f13.net forums - Character Wipe and Release Notes

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Of Special Note
Players can now duel against other players! Choose either of the following methods to initiate a duel:
Select the player you want to duel, and type “/duel” in the chat window.
Select the player you want to duel, right-click to bring up the CSM, and select duel from the dropdown list.
The long-awaited Auction system is finally here! Buy from and sell items to your fellow LOTRO players throughout the lands!
Auctioneers can now be found in the following locations: Bree, Michel Delving, Thorin’s Hall, and Rivendell.
LOTRO now has a skinnable UI! For instructions, click here.
Ranged Auto-Attack has been added! See the Gameplay section below for more details.
All weapons in the game have had their attack speeds modified to differentiate between the weapon categories.
Special one-shot craft recipes are now available as rare drop items!
We’ve added two new quests for quickly leveling up our experienced players to level 20 and 30, so they don't have to go through all of the content again following character wipes. These quests are bestowed by the first NPC inside any starter instance.
The NPCs are:
Amdir (Human starter)
Postman Took (Hobbit starter)
Glóin (Dwarf starter)
Talagan Silvertongue (Elf starter)

These quests work in the same way as the Skip Intro quests. When you start a new character, the first NPC you speak to will have additional quest selections (depending on your billing token) that will bestow the Level Up quest on you. You then complete that quest with the same NPC.

If you were invited before the beginning of November, you can do either quest.
If you were invited in mid-November, you can only do the Level 20 quest.
If you were invited in late November, you cannot do either quest.

Additionally, the level 20 quest teleports you to Bree-town, and the level 30 quest teleports you to Esteldín. Both quests give you some amount of starting gold.

Gameplay
Added support for ranged auto-attack:
Only supported for Bow and Crossbow weapons.
You will automatically switch between melee and ranged auto-attack depending on the distance to your target.
Ranged auto-attack cannot be used while moving.
Targets who have been stunned, dazed, or knocked down will no longer be able to parry, block, or evade while in that state.
Your pet's floating damage will now appear on your behalf. When floating damage is turned on and "My floating damage" is turned on, you will see the damage done to and by you as well as the damage done by and to your pet.
Players can now queue up 'response' skills before the event that enables them is available. This should make Minstrel ballad 'twisting' a bit easier to manage, and improve Guardian ability to execute block and/or parry initiated response skill chains.
The Hunter's campfire will now increase the rate of out-of-combat regeneration for nearby players as well as enable the use of cooking crafting recipes.
Hunter trap items (as opposed to the Set Trap skill) can be used in combat and their inductions will not automatically interrupt on hit.
Beneficial Conjunctions no longer apply to non-fellowed members.
Avatars will now fall to a knee when they are defeated and the Deadly Wound fx will play on them.
The Dread fx will play on the person who was defeated.
Players will now get sent to the Staddle Defeat Circle when defeated in certain areas.
Removed the /milestone command. Players should use their Map Home instead.
Fixed a problem where monsters would get stuck spinning in circles.
Damage reflection items now properly trigger at the frequency listed in the tooltip.
Characteristics that govern the weaponry and armour you can wear are now purchased from the class trainers.
Fixed a bug that would prevent lower level players from detecting stealthed higher level players in their Fellowship upon joining.
Fixed an issue that was occasionally causing defeated monsters to remain standing for several seconds before falling over and becoming lootable.
Updated the Rest skill by removing the 'usage' restriction. You can now use potions and other items while in the resting state.
Morale transfer effects on weapons cannot defeat the target when the amount of Morale transferred exceeds the amount on the target.
Minimum usage requirement on basic bear trap has been increased to 15 (it was a level 10 item, which was an error).
The Hunter retreat skills no longer fail when the destination is outside a private instance.
Fixed a bug with some area-effect monster skills that was causing them to hit targets in inconsistent ways, e.g. some breath weapon attacks were hitting players behind the attacker.
Fixed a bug that was allowing certain creatures (e.g. Morroval) to root a player until they logged out and back in again.
Skills
The Skill UI will now properly display information about skills when under the effects of Traits.
“Inner Flame” has now been moved to level 16.
