Update 32 - Wednesday February 16, 2022

Update 32 Release Notes

Here are the Release Notes for Update 32: Rangers and Ruins, released on Wednesday, February 16th, 2022.

Of Special Note:

The Hiddenhoard of Abnankâra Raid arrives soon!

"Beyond the falls of Amgaruslun in the Clovengap lies Abnankâra, the Hiddenhoard. Once an ancient treasury wrought in secret by Mótsog and the Greymauls during their rebellion against the Longbeards in the Elder Days, it has become the lair of Hrímil Frost-heart, a dreaded cold-dragon of Morgoth. Within this frozen retreat, Hrímil tends her wounds and slumbers, dreaming of vengeance upon Prince Durin and the dwarves of the Gabil'akkâ..."

• The Hiddenhoard of Abnankâra will initially be available to play on both Tier 1 and Tier 2 difficulties, with Tiers 3-5 unlocking in the weeks to come! The raid will open at Noon Eastern (-5 GMT) on Thursday, February 24th, 2022.
• In addition to three exciting new boss encounters, including the final confrontation between Durin and Hrímil Frost-heart, this raid also features new rewards, a suite of new deeds, and new, time-limited titles for completing Tier 3, Tier 4, and Tier 5!
• The Hiddenhoard of Abnankâra is available to all players who have purchased Fate of Gundabad and reached Level 140. Talk to Prince Durin at Zidir-nesad, the Steepset in Mount Gundabad to begin the quest to discover the Hiddenhoard! It is recommended, but not required that you complete the tale of The Legacy of Durin and the Trials of the Dwarves before entering the Hiddenhoard of Abnankâra.
• The Leading the Charge Deed is available to earn until 3:00 AM Eastern (-5 GMT) on April 21st, 2022.

Now Available: Erebor Housing!

One of Smaug’s last treasure hoards has been opened and the Dwarves of Erebor have moved to reclaim it! Join them in owning a piece of Middle-earth, in the Great Hall under the Mountain.

New premium player and kinship housing is now available in Erebor! To learn more and tour the available homes, visit Gárthi Lockwarden in the Broker's Office in Bree as well as within Erebor in Tumnu-dûm, The Dwelling-halls NOTE: Players can own as many personal premium homes as they wish, but Kinships can only own one premium house. Erebor Housing includes:

• Twelve Base Premium Houses, one Special Base Premium House, six Deluxe Premium Houses, and one Premium Kinship House!
• A full suite of Town Services and social spaces for you to enjoy with your kinship and neighbors!
• New exterior music and Ambient Environment hook types to allow you even more customization options for your homes!
• Swimmable gold coins!
• Life-sized chess/checker boards

Introducing: The Legendary Items Reward Track!

The Legendary Items Reward Track is now available to all players starting at level 45! This track can be accessed through the Menu (Character → Reward Track). As you play the game and collect Item XP it'll progress the track throughout the season, and if you get all the way to the end there is a repeatable goal for more rewards! We'll refresh the track every season, and the frequency, drop rate, and kind of rewards will change over time. The Legendary Items Reward Track is Account-based, so all of your characters on each world will contribute to the Rewards track, and you can select the rewards on whatever character you prefer. Read more in an article about the Legendary Items Reward Track on LOTRO.com.

The Angle of Mitheithel is available to explore!

Stretching south from the Trollshaws to the junction of the Bruinen and Mitheithel rivers is a wild land of rocky hills and deep pine-woods, and a graveyard of ancient kingdoms. The ruins of Elves and Men alike crumble among the trees, and the Rangers steal through the shadows of the trees, ever watchful, carrying out secret assignments as the north grows more dangerous by the day. The Angle of Mitheithel is a new area for levels 40 to 45.

The Angle of Mitheithel is free to VIPs and available in the LOTRO Store under the Quest Pack called "Rangers and Ruins".

News and Notes:

