Stranger things with LOTRO update 21.2

September 15, 2017|Mordor|Beta, Blog, LOTRO2

A lack-cluster instance cluster.

The next update to Lord of the Rings Online, Update 21.2, is currently being beta tested on the Bullroarer preview server. The update brings some quality of life improvements (including one of the oddest functionalities I have ever seen added to an MMO), plus the much-discussed instance cluster that is part of the Mordor Expansion. I’ll briefly discuss some of the new things in this post, but first: An overview of the changes

Beta patch notes

These notes are taken from the Bullroarer forum and are subject to change.

Of Special Note:
Plateau of Gorgoroth Instances

• Bring a full fellowship with you when you enter “The Dungeons of Naerband”, a place of fire and anguish. Prepare to encounter the Maiden of Flame and face her ally, the chief torturer, in the prison of Direhold.
• You will need a small fellowship to aid the rangers as they penetrate “The Court of Seregost” and struggle to thwart Lhaereth in her attempts to unleash a second Great Plague.

Filters

• There is a new main menu item – Filters (alt+r default key mapping). This new panel has three tabs that let you filter out sounds, quests, and items (for the current character, or for your entire account) that you never want to receive or hear again.
• Anything that you add to the Loot filtered list will not be awarded to you again (will not appear in your inventory or pending loot). To add an item, drag it from your inventory to the filtered list. To remove an item drag it from the filtered list to anywhere else.
• Anything you add to the Quests filtered list will no longer attempt to auto-bestow, will not appear as a quest ring on the mini-map radar, and will not appear as a quest ring over npc or mob heads. To filter a quest, in the bestowal dialog, click the filter or account filter button at the bottom left. To remove filtering of that quest, simply drag it off of your filtered list.
• Anything you add to the Sounds filtered list will no longer play as audio in your game client. To add a sound, go to a place/situation in game where you hear the sound. Click the record button to see a list of all sounds currently playing (this list will keep updating until you click stop or close the UI). You can play any sound on this list by right or double clicking it. Drag any sound to the character or account filtered list.

Mounts Collection

• The mount collection has been revamped to match the style of the emote and pet collections and list every mount available.
• Because we have many mounts that can no longer be acquired (such as pre-order and special event mounts), the mount collection has a unique feature that will cause every character to have their own mount collection maximum. If a mount is no longer available, it will not appear in the mount collection panel unless you already have that mount. So while a newly created character on a new account might only see a mount collection with 144 possible mounts, a player who has the Dusky Nimblefoot Goat for example will see a mount collection with 145 possible mounts.

Daily requests from the Expedition Organizers

• There are new repeatable Daily Requests available from the Expedition Organizers in each of the Allegiance halls. Speak to Vórthi, Tancram, Glórellas, and Aster Hayward each day to accept these quests.

News and Notes:
Quests and Adventure Areas

• Talath Urui – Shackles have been excavated from the rubble and can now be reached for the quest “Breaking the Chains”.
• Talath Urui – The hiding spot should now be more obvious in the quest instance “Borangos the Horror”.
• Gorgoroth Resource Dungeons – Allegiance bonus quests no longer go away after completing an Allegiance. If you have already completed one or more Allegiances, the bonus quests will return for you.
• Gorgoroth Resource Dungeons – Barad-dur: Lore of the Past no longer has an Ancient Tome hidden in rubble. Barad-dur: Gathering Relics no longer has a relic hiding in a wall.
• Gorgoroth Resource Instances: The following deeds are now available: Resources of Gorgoroth, Gathering of Resources, Gathering of Resources (Intermediate), Gathering of Resources (Advanced).
• The Tales of Gorgoroth Deed is now visible in your deed log as soon as at least one objectives has been completed.

