

One ask. Two of this week's eight reports were things already fixed weeks ago — the crafting ones, from someone still on 1.0.56. If your game hasn't updated itself, please give it a nudge. Reports now carry the version, so we can tell straight away whether something is new or just hasn't reached you yet.

Quick Commands → Report Bug attaches a screenshot and your location automatically. Every single fix above came from one.

— Steven ⚔️

Seven from your reports, plus five buttons that turned out to be connected to nothing at all.

• 🧤 Cut leather, and boards. Skinning an animal gives hides, every piece of leather armour is made from leather, and nothing in the game turned one into the other — so a tanner could never make a single piece of armour. Logs never became boards either, which quietly made the whole of carpentry uncraftable. The same complaint had come back three times, so this round the entire raw-to-refined category got audited instead of just the part that was reported. (Shadow Lance G M)
• 👗 Cutting cloth from the cloth side. Ore, logs and hides all convert by double-clicking the resource; cloth was the last one that only worked from the scissors. (Radask)
• 💰 Gold weighed a stone per coin. Gold paid to you by a vendor was heavy while the gold you started with wasn't — so selling things made you heavier, which is how players ended up overweight with an almost empty bag. Characters already carrying heavy coin are repaired when they load. (Shadow Lance G M)
• 📜 Skill cards couldn't be deleted on a touchscreen. Removing one was right-click only, and a touchscreen has no right button. Hold a card for a moment to remove it. (Shadow Lance G M)
• 📓 The Skills window reopened as a closed scroll once you'd minimised it, with no obvious way back for the rest of the session. And the stablemaster insisted you had no pet while you were sitting on your horse. (Shadow Lance G M)
• 📌 Five context-menu options were wired to nothing: Open Paperdoll, Open Backpack, Attack, Pick Up and Split Stack. Found by audit this time rather than by one of you.

— Steven ⚔️

Everything promised in the last update is now live, plus three things that turned out never to have been finished at all. iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux.

• 🚧 Getting permanently stuck in the terrain. One player ended up standing on the sea floor, walled in by a thirty-unit cliff on every side. He couldn't have walked in and he couldn't walk out — and because your position is saved, logging out and back in didn't help either. That character was simply gone. The game now notices when you are genuinely walled in and moves you somewhere safe, and it will rescue a character that is already stuck the moment they next try to move. (Tommy Phantom)
• 📱 Skill shortcut cards that ignored your taps. A tap only counted if your finger moved less than eight pixels, on a card smaller than a fingertip — so most taps were treated as drags, quietly nudging the card instead of using the skill. That's also why cards wandered into odd corners of the screen. Cards now stay on screen and can't be parked on top of the movement stick, which silently blocked walking. (Tommy Phantom)
• ⚒ Smelting ore into ingots. Stand next to a forge and double-click ore in your pack. The code to do this has been sitting there working the whole time — nothing ever called it, while the in-game guide told you to go and do it. (Winter)
• 🧵 Cutting cloth into bandages. Double-click scissors in your pack. Same story: the guide said to do it, but only cutting a bolt into cloth was ever implemented. (Winter, and Radask — whose report caught that our first attempt at this fix missed the cloth a tailor actually starts the game holding.)
• 🎨 Dye tubs. Double-click the tub, pick the item, pick a colour. It used to say "Target an item to dye" and then ignore you completely — there was nothing listening. (Winter)

The pattern in this one is worth admitting to. Three of those five weren't broken code — they were features that were never wired up, while the in-game guide confidently told players how to use them. Nobody was doing anything wrong; one player reported the same thing nine times, reasonably assuming he'd misunderstood. The guide now tells you exactly which item to double-click for all three, because "how do you..." turned out to be half the question.

Quick Commands → Report Bug attaches a screenshot and your location automatically. It keeps finding things we'd never have found ourselves.

— Steven ⚔️

Twenty reports came in from thirteen of you over the last two weeks. Nineteen are fixed. Rather than a changelog, here is the whole list and exactly where each one stands — including the one I still can't work out.

Already live — v1.0.56, on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux.

