Update 17 Beta 1 Release Notes & Known Issues - PRELIMINARY AND NON-FINAL - BULLROARER ONLY

The following release notes are for the Bullroarer public test server only and may not reflect the final list of changes or updates included at release.

These notes are not final and should be viewed as a work in progress and subject to change.

The Eyes and Guard Tavern is now open!
Your live characters may be copied to Bullroarer. In your normal game launcher, access the transfer service, select your server, select characters, select copy to Bullroarer. Copies via the transfer service CANNOT currently be accessed from the Bullroarer launcher.

Important Note: Please be aware that the build you are seeing here is a work in progress and is by no means the finished Update 17 product. There are items that are not yet complete. There may also be items missing from this initial list, this is not intentional and will be added as we progress.

Known Issues:

1. German and French localization for this beta build is missing in many many places.
2. The Epic book quests are not available during this open beta.
3. The Epic Battle: Hammer of the Underworld is not available during this open beta.
4. In the Epic Battle: Defence of Minas Tirith, the secondary quest "Despair in the Streets" is not fully implemented, and the portcullis doors currently interfere with soldier movement. Additionally, difficulty balance is not complete for the epic battles.
5. In Minas Tirith, Bergil's quests are not completable.

Release Notes:
Update 17 includes Old Anórien with three new regions (Talath Anor, Pelennor Fields, and Minas Tirith), two new epic battles, a new crafting tier, and an extension of the imbued legendary item system. You can also see a beta version of our new Store.

Cosmetic Weapons:

• You can now turn off your weapons when they are sheathed by clicking the new eye icons in the cosmetic outfit page. In combat, the weapons will reappear.
• Cosmetic weapon visibility rules have been loosened. We have set up a number of categories of items that can be interchanged with each other: all one-handed weapons (including cosmetic-only items), all shields, two-handed clubs/swords/implements, and two-handed hammers/axes/halberds. All other categories (such as Staff, Spear, etc) can only be interchanged with other staffs, spears, etc.You can no longer waste a dye trying to dye shields in the wardrobe.
• Shields and weapons should again appear at their normal size.

Crafting:

• Crafters now have access to a tenth crafting tier: the Anórien crafting tier. Crafters of this tier can use Poplar, Anórien Skarn, Zircon, and Tattered Anórien Parchments to craft items for level 100 characters.
• All crafting nodes can now be harvested while mounted.
• All crafting materials stack to 500.
• There is no longer a distinction between Vegetable, Grain, and Pipe-weed Farmlands. There is now only one kind of Farmland.
• East Gondor craft nodes have been replaced with the tier 10 craft nodes also found in Old Anórien.

Imbued Legendary Items:

• DPS / Main Item Legacies have been granted 4 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 4.
• Imbued stat Legacies have been granted 6 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 3.
• All other imbued legacies have been granted 3 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 6.

Burglar

Burglar's Gamble Chance Legacy now gives Cash Out Damage after tier 35.

Captain

Muster Courage Fear Resist now grants Shield/Song/Blade-brother Critical Defence after Tier 35.

Champion

Swift Strike/Swift Blade Power Cost has a maximum tier of 38.

Guardian

Guardian's Pledge Cooldown now gives Retaliation Damage after Tier 35.

Guardian's Pledge Magnitude now gives Shield Swipe Damage after tier 35.

Turn the Tables Cooldown now gives Turn the Tables Damage after tier 35.

Hunter

Strength Quick Shot Slow now gives more chance to get extra Focus after tier 35.

Quick Shot Critical Chance now gives more Quick Shot critical damage after tier 35.

Loremaster

Signs of Power Durations now grants Signs of Power Debuff Rating after Tier 35.

Minstrel

Cry of the Chorus Cooldown now grants Ballad Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.

Triumphant Spirit Cooldown now grants Triumphant Spirit Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.

Rally Cooldown now grants Major Ballad Healing after Tier 35.

Anthem Duration now grants Melee Skills Critical Rating after Tier 35.

Still as Death Cooldown now grants Song of Distraction Cooldown after Tier 35.

Call to Ioreth Cooldown now grants Call to Ioreth Healing Skills Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.

Rune-Keeper

Healing Attuned Power Cost now grants Revive Morale and Power Restoration after Tier 35.