The hunter's foe-tracking skills now correctly detect evil dwarves and no longer track corpses.
Several Skills that were incorrectly applying the Caltrops hit fx have been fixed, so players will no longer persistently drop caltrops decals every time they go into or out of a building/instance.
Guardian Changes:
“Guardian's Ward” is no longer on a progression. It now provides 4% Block & Parry over the life of the skill, and lasts twice as long as it did previously.
“Guardian's Defence/Parry” now provide 5% to Block/Parry over the life of the skill.
“Guardian's Bash” now does additional damage.
“Shield Blow” was not generating threat properly as described. It now generates threat and has the correct "threat" fx on hit.
Burglars will no longer be able to execute "Mischievous Glee" or "Startling Twist" unless they have an active Trick on the target — which means no more misfires! Also, executing these will no longer remove Trick effects from other Burglars.
Lore-masters executing "Improved Staff Strike" or "Sign of Power: Istari" to take advantage of a "Flanked!" state from their pet will no longer remove the "Flanked!" state from other Lore-master pets.
Corrected issues with executing skills that were altered by Traits, e.g. Guardian "Vexing Blow" will now correctly act like an area-effect skill when transformed by the "Harrasser" Trait.
Traits/Accomplishments
Class accomplishments are now gated by level, New accomplishments become available at 10th, 20th and 30th level.
The numbers required to complete many class accomplishments have been updated.
The following class accomplishments now count specific combat skills rather than generic melee attacks.
Expert Attacks (Captain)
Focused Strikes (Captain)
Quickness (Guardian)
Rapid Recovery (Hunter)
Changes to Lore-master class accomplishments:
Harmony of the Body is now Adept Tier (lvl 20+), and advances using Wisdom of the White Council.
Magic Adept is now Master tier (lvl 30+)
User Interface
You can now purchase stackable items from a vendor, a stack at a time, by holding the Shift key and purchasing the item as you normally would.
/friend list will now work correctly.
New tutorial hint has been added for tapped monsters.
Left clicking and dragging while the mouse cursor is in the world will allow you to orient your camera.
Updated the title UI to be in a tree format.
New (working) sort options are available
When Escorting an NPC, there’s a new Vital Display just for them. If you select the Escort Vital Display, it will select the Escort. If you hit the target button next to the Escort Vital Display, you will select the current target of the escort.
Skill examination tooltips now show more precise values (example: 10.4% rather than 11%).
When ESC is pressed, any pinned tooltips will disappear. When clicking on an item in the chat window to spawn a pinned tooltip, a subsequent click on the same item will remove the pinned tooltip.
Some menu items on the options panel (graphics resolution and refresh rate) were missing their scrollbars. You can now use the scrollbars to pick various menu options.
Monsters have floaty names when "NPCs" floaty names are toggled on.
You must now dismiss the character delete dialog box before doing anything else. (It’s modal!)
Shortcut bars
The old Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Bonus1/Bonus2 bars have undergone a slight name change. The bars are now numbered 1 through 5.
Each bar can be configured to do the following:
Dock/undock itself from the pop-up bar.
Toggle its orientation.
Force itself to always be visible
If not forced visible, it will listen for its assigned keypress before showing itself.
Each shortcut location can now be mapped to explicitly, instead of being forced to Ctrl/Alt/Shift + a number.
Each shortcut bar can now be docked to the pop-up bar, or undocked and moved around the screen. You can toggle this in the options panel.
Each shortcut bar can now be set to "always show." If set, this will (…wait for it…!) always show the bar!
If a shortcut bar is NOT set to always show, it will be shown when the key associated with it is pressed. Your old friends the Ctrl/Alt/Shift bars are still around, but now you can remap those keys to your heart's content. You can also remap the "bonus" bars from before as well.
Each shortcut bar can have it's orientation toggled when undocked.
You will now see the key mapping bound to a shortcut display on the slot.
The /shortcut command now plays nicely with the shortcuts. (It's no longer 0-based).
The "Lock Quickslots" hotkey (ctrl-l) is a more advanced feature, so we have unmapped it by default. You can still go to the Options Panel to the Keymapping tab and remap it yourself.
