LotRO Mounted Combat Guide, Part 3

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color="#ffffcc">The Legendary Bridle

Now that you have mastered the basics of mounted combat and delved into the
intricacies of your mount's build, it's time to have a look at the final
piece of the puzzle, and the only piece of equipment your war-steed can
equip: the Legendary Bridle.

LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Legendary Bridle equipment slot

title="LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Legendary Bridle equipment slot" />

The bridle is a Legendary Item for your horse, and it follows the same
rules as any other LI: it can only be used by a specific class (or weight,
in this case), and it must be slotted in the LI panel in order to gain
fractional XP (the same as all your other LIs) and to be equippable on your
mount. There is no special LI panel for legendary bridles. It uses a slot on
the same panel you've been using since Moria, so if you're running
gear-heavy and your LI panel is constantly full, you'll either need to start
deconstructing or buy new slots. The LI panel has been expanded by two
slots for this feature, but keep in mind that there are 3 bridle weights -
you will need to economize if you want to have one bridle for each weight.

LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Medium Bridle of the Third Age in LI Panel

title="LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Medium Bridle of the Third Age in LI Panel" />

The base stat for all bridle weights is Fury Bonus Contribution Rating. As
the name would suggest, this affects the amount of bonus damage that the
Fury combat stat contributes to damage from mounted attacks. Obviously, a
higher rating means more damage, but this will have a varying effect since
your Fury meter is constantly emptying and refilling as you fight. When the
Fury bar is full, this base stat will have a greater effect, and when it is
nearly empty it will have almost no effect. Higher-level bridles will have a
greater maximum rating.

As you might expect, these new LIs draw from Major and Minor legacy pools,
the same as regular LIs - they start with three Major legacies, and gain a
new Minor with each of the first three reforges, with a small chance of
gaining a new Major. In the case of bridles, Major legacies are tied to the
bridle's weight - Heavy bridles will have only Heavy War-steed Major
legacies that will affect skills in the Heavy skill tree, Medium will have
only Medium War-steed legacies, and Light will have only Light. The Minor
legacies are common across all 3 weights, and affect the stances and base
combat stats like evade and parry ratings.

Third Age bridles of varying levels can be found as random corpse loot, the
same as any other LI, or you can earn a Level 75 Third Age bridle of the
weight of your choice by doing the mounted combat introduction instance in
Harwick. Additionally, guilded Tailors can craft Third and Second Age
bridles of all types for level 85.

LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - crafted Medium Bridle of the Third Age

title="LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - crafted Medium Bridle of the Third Age" />

Legendary bridles differ from other LIs in one key way: relics. The bridles
use different sets of relics than standard LIs, and these can't be found in
the usual ways. Bridle relics will occasionally be found randomly in the
gift boxes from warband quest turn-ins, but the only reliable way to get
them is to bank up a ton of shards and meld them at your friendly
neighborhood Relic-master.

LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Basic relic, Gem of Dexterity

title="LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Basic relic, Gem of Dexterity" />

There are two tiers of bridle relics - the "meh" ones that require any 3
Tier 4 relics and 194 shards to make, and the decent ones that require 3
specific Tier 8 relics and 2496 shards to make. These relics provide much
smaller bonuses to the war-steed than regular relics provide to characters,
but smaller bonuses make a slightly bigger difference to the war-steed.

LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Unique relic, Gem of Haste

title="LotRO Mounted Combat Guide - Unique relic, Gem of Haste" />

As with standard LIs, players will be able to buy Legendary Bridle
upgrades, relics and legacies from the LotRO Store. The store has a new
heading for war-steeds in the main menu, and offers everything from trait
set and cosmetic slot unlocks, cosmetic accessories, colour packs and bridle
bits. Prices and selection were not set at the time of this writing, but we
can likely expect costs to be in line with equivalent items elsewhere.


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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