Update 12, Helm's Deep - November 20, 2013
Previous patch: Update 11.5, Official - October 14, 2013
Next patch: Update 12.0.1 - November 22, 2013 |
Update 12, Helm's Deep - November 20, 2013
Of Special Note
Western Rohan
Rohan's once-serene fields are fraught with gruesome evil among roaring fires that burn the pillaged lands. Heroes are needed to stand against fell deeds in these treacherous times. Five new areas in western Rohan have been added to the game. You can learn more in the Region Developer Diary.
The Epic story Continues
The White Hand moves to seize Edoras as Théoden King broods within the Golden Hall. Without their King the people of Rohan despair. Gandalf and his brave companions arrive at the capital as West Rohan falls under Saruman's control. The fate of the kingdom will be decided at Helm's Deep. You can learn more through the Quest Notes Developer Diary.
The tale is told through three new Epic Books!
Epic Battles
Stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Théoden King, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli as Helm's Deep thunders from the White Hand's fell army. Their only desire is Rohan's annihilation, and their only opposition stands atop the great and ancient Hornburg. Take on three new roles and battle through five epic spaces from Helm’s Dike to the final refuge of the Glittering Caves. Read the five part developer diaries for a full understanding of roles, challenges, and rewards.
Class Changes are here!
All classes have undergone significant revamps and trait trees have been introduced. Please take the time to review the changes and go through your trees and familiarize yourself with the system and changes. To help you understand the new system, Beta players compiled very comprehensive guides for each class. You can find them in the appropriate class forums.
- Burglar by bobhashum
- Captain by Belnavar
- Champion by Redit
- Guardian by Smartbean and Schinderhannes
- Hunter by Widoch
- Lore-master by Easca and PKCrichton
- Minstrel by bobhashum
- Rune-keeper by Eomon
- Warden by Redit.
Level to 95
All Characters may now advance from level 85 to level 95.
Stat Cap Adjustments
Stat Caps have been adjusted to account for the jump in item level and new gear stat-ings. As a temporary solution/bridge to these jumps, we have implemented intermediary stat caps as follows for Block, Parry, Evade, and Critical Chance:
- Level 1-50: 15%
- Level 51-84: 20%
- Level 85-95: 25%
At lower levels, rating contributions should remain relatively untouched, but as players approach level cap, they should notice a slightly decreased return of rating to percentage. We will be revisiting stat caps and rating contributions in the near future to allow for a much smoother transition throughout leveling.
Crafting Changes
Several important changes have been made to crafting in addition to a new Tier. Please be sure to read over the notes carefully.
It's the Little Things...
- Vault-keepers now sell bags of copper, silver, and gold coins. These bags of currency can be sent to other characters on the same world through Shared Storage, allowing you to share money without using the mail system.
- Housing Chests have undergone a transformation. They now function more like vaults and other storage and can be upgraded to 60 storage spaces via in-game gold and to 120 via Mithril. Kinship houses can be upgraded to 90 and 180 respectively. Personal housing chests will accept bound items from the account that purchased the house. Kinship housing chests will not allow bound items.
A thank you to our Fashion Bloggers from Aubergine
We would like to extend a very heartfelt thank you to the fashion bloggers that have so generously donated their outfit designs to the LOTRO Mannequins! Hymne of Cosmetic Lotro has contributed many of the beautiful designs you’ve seen throughout most of this year. In September, we began using the equally stunning designs from Starry of the Starry Mantle. I am constantly delighted and awed by the outfits both have created, and we are very grateful for their generous gift of allowing us to use their creative talent for our designs. Creating wonderful cosmetic outfits is a labor of love and takes an enormous amount of time. It has been a pleasure to use such beautifully and thoughtfully crafted designs in game. - Aubergine
A Special Thank you
To the Players Council and members of the Palantir private preview program
The number of changes to classes and the truly massive size of the Epic Battle system required a great deal of feedback and testing even before we entered the Beta cycle. Without your help and insights early in the process, taking on these challenges would have taken longer, caused far more sleepless nights, and resulted in a less polished final release. We thank you all for your assistance, your passion and for your dedication to helping us make The Lord of the Rings Online the best it can be. – The LOTRO Team
Release Notes
General
- Captains, Champions and Guardians can now wear heavy armor beginning at level 1.
