Update 31 - Wednesday November 10, 2021

Update 31 Release Notes

Here are the release notes for Update 31: Fate of Gundabad, released on Wednesday, November 10th, 2021.

Of Special Note:

Fate of Gundabad is now available!

Prince Durin and his allies have regrouped to prepare their final offensive on Gundabad to reclaim their ancestral home from the corruption of the Orcs, hobgoblins, and Angmarim who lurk within. Our newest expansion is now available! Get the expansion in the LOTRO Market, read more about the Story So Far on LOTRO.com, and read our FAQ! Reclaim the once mighty citadel of Máttugard, uncover the hallowed lake of Gloomingtarn, clear the overgrown ruins of Clovengap, and push back the corruption to return beauty to the Pit of Stonejaws. Venture beyond Gundabad to the bleak vale of Câr Bronach, where the easternmost marches of the fallen witch-kingdom of Angmar once stood, or travel to the windswept crags of Welkin-lofts along the western slopes of the mountain. Fate of Gundabad also includes a level cap increase to 140!

The Legacy of Durin and the Trials of the Dwarves

Experience the epic climax of the Legacy of Durin story! Achieve victory and Gundabad will belong to the dwarves once and forever more.

The first two new quests of The Legacy of Durin and the Trials of the Dwarves will allow you to enter Gundabad! Be sure you have completed Chapter 4.9, "The Lord of Gundabad," and then speak with Prince Durin inside Annak-khurfu (Elderslade) or Zarkul-sulun (in the War of Three Peaks) to begin Chapter 5.1, "Many Masters."

News and Notes:

Allegiances

• In addition to the Longbeards, the Zhélruka Dwarves of the East have an ancestral claim to Gundabad and the surrounding lands. In the new Zhélruka Allegiance, based out of the Hall of Vérnozal in Gundabad, brave heroes pledge their loyalty to Prince Ingór and the Zhélruka Clan, as they seek to reclaim the Three Peaks for all Dwarves. Once pledged to the Zhélruka Clan, Prince Ingór and those loyal to him will need assistance completing Missions to aid in their goals in Gundabad.
• Allegiances now have their own in-game panel. The new Zhélruka Allegiance is the first scaling Allegiance, available for all players, levels 20 and up. The new Zhélruka Allegiance contains 30 levels, with 10 narrative quests, and over 35 Missions. To get started:
  • Go to Character > Allegiances in the Start (^) menu
  • Click the Zhélruka tab (the panel UI is a work in progress)
  • Click 'Join'
  • Travel to the Hall of Vérnozal in Máttugard, and speak to Prince Ingór
• Once you have joined an Allegiance with the Zhélruka Clan you will have access to an all-new set of Missions! After completing the quest "Chapter 1: The Rightful Claim" from Prince Ingór, you can access these new missions from the Scout-masters near the Mission Recruiter Stable-masters in the Hall of Vérnozal.
• The amount of Allegiance Points it takes to complete Mordor Allegiances has been lowered. This update will not affect any Allegiance that is currently underway. This will only affect Allegiances that have yet to be joined.

Classes

• Brawlers can now use Mathom-hunter's Armour selection packages to select a level appropriate piece of heavy armour.
• The Brawler toggle skills, Aggressive Posture and Defensive Posture, should no longer be cancelled when the Brawler is stunned.
• The Buglar's Bob and Weave and Relish Battle heals now scale with the Burglar's maximum health.
• Some adjustments have been made to a few Champion skill proc effects behind the scenes to make them less lag inducing. No changes have been made to the benefits of the skills themselves.
• Hunter - Reduced Quick Shot skill damage back to where it was before the Legendary Item changes of Update 30.3.
• The Hunter's Precision Stance Critical Magnification bonus has been reduced (+45%->20%).
• Corrected an issue with the Guardian's "To the Rescue" automatic crit effect.
• Corrected an issue with the Lore-master's "Critical Coordination" automatic crit effect.
• Updated several Lore-master skills to allow movement while casting (some may cause skating until the animations can be fully updated).
• Updated several Lore-master pets with difficulty system properties that they were missing.
• The Minstrel Skill "Call to Greatness" now grants Brawlers Power and Mettle regeneration.
• The Minstrel's Hammerhand Self bubble base value has been increased to 80% of maximum morale. Minstrel survivability against burst damage is generally weaker than other classes, so this change will give Minstrels a better window of survivability when they get rushed by multiple opponents in solo play, or have to weather a major attack in group play.
• Captain - Master of War stacking crit chance buff now works properly for Ranged and Tactical skills.
• The Captain skill 'Cutting Attack' now has its own animation to distinguish it from other Captain skills that were using the same animation.

