Monster Play:

Pvp players everywhere are rejoicing at the new monster play version of Fellowship maneuvers called Warband Maneuvers. Now those bands of monsters can hit us with even more powerful attacks. Not that we ever fully recovered from their last powerful boosted hitting of us, but this is going to hurt more. To help balance this new skill there were some changes made to the Warg skill "Pounce." It will now stun a person instead of knocking them down if successfuly landed from stealth, but there is still a chance to knock down an opponent on a critical hit and begin a fellowship from it.

Diminishing returns have been added to Monster play crowd control, but the developers want to stress that this will not affect the PvE asppect of the game at all. Crowd control will work the same as it always did. These changes are simply for the Ettenmoore. This new mechanic is aimed at reducing the effectiveness of crowd control type skills if they are used multiple times on the same enemy until finally he becomes almost immune to its effects.

To help combat the infiltration of spies, any player who logs a freep into the Ettenmoore will not be able to log a Creep in for two hours. There will now be an announcement to all players in the area when a keep has been capured. Add that to the fact that you can no longer stealth at a hotspot and the Etten battle is about to heat up in a big way.

 

Miscellaneous:

Those who have completed Book 10 can now advance the Epic story even further. If you have completed Book 10, speak with Calenglad and you can begin your adventure in Book 11. This new epic story arc considt of 13 quest and will give us lore junkies something we love...More lore!!!

Crafted items have gone through a few changes. The critical version of a crafted item should now have the same stats as the normal version, but increased. No more mismatched stats. There have also been 400 new metalworking and Tailor recipes added for Dwarven, Elven, and Westernesse and other variations of armor. This will offer more visual variety in what kind of armor we wear.

Guardians rejoice as Shield-spikes are now useful.

  • "Small Shield Spikes" = 5 Minutes
  • "Medium Shield Spikes" = 10 Minutes
  • "Large Shield Spikes" = 15 Minutes
  • "Westernesse Spikes" = 10 Minutes / 15 Minutes For Critical Success Version
  • "Ancient Dwarf Spikes" = 10 Minutes / 15 Minutes For Critical Success Version
  • "Beleriand Spikes" = 10 Minutes / 15 Minutes For Critical Success Version

Be advised also my fellow Guardians that Turn the Tables will now have a proper cool down time after use.

The Hunter track skills have been reworked a bit. When a tracked target goes stealthed you will now lose it on your track and to make things interesting, when you track a player they will now be informed that someone is following them. Here are the Hunter changes...

    • When hunters use their "Track" skill, targets that are already tapped will show up in the list, but the button will be grayed-out.
    • There have been several changes made to tracking for this update:
      • Tracking a stealthed target will now automatically detect that target for the tracker.
      • Tracked players are no longer shared with your Fellowship.
      • Whenever a Tracking target enters stealth, it will cancel all tracking on that target. The tracker(s) will be notified that they have been eluded.
      • Players who are tracked will be notified that someone is following them.
      • You can no longer attack a stealthed target that you have not detected yet through skill forwarding.
    • The "Tracking Guide" characteristic's description has been updated to reflect its new limitation. Only information about non-player tracked targets can be shared to fellowship members.
    • Improved the Quick Shot's detaunt while in Endurance Stance
    • The duration of the Fear effect applied by the Hunter's "Bard's Arrow" has been increased from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.
    • Critical Hits with the Hunter's "Merciful Shot" now deal 50% more bonus damage than normal criticals. Also, the skill damage has increased slightly.
    • The second shot of the Hunter's "Swift Bow" was not using the damage type of applied oils. Now both shots will use the Fire or Light damage type if the appropriate oil is active and apply special effects if they critical.
    • Fixed a bug where the Hunter's "Sturdy Traps" Trait would cause the "Set Snare" skill to drop the same kind of trap as "Set Trap."

You little Captains with your let's get the fellowship killed Heralds also got a few changes. Unfortunately loyalty of the Herald was not one of them...

    • The Captain's "Cry of Vengeance" skill now has a range of 10 meters.
    • Captain banners and armaments are now Bind on Equip.
    • The skill description for "Grave Wound" now uses "real" words.
    • Updated the Captain's Standard description text to better explain what they do.
    • The Captain's Mark skills will once again bestow visual effects on their targets.
    • Fixed a bug that was preventing Captains from using Cry of Vengeance on players outside of their fellowship.
    • The Oathbreakers summoned by the legendary Captain skill "Oathbreaker's Shame" now visibly harass their target.
    • Captain Standards now show their power costs.

You mass killing Champions also received a few tweaks. The developers were showing love all the way around in this update...

    • Fixed an aggro issue with the Champion's "Ebbing Ire" and "Rising Ire" skills.
    • "Controlled Burn" will no longer break on stuns and knock-downs
    • The "Patience" Trait and "Call of the Wild" Trait icons have been updated with the proper colors for their crests.
    • Legendary Champion deeds now state that Gimli can be found in the Misty Mountains rather than Rivendell.

This update is the largest since the launch of Book 9 Shores of Evendim. The undertaking of player housing as a free feature and not part of a paid expansion shows how devoted the developer team at Turbine is to making Lord of the Rings Online one of the top MMOGs on the market. With this update we will have plenty of content to keep us occupies while the developers finish their next big project. While we are enjoying the new housing feature and changes to our classes and searching for that big nasty Balrog, the developers are hard at work creating new content for our next big adventure in Book 12. This is a summary of the big changes, but this is by no means all of them.

Share your thoughts on this update on our Forums.
Read the full list of patch notes Here.
Still undecided on that home? Browse our href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=359">Player Housing and Neighborhood Screenshot Gallery.

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.

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