Defense of the Shards

A MOBA built inside Ultima Online - pick a hero, farm a lane, and tear down the enemy World Tree.

Overview

Defense of the Shards, or DotS, is a MOBA running as a scheduled event on its own instanced arena. Two teams choose heroes, level up by killing creeps and enemy players, push down the lanes past towers, and race to destroy the other team's base. It is a complete match with a clear win condition, not an open-world skirmish.

Your regular character is set aside for the duration. When the match starts you become one of ten heroes with its own stats, skills and abilities, and when it ends you turn back into yourself with everything you brought handed back. Nothing you own is at risk - only bragging rights. The two sides are Britain and Trinsic.

Formats. The standard match is the three-lane, 5v5 game described here; it also runs as 3v3. An all-random (ARAM) variant rolls a random hero for each player instead of running a draft.

Joining a Match

Matches are formed through the signup stone, which runs on the shard's scheduled event clock - see PvP Event Rotation for the full timetable. When its window is open, sign up and you are sent to the staging area; at launch the queue is split into balanced teams by rating and everyone is teleported into the arena.

An event needs enough sign-ups to fill at least one full match or it is cancelled and everyone is released. If more people queue than fit evenly, the extras are cut at random and told to try the next event. Once you are in, your whole inventory is moved into a secure stash, your appearance and skills are snapshotted, and you drop into your team's spawning pool ready to draft. All of it is restored when the match is over, so a crash mid-match cannot cost you a thing.

The Heroes

Switch to the Defense of the Shards profile first. A Defense of the Shards Razor profile ships with the client. When you enter the event, load it - it binds every hero's abilities to Q, W, E and R and sets up the hero HUD, so you are ready the moment the match starts. (A Paintball profile is on the way for that event too.)

There are ten heroes, and every one is a distinct kit rather than a reskin of your class. Five lean on Intelligence and spell damage, three on Strength and durability, and two on Dexterity. Each hero has three abilities plus an ultimate.

Abilities are cast on the Q, W and E keys, with the ultimate on R. You spend an ability point each level to rank them up; the ultimate opens at level 6 and ranks again at 11 and 16. As a rule of thumb the basic abilities carry short cooldowns and the ultimate the longest, so save the big button for when it counts.

The Draft

Before the fighting starts, both teams draft heroes on a shared pick screen. Picks run in an interwoven snake - the teams alternate 1-2-2-2-2-1 - and the team with the lower average rating picks first, which hands the underdog a small edge. You get 30 seconds per turn, and on the double-pick turns two teammates share one clock.

Heroes are globally locked: once anyone takes a hero, nobody on either team can pick it, so no two players field the same hero. Click any hero to preview its full kit - role, stats and all four abilities with their numbers - even while you are waiting on someone else, then hit Pick to lock it. Miss the timer and you are handed a random remaining hero. Once the draft finishes there is a short countdown, and then everyone transforms into their pick at once.

The all-random (ARAM) variant skips the draft and simply rolls a random hero for each player.

Map & Objectives

The standard battleground is a three-lane MOBA map connecting the two bases, with neutral jungle camps in between. Waves of computer-controlled creeps - melee, ranged and heavier siege creeps - march down each lane, and you earn gold and experience by killing them, the enemy heroes, and structures. The pieces you have to break through:

Moria, the Ancient One is the map's neutral boss - a 2,500-health monster tucked in the river. It first wakes about five minutes in and comes back roughly five minutes after each death. Killing it pays the team gold and drops an Aegis token: pick it up and the next time you die you are revived on the spot. It hits hard and its bite can stun, so it is a team objective, not a solo dare.

The river also grows runes. Every two minutes - the first pair at the two-minute mark - two runes appear at the river's two shrines: one is a random power rune, the other is always a Bounty rune. Any runes left uncollected from the last cycle vanish when the new pair spawns. Walk within a tile to pick one up. You can carry only one power-rune effect at a time - grabbing a new one replaces the old - and each power rune lasts 15 seconds:

While a power rune is active your hero glows in its colour. If you are carrying a Life Flask when you grab a power rune, it is bottled into the flask - which also refills the flask - instead of firing right away; release it from the flask when you want it, or it goes off on its own after two minutes.

Scattered around the map you will also find wards you place for vision, and per-team couriers - an eagle that ferries shop purchases out to you so you do not have to walk back to base. There are no mounts in DotS; everyone moves at hero pace, and boots from the shop are the way to buy more speed.

Combat & Leveling

DotS uses its own combat model instead of the shard's normal skills. Two numbers drive your damage and two defend against it:

Your health pool grows with Strength and with bonus-HP gear, your attack speed comes from Dexterity, and some items grant a chance to dodge an attack outright. Pop the hero stat panel any time with the [HeroStats command to see your live Attack, Skill, Armor, Magic Resist and health.

Levels come from a shared pool: experience is split among nearby allies rather than going to the last hit, so you level just by being in the fight. The cap is level 25, and a farmed hero should be well into the twenties by the end of a 25-to-30-minute game. You can also deny - land the killing blow on your own creep or a badly hurt ally below half health to rob the enemy of the reward: a denied creep gives them only half its XP, and a denied hero gives them none at all. When you do die you respawn on a timer that starts around 30 seconds early and climbs toward a minute at max level, so late-game deaths hurt.

The Item Shop

Gear is the other half of the game. You buy items with the gold you earn in the match - it is a separate in-match currency, wiped when the game ends, not your real gold. It trickles in passively (about 100 a minute) and pours in from last-hitting creeps, killing heroes, and cracking structures.

The shop is organized into consumables, relics, minor artifacts and major artifacts. The artifacts are recipe-built: buy the recipe and its component relics and they combine into the finished item, so most builds are a ladder of small upgrades converging on one or two game-enders. Buy from the shop at your base, or send your courier to run the goods out to the lane so you do not lose farm walking home. There is a full base shop at your fountain and a smaller wilderness shop at each lighthouse that stocks only basic potions and a handful of cheap relics. Costs below are in match gold.

Rewards

Playing DotS earns DotS Points, spendable points tied to your account and paid out at the end of every match: 4 to each winner and 2 to each loser, plus a bonus point to each team's MVP (most kills) and each team's top healer, and those bonuses stack. You spend them at the Defense of the Shards Vendor, which stocks the event's exclusive deep "Abyssal" colour: bolts of special cloth, dyes for your hair, facial hair, weapons, armour, furniture, spell effects and backpack, Abyssal ethereal mounts (horse, llama and frenzied ostard), and an ethereal dye that recolours any ethereal mount you already own.

One catch to know about: leaving a team match early and not coming back counts as a leave, and repeat offenders get temporary bans from all events (a warning first, then 48 hours, then a week, then a month). Playing ten clean matches wipes the counter. Do not queue for a game you are not going to finish.

Tips

• Preview heroes during the draft. Thirty seconds is enough to pick something that fills a gap in your team.
• Last-hit creeps for the gold, and deny the enemy theirs when a creep drops below half health.
• Never dive a tower without a creep wave in front of you to eat its shots.
• Buy boots early. With no mounts, movement speed decides who wins fights and who shows up late.
• Group up for Moria and for towers - the big objectives reward teams, not lone heroes. Grab the Aegis before a big push.
• Nothing you brought is at stake, so take the fight - but do not queue if you cannot see the match out.