More Book 11 info from Digital Life and other sources

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Lore-Masters

Lores of Warding.

LMs get a number “Lore of Warding skills. Basically a LM sets up a warding field against a certain kind (creatures of nature, the dead, etc etc) of monster. This field does damage to monsters if the monster type corresponds to the Lore type. These skills have cast timers and affect the area around the LM, and are stationary.

Sticky Tar

Elves and Dwarves already know this ability, the one that the goblins use on you and Dwallin in the beginning instance. Only where as the goblin tar stops you from moving completely until the dialogue is over, LM tar slows creatures down in its area of effect (50% snare, I saw). This skill has a cast timer and affects the area around the LM, and is stationary.

Thunder Clap

The skill description was something like “The Lore-Master strikes the ground with his staff, causing lighting to bla bla bla.” I didn’t get the details of this spell but I saw that when the mouse was hovered over the icon, the description of the spell had 3 rows of damage, so I figure this is chain-lightning type of spell.

Lynx Speech! (Super cool DPS pet)

Yup. The fourth LM pet is a Lynx. A stealth using, DPS oriented, high-level pet. The lynx has 3 skills: stealth, an AoE attack (I saw this baby hit a light blue troll for 730ish damage) that strikes 3 targets in front of the lynx. And another one I didn’t get to see.

A Rez

Yup, LMs will be able to rez those who died.

Scan-esque ability.

This casted ability shows you the stats of the opponent on which you use this skill. It basically brings up a window, which has useful info about the target. This info includes, but is not limited to, the damage mitigation for each type of damage, the resistance rates for each type of status ailments, and whether the target is susceptible to conjunctions.


Minstrels

War-Chants

New types of songs, which afflict your enemies. There were a number of war chants, but I remember only one, and not even the name of it. This war chant cut the healing done to the target by 50%.

New Tales

These are variations of the currently existing Tale of Heroism. The couple I saw included Tale Of Battle, which increases agility and might, and Tale of Warding, which gives 1 hope and increases morale or vitality (can’t remember which).

Weapon Chants

Minstrels will be able to increase their fellow’s effectiveness with skills like the Oathbreaker’s Blade. Oathbreaker’s Blade adds some damage to every attack, but also causes the weapon to do additional damage in the form of a DOT (which will be a % of the initial hit). There are other weapon chants, but I saw only this one.

Gift of the Hammerhand.

Yup. You will be able to give the shiny bubble to your friends now! Only this is a lesser form of the spell which you can cast on yourself, and thus eats up more power, faster.

Minstrels get MORE COWBELL!

Seriously. No joke. Minstrels get to play the cowbell (the item's name is "Moor Cowbell") and the bagpipes as new musical instruments.

Housing.

Personally, I couldn’t care less about housing, but as people seem to to think that a MMO is not complete until it has housing, here is the info:

Housing is mostly a cosmetic feature with the added bonus of giving people more storage. It is a system of “neighborhoods” where every neighborhood is an instance in one of the three regions (Ered Luin for both Elves and Dwarves, the Shire for Hobbits, and Bree-land for Men). A neighborhood has a set amount of set types of houses (from small cottages to large kinship manors). If one neighborhood has no houses for sale, a prospective buyer needs to go look in another neighborhood. You zone into neighborhoods from set points in the three regions.

The houses of each region have their own architectural style. Humans have the practical but still attractive “human” architectural design. Hobbits have, you guessed it, hobbit holes! Dwarves life underground, while elves live in skyscrapers. That is, elves have soaring type of houses with many floors.

You can customize every part of you home from your garden troll, to your furniture (which is sold by vendors but can also be crafted), to artwork that hangs on customizable walls. The only thing you CAN’T customize is the architecture, for this you have to buy a new house.

There is rent you have to pay, and if you don’t pay it, your house will lock you out and everything that you poured in it will be sucked into the astral (that’s the word the reps used, lol). You have a grace period during which everything you own is held in the astral, but if you don’t cough up the money in a set amount of time, everything gets sucked into a black hole.

New Areas!

Book 11 sees a big expansion to the Misty Mountains region (I saw the High Pass) and the Trollshaws region.