Crafting

• Apprentice Cooks can now prepare a number of different fish into "Fish Fillets," which are used in Gundabad crafting.
• Crafted Captain Armaments should now have proper Herald +Armour stats for crafting tiers 11 - 14. Tiers 11-14 Herald Armaments now also grant a small amount of outgoing healing to the equipping Captain.

Deeds

• The Halls of Night Deed, Raising Spirits, no longer requires minimum level 65 and can now be completed on Legendary worlds as long as your character is at the current level cap.
• The Brawler skills "Helm-crusher" and "Mighty Upheaval" now count towards completion of the deed "Crowd Control."

Items

• Item Experience runes have been added to many non-repeatable Gundabad quests and other rewards temporarily since the new reward track is not yet available. This will make sure players do not lose their quest awarded item experience.
• Legendary Items can now be reforged to item level 465.
• Heritage Runes and other items that grant item XP now have minimum usage levels commensurate with the XP they grant.
• Vendors no longer offer enhancement runes for Embers.
• Bumped the tactical damage bonus on new Legendary Items by 10% to bring them more in line with the bump that physical damage weapons received earlier.
• Level 121-130 Coffers of Adventurer's gear have been renamed as Faded Coffers of Adventurer's gear.
• Adventurer's Steel-Bound Lootboxes now require level 131 or higher to open.
• Adventurer's lootbox gear for level 131-140 characters should now appropriately be item level 450 - 457.
• Adventurer's lootboxes should now occasionally and correctly drop from level 131-140 monsters.
• Adventurer's and Traveller's Steel-bound lootboxes contain new "Heartwood" cosmetic items including avatar cosmetics, cosmetic pets, housing items, and a steed and matching war-steed appearances. These items are also available on Myrtle Mint for Figments of Splendour.
• The Legendary Item Box now correctly offers these previously absent legendary weapons: Beorning Great Axe, Hunter Axe, Rune-keeper Fire Stone, and Rune-keeper Lightning Stone.
• The Speckled Shell Fragment is now correctly tagged as an ingredient, and will go into Crafting Carry-alls.
• Some weapons, most notably the Bow of the Eglan-provider, now correctly decrease rather than increasing induction times.
• Armour Stats should now look more consistent between their tooltips and the socketing interface.
• More deprecated Legendary Item remnants have been taken out of reward and barter profiles, and in many cases replaced with relevant items.

Localization

• The "Class" in the Wildwood Title awarded by the Deed: Quests in the Wildwood now correctly displays in French and German.

PvMP

• Warleader and Reaver melee skills have been increased to have a 5.2 meter range to be on equal footing with Champions and Guardians.
• One-shotters have been added to Glan Vraig.
• The "backdoors" to the Keeps in the Ettenmoors have been removed.
• Vitality PvMP Essences have been temporarily removed to address balance concerns.
• Audacity has been reworked to provide more significant bonuses and to make it a soft requirement for PvMP. We want to move away from players being required to do high end raiding to attain PvMP viable gear, and at the other end of the spectrum, we don't want PvMP gear to be best in slot across the board for PvE, so this is where Audacity comes in. Here are the changes:
  • Legacy gear will retain its audacity, but it will be suboptimal.
  • 25 Ranks of Audacity have been added, up from 25 to 50.
  • The damage bonus is now multiplicative instead of additive, so it will increase all damage.
  • The damage bonus now scales from 2% to 50% at ranks 25 to 50 (was 1% to 25%, from 1 to 25).
  • Incoming Damage reduction has been removed.
  • Crowd Control duration reduction scales to -60% by rank 31 (was rank 25).
• We are introducing several new gearsets to be released in line with PvE content. These may be purchased from the respective armor quartermasters in Glan Vraig. Most pieces will have lower stats overall than a PvE ilevel equivalent, however the audacity damage bonus should make up for this. The base sets are intentionally not itemized perfectly, however higher tier sets have more optimal statting.
  • The first set is purchasable with Gold, with the higher sets purchased with commendations.
  • These sets all have Audacity on them, the baseline set has 25.
  • Audacity Jewelry has been added.
  • Higher tiers of gear have Essence slots for PvE-only essences.
• PvMP Rank cloaks have been updated to level 140. If you have already purchased a rank cloak, it should automatically update.
• There is a new type of essence, called Essences of War, which are PvMP exclusive. These may be purchased from the Coldfells Quartermaster in Glan Vraig. These may only be slotted in PvMP gear and can be bought rather cheaply for commendations. These will be released in waves with PvE content and will be Rank gated.
• The Warleader's Mobilize has been buffed to 55% (from 35%).
  • This change was introduced as a first step for lower mobility in the moors. One issue we are hoping to curb is mass amounts of creeps mapping into hot zones. By adding more conventional mobility skills we want to encourage more roaming on foot over maps. Future plans revolve around removing some of the maps creep side, and introducing more skills like this one to establish parity with Freep mounts.
• Akúlhun's Brand of the Tyrant has been changed to a 1 minute cooldown (from 2 minutes) with 5 seconds of immunity (from 10 seconds). It also no longer requires a rank (from rank 15). The cost has been changed to 2,000 commendations (from 5,000).
  • This was changed to offer creeps a consistent CC break to match that of their Freep counterparts. Every Freep class already has a breakout skill on a 1 minute cooldown, and several of them have immunity skills as well. Furthermore, until audacity is updated Creepside the Freeps have higher innate Crowd Control duration reduction
• Lainedhal's Insignia of the Captain-General has been changed to a 10 minute cooldown (from 2 minutes), with 5 seconds of immunity (from 10 seconds). The other rank 11-14 brands have had their cooldown set to 10 minutes.
  • This item was toned down to help combat the problem above. We still want classes that don't have immunity skills a way out in sticky situations, however we don't want this popped in tandem with their other Crowd Control breaks and immunity.
• All Creep skills and corruptions have been reduced to less than rank 5, with the exception of appearances.
• Fixed an issue where Freep people could attain Monster potions, and use them outside of the Ettenmoors.
• An arena has been added to the Southwest corner of the Ettenmoors.
• Freep gear has had its Rank requirements reduced.
• Outgoing Healing has been added to Freep Audacity.
• Defiler healing has been reduced across the board by about 10%.