Classes

• Beorning
  • Relentless Maul can no longer be used while moving. The skill would instantly fire and cancel, and there were some other unintended behaviors.
  • Base form of Relentless Maul now counts as a healing skill, as it can be modded with the Yellow line heal effect.
  • Desperate Shout's buff is now visible again.
• Burglar
  • Purge Corruption can now crit.
  • Hedge Your Bet now heals 5% per pulse on all rolls. It now has a 15-30% chance of applying on each attack, based on the roll.
  • The bleed on the Blue raid set has been reduced.
  • Honed Wit now properly increases Burglar damage over time.
• Brawler
  • Brawlers who complete the class quest "Brawling Lessons" will now receive a new title, "Fearsome Fists", in addition to the existing title. This title will be awarded retroactively to Brawlers who have already completed the quest.
  • Changed the builder attacks to all have an animation time of 0.75 seconds. Previously varied from 1.0 to 1.5 depending on the builder.
  • Come at Me has been buffed. Taunt radius increased (7->12) and base targets increased (3->5).
  • Weather Blows can now be used in motion.
  • The range of Strike Towards the Sky has been increased from 2.5 meters to 3.5 meters.
  • All group buff effects smaller than 10 meters have been expanded to 10 meters.
  • All attack AOE's shorter than 7 minutes have been extended to 7 minutes.
  • The Eager Challenger trait in Blue line has been changed from -30 seconds to -20 seconds. The other -10 seconds is now available on a Tracery that also increases the Mayhem bubble magnitude.
  • The Critical Chance Increase in Red line now has an additional effect at Tier 5: Critical hits with Finisher skills generate 1 Mettle.
  • The base healing percentage for Joy of Battle has been increased from 1% to 3%.
  • Pummel will no longer cancel early if used with five or less Mettle.
  • Some Tracery naming and display issues have been corrected.
• Champion
  • Bracing Attack no longer misses or can be BPE'd. Its damage has been reduced by about 20%.
  • Merciful Strike's crit multipliers have been raised to match the default for most skills (x1.5 crit, x2.0 dev).
• Guardian
  • Flash of Light now scales with your weapon. Damage now scales up more effectively into higher levels as well.
  • Flash of Light now only procs off of your active Take to Heart target.
  • Catch a Breath's cooldown timer will no longer bug when war-chant is reducing it.
  • Shield Smash was incorrectly calculating its area of effect from the selected target rather than the Guardian. This has now been fixed. Shield Smash's arc range has been increased slightly to make up for lost reach.
• Hunter
  • Lingering Wound now applies damage over time again.
  • Rapid Fire now properly reduces the cost of Split Shot.
  • Focus when affected by Song of Aid is now usable both in and out of battle.
• Lore-master
  • Commune With Nature now has a 180 second cooldown. Nature's Light has had its duration changed to 20 seconds. Nature's Gift has had its initial cooldown removed so it can be used immediately. Both these pet skills have an internal cooldown of 180 seconds.
• Minstrel
  • Call of Earendil now resets properly with Cries and Calls.
• Rune-keeper
  • Some Rune-keeper damage over time pulse rates have been increased. The number of pulses is unchanged, so the durations are now shorter. The total damage is the same, but overall DPS is higher: Writ of Fire's pulse rate has gone from four to three seconds, and Scathing Mockery has had its pulse rate lowered from six to three seconds.
  • Fire, Frost and Lightning skills are all now labeled correctly in their tooltips.
• Warden
  • Tracery Mastery's cooldown has been improved from -3 to -5 seconds, while Remmorchant set bonuses have been reduced from -5 seconds to -3 seconds.
  • For the Free Peoples now grants an incoming damage percentage reduction that increases to -25% at full stack. This replaces its old effect.
  • Heals have been increased generally across the board.
  • Critical Defense debuffs now scale correctly.

Crafting

• Brawler Belt Buckle icons should now be consistent across crafting tiers.
• Achieving a critical success when crafting Dwarrowgleam Belt Buckles now adds 2 ilevels to the resulting item.
• Achieving a critical success when crafting Dwarrowgleam Stickpins now adds 2 ilevels to the resulting item.
• Players who have achieved the highest reputation with their crafting guild now have access to a recipe that will allow the creation of a Sunstone Shard once every 7 days. See your "Improved Recipes" vendor. Please note: These recipes require Gundabad (T14) Crafting.

Housing

• Cape of Belfalas and Rohan housing interiors now support multiple music hooks.
• Cape of Belfalas and Rohan housing now supports exterior Ambient Environment and music hooks.

Items

• Legendary Item Rewards: Older scaling instances made it too easy to farm Legendary rarity LI items. As a result, scaling instances have had their top end LI drops reduced to Incomparable rarity. Non-scaling instances remain unchanged.
• Legendary items may now reach item level 475.
• Incoming Healing progressions have been corrected on class items so they can now increase to current levels.
• New Adventurer's gear for level 140 characters will now scale to item level 461 - 463.
• Bound to Character Traceries and Essences now actually bind the legendary item or slotted item to the character when slotted.
• PvMP Rank cloaks are now gated by Monster Play, and may not be used outside the Ettenmoors.
• You can now equip a second Legendary Item without first unequipping the first if you have a unique Essence or Tracery in two different items.
• All shields will now offer the Crit Defence and Ranged Defence bonus previously only granted by Heavy (Guardian) shields.
• The Brawler Abyss Raid Set Armour pieces bartered from the Master of Mordor Lore in Dor Armarth on the Plateau of Gorgoroth are now actually usable by Brawlers.
• The Delver's Essence boxes now allows selection of a Vitality essence.
• New Brawler Traceries have been added to the barter vendor.
• The Pelennor Warrior's Gear Rewards Vendor - Master of Battle Lore now correctly offers Brawler set gear.
• All Task Quest items now list the regions that they belong to in their descriptions, excluding Housing Task Boards.