Epic Quests

A fisherman has seen a strange creature at night and has had trouble catching any fish recently….

Miscellaneous

With Book 11 LotRO will support DX10!

The Future (not book 11)

We will have Legendary Play, or so I was told. That is, we will be able to take “Legendary” (the term being loosely defined) characters and take them for a spin in certain situations. I wasn’t told more than that.

When asked whether we will have new MvMP regions, the answer was “Yes.”

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=92974

Not so keen on the Legendary Play bit...

Book 11 info from Roheryn (US preview server):

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=93413

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=93490

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Book 11 is up on th preview server, Roheryn. As I already had a few characters created on the server, I downloaded it and am currently checking out some of the changes. I'll post some of them here.

The first thing I did was enter the Shire Housing area. It is HUGE. There is a huge expanse of land just to hold the neighborhoods. Apparently the housing area is location to the South of Michel Delving that used to say "to the Southfarthing". Now I can exit intot he main world easily.

The house-selling hobbit gave me a quest to talk to another NPC, and the rewards were several pieces of furniture. Cool! I clicked on the "purchase a house screen" but it said that housing is temporarily locked. Oh well. Apparently we are awarded an "allowance" of money that will allow us to access housing on the 4th of October, according to someone who was chatting in /ooc (haven't verified this).


Other things added:

1) You can see your pets on the minimap now. Blue circle

2) There is an option to ONLY ACCEPT TELLS FROM FRIENDS, FELLOWS AND KINSHIP! YAY!!!!

3) You can now put deeds in the quest tracker.

4) Only level 30, but the new loremaster skills look nice. Played a bit with them.

5) Icons changed... again.

6) Theres an FPS window, but I can't figure out how to actually turn it on.

7) Tooltips have been cleaned up a LOT. More descriptive, and easier to read.

Hurrah for point 2!

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New Minstrel skills : http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=93436

New Lore Master skills: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=93499

are we gunna get a kinship house????

b4 i go lookin in to how much a dwarf mine is gunna be

and if we are gunna get a kin house what style etc? just throwin it out there, mayb cud do a vote or summit?

and when is champion class gunna be un nerfed????

Book 13 is likely to be the next chance Champs get a look-in; Bk 12 will be Guardians and Burglars...

As for the KS House - we can do a vote; I'm waiting until Friday when info on the houses from Roheryn will start filtering out before worrying too much

I honestly dont think we will need to vote that much.

Elf housing will be in the area around Celondim, far from anything.
Dwarf housing will be close to Sarnur, again too far from anything.
Hobbit housing will be in South Farthing, likely more ok with the distance to Michel Delving, but I cant see us enjoy a tiny hobbit cottage.
That leaves Man housing, south of Bree, which to me makes the only viable choice.

Yes, I know that I'm an elf. Yes, I know that our kinship is based on the Elf charter. But all put together, I cant see any reason to choose anything but South Bree.


If you have any objections to the above, please throw them here


/G.

Housing Maps:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=93693

Man housing does look the best option

found some PvMP stuff as well if anyone is interested

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221479

Good to see the Diminishing Returns, the reduction in max Troll numbers and the 2 hour cooldown on Freep to Creep flipping...

found some book 11 screen shots. not much tho

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=173167

the wood trolls look cool

and found more details for epic book and other stuff

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=93413

Some videos about houses ...

http://lotrovault.ign.com/View.php?view=Videos.Detail&id=56

The Rift - raidsets : they look awesome !

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=222271

More info about The Rift:

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The Rift of Nurz Ghashu, or more commonly referred to as simply ‘The Rift’, is a new 12 man raid located through the gates of Gath Uior (that scary place in North-East Angmar, past the Elite Masters) where players will battle their way through 7 bosses on their quest for the next best loot. That’s right, the next best loot! The Rift brings players the opportunity to achieve a new level of greatness by offering a smaller scale raid with a Barter System. In The Rift players will receive shards and coins from ‘trash mobs’ and bosses which can then be traded in for the coveted new Rift armor. Yes, some of the coins and shards are tradable and thus will be sold on the auction house. However, the largest of these barter items will be bind on acquire – so killing bosses will remain worth your time.

