Update 15.1 - December 15, 2014

Update 15.1 Release Notes

Of Important Note: Essence changes

Some Essences available in Central Gondor were too powerful when equipped in multiples. Therefore, they have been made "Unique Use". You can only have one of any particular unique use essence equipped on your character at a time. In order to clean up the players who already have multiples of a unique use essence equipped, two changes have been made:

1. When a player logs in for the first time after Update 15.1, if they have more than one of a unique use essence socketed in all their equipment, any armor or jewelry with that essence will be unequipped and placed in their inventory (going to overflow if inventory is full). The player will also get chat notification telling them that this happened.
2. When a player tries to equip a piece of equipment, the game will check whether the item has multiples of a unique use essence. If so, the player will not be able to equip that armor or jewelry, and all instances of the duplicated unique use essence will be removed and placed into the player’s inventory. (Going to overflow if inventory is full). Note: this will only happen as long as the player has no other item with a matching unique use essence already equipped.

General

• Players arriving by stable-master in Ethring should no longer get attacked when another player is in the quest In Ethring's Defence
• Ettenmoors guards which used to attack low-level scaled-up players have been given a talking-to
• Moved the default position of the "Quest Actions Available" button to be higher, so it no longer overlaps the quest tracker text. It now hides the coordinates of your current location, but that seems like a better place to be.
• Several non-stance toggle skills, such as Reveal Weakness can now persist across the player mounting up, although their effects are suppressed while the player is
• Trait point rewards in the deed log now show an icon
• You can now use "Track Nearby Quests" in interior locations
• It should now be more difficult for players to become out of sync with their mounts when riding.
• Boxes that allow you to select one item, such as the new legacy scroll box now regenerate their contents when you open them.
• Fixed a problem where players could be charged Mithril Coins for repair item services while they were incapacitated that wouldn't do anything. Now you can't repair the item while dead.
• Made it possible for some names in examination tooltips to use smaller fonts, to avoid getting cut off
• Players should no longer stutter when walking.
• The launcher stopped downloading new in-game splash screens, it will start downloading them again! The launcher stopped performing the "install pre-requisites" stage, it will once again install missing pre-requisites.

Beornings

• Mounted Combat: - Motivation Through Aggression was giving its effect to Slash twice, this should not be the case anymore.
• Mounted Combat: - Fixed issue with Beornings Ferocious Roar buff allowing all auto-attacks to critically hit while the buff is active.
• Mounted Combat: - Resolved issue that wasn't properly granting the Beornings skills for completing the introductory quest
• Mounted Combat: Everlasting Focus should now affect Dash and Coax. Also added to the tooltip to notify the player that this trait does not affect healing effects.
• Mounted Combat: Medium Bridle's damage over time pulse legacy should now affect all Beorning damage over time effects.
• Beornings should now be able to use keep back doors in Ettenmoors.
• Many of the Beorning’s skills were incorrectly labeled as melee skills when they were in fact tactical skills.
• Iorelen's Camp should now have a barter vendor that sells Beorning specific Rift gear.
• Out-of-Combat Wrath Decay legacy should now lower the amount of wrath drained instead of increasing it.
• Fellowing with a Beorning that isn’t nearby should no longer cause a Power meter to display in their Fellowship vitals display.
• Beorning Trainers should no longer appear to sell Burglar Class Items.
• Reaching zero Wrath in man form should no longer prompt the player with an effect notifying them they are about to switch into man form.
• Many heals and buffs were breaking target’s stealth when used on an ally. This should not be the case anymore.
• Resolved an issue where Expose Weakness was not properly refreshing itself if already present on the player.
• Fixed Grimbeorn's Strength bonus for Cleanse that was not properly reducing the cooldown of the skill when used on your marked target.
• Resolved an issue that was causing Grimbeorn's Strength to remove the tooltip info of Sacrifice.
• Relentless Maul should now properly damage players in spars.
• Relentless Maul - Relentless Maul should now more consistently deliver 8 pulses (or 4 with Brutal Energy trait). Previously the last pulse would sometimes be missed.
• There's now a Beorning video that you can play when making a new Beorning using the "play movie" button.
• Wrath tooltips in the character panel now show the out of combat decay rate.
• Beornings: You can now fish in the Vales of Anduin
• NPC Beorning Trainers show up on the Map now
• Relaxed naming restrictions surrounding "-beorn", which is now a legal character name suffix.
• Beornings can now access certain pedestals during the fight with Zholuga in Dar Narbugud.
• Beornings can now use the Dagger of the Eglan-soldier or the Axe of the Eglan-vanguard. There is also a new 2 Handed Club for Beornings to acquire.
• Relentless Maul Damage Legacy should now properly increase the damage of Relentless Maul.
• Beornings should now look less awkward when jumping.
• Monster Play - Beornings should now get Battlefield Promotions

Rune-keeper

• Fixed issue regarding Rune of Restoration's trait making mentioning of a max rank that was no longer present.
• Rune-stones should now properly damage players in spars.
• Glorious Foreshadowing Duration Legacy should now properly increase the duration of Glorious Foreshadowing.

Champion

• Essence of the Red Storm's bleed should no longer override Rend's bleed.