Chat
In LOTRO, you don't LFG, you LFF! (Look For Fellowship)
We have renamed a couple of chat channels:
Auction -> Trade
Advice -> Help
General -> Regional
Elder -> Officer
When you select the Raid and Officer output channel from the chat menu, the text will actually go into those channels now, instead of the normal "Say" channel.
Instead of a "General Error" when you send tells to players that are offline or non-existent, we display "The player is offline or does not exist."
You can now right-click on a player's text tag in chat to display a context-sensitive menu. The menu will be different when the player is nearby or far away.
You were never supposed to emote from typed text unless it was in the "say" channel (as opposed to whenever you typed text). This has been fixed.
When an admin speaks to you, your chat window will be displayed with a clearly visible notification.
Various error text is now filterable. If you filter off the "Error" text type, this actually works and "General Error" won't appear in all your chat tabs.
The output button in the chat window now has a list of emotes that you can do!
When you drag and drop items into the chat entry area, the formed chat links will be colored by the item's rarity.
Crafting
The quantity to make defaults to 1.
Crafting UI - Mastery Options no longer accidentally grey out until you log out and log back in.
When adding a new recipe, the recipe list will be updated immediately.
Crafting titles for tiers 4 and 5 have been swapped. Tier 4 is now Artisan / Master Artisan. Tier 5 is now Master / Grand Master.
The Crafting UI was previously displaying incorrect names for some of the crafting tiers for all professions, causing confusion when players were awarded titles for completing some proficiencies. The names in the Crafting UI should now match the titles awarded for completing proficiencies.
Weaponsmith: Changed all crafted Westernesse weapons (sword, greatsword, axe, dagger, throwing axe) damage type to "Westernesse-make."
Class specific items (such as traps, caltrops, marbles, stundust, shield spikes, drums, lutes, pipes, horns, runes, books, pennants, burglar tools) are now produced using the various crafting professions. The recipes are available via treasure drops. Check your local provisioner for new ingredients used in these recipes.
New items used in crafting are for sale at the provisioner.
Enhanced craft tools now have correct icons.
Crafted jewelry has appropriate glow icons hooked up.
Crafter created hunter traps, champion horns, burglar marbles, stun dust, and caltrops are more effective against monsters (up to five levels of minimum usage requirement on item).
Removed the rare and incomparable craft tools from treasure, as now crafters can construct them.
Items
Star-glass now works on the user and the user's fellowship instead of every person within the usage radius.
Light helmets have been updated, and this will have an impact on your appearance. Most of the light helmets appeared too heavy for light gear and therefore are now used for medium & heavy armor sets.
Trophy items from monsters can no longer be stacked in amounts of 100. Max stack size for these items has been reduced to 25.
Curing potions are no long usable in combat.
Class items are now created by crafters instead of being sold at trainers. Campfire kits were removed from the provisioner and are also created by crafting now.
Some vendors were offering carte blanche discounts on item repairs. The offending vendors have been put to task and now charge full price for repairing items.
Weapons that do additional damage towards a genus type now glow blue. This is not the final version and there are some known issues with this new feature that still have to be ironed out.
Some East Angmar quest reward armor was incorrectly set as light. They are now the proper equipment category.
Monsters who use weapons now have more variety in what they wield.
Graphics/Animation
Medium Graphics Quality has undergone some changes. The settings have been balanced to make the game's graphics look better in Medium Detail without sacrificing much rendering performance.
Frills (ground clutter objects) now render farther in all detail levels!
In Medium Detail and lower, tree leaves and bushes now use a new rendering technique when fading in and out as you approach them! This technique eliminates the 'pop' when the tree leaves finish fading in. Now, the tree leaves will 'dissolve in' when using Medium Detail. In High Detail, trees will still smoothly fade in and out.
Watch the wind blow through the trees! Many trees now have subtle animations to simulate leaves rustling in the wind.
Human Male Avatars can now use crossbows for ranged combat, Other avatars will be setup when animations are available. Please report any Hunter skills that are not functioning correctly when a Crossbow is equipped.
The Elf Female now has strafe jump animations.
Hobbits wearing dwarven style robes will be pleased to know that these items now appear correctly when worn.