Quests and Adventure Areas

• Cleaned up the Quest Guide situation for 'Ayorzen, Twice-Imprisoned' in the Black Book of Mordor.
• You can now join up to 15 private encounters per hour (increased from 10).
• You can now add up to 75 entries to your Housing Permissions panel.
• Adjusted the name of the Scholar's Abode in Erebor for accuracy.
• The Sentinel's Challenge quests in "The Battle of Lórien" should now always be available and no longer requires server activity to unlock.
• The Instances "Eyes of Edoras" and "A Need for Words" will now have their correct categories in the quest journal.
• Starter Third Age Legendary Items granted by the quest "Chapter 9: A Weapon of the Elder Days" can now be destroyed to remove them from your inventory.
• Changed the names of each chapter for 'Further Adventures - Bilbo' to more properly sort in the Available Quests list.
• Added a bell-ringing sound effect for the bell in the 'Chapter 6: A Mortal Gift' Allegiance quest.
• Mithril travel has been added to some quests in Volume IV, Book 1 where it was not previously available.
• Adjusted the prerequisites for Volume V, Book 1, Chapter 1: 'A Real Adventure' to keep it from bestowing twice.
• The rare Great-bat Muzbuk in Azanulbizar no longer enters an anti-exploit mode at certain locations.

Traits

• You can now spend up to 98 class trait points. Reaching level 140 will award one class trait point.

UI

• The External Store UI option will now allow you to open the LOTRO Store in a separate window in your default system browser. If you are experiencing difficulties using Paypal as a payment options, please try changing this setting to use the External Store option.
• When the in-game store is set so that it uses your system browser, the "No" button has been updated to "Cancel" to reduce confusion.
• Many of the ratings and gear values in the game have been rounded up to the 3rd significant digit for readability.

Known Issues

• Numerous new items from Fate of Gundabad do not yet have their French or German translations.
• Brawler mounted combat stances currently expire after 9 seconds out of combat.
• Some drakes in "Mission: Stepping into the Drearspire" are missing a summoning animation.
• Angmarim in "Mission: Lay to Rest" don't always have death animations or sound effects.
• The quest "Ancient Guide" is missing its quest guide.
• Burgler loot tables for monsters from level 131 - 140 currently only have potions.
• Akhaldarag in the Pit of Stonejaws has some inaccurate minimap data.
• Champion's Merciful Strike skill is incorrectly benefitting from the "Fury of Blades" Tracery.
• Some parts of Deepscrave don't line up 1:1 with the game map - it appears as though you're off the map when you are actually on the map.
• "Epic: A Weapon of the Elder Days" currently offers a Champion weapon to Guardians.
• If your inventory overflow is full and you attempt to unslot an individual Tracery, the game erroneously lets you.
• Brawler's Battle Fury skill doesn't get the damage bonus when used at maximum Mettle.
• It is not currently possible to complete the quest "Awakening" in Gloomingtarn.
• The remote bestowed quests in "Mur Shatraug" complete automatically when objectives have been met; despite not having a completion event, you can see what your rewards are in the chat box.
• Missions:
  • Defeating Fell Spirits is not advancing the Slayer Deed in the mission "Lay to Rest".
  • The mission reward chest is not spawning at the end of the mission "Raging Frost".
  • Mithril Travel takes you to an area you need to map out of in the Quest "Flight to Grumachath".

Source

• English
• French
• German