Lore-master

• Lore-master bear pets no longer roar out of combat

Armor, Items and Gear

• Hytbold gear should now use the proper appearances for Beornings.
• Hytbold gear should now properly be Bind On Account for Beornings.
• Fixed issue with Hytbold 4-set bonuses display on gear. Some sets had no information while others were showing incorrect information.
• Beorning Erebor and Greater Erebor armor sets should now be available at all Skirmish Camps.
• Proc Essences - Proc Essences from Central Gondor which restore % Morale upon a successful Evade now have a 20 second cooldown

Epic Battles, Quests and Instances

• Gondor - Endgame - Retaking Dol Amroth - Docks: Mobs no longer fall off the boat
• Western Gondor - Endgame - Bait Ball: Fail timer increased from two minutes to five minutes.
• Addressed a flaw in Epic Battles interactables (e.g. siege weapons and barricades) that could result in incorrect player state after their current target is destroyed. This would manifest as a General Error and an inability to interact with a different object.
• Central Gondor -- Dor-en-Ernil -- You must now complete Rallying a Defence before entering the instance "Blood for Blood" at the end of the Dor-en-Ernil quest line.
• Helegrod -- Drake Wing -- Completing the challenge properly awards seals and medallions again.
• Deeping Wall -- It is now possible to achieve a platinum medal on Securing the Culvert again, and laborers once again have haste as an action.
• Deeping Wall -- Shells in the Air -- Items related to the secondary and the medals on the mini-map are now the proper color.
• Ground targeting reticles displayed while interacting with Epic Battle siege weapons should no longer erroneously disappear over certain geometry.
• Lebennin - Instance: Sons of the Usurper - Half-trolls from the non-instanced version of the camp will no longer be present in the instance space.
• Lebennin - Instance: Sons of the Usurper - If you are defeated in the instance, you will now retreat to the entrance of Hata Kebir inside the instance instead of being ported out to a rally circle near Linhir.
• Western Gondor -- Jajax should no longer spawn underground.
• Dol Amroth -- Death from Above -- Added text insisting that you use the flag item on the spotters before defeating them. Also dramatically reduced the cooldown on the flag item.
• Epic Battles -- Helm's Deep -- Deeping Wall -- Various interactive objects now reference the proper quest, banner colors on the mini-map have been corrected, and objects no longer clip into walls/decorations
• Quartermaster's Rewards now being granted for ALL Helm's Deep battles & secondaries.
• Fixed a problem with how the "completion percentage" was calculated. The problem made the completion percentage be too high, and allowed you to get over 100% completion on the quests, which would lead to getting too much merit.
• Ringló Vale - Ruthless Archers now have ranged attacks
• Central Gondor - Instance: A Commanding Knock - fixed issue where Borhador sometimes is not visible
• Ered Luin - Deed: Scouting the Dourhands - objective 'Find Spire of Kheledul' should work again
• Action buttons on Epic Battle interactives should no longer become 'stuck' and unusable under certain conditions.
• 'The Doorward' session could get into an unstable state if you chose Retreat Now, so that button has been removed.
• Adjusted Ofolmóth's transformation during 'The Skin-changer's Heritage'
• Plugged in the new version of the Gondor Tall Candelabra Endgame Reward
• The instance, 'A Need for Words' is now completeable for Beornings.
• Rhus Cornchuthur, in the Gloomglens in Enedwaith, will now speak to Beornings.
• The fighting animations should now play properly during the 'Instance: Hatred of Bear and Man' instance.

Pelargir

We are pleased to announce that a Fellowship version of Retaking Pelargir is now available! The fellowship version of Retaking Pelargir features two new secondaries: The Ship-slaves and The Thrice-blown Horn. Additionally, all Epic Foes have been re-statted for group challenge.

• In Retaking Pelargir, secondary objectives now contribute towards total merit of primary battle. Log messages now display the points at which merit is updated during battle.
• The timing of Kisung Teng's arrival has been made more reliable
• Time required to earn merit on all Epic Foe secondaries has been significantly reduced.
• A failure objective for Retaking Pelargir has been rephrased from "The Great Gate must open" (a bit vague) to "The Gate Winch must survive" (hopefully much clearer)
• Some bad entrance animations at the end of the battle have been fixed
• The Army of the Dead now glows prettily when they enter Pelargir the same way they do at piers
• Fixed a bug where some enemies in the middle of the city keep spawning after the pillagers are supposed to have been routed
• City guards are a little sturdier than they used to be
• Pelargir Rings have been re-statted so that they are no longer missing some stat value and that they are not identical.
• Siege weapons in Pelargir will now build at a normal & reasonable rate
• Winch no longer (subtly) spontaneously combusts when the great gate is opened
• In Parade of Thieves (Fellowship Edition), the Pillagers are heartier and and move faster
• At the Piers, before Aragorn arrives, there are more waves of enemies and the secondaries are more staggered
• Aragorn's voice can FINALLY be heard summoning the dead to fulfill their oaths
• Retaking Pelargir map notes are now correctly colored for secondary quests, and never overlap other secondaries
• In retaking Pelargir, Zagarôth now has a renewable supply of friends to help beat you down
• When enemies clear out as Aragorn arrives at the end should be cleaner and more timely than it had been
• The winch wheels now stop turning when the gate has been opened
• Secondaries in Retaking Pelargir now have useful information, rather than the completely wrong "Completed"
• The Fellowship version of Retaking Pelargir yields superior victory boxes that come with higher drop rates of good stuff, plus an exclusive surprise.

Mac

• The help page and /bug should now load correctly on OSX
• OSX: Drop-down menus now work in the in-game browser

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Source:

https://forums-old.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?560718-Update-15-1-Release-Notes