Instance

Instances are sections of the game separated out of the main world for quests or story-telling as public dungeons, private fellowship, solo dungeons, skirmishes or massive raids.

For a category of all see: Category:Instances.
May be entered via the Instance Finder window. Examples: Great Barrow: The Maze, Glinghant, Urugarth.

Use the Template:Infobox Instances

Separate copy of a building's interior, a dungeon, or some piece of the game's landscape. Instances are created when certain quests are activated or players pass through an instance portal, and allow an individual, Fellowship or Raid to participate in a private adventure. Generally, instances can only be entered by the individual or group that triggered them, and no outside help can be rendered to those within an instance by other adventurers.
Allow game developers a greater ability to customize the details of an adventure, including things like weather, events and terrain. The use of Instances means that multiple groups can enjoy highly immersible adventures at the same time without interfering with each others' completion of the quests, or triggering conflict over scarce resources or monsters needed to complete them.

Instance Types

The instanced types found in the game can be summarized into five categories. An instance could be more then one of these.

Quest Instances

These instances are only accessible when one or more members of the fellowship have the corresponding quest. They are usually short (5 minutes to 1 hour), very scripted and linear, and the bosses that may be found there do not drop any loot above the uncommon quality (with very rare exceptions). Some require a full fellowship, while others are solo. Some are scaled by level of the player, but not all. The real reward for completing these is from the quest.

World Instances

This type of instance is not found as often in LOTRO as its quest counterpart, and requires a small or full fellowship if everyone is within the recommended level. World Instances have many quests that lead within, deeds, can be completed and repeated, and contain boss encounters that generally drop rare quality and better loot.

Raids

The larger counterpart of World Instances, they are designed for two to four full fellowships of players, and are always raid locked. Completing a boss encounter almost always yields at least one teal-quality item.

Public Dungeons or Public Instances

While they may at first appear to be world instances, this type of instanced location is open to anyone to enter. This means that the separate players and groups that enter will end up in the same instance. Due to the large amount of players that can enter, these are not scalable, mob respawn rates are exponentially faster than in a different instance type. Bosses tend to respawn at a very slow rate, and fighting them usually requires less coordination than a world instance boss.

Skirmishes

Introduced with the Siege of Mirkwood expansion, skirmishes allow players of levels 20 and above to instantly enter into combat from anywhere in Middle-earth alongside their Soldier. Level, location and difficulty of the skirmish are all predetermined by the player (scalable), and can be adjusted for solo, duo, small fellowship, fellowship and raid group sizes. The battles usually have five different phases and take between 30-90 minutes per completion. The rewards are primarily Marks, which can be traded in to NPCs at Skirmish Camps for a variety of rewards.

Epic Battles

Epic Battles, which were first introduced in the Helm's Deep expansion, are different from other instances in that any player levels 10 and up can start them, provided they own the expansion. This type of Instance automatically levels the player up to level 100, along with their current skills, temporarily. These Instances are designed for large-scale battles and require the player to take on different tasks such as commanding a group of soldiers or firing artillery. Epic Battles will automatically assign you a random quest or two during the battle, though it does consider whether you are playing solo or in a group when it assigns the quest.

For a list of quests leading into instances, see Instance Quests.