• 💰 The vendor Sell button opened the Buy window. NoxSoldier reported this seven times before I got to it — sorry, and thank you for not giving up.
• 📚 Skills could reset to starting values. There was a path that wrote a save with no skill data at all, wiping your progression on the next load. Found and closed. (Zym — this one genuinely cost you.)
• 🏹 Items in a monster's corpse were never consumed, so they could be used forever — and dragging one afterwards crashed the game.
• 🏃 Running was about 67% faster than it should be, which is also why the legs skated. (Skiter)
• 🎯 Dragging a skill out to make a shortcut only worked if you let go within a few pixels of the window edge. (Zi)
• 🏰 A castle you couldn't enter — all four archways were solid. (quirt)
• 🐛 The bug reporter could trap you with no way out. On phones and tablets there was no escape at all. That one was squarely my fault, in the very tool I ask you to use. (Adventurer)
• 🖥️ High-resolution and Linux: the game opened in a small fixed window on a 4K display with no way to zoom. It now sizes to your screen. (Brynn)
• 📜 The tutorial couldn't be completed on some Android devices. (Lourdes)
• ⚔️ Skill trainers: the Train button did nothing. You could pick a skill and see the price, but tapping Train never trained you — the button was drawn just outside its own window, so your taps were thrown away before they ever reached it. (Kendra, who had to report it twice. Sorry.)
• 📡 "Connected to:" with a blank name after reconnecting — it looked like the connection had dropped when it was perfectly healthy. (Toda)

Fixed this week, going out in the next build.

• 🚧 Getting permanently stuck in the terrain. One player ended up standing on the sea floor, walled in by a thirty-unit cliff on every side. He couldn't have walked in and he couldn't walk out — and because your position is saved, logging out and back in didn't help either. That character was simply lost. The game now notices when you're genuinely walled in and moves you somewhere safe, and it will rescue characters that are already stuck the moment they next try to move. (Tommy Phantom, who reported it three times in six minutes.)
• 📱 Skill buttons not working, "bugging on and off". A skill card only counted as a tap if your finger never moved more than eight pixels — on a card smaller than a fingertip. Most taps registered as drags instead, so the card quietly shifted and the skill never fired. That's also why cards wandered into odd corners of the screen. The tolerance now matches the rest of the touch controls. (Tommy Phantom)

Still open — one. A "stuck on tower" report I haven't been able to explain: I checked the map data at that exact spot and every direction is walkable stone. If that was you, or it happens again, any extra detail would help a lot. (Grimm Ravenclaw)

Nearly every fix above exists because somebody stopped playing for a minute to file a report. Quick Commands → Report Bug attaches a screenshot and your location automatically. Please keep going.

— Steven ⚔️

Everything below came from someone hitting a problem and taking the time to report it. Thank you.

• 🐛 We broke the bug reporter, and you used it anyway. Once the Report Issue screen asked you to tap the problem in the game world, there was no Cancel and the close button stopped working — on phones and tablets there was no way out at all. Some of you escaped by sending an empty report; one person couldn't finish the tutorial because every tap was being swallowed. There's a Cancel button now, and the X works again. That one was squarely our fault, in the very tool we ask you to use.
• 🖥️ High-resolution screens. The game opened in a fixed-size window whatever your monitor, so on a 4K display everything was tiny and unreadable with no way to zoom. It now sizes to your screen — no change on a 1080p monitor, twice the size on 4K, and it finally fits on smaller laptops where the old window was too big for the screen.
• 🏰 A castle you couldn't get into. All four of its archways were solid. They're open.

And the part that matters longer term. Chasing that castle turned up something worse: map corrections lived inside the ~1GB game data, and iPad and Mac installs only download that data once and never refresh it. Any future map fix would have reached those players never — blocked doors, bad tiles, terrain problems, silently stuck forever. That's now fixed as a category: map corrections travel as world data in a normal update, so a blocked door gets fixed for everyone, on every platform, without re-downloading the game.

If you've been using Quick Commands → Report Bug, please keep going. Five reports, five fixes, and one of them exposed a problem we'd have taken months to find on our own.

— Steven ⚔️

Almost everything in this release came from a player. Someone hit a bug and took the time to report it, or sat down and wrote out an idea. That is the entire changelog below. Thank you — genuinely.