Monsters

• Monsters above level 60 now have a small base Critical Defense rating.
• The wargs for "Corrupted Heirlooms" no longer count as North Downs creatures, so they will no longer trigger deeds, but especially not when you find them in Rohan.

Traits

• Class, Race, and Virtue trait slots will now automatically unlock when a character hits the required level, regardless of subscription status or purchase. This does not apply to Monster Play characters.

Quests and Adventure Areas

• The Featured Instance rotation has been updated to now include: Dungeons of Dol Guldur, Fornost: Wraith of Water, Seat of the Great Goblin, Iorbar's Peak, Sword-hall of Dol Guldur, and Barad Guldur. The Featured Instance reward packages have been updated, including new armour that will scale to your character level. In order to support this scaling, the reward packages will now decay, so they must be opened within 1 hour or be lost. The Featured Instance (Cap) quests will now require tier 2 completion of the instance. The Featured Challenge quests have been removed.
• Stablemasters in the Trollshaws, parts of Eregion, Lothlorien, Southern Mirkwood, and Eryn Lasgalen now use the Elk Travel Mode. NOTE: Since we have updated the Trollshaws Stablemaster routes players will need to rediscover them.
• A vector has been added from Thorenhad in the Trollshaws to guide players to the Angle of Mitheithel.
• Added some clarifying dialogue to "Chapter 6.1: The Artist and the Apprentice" to make it clear which character advances the quest.
• Enemies in Elderslade and Gundabad missions now execute their induction skills in 5 seconds down from 10 seconds.
• The Adventurer's Quartermaster and lootbox now offer Delving Adventurer's Essence Boxes.
• The Houses of Rest - Vethug Wintermind no longer becomes unattackable on Dui and Fellowship group sizes after being reset.
• The level requirement from Rivendell to Gath Forthnir has been adjusted from 125 down to 20.
• Fate of Gundabad
  • Gundabad Quests: The story of Câr Bronach concludes in Gundabad with 20 additional quests for level 135-136. If you have completed questing in Câr Bronach, speak to Mézto at Grúmachath to continue.
  • Den of Pughlak - Removed some visual effects that would stick onto players even after they left the instance.
  • The name for the Orders From Dushtalbuk should now correctly display during "The Camps of Stazg Vozag".
  • Gundabad Geode Hunter: Barter prices have been adjusted.
  • Mission - Gundabad - Lay to Rest - Dwarf-wights now patrol the space and have proper appearances.
• Legacy of the Necromancer
  • Lay of Rust and Rime - Scion of Winter - Stablemaster icons will no longer appear on the minimap during this instance.
• War of Three Peaks
  • All tier completion deeds bestow in "Woe of the Willow" regardless of tier.

UI

• Some French and German translations have been updated.
• The system now refers to Traceries correctly In the new Legendary Items UI instead of calling them Essences when unslotting, and with tooltips on the buttons.
• The Reforge UI now has a summary that is accurate, and the Reforge UI has had its text updated to reflect the new system.
• A display error on classic Essence examination has been fixed.

Miscellaneous

• The Gold restriction has been removed from free and premium accounts. All account types can now have a maximum of 9999 Gold without purchase of the Currency Cap.
• The benefits of the Premium Wallet Upgrade have now been applied to all accounts. The widest possible assortment of barter currencies, including a variety of instance tokens, region barter tokens, festival tokens, taxidermy barter items, and crafting instance tokens, will now automatically go into the barter wallet for all characters on all accounts.

Known Issues

• Erebor Housing: In order to prevent decorations from intruding on other player's properties, the mobile hooks in the lower courtyard of Deluxe Erebor Houses, and the Huge/Enormous Hooks in all Base Erebor Houses have their vertical movement restricted.
• The Last Bridge Stable-master appears on the Lone-lands map but not on the Trollshaws map.
• Barachen's Camp, Echad Candelleth and Gwingris Stable-masters do not appear on The Angle of Mitheithel map.
• The Legendary Items Reward Track currently uses the wrong icon and does not yet have a hotkey for access. Access is through the Menu, under Character options.

Source

• English
• [TBA French]
• [TBA German]