Archive for the ‘LOTRO’ Category

The Developer Diary for Lord of the Rings Online brings us word of changes to the crafting system coming in tomorrow’s release of the Siege of Mirkwood Expansion.

Multi-output Recipes

You will be able to craft some items that are slightly different based on the same recipe using the new “Multi-output” option in the crafting panel. An example of this is given as a Malledhrim Sword of Striking being crafted as the Malledhrim Sword of Warding. The DPS of the sword remains the same, but the damage type and stats change from +20 fate, +85 maximum power, +95 maximum morale, +128 melee critical rating to +20 agility, +49.2 in-combat power regen, +95 maximum regen, +128 parry rating. This will certainly lead to more opportunities to sell your wares to different classes.

Second Age Legendary Weapons and Class Items

Recipes will be available to create these items. You cannot find these items through treasure drops and they cannot be chosen as rewards. You can only get these through crafting. Each item will require an ancient symbol, which is only found in “dangerous, dark places.” The ancient symbols are tradeable.

Fourth “Crafted” Relic Slot

Legendary weapons and class items will now have a fourth relic slot. This slot can only hold relics made by players. There are two types of relics: normal and legendary. The normal relics provide a bonus to your agility, fate, might, vitality, will, morale, or power. Normal relics are tradeable. Legendary relics provide bonuses to melee, ranged, tactical, or healing abilities. Legendary relics are bound to the crafter who makes them so they cannot be traded. It will be interesting to see if alternates can pick them up through the new shared storage system also being introduced tomorrow. Most relics will have a minimum item level requirement.

Guild Reputation Items

Guild reputation items can be traded up for the next larger size. You can trade in seven small guild reputation items for one medium guild reputation item. And three medium guild reputation items can be traded in for one large guild reputation item.

Existing Recipes and Craft Experience Updated

Many of the recipes that require “components” have had the quantity of components required reduced. Auto-granted recipes no longer use any components crafted by other professions One-shot recipes are now the most difficult and use the most resources and components from other professions. Crafting experience has been increased and coincides with the difficulty of the recipe. Auto-granted recipes will award 6 points while one-shot recipes will award 12 points of experience.

Check it out in the developer diary.

Lord of the Rings Online is bringing servers down today between 9AM and 2PM. It appears they are prepping the launcher for downloading the Siege of Mirkwood Expansion. In addition, all servers will be brought down tomorrow, Tuesday, December the 1st at 6:00 am EST. When they are brought back up you should be able to login and try out the new expansion content.

The Siege of Mirkwood Expansion brings players:

• Mirkwood adventuring area
• Character advancement to level 65
• Level 70 Legendary Items
• Nazgul Lord, Lieutenant of Dol Guldur, 12-person raid

If you purchase the Adventurer’s Pack you will also get:

• Shared storage for 20 items, accessible by all your characters on the same server.
• Two additional character slots

If you purchase both the Siege of Mirkwood Expansion and the Adventurer’s Pack, for $40, you also get three stacks of ten consumable maps allowing you to travel to Michel Delving, Thorin’s Hall or Bree-town.

As Halloween approaches there are lots of events taking place in and around your favorite MMO.

Asheron’s Call is holding their AC-themed carved pumpkins event. Carve a pumpkin, take a digital picture and send it in. Four winners will be chosen. The top winner will receive an in-game title “Jack-o’-all Trades” and a pet pumpkin golem.

Champions Online Halloween event is titled “Blood Moon” and runs from October 27th through November 10th. Within this event you will see Celestial, the first new power set introduced, which is a support and healing based set. Saving 13 Undead Heroes will unlock the Celestial power set before anyone else. The set will be unlocked on November 10th for everyone else.

Seven new perks will be available:

1. In Memoriam for freeing all 13 Undead Hero Souls
2. Thrash of the Lich King for driving off Takofanes during the event
3. Silver Bullet for defeating 100 non-player Bloodmoon Werewolves
4. Bite Me for completing Wolfsbane and Leader of the Pack to earn a title and werewolf action figure
5. Leader of the Pack for defeating 100 Hunter Players as a Feral Warrior during the event
6. Wolfsbane for defeating 100 Feral Warrior Players as a Hunter during the event
7. Moonstruck for completing all of the other perks to earn a special action figure

Dungeons and Dragons Online is also having a Pumpkin Carving contest. Carve your pumpkin using a DDO theme and if you are selected as the lucky winner you’ll win 500 Turbine Points.

Fallen Earth is holding a costume contest through October 21st. They are accepting submissions for creative faction-inspired costumes. The top five submissions will receive a Fallen Earth t-shirt, messenger bag and a poster autographed by the development team.

Lord of the Rings Online is hosting a Pumpkin Carving Contest with the first prize winner receiving 1 million copper!

Sony Online Entertainment is hosting several Halloween events both in-game and on their various forums. Take part in everything from Candy Corn Mystery, Pumpkin Carving Forum Challenge and the Haunted Art Forum Challenge.

Turbine just announced that the Siege of Mirkwood expansion will launch on December 1. In addition they announced these pre-launch offers:

• The LOTRO Lifetime Membership is back and still $199.
• If you renew or upgrade a multi-month subscription you will get the Siege of Mirkwood for free
• A new LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack is available for $19.99 and includes 2 character slots and one shared storage slot. You also get the Harbinger’s Cloak which provides 8% speed boost and a new mount.
• Existing members who preorder the LOTRO Adventurer Pack will also get the Siege of Mirkwood expansion and the two items.

Check out the full scoop. And if you want to check out the features of the Siege of Mirkwood expansion, click here.

Turbine’s latest posting for the “Ask the Dev Team” series reveals these tasty morsels coming with the Siege of Mirkwood expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online:

• Resource tracking skills will be usable from mounts
• Combat system will feel more responsive and less laggy
• Legendary books and pages will be acquired differently
• Cowering will change such that anything greater than 8 dread level will be the same as at 5 dread level currently
• Gloom will be relaxed throughout raid zones
• Radiance gear will be easier to attain

See this post for the full details.