Battle Attuned Power Cost now grants Chill of Winter Target Resistance penalty after Tier 35.

Steady Attuned Power Cost now grants Armour of the Elements Tactical Mitigation after Tier 35.

Class changes:

• Beornings now have access to Bows.
• The Beorning Club-damage trait now applies to axes as well.
• Beornings with more than 100 Wrath should gain +15% Crit Chance from the Wrathful trait, instead of +0%.
• Champion Horns can no longer miss. They can still be resisted.
• Minstrel - Call to Ioreth now grants +5% critical magnitude to healing skills, in addition to making the next healing skill automatically a critical hit.
• Wardens will now animate properly when using the Taunt skill when unarmed.

Other stuff:

• Hope Tokens now have a 3-minute cooldown, instead of 15 minutes.
• All 6-man and 12-man Roving Threats now have a chance to drop Morgul Crests.
• The Dome of Stars, The Ruined City, and The Sunken Labyrinth now all give 1 Morgul Crest upon completion of the tier 2 instance. This is in addition to any Morgul Crests from the tier 2 Challenge chest.
• Epic Battles - fixed merit progress display for some of the secondary quests which used to not show any progress at all.
• There's a new option that allows you to control the opacity of floating names on the UI Settings options page.
• Added an audio option to disable combat music. When checked, landscape music plays uninterrupted by combat.
• A handful of tweaks have been made to the player music system: Bagpipe notes should no longer clip, the Misty Mountain Harp has had its note lengths slightly shortened, and the Theorbo's seven highest notes should now sound more like a Theorbo.
• Level-scaled players should no longer lose their scaling buff when teleporting between Ettenmoors and Osgiliath.
• In the Battle for Osgiliath, Creep NPCs have less Morale and Freep NPCs have more.
• The store now has a minimum width of 600px to prevent the scrollbar from disappearing.

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Originally Posted by Tybur

Crafting:

• All crafting nodes can now be harvested while mounted.
• All crafting materials stack to 500.

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Looking forward to everything here, but THANKS YOU SO MUCH for this!

also, Beorning bows!

How many TPs this map will cost?

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Originally Posted by floccari

How many TPs this map will cost?

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795tp OR 29 million bottle caps, since we are allowed to pay with bottle caps now :D

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Originally Posted by Tybur

Imbued Legendary Items:

• DPS / Main Item Legacies have been granted 4 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 4.
• Imbued stat Legacies have been granted 6 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 3.
• All other imbued legacies have been granted 3 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 6.

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One question and one statement:

Question: Will there be a new Scroll of Empowerment introduced or will Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment continue to work to increase legacies? I suspect Anfalas will still work since I can't quite get my head around how they'd suddenly require a newer type.

Statement: As predicted, those who thought imbuement would be the end to the LI grind were kidding themselves. You may not be destroying your LI (hooray!), but you're still going to suddenly need to grind out another 42 Scrolls of Empowerment and four star-lit crystals. That's more grinding than we had to do to replace an entire LI under the prior system. Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that they sell Scrolls of Empowerment and Star-lit Crystals in the Store?

In Turbine's defense: They had to find some way of continuing to generate revenue from LIs in an era of no level-cap increases. And at least we can grind out Scrolls of Empowerment a bit easier now (via Training Exercise instance, assuming it's still a valid means post-update). Still, I have a hard time believing the system would look like this or be incremented so rapidly under a subscription model (though the game might not still exist under a subscription model).

I realize that the update is a pretty major content addition, but is there any chance of getting the bowstring bug fixed as part of U17? Still there as of 16.5, which replaced the original 16.5, which became 16.4.2. :)

-Thundertrain

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Originally Posted by Hurin

One question and one statement:

Question: Will there be a new Scroll of Empowerment introduced or will Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment continue to work to increase legacies? I suspect Anfalas will still work since I can't quite get my head around how they'd suddenly require a newer type.

Statement: As predicted, those who thought imbuement would be the end to the LI grind were kidding themselves. You may not be destroying your LI (hooray!), but you're still going to suddenly need to grind out another 42 Scrolls of Empowerment and four star-lit crystals. That's more grinding than we had to do to replace an entire LI under the prior system. Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that they sell Scrolls of Empowerment and Star-lit Crystals in the Store?