- Guardians can use heavy shields beginning at level 1.
- Bows and crossbows can be used starting at level 7.
- Skirmish Marks and LIXP Runes have been added to Hobbit Presents.
- The female hobbit run, walk and jump animations have been updated to accommodate shields better.
- All level 85 armor and weapons that had an associated seal cost are now barterable for marks and medallions
- Bounders Bounty Tokens have been converted to Marks.
- Seals have been reset and converted to Marks and Medallions.
- Seals have been removed from all non-raid challenges.
- Travel rations are no longer required.
Classes
Burglar
- Provoke will no longer immediately break targets out of the Disabling Gamble it applies with Double Down.
Captain
- Grave Wound and Improved Grave Wound no longer apply additional threat when Cutting Attack's bleed is present. In addition, Improved Grave Wound always applies its damage over time effect.
- Battle-shout's range has been increased to 30m, up from 20m.
- Inspiriting Call is now available at level 20.
- Call to Arms: Archer is now available at level 26.
- Shadow's Lament now deals Light-type damage
- Withdraw and Fighting Withdrawal are now Immediate skills.
Champion
- Champions should now be able to equip crossbows.
Guardian
- Might's contribution to Tactical Mastery has been increased.
Hunter
- Focus and Improved Focus is no longer useable while moving.
Lore-master
- Combat Summoning has been removed from the game, as Lore-masters can now summon pets in combat a special ability is no longer needed.
- Lore-masters - a bunch of changes have been made to make the quests for cosmetic pets easier and more accessible. The quest is now bestowed directly by Radagast instead of the Class Trainer. The rabbit and turtle have been moved closer, and the Sparrow quest will now have a much longer time limit on it. At the end, the player may choose one of the three pets they helped.
The Ettenmoors
- Monster players now have access to 6 additional Corruption slots.
- Corruption set bonuses. Corruptions now provide various bonuses if 3 or 6 of the same corruptions are slotted.
- Monster players damage has been boosted by roughly 30%.
- Monster players morale has been greatly increased to compensate for the change in potency of their enemies.
- Monster player cooldowns have been reduced across the board to reflect the change in cooldowns for the class revamp.
Items
- Various quest items should now make a sound when used while in your inventory.
- Items - The Armour of the North Star set no longer gives Motivating Speech a Tactical Mitigation buff.
- Fixed the Ettenmoors Minstrel item set bonus that was supposed to increase power restore from Song of the Hammerhand by +3% to work correctly
- Jeweled Bell once again works when you are not on a horse. O_o
- Crafted Champion horns can now be used while moving.
- Crafted Champion horns are now consumable.
Crafting
- All lower level leather and wood forester recipes will now have a second processing step, similar to that in Tiers 7-9. The names have also been changed to be more consistent with those in the later tiers.
- Both Tier 1 and Tier 6 tin deposits and the recipes to make tin ingots have been removed. Tin ingots should now be available via the Supply vendor. Any tin ore that is still in player inventories will be able to be converted into copper ingots via the multi-output option on the copper ingot recipes.
- The scholar glass now has a decreased "researching" time similar to mining picks and forester axes.
- New vocation craft tools and corresponding recipes will be replacing the single craft tools/recipes in the lower level crafting tiers.
- All ingredient packs have been combined into one, the Universal Ingredient Pack, and are now paper items that go into your barter wallet.
- New processing recipes have been added for lower level jeweler, metalsmith, tailor, weaponsmith and woodworker professions.
- Components have been removed from metalsmith, tailor, weaponsmith and woodworker recipes. Any components that players have in their inventory can be turned back into useable crafting materials via auto-granted recipes listed in the crafting panel under Obsolete Item Conversion.
- Craftguild reputation items have had their reputation amounts adjusted.
- The crit chance bonus on the Scroll of Ages has been lowered.
Tier 6 crafting resources have also had the following changes made:
- There is now only one ore deposit found throughout the regions pertaining to this crafting tier: Khazad Skarn Deposit
- There is also only one wood and one hide: Ilex and Magnificent. Any mallorn wood or extraordinary hides that players still have in their inventories have been renamed and will be able to be converted into useable planks/leather via multi-output options on the wood and leather recipes.
