Book 10 (Part 1) (2007-08-17)

Book 10 (Part 1) (2007-08-17)

Book 10: The City of Kings - Part 1

New Area : Annúminas!

• The main theme in the area is one of battle over the ruins of the past. The Rangers are far out-numbered by Angmar and its troops. The players are coming to help turn the tides in this struggle.
• The area around Annúminas is full of rolling green hills and fields, leading the edge of Lake Evendim (Nenuial). Upon the banks of Nenuial lies the ruined city of Annúminas, long abandoned by the Men of Arnor in the days of Amlaith, who moved the seat of power from Annúminas to Fornost.
• The city of Annúminas was one of the greatest achievements of the Men of Westernesse, built during the reign of Elendil. Great works of architecture spanned the city across multiple levels, though nearly three-thousand years of weather and abandonment have left much of it in ruin. Where once were beautiful gardens and tall spires now are pools of filth and decay and jagged ruined towers.

Monster play enhancements and new quests

• Play as a Troll
• Play as a Ranger
• Play as a Chicken
• Gain powerful new keep defenses
• Gain allies in keep assaults

New content:

• Three new Annúminas instances
• New Ered Luin reputation Dungeon
• New Barrow Downs reputation Dungeon
• More integrated Events: Ettenmoors Events, Annúminas Events (three)
• More special game Events: Trestlebridge Invasion, Ost Guruth Invasion, Tale of the Shipwrecked Mariners
• New Ettenmoors quests
• New Annúminas quests

New Areas:

• 6 Instances, 2 Public Dungeons, Annúminas Ruins Landscape

Quests:

• ~24 new Ettenmoors landscape quests
• 8 new Session Play quests
  • 2 types of Troll play quests
  • 2 types of Ranger play quests
  • 4 Chicken quests
• 30 new Annúminas landscape and dungeon quests
• 14 quest Epic Book 10 arc
• 16 new side quests
• 4 new Hunter Class quests
• 39 new reputation quests
• 7 new reputation vector quests

Classes

• Hunter Revamp
  • Additional Skills to round out the Hunter's non-combat skills
  • Improved single target DPS
  • More Traps
  • Tracking Improvements
  • New Travel skills

• Captain Revamp
  • Additional skills to boost the Captain's combat variety.
  • Banner Standards (instead of Herald)
  • Improvements to Herald appearance
  • Defensive Targeting

Keep Siege Enhancements

• Monster Play Events (numerous events open and close based on keep/POI ownership)
• Players can gain access to new keep defenses such as murder holes, arrow traps, and area of effect buffs.
• Both attacking and defending players have more option to call on the aid of ‘allies' as reinforcements.

Easy access to Monster Play

• Players can now enter as monster players directly from the character selection screen. No need to even log in as a player!

Reputation System

• Reputation can be earned with a number of factions in the game, each of which has its own set of unlocked rewards associated with it. The main rewards are vendor items, with secondary awards including access to a Reputation Lodge, and possible access to additional quest lines or dungeon spaces.
• Each Reputation is based in a particular hub, and has a specific set of trophies and crafting recipes associated with it.
• Reputation is earned primarily through Trophy drop turn-ins from landscape mobs, Crafting turn-ins, and in some cases via kills inside instances. In the case of trophy drops and crafted items, these are converted into reputation gains via turn-in quests available at the hub representing the faction.
• The Reputation system enables players to earn positive and negative standing with races/groups/affiliations based off of both monster kills and quest completion.
• The factions in Book 10 are:
  • Elves of Rivendell: The Elves of Rivendell have a great many matters of concern, but the aspect that the faction itself deals with is the recent intrusion of a group of hill-men and Angmarim who claim to be ancestors of the ancient kingdom of Rhudaur, and have moved into the ruins discovered in the Trollshaws and the Misty Mountains.
    • The Elves have no interest in seeing Angmar reconstruct its corrupt proxy kingdom from the wars of old, and are working to expel these unwanted intruders from the edges of their domain.
  • The Council of the North (Angmar): A small alliance of elite warriors and scholars who have taken their fight into the belly of the beast of Angmar, either out of necessity or great personal sacrifice & bravery.
    • This group is composed of rebel Angmarim Hill-men, Elves, Dwarves and Rangers. They fight not to assault Carn Dum directly, but to disrupt their war machine by launching attacks on their supply trains, gathering intelligence on their movements, and killing important personages when the opportunity arises.
  • Rangers of Esteldin: The Rangers of Esteldin stand athwart the main path of the advancing armies of Angmar, as such they are constantly making sorties against the orcish forces that have invaded the Northdowns.
    • They also wish to strike further afield, at the forces encamped in Fornost, and at the staging grounds in the Eastern Sulfer Swamps, and will support adventurers and warriors who are willing to take these dreadful risks.
    • Wardens of Annúminas are a specific branch of the Rangers who have long been tasked with protecting the ruined city of Annúminas, and the tombs of their ancestors from looters, robbers and other enemies of that ilk.
    • Recently they have become overwhelmed by the influx of bandits and the intrusion of powerful forces backed by Angmar into the city of Annúminas itself, and they are desperate for aid from any quarter that might help them dislodge the invaders from the city they have been sworn to defend.
  • The Longbeards of Thorin's Hall have had a relatively quiet existence since the expulsion of the Dourhands from Thorin's Hall. The recent discovery of the Dourhand's ancient city, renamed anew Sarnur, has caused many of the Longbeards concern.
    • With the blood-price set against the Dourhands not yet repaid, the Longbeards of Thorin's Hall are loathe to let the Dourhands begin construction on a fortified stronghold so near to their city.
  • The Men of Bree have recently had their peaceful existence disturbed by Black Riders, upsetting the quiet town and driving off animals. But trouble in Bree town is not the only thing that was stirred up. The captain of the Ringwraiths himself traveled to the barrow downs and began awakening things that should have remained sleeping.
  • The Mathom Society (Hobbits): The Hobbits of the shire enjoy many fine leisure activities when they are not so busy eating or growing food. One such activity is the collection of Mathoms, items that hobbits have no particular use for but hold onto anyway.
  • The Mathom Society are a group of hobbits dedicated to the collection of such items, and they scour the countryside in search of new items to add to their collection, when they aren't busy planning a mathom society dinner that is!