In Turbine's defense: They had to find some way of continuing to generate revenue from LIs in an era of no level-cap increases. And at least we can grind out Scrolls of Empowerment a bit easier now (via Training Exercise instance, assuming it's still a valid means post-update). Still, I have a hard time believing the system would look like this or be incremented so rapidly under a subscription model (though the game might not still exist under a subscription model).

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A new type would be better if it comes with a significant discount on already existing scrolls. Not everyone would have their LIs fully upgraded, and there are still new alts to come.. the grind would need to be reduced at the lower end to not create a huge gap between players.

And btw.. I find it concerning that Turbine now has to rely on P2W models to gain money, and that while the opportunity to get more income out of cosmetics is ignored.

This all looks amazing, especially the Beorning bows, axe bonus, & cosmetic weapon options... Gotta go update Bullroarer now.
Thanks.

Never understood why beornings need a bow, well I guess more stats is nice but bow is totally useless.

The advancement of some of the legacies is being rendered virtually meaningless, which is a very welcome change. The less legacy tiers we have to unlock, the better.

Also, the fact that no useless legacies are being made useful with the additions is a good thing, as I'm not sure anyone would want to change legacies based on these alterations.

You can drop another 42 Empowerment Scrolls into your LI to help beat the new EBs... oh wait.. you don't need gear for EBs.

Looks like a challenge-free update sadly.


I really hope this new update is not an epic battle fest, last time that happened - central gondor - I quit for 3 months, and when I came back so had all my in-game friends.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Never understood why beornings need a bow, well I guess more stats is nice but bow is totally useless.

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In The Hobbit (book), Beorn gives Thorin and Co. a bunch of bows and arrows, meaning he had some and could probably use them, so it makes sense that his descendants would also be trained in archery.

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Originally Posted by Tybur

• You can now turn off your weapons when they are sheathed by clicking the new eye icons in the cosmetic outfit page. In combat, the weapons will reappear.
• Cosmetic weapon visibility rules have been loosened. We have set up a number of categories of items that can be interchanged with each other: all one-handed weapons (including cosmetic-only items), all shields, two-handed clubs/swords/implements, and two-handed hammers/axes/halberds. All other categories (such as Staff, Spear, etc) can only be interchanged with other staffs, spears, etc.You can no longer waste a dye trying to dye shields in the wardrobe.
• Shields and weapons should again appear at their normal size.

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Really really nice!

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Originally Posted by Tybur

Crafting:

• Crafters now have access to a tenth crafting tier: the Anórien crafting tier. Crafters of this tier can use Poplar, Anórien Skarn, Zircon, and Tattered Anórien Parchments to craft items for level 100 characters.
• All crafting nodes can now be harvested while mounted.
• All crafting materials stack to 500.
• There is no longer a distinction between Vegetable, Grain, and Pipe-weed Farmlands. There is now only one kind of Farmland.
• East Gondor craft nodes have been replaced with the tier 10 craft nodes also found in Old Anórien.

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Like it all. Yehaw

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Originally Posted by Tybur

Imbued Legendary Items:

• DPS / Main Item Legacies have been granted 4 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 4.
• Imbued stat Legacies have been granted 6 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 3.
• All other imbued legacies have been granted 3 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 6.

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Oh, really? 8/9 new tiers for legacies? Isn't that a bit much for one normal upgrade?

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Originally Posted by Tybur

Minstrel

Cry of the Chorus Cooldown now grants Ballad Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.

Triumphant Spirit Cooldown now grants Triumphant Spirit Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.

Rally Cooldown now grants Major Ballad Healing after Tier 35.

Anthem Duration now grants Melee Skills Critical Rating after Tier 35.

Still as Death Cooldown now grants Song of Distraction Cooldown after Tier 35.

Call to Ioreth Cooldown now grants Call to Ioreth Healing Skills Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.

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Melee critical rating as minstrel? What is that good for? They have only one melee skill and are not considered to be melees...