Name changes to crafting materials no longer used:
- A Log of Mallorn Wood is now a Gnarled Ilex Branch that can be used to make Thin Ilex Planks.
- A Treated Mallorn Plank is now a Treated Ilex Wood that can be used to make Solid Ilex Planks.
- An Extraordinary Hide is now an Aged Extraordinary Hide and can be used to make Brushed Extraordinary Leather.
- A Tin Ore is now a Piece of Copper-infused Ore.
- A Khazad-tin Ore is now a Piece of Khazad Metal.
Mithril Services
- Lowered the rate of Mithril Repair to 2 Mithril Coins
- Due to popular demand, there are now Mithril Traders located in all of the post-new player racial starting areas. These vendors offer easy access to our more popular items for players just starting out.
- Mithril quest teleportation costs have increased slightly for Helm's Deep questing areas only.
User Interface
- Tooltips that referenced fractional duration less than one second should show the value correctly
- Fixed a bug causing player auras to not apply to their newly-summoned pets when the player is not in a fellowship
- Items that were intended to be uncommon landscape drops should now display as such in their icons
- Under-leveled on-equip effects have been pulled from new landscape gear
- Quest Guide Examination for monsters and items now includes information for underway deeds as well as underway quests.
Quest Guide
- Fixed a problem that was preventing quest guide from correctly pointing you to the destination of channeling quests.
Music System
- Loading music files to play (with /play “filename”) will now work properly on Mac.
Lua
Lua classes API changes:
- Burglar - removed mischief stance and the tier 3 critical response
- Champion - removed stances
- Guardian - removed stances
- Hunter - removed Fleet stance
- Runekeeper - removed GetWinterstormLevel, GetMasterOfTragedyLevel, GetMasterOfConnotationLevel, GetMasterOfAllusionLevel
- Warden - removed Recklessness and Way of the Warden stances
Helm’s Deep Known Issues
Note: The majority of issues listed below are currently slated to be addressed in Update 12.1
Epic Battles
The following Secondary Quests are currently unavailable.
- Deeping Coombe – Prepare to Fall Back, A Pillage Denied
- Glittering Caves – Bombs and Bats, Cave In
- Hornburg – Final Blockade
- Helm’s Dike 6-man – A Stone Obstruction, Guarding the Watchtower
Promotions - Vanguard combat skills are missing audio and visual effects
Items
- Several Gear Set Bonuses are not functioning correctly.
Relics
- Level 85 and 95 Sealed Devices of Potency are granting Device of Protection when deconstructed.
Legendary Items
- Several legacies are unable to be extracted, including Champion Minor Class Legacy:Strikes Line Power Cost and Major Class Legacy:Strike Skill Power Cost, Rune-keeper Minor Weapon Legacy:Chill of Winter Damage and Minor Class Legacy:Frost Damage, and Warden Major Melee Legacy:Light Damage and Minor Class Legacy:Light-type Damage
Legendary Item Legacies
- Hunter - AoE Skills Maximum Targets legacy isn't applying to Cry of the Hunter skill
- Rune-keeper - Chill of Winter Debuff Duration legacy is not applying to Flurry of Words skill
Quests
- Broadacres - Brigands in the Wild - Waves won't spawn if attempting to speak to Frithild immediately after someone has completed the waves
- Kingstead - A Summons to Magla - Magla will be phased out before the quest is completed if you've already started the Middlemead quest arc
- Westfold - Session: Let's Take the Hornburg! - Instance is locked.
Classes
Champion
- Furious Swings set bonus is not applying +30% Blade Skill Damage to Blade Wall and Blade Storm skills
Guardian
- Vicious Rebuttal does not increase the duration of Redirect
Hunter
- Several skills cause the player character to sink slightly into the ground when used while moving; this includes Barrage, Blood Arrow, Exanguinate, and Penetrating Shot
- Master Trapper references Set Trap and Snake Bite instead of Triple Trap and Piercing Trap
Lore-master
- Dispel Corruption does not remove tiered corruptions
- Loyalty is not applying a heal when it procs
Rune-keeper
- Improved Final Word is not dispelling tiered corruptions
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