Bullroarer Update 25 - Preview #1 (Preview Server Closed)

[LordOfTheSquids]

Minas Morgul has almost arrived!
Minas Morgul takes you on an expedition deep into the Morgul Vale in search of answers to a mystery that spans three thousand years. The words of the shade of Isildur will unearth secrets and visions of the Second Age that have remained untold until now, revealing playable landscape and new adventures from a crucial time in Middle-earth’s history.

• Two New Regions: The Morgul Vale as well as Mordor Besieged!
• Level Cap Increase to 130
• New Crafting Guild benefits
• New Black Book of Mordor Quests
• and more!

Visit LOTRO.com/MinasMorgul to read more. Some elements of the expansion, including the Shelob raid and new Instances, will be released in the near future. Players logging in once the Minas Morgul expansion has been released will get their Valar items, Expedition Supplies, Crafting Carry-alls and more. Visit LOTRO.com/MinasMorgul for details.News and Notes

• Bullroarer will remain open until Friday (10/18). Time subject to change! (Preview is closed for the week)
• The expansion is still a work in progress, there will be bugs and unfinished content. If you see something that doesn't work or you think is wrong, please tell us about it!
• The player database was wiped last week, characters copied characters will be available.
• Character Copy to Bullroarer is available. Shared Item transfer is currently disabled.
• Hobbit Presents are currently being reworked and are disabled.

Discussion Threads

• Rune-keeper Udate - https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...te-Rune-keeper
• Premade Imbued Legendary Items - https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...egendary-Items
• Crafting Carry-all Bags - https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...Carry-all-Bags
• Instance Feedback - https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?675960-U25-Instance-Feedback

Black Book of Mordor

• Characters that have completed 'Shades in the Swamp' can pick up the next chapter of the Black Book of Mordor from Gandalf in the Beorninghus
• Chapters 11.1 and 11.2 are available for this Preview
• If you have not caught up with the Black Book of Mordor, talk to Made of Lions in the Epic Book room in the basement of the Eyes & Guard Tavern. He will complete all the previous Black Book Chapters as well as Shades in the Swamp. You can then talk to DocOctoport in the hallway to port you to Gandalf.

Classes

• Rune-keeper has received a balance pass.

Crafting

• Crafting is not fully functional yet and is quite rough around the edges, so please be patient. It will be in a more complete state during the next round of Beta.
• Farmer - The time required to execute planting recipes has been reduced from 10 seconds to 3 seconds for most farmer field recipes.
• Crafting Carry-Alls - When Minas Morgul launches, all players who purchase the Ultimate Fan and Collector's Edition will have Carry-alls delivered to them. A Carry-all helps you consolidate and organize your inventory by storing your various crafting materials inside it using only one slot of space. Because these Carry-alls are Bound to Account, sharing crafting materials amongst your characters becomes easier. - The Collector's and Ultimate editions will grant a Small Crafting Carry-all that will hold 10 different types of unique crafting items that will allow each stack to go up to 2000. - The Ultimate Fan edition will grant an additional Large Crafting Carry-all that will hold up to 50 types of unique crafting items that will allow each stack to go up to 5000! - These items will be delivered once per account, and will be delivered to the first character you log in to after Minas Morgul launches. If you play on multiple servers, please make sure to first log into the server where you want these Carry-alls delivered.

Emotes

• The Elevenses Emote has been scripted to work more consistently; the food items will disappear if the emote is interrupted.

Instances

• Eithel Gwaur, The Filth-Well
• Gorthad Nur, The Deep-Barrow - Gurzhorn is currently being very stubborn about being defeated. We'll have that fixed for the next round of Beta.
• More instances will be available in the next round of Beta!

Items

• Imbued legendary items: When replacing an imbued legacy with another legacy, you now carry over a much greater percentage of the earned item advancement experience.
• Updates to the Legendary weapon and Relic damage progressions. This should generally see DPS numbers on these weapons that better compare and track with their offhand versions.
• Items that grant War-steed appearances can now be consumed while mounted.
• The Flame of Ancalamír can now be used while mounted.
• The War-steed Appearance: Grand Accessory once again has its proper appearance on a War-steed Pony instead of looking like a basket of sunflowers.