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Originally Posted by Tybur

Class changes:

• Beornings now have access to Bows.
• The Beorning Club-damage trait now applies to axes as well.
• Beornings with more than 100 Wrath should gain +15% Crit Chance from the Wrathful trait, instead of +0%.
• Champion Horns can no longer miss. They can still be resisted.
• Minstrel - Call to Ioreth now grants +5% critical magnitude to healing skills, in addition to making the next healing skill automatically a critical hit.
• Wardens will now animate properly when using the Taunt skill when unarmed.

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Nice fixes, especially Beornings getting ranged weapons with stats :)

I would still really like to know, if there will ever be a higher levelcap and if, what will happen to inspired legendary items then.
And: when will it be possible to inspire legendary items below lvl100? Leveling toons and trashing items all the way up for 50 levels is still bad. One cant even really play with the system, as one levels faster than the weapons. If we could inspire since lvl60, we could work with the system from the beginning and there would be a reason to put efford in weapons from there on. Not just trash everything and have a closer look at it when finally reaching lvl100.

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All 6-man and 12-man Roving Threats now have a chance to drop Morgul Crests.

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Why would you do this? The Morgul Crests should drop only from T2C chests in Osgiliath instances, not from these Roving Threats (while not always a faceroll, are significantly easier that even the 3man Osgiliath instances, when not exploited).

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Originally Posted by Morfinniel_Elvellon

Why would you do this? The Morgul Crests should drop only from T2C chests in Osgiliath instances, not from these Roving Threats (while not always a faceroll, are significantly easier that even the 3man Osgiliath instances, when not exploited).

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It has a "chance" to drop morgul crests, knowing turbine this % will be very small and probably not worth the time to go do RTs instead of the Osgiliath instances. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

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Rally Cooldown now grants Major Ballad Healing after Tier 35.
Anthem Duration now grants Melee Skills Critical Rating after Tier 35.

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These are both 110% useless. Think of another bonus.

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Added an audio option to disable combat music. When checked, landscape music plays uninterrupted by combat.

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Very good addition.

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Originally Posted by Morfinniel_Elvellon

Why would you do this? The Morgul Crests should drop only from T2C chests in Osgiliath instances, not from these Roving Threats (while not always a faceroll, are significantly easier that even the 3man Osgiliath instances, when not exploited).

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I don't know. It's been quite a while since Osgilliath was the new 'best' gear, and a large amount of people who have the gear currently exploited in one form or another to get it anyway. It's a random chance, so, is just a random 'extra' way to get the crests. Provided it's still significantly faster to do T2C instances I'm not sure it's a huge issue that there are other very extreme ways to acquire the currency. So long as this is a very limited drop and doesn't start constant Roving Threat farm trains I don't see an issue with another small avenue of acquiring the currency.

Hopefully there's a similar instance cluster coming in U18 after Minas Tirith. That would make Osgilliath gear becoming more accessible have even more sense to it.

Looks great!

Is there a new crafting rep tier? I need to start making emblems if so...

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Originally Posted by Hurin

Statement: As predicted, those who thought imbuement would be the end to the LI grind were kidding themselves. You may not be destroying your LI (hooray!), but you're still going to suddenly need to grind out another 42 Scrolls of Empowerment and four star-lit crystals. That's more grinding than we had to do to replace an entire LI under the prior system. Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that they sell Scrolls of Empowerment and Star-lit Crystals in the Store?

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No, you don't "need" to grind out anything. If you want to have the highest powered LIs, you will certainly have to put forth the effort. But maxed out LIs are by no means necessary for any content in this game.

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Originally Posted by gildhur

No, you don't "need" to grind out anything. If you want to have the highest powered LIs, you will certainly have to put forth the effort. But maxed out LIs are by no means necessary for any content in this game.

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It's amazing to me that people don't get tired of making this specious, spurious argument every time someone points out that not only is there an egregious grind, but that the Store has likely caused the grind to be more egregious than it otherwise would have been.

Nobody "needs" to play this game at all. So we can probably stop playing pedantic, semantic games with the word "need." A certain playstyle enjoys playing this game and maximizing their characters. Those players have every right to weigh in on what level of grind seems appropriate. Especially when there's reason to believe that the amount of grind is artificially increased by the present business model.

As for this arbitrary standard of "you don't need it to complete content". . . that's been addressed and been demonstrated to be so utterly irrelevant so many times that it just boggles my mind that people continue to use it as some bizarre benchmark for determining what feedback is legitimate and what feedback is not.