How does The Rift compare to Helegrod (currently the only raid) and will it be worth the time for players to form tight 12 man groups? The Rift is by far the most challenging content in the game and the reason why many people will continue to have faith in what is possible with LOTRO. It forces each member of a Raid to consider all of their skills and encourages more diversity in groups even compared to the Helegrod. The potential rewards alone, (i.e. the best looking and arguably best gear in the game) will be motivation enough for kinships to be running it as frequently as possible. With the 7 bosses and the overall increase in player competence required, you should not expect to clear The Rift in just one night. Making this a larger and more stretched out experience Turbine has filled that gap in the week where players have found themselves with nothing to do. The Rift has a lockout timer like the rest of the content in LOTRO, so don’t expect to farm this place just yet.

From Book 11 Preview from LoTRO Vault:

http://lotrovault.ign.com/View.php?view=Columns.Detail&id=18

Gollum artwork and links to vids as well

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/825/825541p1.html

The Rift lockout is being reported as 1 week, as opposed the 3 days (plus a few hours) with Hele...hopefully it changes on release...

Month of the Minstrel article:

http://www.lotro-europe.com/news.php?search=yes&keyword=&id=4624&pagename=gameinformation&type=Gameplay

housing pics

http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=359

lots or neighbourhood shots and some interior stuff as well. dwarf housing looks best imo but then again i am a dwarf

omg will u be able to make a own house ? =D.. very cool in that case

Looks like the US are getting Bk11 on 24th Oct so we should get it 25th Oct...

http://www.lotro.com/article/421

Something to note with the housing:

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When you own a home, you earn a Passive Skill which gives you a discount to purchases and repairs from the vendors in your neighborhood. What’s more, if your kinship has a house in the same neighborhood, you get another discount which stacks with your personal house discount.

http://www.lotro-europe.com/news.php?search=yes&keyword=&id=4633&pagename=articles&type=Dev%20Diaries

thats sweet about discounts. lets hope there will be a milestone in each neighbourhood or some other return home skill coming
found some other junk today as well

http://www.lotro-europe.com/news.php?search=yes&keyword=&id=4633&pagename=articles&type=Dev%20Diaries

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Taxidermy

If wildlife is more your speed, Clar Whitethorn will be offering his services as a Taxidermist. He’s setting up shop in Bree not far from the bank. If you should happen to find any particularly well-preserved or intact animals, be sure to bring them to him if you’d like them stuffed and mounted for display. Visit soon -- his introductory rates may not last forever!

taxidermy YES!!! stuffed and mounted goblins severywhere! boar head over the fire place

rift raid stuff

http://www.lotro-europe.com/news.php?search=yes&keyword=&id=4635&pagename=gameinformation&type=Gameplay

loremaster stuff

http://www.lotro-europe.com/news.php?search=yes&keyword=&id=4631&pagename=gameinformation&type=Gameplay

i want 2 be a loremaster now
can't wait till new year and champ will be better

Zill wrote:

can't wait till new year and champ will be nerfed

fixed!

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Some of the stuff in Bk11 does look interesting; really looking forward to The Rift and being able to have a full 12 player kinship team working together (fingers crossed we can get 12 ppl :p) - just not too sure I'll be getting a Tier 2 house (the upkeep has been doubled) and about some of the underlying changes (fear and stealth) although they don't directly affect me as a Capt

25th October it is...

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Turbine, Inc. and Codemasters Online Gaming announced the details of the third free content update for subscribers to The Lord of the Rings OnlineTM: Shadows of AngmarTM. Book 11: Defenders of Eriador continues the epic story of The Lord of the Rings Online adds over 100 new quests, a new 12-player raid, two new areas in Middle-earth and introduces the player housing system. Book 11: Defenders of Eriador will be available to subscribers of The Lord of the Rings Online on October 24, 2007 in North America and October 25, 2007 in Europe.

http://www.lotro.com/article/430

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Zill wrote:
can't wait till new year and champ will be nerfed


fixed!

i meant un-nerfed. really lol