Pets

• Critters summoned from the following housing decorations will now perform their correct emotes when not moving: Nanu's Hiding Place, Hedgehog Burrow, and Badger House. Nanu's movement has also been slowed down slightly.

PvMP

• Player characters in the Ettenmoors and PvMP Osgiliath can now use cosmetic outfits.

Quests and Adventure Areas

• Scion Difficulty Tiers 4 and 5 of the Dwarfholds instances and Kidzul-kâlah are unavailable while the new instance cluster is being introduced. Scion difficulty tiers will be available again on selected instances in the future.
• Fixed a door in the Loremaster-specific chamber of "In The Presence of Saruman".
• The boss in Instance: A venomous Strike will now summon at the correct time.
• Adjusted the requirements to unlock the Volume II Book 3 and Volume II Book 8 movies in the Movie Library.
• Various areas have had minor stuck spots, death spots, and physics issues fixed.
• Erebor - Forging Trust - Mistrustful Dwarves are now denoted by a blue quest ring to improve their visibility.
• Monster HP in the 116-120 range has been increased modestly to compensate for increased LI DPS (overall pacing should be similar).

UI

• Fixed an issue where Disenchantment examination tooltips would sometimes be clipped along the right edge.

Miscellaneous

• All Embers and Motes of Enchantment, along with all Figments of Splendour, will have their total set to the cap of 10,000 if their total exceeds 10,000.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a crash on startup on machines with more than 32 logical processors, such as AMD Threadripper 2970WX and 2990WX.

BULLROARER ONLY:Eyes & Guard Tavern

• The Imbued Legendary Items selection packages from Tybur in the basement of the Eyes & Guard Tavern have been disabled due to a bug. You will not be able to use these packages for now.
• Trotter now sells some Housing Decoration items, including training dummies that can be placed in your house.
• Sarumango now advances characters to level 130.
• DocOctoport will now take players to the Beorninghus interior to speak to Gandalf to begin Chapter 11.1: A Window On the Past.
• Ransroth now offers all his reputation quests to all characters, and now grants Wilderfolk reputation.
• Ayvan now had quests to reward Rimes of the Anvil and Artifacts of the Vale.
• Speak to Ayvan in the Eyes & Guard Crafting Hall to receive the Large and Small Crafting Carry-alls.
• Epic Book bestowers no longer require players to have completed the skip quests.
• Javatar now completes instance discovery deeds for players.
• Stout-axes may now pick up a Skip Intro quest from Núluzagar. This quest grants access to the Eyes and Guard Tavern and all of its amenities. Please note that Núluzagar's other quest Toil in the Dark Tower will be available but should not be taken by players who wish to skip intro (This quest cannot be cancelled).
• Two new quests have been added to MadeofLions. After completing the quest that grants Black Book of Mordor Chapters 1-4k, players can now complete two other quests. The first grants Black Book of Mordor Chapters 5-8 and the second grants Chapters 9, 10, and Shades in the Swamp.
• Cooldown timers have been removed from Aubergine's Mithril Coin and LOTRO Point granting quests.
• Each of Mister Alexander's Craft Guild quests now have a 30-minute cooldown timer.
• Crafting vendors now have all necessary Minas Ithil ingredients.

[squirle]

Assuming this means normal cosmetic outfits. This is probably a mistake. There has always been the main reason that a light class isn't able to immitate a heavy armour class. I don't see why this reason would be different now? If outfits even includes cosmetic weapons this would be even worse. Thinking you're about to pounce a light class to be hammered by a guardian instead isn't a good idea.

PvMP - Player characters in the Ettenmoors and PvMP Osgiliath can now use cosmetic outfits.

[Hephburz-2]

Assuming this means normal cosmetic outfits. This is probably a mistake. There has always been the main reason that a light class isn't able to immitate a heavy armour class. I don't see why this reason would be different now? If outfits even includes cosmetic weapons this would be even worse. Thinking you're about to pounce a light class to be hammered by a guardian instead isn't a good idea.