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Originally Posted by Tybur

Cosmetic Weapons:

• Cosmetic weapon visibility rules have been loosened. We have set up a number of categories of items that can be interchanged with each other: all one-handed weapons (including cosmetic-only items), all shields, two-handed clubs/swords/implements, and two-handed hammers/axes/halberds. All other categories (such as Staff, Spear, etc) can only be interchanged with other staffs, spears, etc.

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Can we please have Spear - Staff cosmetic interchangability?

I'm sure you have a reason for it not being so, but depending on what that reason is, I'd very much like this reconsidered. If it's a technical issue with clipping or how it is wielded in combat (graphically) then I can understand and would resignedly accept it. If it's a reason determined by a person's preferences I'd vehemently ask for this to be reconsidered and approved. From the moment I made my LM and saw the spear cosmetics I've wanted to use them instead of the many rather horrible staff cosmetics (especially Legendary cosmetics). Real world weapon techniques for spears and (Lotro style) staffs are very similar in how they are used, with the only difference being the sharp pointy end on the spear.

So once again, please let Lore Masters look as badazz as everyone else!

Dont mean at all to be ungrateful for the crafting item stack size changes, but would it be possible to get a similar raise for the following items?

• Task Items (250-500)
• Crafting Recipe Scrolls (250-500)
• Consumables (100-250; crafted stuff can be 100 for example, if needed (pots are a big issue though with capping stacks easily), but at least Premium Perks should be 250)

Would be a great help, mainly for management. I hate needing more than one slot of space for any one item type, and 250-500 is great for being able to really not worry about that. 50 is just too small for most occasions. Anyways, thanks soooo much for adding it even for crafting items, cut down my required storage space for them in total by about 2/3, and over 300 slots of space.

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Originally Posted by Hurin

It's amazing to me that people don't get tired of making this specious, spurious argument every time someone points out that not only is there an egregious grind, but that the Store has likely caused the grind to be more egregious than it otherwise would have been.

Nobody "needs" to play this game at all. So we can probably stop playing pedantic, semantic games with the word "need." A certain playstyle enjoys playing this game and maximizing their characters. Those players have every right to weigh in on what level of grind seems appropriate. Especially when there's reason to believe that the amount of grind is artificially increased by the present business model.

As for this arbitrary standard of "you don't need it to complete content". . . that's been addressed and been demonstrated to be so utterly irrelevant so many times that it just boggles my mind that people continue to use it as some bizarre benchmark for determining what feedback is legitimate and what feedback is not.

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A) You're the one who said you NEED to, not us.

B) I don't know if we ever said "Well, that's it, 35s across the board, will never need to do anything again. I know they never said that...in fact, I think I remember something to the extent of exactly this...instead of having to make new LIs, the alternative would be in the form of unlocking additional tiers...some to be given out, and then more that could be acquired through Empowerment. Of course, if Imbuement didn't exist and you had L105 or L110 LIs, would you say "Well, time for new LIs," or would you object that now you have to buy new Empowerment Scrolls, and new Starlits, and new Rememberances, and new Delving Scrolls, and it's all P2W grind for the store...basically, what you're saying now.

That having been said, they probably are adding too many tiers at once. I'd be happy to have them spread out over two updates, to be honest.

The performance in this instance is horrible.

http://i.imgur.com/N27De5x.jpg

I rest my case.

PS. in before someone try to teach me about graphics and smooth gameplay. 2015 vs 2009 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vUtSE4gKUk

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Originally Posted by Ride_the_Train

I realize that the update is a pretty major content addition, but is there any chance of getting the bowstring bug fixed as part of U17? Still there as of 16.5, which replaced the original 16.5, which became 16.4.2. :)

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A dev said it's been fixed, should come out with a future update. Given the testing cycle, plan for it coming out about this time next year.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Never understood why beornings need a bow, well I guess more stats is nice but bow is totally useless.

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When boernings first came out, it was really annoying for them to try to pull a group of ranged mobs. They get bows for the same reason that bows were added to champions.

Out of curiosity, why isn't the cross-weapon cosmetics open to halberds as swords? Is there some issue with skill animations, perhaps?