Barter System

• Players can use certain trophy drops to "purchase" cool new items. For example, a player visits a bartering NPC and sees, through vendor style UI, that this NPC will trade goods for trophies, coin, destiny points or a combination thereof. Action picker dialogue explains where the player can find the corresponding trophies and items for barter; bartering with an NPC is gated by reputation usage restriction. If a player has no trophies needed to barter, the rewards display but are grayed out.

Of Special Note

UI Scaling: Rejoice! Dry your squinting eyes, use that maximum resolution, and take your nose off the screen. UI scaling is here! There are a lot of new sliders in the UI Settings page of the options panel. Drag one and watch your excitement grow (or shrink)!

Level Challenge Ratings: All landscape and dungeons in the game now have a level challenge rating associated with them. If you enter a location that you do not meet the challenge rating for, the radar and billboard feedback for that area will be red. Players that are significantly below the challenge rating for an area or dungeon will now find monsters in those locations much more aggressive. Players that are significantly below the challenge rating for an area or dungeon will now be sent to their Map Home location upon defeat.

Expanded Vault Space: The vault can now be expanded, at a cost. The vault now has a number of locked bag slots that can be opened if you have achieved a certain level and have enough money, but will give you an additional 15 slots each time you upgrade!

Roleplaying Chat Channel: A new chat channel has been introduced to brighten the day of all of you role-players out there. Tired of OOC? Turn on the RP filter and type to your fellow RPers with /rpc! Like other public channels, the Roleplaying channel is regional.

Raid Locks: Raid locks are based on the leader now. The leader's raid lock must be equal to or greater then anyone elses in the raid. If his is not then the group **temporarily** will have to lend control to the highest lock (or one of is a few are equal) and then have someone enter the instance. This is because we now want the locks to meld together, and the easiest and less computational way is to pick a pivot point without computation... leader!

So, the leader's lock will dictate the raid lock and everyone will meet it if they can. Only subsets will be allowed. Ex1: Leader: 1, 3, 5 locks Fellow1: 1, 5 locks Fellow2: 1, 2, 3 This will fail because Fellow2 is not a valid subset of the leaders Ex2: Leader: 1, 3, 5 locks Fellow1: 1, 5 locks Fellow2: none This will succeed because Fellow1 has a valid subset and can inherit lock 3 now... Fellow2 will be automatically promoted since he has 0 for a lock tag.

Monster player Tribes: Monster Players may now create Tribes! See the Tribe Scrivener in Gramsfoot to buy your Charter. Please note: any tribes with less than 6 players will be disbanded (following the same rules as Player Kinships).

Crafting: Crafting has had a major pass and lots of tweaks! Jewellers can now make earrings and bracelets, for a total of 72 new jewellery pieces and 38 new recipes. Additionally there were lots of new recipes added for Hunter-only items, like Traps and Bow Chants. See the Crafting section for more details, and for an overview, please see this post.

In-game clock: The in-game day time indicator has been updated to have more gradations to the day. Each in-game day is now broken up into the following segments: Day: Dawn - Morning - Noon - Afternoon Dusk Night: Gloaming - Evening - Midnight - Late Watches - Foredawn. By breaking the day up in this fashion, you can better tell what part of the in-game day you are currently in.

But I want a pony!: If you have completed the "Proving Your Quality" race and have purchased a mount by accident that you do not want or cannot use, you are now in luck! Horse-master Éogar has a quest that allows you to swap your mount for a receipt that can be used to purchase a different mount. Once you have your receipt from Éogar, speak to Cam Applewood, Éogar's stablehand, to select a different mount.

Toggle Skills While Mounted: The following toggle skills will now remain active when mounted:

• Burglar: Track Treasure
• Champion: Glory, Fervour
• Guardian: Guardian's Threat, Guardian's Parry, Guardian's Defence
• Hunter: Stance Precision, Stance Strength, Stance Endurance
• Common Skills: Track Mines, Track Crops, Track Wood, Track Artifacts

Emotes: We've added 40 new emotes! /clap

User Interface: The UI team has been hard at work with more UI fixes and improvements!

Are we there yet? By popular demand, the "Return to Hobbiton" race trait has been changed to "Return to Michel Delving" (and that's exactly what it does!)

Holly Hornblower: The quest "A True Friend of Holly Hornblower" was not giving players the pie recipe when selected as a quest reward. Players who already have the pie recipe could not take it from their bank or learn the recipe. The recipe should now be usable and removable from the bank. If you previously completed the quest please talk to Holly again to get the Pie Recipe if you were unable to get it before.

Easier to play with your friends: Players can now use the quest NPC to join their fellowship in a private encounter once they accept all available quests from the NPC. For example, if someone in your fellowship has started the Weathertop Instance but you have not done any of the quests, once you accept the first quest from Candaith, you will get the option to enter the Weathertop Instance with your fellowship.