PvMP - Player characters in the Ettenmoors and PvMP Osgiliath can now use cosmetic outfits.

This is the lamest, most bottom of the barrel excuse I've ever seen.

Any idiot checks what class the player is first before attacking them -_-

This is one of the best changes, and one of the most I've been looking forward to in a while.

[Elmagor]

Scion Difficulty Tiers 4 and 5 of the Dwarfholds instances and Kidzul-kâlah are unavailable while the new instance cluster is being introduced. Scion difficulty tiers will be available again on selected instances in the future.

Another idea how force move players from old instances to new instances?

[Yicky]

Assuming this means normal cosmetic outfits. This is probably a mistake. There has always been the main reason that a light class isn't able to immitate a heavy armour class. I don't see why this reason would be different now? If outfits even includes cosmetic weapons this would be even worse. Thinking you're about to pounce a light class to be hammered by a guardian instead isn't a good idea.

PvMP - Player characters in the Ettenmoors and PvMP Osgiliath can now use cosmetic outfits.

Not a mistake. By now people know what classes are what by many indicators...Most not being their gear. This is a nice addition for Freeps to be able to keep their individuality and enjoy the cosmetics they have put together

[Knight.]

The special runes on LIs from instances, raids, barter are broken on this update (whether opening new box or already slotted in LI):

Live:



Bullroarer:

[Knight.]

The gear from "Rare Mordor Chest" doesn't make sense (can only open at level 121, but it's 110 gear)
Also no hobbit presents in this build?

[Knight.]

Will craft-able essences be available from day 1 on Minas Morgul update?

The reason I ask, is I'm sure many players would like to avoid the saga we had at 120 where green and purple essences were initially only available as landscape drops or from lootboxes. Farming Landscape mobs for days in the hopes of getting essence drops (and then hoping it was the right one) simply wasn't fun and the delay in being able to craft essences (despite them being available on BR previews) had a very "cash grab" feel to it.

We've paid for this expansion with real money, so please don't gate essences behind mind numbing grind / lootboxes / embers only upon release.
Allow us to craft purple moonlit essences using standard crafting materials from day 1 release. Tier 2+ essences requiring solvents can always be introduced later.

The following can be found in item scanner on Bullroarer (but could not find any way to craft essences):

[Laurelinarien]

./signed

Give crafters some love. And we already have a huge enough grind without having to scavenge for purple essences.

[trarza]

so anyone noticed the huge increase in power cost on a lot of skills?

[Thurinuor]

so anyone noticed the huge increase in power cost on a lot of skills?

I would love that feature because power potions would be useful with this change.

[Elmagor]

Some crafting items need buff, some of them need nerf. Mordor Besiedged looks nice. They even bring back scourges of mordor. And we have not only new crafting tier, but even new crafting guild tier

[elzeqq]

Power became a huge problem at 130 because you increased power cost by about 70%.
At this point, we have 6,000 power and you add power debuffs inside a instance. You add -75% ICPR and -25% maximum power.
I spent about 300 rejuvenation potions in instances today. I'm not joking.
We need either more power, or better scaling.

LI nerf was unnecessary and creates even more imbalance in DPS.
Overall, there are huge issues with scaling. It took us about 3 hours to clear trash in those instances to reach final boss. We had DPS who had capped mastery aswell for 130. RK dps became extremely bad with the relic nerf in those instances.
I think we need some compensation, either add this amount of DPS rating into star lits and improve it based on LI DPS/Legacies/Star lits, or return these relics.
Right now, everyones dps is way too nerfed. Making it even more dull and boring clearing trash pulls in instances.

Also I think purple items from T3 drop is really bad considering the amount it takes to finish the instances.

[Smapper]

Power became a huge problem at 130 because you increased power cost by about 70%.
At this point, we have 6,000 power and you add power debuffs inside a instance. You add -75% ICPR and -25% maximum power.
I spent about 300 rejuvenation potions in instances today. I'm not joking.
We need either more power, or better scaling.

