By: Martuk

The Book 10 City of Kings update is here and it marks the second major content update for Lord of the Rings Online. This new free content update brings a ton of new features and content to Middle Earth and even offers us a few new ways to play the game. Book 10 will advance the epic story line and draw players to the ancient city of Annúminas to aid the Rangers of the north who are far outnumbered by the forces of Angmar.

With this launch comes a ton of new content and four pages worth of patch notes. So to save you the time of gazing through all of the technical information Tentonhammer offers you this special Book 10 launch feature that will summarize the big stuff for this massive update.

Session Play:

Session play is a new feature that will allow players to use destiny points to play as a Chicken, Troll, or Ranger. The chicken has its own story line that can lead as far as Angmar and involves the local wildlife as seen in Tolkien’s story. The Chicken has some comical skills such as Threatening Cluck to inspire a comical attempt at fear in its enemies. The Trolls and Rangers are new classes that have been added for Monster Play PvP. There can only be a certain number each on a server at a given time. Trolls and Rangers are made to be much stronger than regular characters, but can only be played in one hour blocks.

Reputation System:

To add a new way of advancing and acquiring items the reputation system has been implemented with Book 10. This is a faction system similar to those used in previous MMOs. You can earn faction with a number of groups throughout Middle Earth by completing certain quest, killing certain enemies, and by turning in certain trophy items. Gaining reputation with certain factions can earn you new items, crafting recipes, and even access to new dungeons. Some of the factions include…

• The Elves of Rivendale: The Elves residing in Rivendale can use your help wit the Angmar intrusion into Trollshaws and the Misty Mountains. You can earn reputation with the by helping them combat this threat.

• The Council of the North (Angmar): This is a group of Elves, Dwarves, and Rangers who have taken the fight to the forces of Angmar. Rather than launching a full assault on Carn Dum this group of allies instead launch small attacks on supply lines, and gather intelligence on Angmar’s forces.

• Rangers of Esteldin: The Rangers within Esteldin stand between the forces of Angmar and their incursion into the North Downs. They are constantly engaged in battles against the Orcish forces as they try to advance further into the North Downs. They wish to push their attack further into Fornost, but they have recently been overwhelmed by an influx of Bandits. Seek them out and lend aid in the battle for the North Downs and earn their gratitude.

• The Longbeards of Thorin’s Hall: The Longbeards feud with the Dourhand dwarves has taken a new turn with the discovery of the Dourhand's ancient city, renamed anew Sarnur. This new threat concerns the Longbeards and they seek aid in dealing with this new threat.

• The Men of Bree: Bree has recently had a surge of problems from the Black Riders and it is rumored that the Witchking himself has awakened great evils within the Barrow Downs.

• The Mathom Society (Hobbits): The Hobbits of the society collect Mathoms for whatever reason, but when they aren’t collecting they are eating. You can lend aid to these hobbits and help them collect their Mathoms in exchange for some well deserved goods.

The reputation system will offer a new way to acquire needed items without having to raid evil creatures or pay insanely high auction prices.

The Barter System:

The Barter System will work in cooperation with the Reputation system and it will allow players to barter with NPC’s for new items. This system will allow players to trade with the merchant trophy items, coin, Destiny Points, or a combination of all three. When a player approaches a merchant they will be informed of what trophy items the merchant wants in order to trade a given item.

Miscellaneous:

Some of the other notable features are listed below.

• Monster Tribes: The Monster equivalent of kinships can now be formed.

• Emotes: There are now 40 new emotes.

• Vault Space: The vault space has been increased by allowing the player to purchase additional bag spaces that give 15 extra slots from the vault keeper.

• UI Scaling: You can now resize the user interface with several new sliders.

• Role-Playing Chat Channel: This new channel is designed for those who like to role-play, but dislike the out of character channel Role-Players rejoice!

• In-game Clock: This new feature will allow players to see what time of day it is. Each part of the day has been broken up into different sections and they are Day: Dawn - Morning - Noon - Afternoon Dusk Night: Gloaming - Evening - Midnight - Late Watches - Foredawn.

• Annuminas Dungeons: There are 3 new instances within Annuminas.

• Reputation Dungeons: New Reputation dungeons have been added to the Barrow Downs, Erud Luin.

This is a basic overview of some of the bigger things that have been implemented in Book 10. There are many other changes implemented as well. It has taken four pages on the official forums to cover all of it. There have been many additional changes to graphics, classes, and crafting, but one thing is for sure. This epic content launch will keep our little section of Middle Earth full of content that will keep us occupied for quite some time.

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You can read the entire patch note list of Book 10 on the official forums Part 1., Part 2., Part 3., Part 4.