Development Roadmap
Shattered Lands is in active development. Here's where we stand.
Last updated: May 2026 · See what shipped recently
Working Now
18 systemsCore systems that are functional in the current alpha build. Verified through live gameplay.
Tab-Target Combat
Full combat with auto-attack, abilities, cooldowns, projectiles, AoE, threat/aggro, and leashing. Dodge, parry, block. Dual wielding and ranged weapons (bows, crossbows).
Status Effects
Buffs, debuffs, and damage-over-time effects with stacking modes and stat modifiers.
Skill Training
Passive time-based training that continues offline. Skills unlock via trainers or skill books. Training queues for multiple ranks.
Death & Consequences
Vitae penalty, equipment/gold drops to corpse, corpse looting with ownership timers. Corpse dragging via /consent. Die anywhere, respawn at your bind point.
Bind Points
Bind your soul at shrines. Return to your bind location on death. Everyone starts bound to the safe starter area.
Zone Transitions
Portal connections between zones. Step through a gate and load into a new area with its own terrain, creatures, and rules.
Interior Spaces
Enclosed areas like buildings, caves, and dungeons with their own navmesh pathfinding, separate from the open world.
Party System
Group formation, loot rules (FFA, round-robin), assist targeting, party health display.
NPC Systems
Dialogue trees, merchants, trainers, quest givers. NPCs with equipment. Guards patrolling roads. Faction reputation affects NPC disposition.
Player Trading
Direct player-to-player item and currency trading with confirmation.
Chat & Communication
Local, party, whisper, and team chat. /r to reply to whispers. Emotes. EQ-style combat messages.
Pets & Summoning
Conjuration system with summoned familiars. Control points limit active pets. Pets fight alongside you.
Quests
Quest accept, progress tracking, completion, and turn-in. Kill count and collection objectives. Repeatable quests.
Time & Weather
Day/night cycle and weather systems fully synced between server and client. 11 weather types with transitions.
Friends & Block Lists
Add and remove friends, block players, online status notifications.
Input Support
Mouse and keyboard fully supported. Gamepad with face buttons, d-pad target cycling, and autorun. No key remapping yet; default bindings only.
Crafting
Walk up to a forge, alchemy table, loom, or campfire to craft, with station effects and a crafting animation while you work. Tag-slot recipes accept categories of ingredients, and material quality flows through every step, ore to ingot to blade to sword. Craft preview shows expected stats, and finished items carry their maker and the materials' history in the tooltip.
Gathering
Four gathering tradeskills with two ways to find resources. Herbs, mushrooms, and trees grow visibly, so equip the right tool and harvest. Mining and fishing are hidden: prospect, sample, analyze, then extract. Different biomes grow different things, gathering lenses and detect abilities scale with your skill, and a single harvest can yield several materials.
In Progress
Features actively being developed for upcoming alpha builds.
Post-Alpha Content
New zones, creatures, quests, and points of interest. Expanding the world beyond the starter area.
Pets & Taming
Pet control window and HUD are live. Building out stance/command toggles and permanent tamable pets. The server infrastructure exists; UI and content are in progress.
Crafting Depth
The material-quality pipeline and provenance are live. Next up is experimentation that yields exceptional results, manufacturing orders so you can batch-craft while you adventure, and style mastery that makes a master's work look the part.
Swimming
Client-side swim locomotion exists but server-side water detection and movement still in progress.
Planned
Features on the horizon, ordered roughly by priority.
Foraging & Gardening
Building on the live gathering systems: foraging for rare, hidden micro-resources that reward a trained eye, and gardening, where you plant the seeds you harvest, tend a growth cycle, and reap a crop. Closing the loop from gatherer to cultivator.
Magic System
Right now there are simple abilities; the full magic system is still ahead. The vision draws from EQ's spell memorization slots, Master of Magic's elemental school system, and Asheron's Call's spell components. Spell research, fizzle risk, and real commitment to your school of magic.
Guild Systems
Guild creation with ranks, permissions, and shared banks. The social backbone for territory control, coordinated crafting operations, and large-scale expeditions into dangerous zones.
Player Economy
Auction houses, player-run vendors, and trade contracts. When crafters make the best gear and gatherers find the best materials, the economy becomes the connective tissue between every playstyle.
Raid Groups
Multi-party raids with specialized loot rules. Coordinated groups tackling content that no single party can handle alone.
Dangerous Zones
Lawless frontiers beyond the guard patrols. Better resources, rare creatures, and contested territory. No one is coming to save you, but the rewards justify the risk for those who organize and prepare.
Exotic Zones
Ephemeral fragments that drift in and out of existence: frozen battlefields, time-locked ruins, shards of places that shouldn't exist anymore. High risk, rare resources, and they might vanish while you're still inside. The core exploration loop: scout, exploit, escape.
Player Structures
Prefab-based building, from a single house to full outposts. Requires resource delivery and skilled tradesmen to construct. Inspired by Horizons' cooperative building, UO's player towns, and EVE's infrastructure. Players don't just inhabit the world, they physically build it.
Input Customization
Key remapping and customizable bindings. Gamepad basics work; full controller support with radial menus and UI navigation is still ahead.
And More Content!
Once these systems are in place, the real work begins: new zones, creatures, quests, lore, professions, and world events. The systems are the foundation. The content is what fills them.
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