Items

• The Aria of the Valar now includes a Class Deed Tome that will automatically complete trait point granting class deeds. If you have already used an Aria of the Valar, visit your class trainer and get your Class Deed Tome.
• A large selection of armour that was previously invisible on your High Elf now has its proper appearance.
• The Unidentified Third Age Legendary Item Box that can be acquired via barter once again correctly delivers a level 100 legendary item.
• When running the Pelennor Instances: Blood of the Black Serpent, The Quays of the Harlond, and The Silent Street, at level 115, you can now receive equipment that scales up to Item Level 315.
• Crafting – Doomfold Healing, Milkthistle, Conhuith, and Lhinestad Draughts now remove negative effects up to a maximum strength of level 120.
• Crafting – Captain Crest and Warden Carving recipes may be executed with Universal Ingredient Packs.
• Crafting – Food produced from Doomfold Cooking now has a stack size up to 100.
• Crafting – Woodworkers are now able to craft Strong Boards of Doomfold Wood, Weaponsmiths are now able to craft Quality Doomfold Ingots, and Tailors are now able to craft Well-treated Doomfold Leather.

PvMP

• Ettenmoors – High Elves can now use the back doors of keeps.
• Level 115 Audacity gear has been added to barter vendors in the Moors.
• The Glan Vraig training dummies are now level 115.

UI

• Fixed raid vital background sizes.
• Scourge-slayer of Mordor deeds will no longer incorrectly show the accelerate button since these deeds cannot be accelerated.
• The Barbershop camera now zooms farther out for better visibility of Body Type option changes.

Misc

• In game voice chat: Party member voice volume can be adjusted individually. Party volume control visibility can be toggled by clicking on the party voice chat icon for party members. Default Group Volume preference has been added to the Voice section of Audio options. Use this volume slider to set the default voice volume level of new group members. This setting is 75% volume by default.
• Mordor Lost Lore dialog is now affected by the Voice-Over sound volume setting.
• Lua – We recently changed the way LOTRO ListBoxes work to fix a category of UI bugs. This may have side-effects for Lua scripts dependent on the broken behavior. If you encounter issues with your existing Lua plugins, you may want to change the ListBox orientation from Horizontal to Vertical and remove the SetMaxItemsPerLine limitation setter.
  • The Lua interface is being updated to provide four new functions for the ListBox control. They should be used in the place of SetMaxItemsPerLine( value ) and GetMaxItemsPerLine() which are being deprecated:
    • number GetMaxColumns();
    • void SetMaxColumns( number );
    • number GetMaxRows();
    • void SetMaxRows( number );

Good stuff and bad stuff

I won’t touch upon all the changes with U21.2, but here are some of the things of interest to me.

Instance cluster

When did a pair turn into a cluster? Basically, the instance cluster coming with Mordor gives us one 3-player and one 6-player dungeon (a raid will also arrive with a later point update). That’s a pretty low number of instances compared to earlier clusters. With the previous LOTRO expansions, the number of instances has never been less than five.

This might add further fuel to the fire of those who feel that the Mordor expansion was overpriced in the first place. Ultimately, this is disappointing for all who like group-oriented adventures.

Filters

Odd oddity odd odd odd. Have we ever seen this in an MMO before – the ability to filter out individual sounds, quests or loot items?

Still, this could be very useful for removing individual pet peeves and irritants from the game. I have personally long dreamed of nuking the ANNOYINGLY LOUD pipe smoking sounds (and recently, the bubbling sounds from the bubble fish pipe). I am tired of having my bags fill up with 3rd age legendaries and non-useful task items when questing. Hobnanigan quest pop-ups drive me batty. If I’ll really be able to remove these things, I’ll be one happy hobbit.

LUA changes

It is grand to see that developments of the LUA system hasn’t died out completely. On the other hand, many LOTRO plugins aren’t updated anymore, and their authors have long left the game. Will useful tools like Buffbars, PredictInGameTime and others still work after 21.2? Time will tell.

At least, I’ll gently nudge the authors of these plugins to check for bugs.

Aria of the Valar

Class Deed Tome? Very useful for Valar users. About time this was implemented for the level boosters.

What do you think of U21.2?

In short, I’d say that U21.2 brings some nice (albeit surprising) quality of life improvements, but too few new instances. Additionally, the update doesn’t really address many remaining issues with the Mordor expansion: Avatar update changes, crafting issues, class balance issues++.

How about yourself, though? Are there things you like/dislike with the new update? Feel free to add yer thoughts below!