Bugs you found:

• 💰 The vendor Sell button opened the Buy window. It had been quietly wrong for a long time behind a "we'll finish this later" note in the code. Reported seven times by the same patient person — sorry, and thank you.
• 🧭 Dragging a skill out to make a shortcut only worked if you happened to let go within a few pixels of the window edge. Anywhere else and nothing happened. It now works wherever you drop it.
• 💾 A character could load with all skills reset to starting values. This was the bad one. A save could be written with no skill data at all, and the next load rebuilt the character from scratch. That path is closed — your progression can't be overwritten that way any more. To the player this happened to: sorry. That should never have been possible.
• 🏺 Items used from a monster's corpse were never consumed, so a single bandage lasted forever — and dragging one afterwards crashed the game outright. Both fixed.
• 🏃 Running was about 67% faster than classic UO, which also made the legs skate along the ground. It's back to the authentic 200ms per tile, and it looks right again.

Ideas you sent:

• 📱 Quick slots. Drag any item from your backpack onto the ring around the thumbstick and it becomes a bubble you can tap once to use. Bandages, potions, scrolls, whatever you need mid-fight. Hold and drag away to remove it. This was designed almost exactly as it was described to us by a longtime UO player — it's your idea, we just built it.
• 🎯 Targeting. Your current target now has a marker on it so you can actually see what you've got, and Next Target in Quick Commands steps through nearby enemies nearest-first. No more guessing which of the five skeletons you're swinging at.
• ⚡ Smoother movement on phones and tablets. Mobile was locked to 30fps for everyone to protect older devices. It now runs at 60 and only steps down if your device genuinely can't hold it.

One more small thing: bug reports now record which build they came from, which makes them far easier to chase down. If you've been using the Report Bug tool in Quick Commands — please keep going. It's working.

— Steven ⚔️

Big one. As of this week you can play UM Classic on every platform we set out to support.

• 🍎 Mac — approved and live on the Mac App Store.
• 🤖 Android — live on Google Play.
• 📱 iOS — live as a free public TestFlight beta. Install TestFlight, tap the join link in the download panel above, done. Same build as everywhere else.
• 💻 Windows and Linux — direct downloads above, and they now come off a proper CDN, so they pull down a lot faster than they used to.

About iOS, honestly: the Mac version went through Apple's review without much trouble. The iOS version did not. It came back over and over, and the last round wasn't about wording or icons — it was a judgement that the app is too close to an existing game. That's not something you argue your way out of, so I stopped trying and went the TestFlight route instead. It's free, it's the same game, and it works. Beta builds do expire every 90 days, so you'll reinstall from the same link now and then.

Also fixed in v1.0.45:

• 💰 Vendors buy and sell properly again. An invisible distance check was silently swallowing trades — you'd tap Buy and simply nothing happened. Fixed, along with three other paths that failed quietly, plus a vendor bug that only showed up in multiplayer.
• 🧭 Tutorial arrows point at real places now. Every class shop marker, plus the Bank and the Healer, were aimed at empty ground. They're now taken from the actual world, so following the arrow gets you somewhere.

Still rough in places — that's the honest state of it. If something breaks or looks wrong, please open Quick Commands in game and pick Report Bug rather than just closing it. It grabs the details automatically and it's far more useful than “it crashed.” I read all of them.

Thanks for playing, testing, and hollering when something is off. It genuinely makes the game better.

— Steven ⚔️

Hey everyone, a quick one this week. This update is all about first impressions, because a certain young tester asked, loudly and more than once, “where was our guide?” Fair question. Fixed!

What’s new in v1.0.37:

• 🔄 Online play stays in sync automatically. The game already downloads the newest world data on load; now your online-play credential updates with it, so joining multiplayer never waits on an app-store update again. (This is the v1.0.37 hotfix, shipped the same day.)
• 📖 The new-player guide shows for every new character now, not just the very first one created on a device. Veterans get a big bold Skip Guide button, so nobody is stuck reading.
• 🗺️ The guide grew from 5 to 7 pages, with a proper tour of the six connected lands and the three ways to play: Solo, Private Shard, and Public Shard.
• 📚 Re-read it any time in game under Help > Getting Started > Game Guide.
• 🧑‍🏫 The in-game tutorial got love too: every character path now has a complete walkthrough, the Counselor introduces itself when you arrive, and the adventure steps give clearer directions.
• 💡 New tips for what to do when you fall in battle (find a Healer, and Young players keep their items!) and how to get started with Animal Taming.

The update (v1.0.37) is rolling out now: Google Play today, the Mac App Store as soon as Apple approves the update, and the Windows and Linux downloads below are already fresh. iOS is still in App Store review. Everything remains crossed.

Thanks as always for playing, testing, and hollering when something is off. It genuinely makes the game better.

— Steven ⚔️