LI nerf was unnecessary and creates even more imbalance in DPS.
Overall, there are huge issues with scaling. It took us about 3 hours to clear trash in those instances to reach final boss. We had DPS who had capped mastery aswell for 130. RK dps became extremely bad with the relic nerf in those instances.
I think we need some compensation, either add this amount of DPS rating into star lits and improve it based on LI DPS/Legacies/Star lits, or return these relics.
Right now, everyones dps is way too nerfed. Making it even more dull and boring clearing trash pulls in instances.

Also I think purple items from T3 drop is really bad considering the amount it takes to finish the instances.

Get guud

[Tybur]

Please note that the Imbued Legendary Item selection packages found on Tybur in the Eyes & Guard basement have been disabled due to a bug. While you can still barter for the packages, you will not be able to use them to select an imbued legendary item for this round of feedback.

[Arnenna]

^{Is the 50 x ingot/leather/plank per crafted item staying as it is, or is it just copy/pasted over from EM. Please do not do this to crafting again. 100 raw materials to craft a single item, killed crafting once already.}

[Arnenna]

Is the 50 x ingot/leather/plank per crafted item staying as it is, or is it just copy/pasted over from EM. Please do not do this to crafting again. 100 raw materials to craft a single item, killed crafting once already.

[Lord.Funk]

Is the 50 x ingot/leather/plank per crafted item staying as it is, or is it just copy/pasted over from EM. Please do not do this to crafting again. 100 raw materials to craft a single item, killed crafting once already.

I guess now we know why we need 5000 item stacks in the Carry-all bags, he he he !!!

[auximenes]

[*]Monster HP

*bzzzz* incorrect.

[cbfan14]

I love what they've done for the Mordor Besieged scourges, very nice touch! I would like to point out though that the Gloom of Nurn seems to have a clone of himself, may want to fix that.

[aljbookworm]

So many ghost elves in Echad-in-Edhil missing their bodies

[cbfan14]

So many ghost elves in Echad-in-Edhil missing their bodies

It's really scary since the region also has elf-wights. The lore monkey in me though wonders how in Arda can elf-wights exist?

[aljbookworm]

It's really scary since the region also has elf-wights. The lore monkey in me though wonders how in Arda can elf-wights exist?

That might explain so much.

Also i had tattered rohirric parchment drop for me for some reason in the mordor besieged zone.

[Knight.]

2 quick points:

- Whilst I'm all for making power consumption a bit more relevant, the rate at which everyone is going through it at level 130 is somewhat insane.
- Captain banners need looking at (so newer ones are better than old for all stats)

[Theozor]

I did a little exploring with my guardian, leaving him as-is other than picking up some mithril coins to unlock stables. I only had a couple hours or so to check things out, but here's what I noticed so far:

• There seems to be a lack of lvl 121-122 mobs and quests, at least that I could find from entering the new zones from either the east or west. (Maybe I just missed something.) Landscape mobs were in the 123-126 range except for one area where they were all 130. Not a huge deal for a guardian with maxed out LIs but it'd probably mean I would spend more time in existing zones before venturing near Minas Morgul on any of my other characters.
• Locations of lvl 123 mob spawns in North Ithilien could be problematic. I saw multiple mobs spawning in the vicinity of the noxious blossoms for the lvl 105 herbalist daily given by Mithrandir, which would pretty well render that quest impossible for someone leveling through NI.
• I enjoyed what I saw of Cirith Ungol.
• The location of the Minas Morgul stablemaster gave me a scare. Good thing those elite trolls seem to have short aggro ranges.
• Hooray to a lvl 120 shield crafting recipe. Boo to the same ridiculously high material costs as the previous crafting tier.
• I was happy to not encounter any new places with shadow/LoE needed. I hope the rest is this way.
• The stable route from Magh Ashtu to (I forget the name, it's the only one in the new zones with a travel route from there) bugged out on me. I didn't even get to the top of the hill leaving TU before my horse got stuck. I tried to submit a bug report but the form never loaded.

Overall I'm cautiously optimistic about this one. It certainly didn't give me the "I hate this" vibe Mordor did.