World/Travel/Maps
Your map and radar have default filters applied to them: most notably POIs and your fellows will appear on the world maps by default.
Weather! All major regions now have a chance of precipitation. Grab your umbrellas!
Added a missing quest NPC and a vendor to Thorin's Halls.
Thorin's Court is now known as Frerin's Court.
The DELETE ME Spider has been removed from Rath Tereg.
The western corner of the wolf camp west of Celondim is now named "Falathlorn.”
The Ram Duath Earth-kin hub is a bit more colorful now.
Your Map Home will now tell you where it takes you.
Thorhad, the swamp in Angmar, has been renamed Malenhad to avoid confusion with Thorenhad in the Trollshaws.
Rapids and rocks have been added at the north end of the River Lune.
Various locations in the North Downs have been modified to prevent players from getting stuck in an inescapable pit.
An inescapable pit in the Trestlebridge Falls has been backfilled.
Various floating objects in the North Downs have been grounded.
Esteldin now has a full suite of class trainers!
One of the doorways to the Prancing Pony was broken. Grease applied to hinges....
Fellowship mapnotes won't disappear from the radar when the fellow moves beyond your visual range.
Miscellaneous
Removed surnames from character generation descriptions. Surname options are not available.
Race descriptions in character generation have been fleshed out.
Dread effects in monster camps have been adjusted to more manageable amounts according to players level.
The quickclaw sub-species has been removed.
Wights no longer wander too far from camp in Harloeg.
Great Barrows Split-wights now spawn from the ground.
Resolved chat breaks in French and German.
Ambient wildlife will no longer run in fear from elves. (Say it with me: "Awwww. Idinitcuuuuute?")
Hendrovals no longer drop hides.
Quests
General:
The Quest Tracker has been revamped:
The auto-fill option for the Quest Tracker will now replace the oldest quest when a new quest is updated (unless that quest is locked).
Manually adding a quest to the tracker will lock the quest in the tracker automatically.
To open the journal to the selected quest, use the new button to the right of the entry. Right-clicking this entry allows you to open the journal, lock/unlock the quest, remove the quest, and remove all quests.
The quest title now portrays the difficulty of the quest in the same way it appears in the journal.
You can now view quests you have completed. In your Quest Journal there is a check box for 'Show Completed Quests.” When checked, you’ll see all the quests you previously completed. You cannot view both Current and Completed quests at the same time.
You can now only have forty active quests at any one time. Instance Quests do not count toward this limit.
Every Class now has a set of high-level quests that become available at Level 45. Rewards for these high-level quests are not yet implemented, and the second and third steps of each of these quests are uncompletable until certain high-level dungeons become available to the public.
Specific quests:
Players must now speak to Laergil at the end of the “Grisly Task” quest.
“Sickening of the Land” now counts all insect kills in Haudh Lin (east and west).
In Epic Book 8, Chapter 3, Hemeldir no longer takes Golodir's shirt and shield, only to return them to the player in the next objective.
Quest item filename removed from event text in “Spider Gems” text. Copy and paste error....
The confusing "or" objective for the Ered-luin Standing-stone quest has been clarified
Obsolete "Delete-me" briars near Glamir have been removed.
Removed the mysterious floating "Bird" from the Ered Luin. My pet cockatiel is named "Bird" too, but when he flies, he generally moves his wings (and winds up bouncing off a wall).
Aurochs meat in “Preparing for Winter” has a good stack name now, no longer ...
Violet Underhill's tooltip said she is a Man. That is wrong on two counts, so we apologize both to her and to the Stock Ad-hoc Committee for the Presentation of Correct Race and Gender Identities.
Halbarad, Nellie, Gildor, and Dori can now be found in the Esteldin library after a certain point in Book 3.
The goblins for the “Clear The Way” quest in the Ered Luin are now present in reasonable numbers.
The “Sharkey's Plan” chest location should now be a bit more solo-friendly. Thinned out encounter there a little.
For the quest “Leaving Middle Earth,” directions to the tree have been clarified, and the tree itself has been made more distinctive.

My fanboi meter just blew. Cal, you had me at "Hello."