Bullroarer - Update 46 - Kingdoms of Harad - Performance Test - COMING SOON (Wednesday - 10/08/25 - 10:00 AM ET)

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Bullroarer - Update 46 - Kingdoms of Harad - Performance Test - COMING SOON (Wednesday - 10/08/25 - 10:00 AM ET)
Link: https://forums.lotro.com/index.php?thre ... -et.23694/

Bullroarer is CLOSED

Server Opening Time: Wednesday, October 08 ~10:00 AM EDT
Server Closing Time: Friday, October 10 ~3:00 PM EDT

• Report A Bug
  • /bug may also be used from the Chat in the game.
• Guide to the Eyes and Guard Tavern
• Character Copy is AVAILABLE. This can be accessed through the 'Transfer' button on the Live Servers LOTRO Launcher.
• Player database was wiped on October 06, 2025.

Welcome to Update 46 - Kingdoms of Harad - Performance Test Event

Performance Test

Special Raid and PvMP Focused Bullroarer Preview This Week

We are hosting a special preview this Wednesday and Thursday on our public preview server Bullroarer to determine the impact of some changes made to how the client communicates with the server in instance and raid groups. We have been doing analysis behind the scenes and we believe we have identified ways to optimize how effects are communicated across the system.

In order to determine the impact of this work we are hoping to gather raid groups and PvMP players on Bullroarer on Wednesday and Thursday during two windows:

• from 2:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to 4:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT)
• from 9:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to 11:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT).

We are hopeful that many of you will be interested in potentially helping us identify work that will improve game performance on the live game worlds, but we also want to make a small gesture to encourage players to participate. During these preview windows, our Community Manager Cordovan (+Cordovan on Bullroarer) or other developers when they are not available, will distribute Coupon Codes for a new upcoming in-game account-wide title that has NOT YET BEEN RELEASED! This title, called “Fellow of the Bullroarer”, will be made available more widely in the future, but participants this week will be the first to get the title when it arrives to the live game worlds with Update 45.6.

During the preview, we would love to see you copy over your “main” raiding characters, get into full groups, and run whatever raids you would like to. Additionally, we are hoping to get some larger group PvMP action going on in the Ettenmoors. +Cordovan or another developer will randomly select a bunch of characters during these preview windows who are actively engaging in gameplay and will message them on Bullroarer with a code. This code can be redeemed on the LIVE GAME WORLD at any time, although the title will not be available to select until Update 45.6. To redeem the code, enter it through “Redeem Code” in the LOTRO Store inside of a game world.

NOTE: This testing will be performed in the current game world and access to any of the Expansion areas will be blocked off. Coming Soon!!


Release Notes - U46 - Performance Test:

Of Special Note

• Players should now be able to unlock additional cosmetic outfit slots in the LOTRO store.
• The "/cpet rename" command now has a 20 second cooldown on its use.
• Salutation to Faire Days Farmers Faire wrapper quest will now take 12 total days to complete rather than 15.

Festivals & Events

• A Bountiful Harvest Fall Festival wrapper quests can no longer be cancelled to prevent issues with properly receiving the quests every year.
• Ringwraith:
  • Spiderweb hotspots from ringwraith adds no longer stack effects.
  • Updated most wraith skill inductions to (hopefully) reduce or eliminate instances of the AI becoming stuck during skill execution.
  • Updated target VFX on Enervating Grip.
  • Ringwraith Shadow Lance vfx no longer displays large purple boxes when Post Processing Effects is disabled in Adv Graphics settings.

Classes & Skills

• Burglar
  • Malicious Wound can now benefit from DoT crit chance.
  • Clever Retort Outputs now have reduced critical magnitude.
  • Clever Retort now consumes Aim correctly when used.
  • Cash Out (Payout) damage variance reduced from 20% to 5%.
• Champion
  • Mighty Roar no longer removes Unbreakable buffs.
  • Mighty Roar now has a 10m radius and its target count has increased from 5 to 10.
  • Unbreakable buffs now reduce incoming damage up to 10% rather than increasing tactical mitigation.
  • Adamant buff has been cleaned up and now reduces all incoming damage by 5% (with additional 4% per fervour, up to 25%).
  • Armour of the Hiddenhoard Martial Combatant's Unbroken buff now lasts 60s, rather than 120s.
• Guardian
  • The Keen Blade trait Protection by the Sword now provides fellowship and raid members within 10m of the Guardian with a boost to parry rating, partial parry chance, and damage every ten seconds. The Guardian receives a boost to their skill damage, parry rating, and partial parry chance. The aura has been removed.
  • The Keen Blade trait Prey on the Weak will now trigger on each skill played on a target with an active bleed applied by the Guardian.
  • All guardian bleeds applied by skills now have matching iconography.
• Hunter
  • The trait "In for the Kill" now correctly increases the damage of all Hunter DoTs.
  • Heart Seeker no longer has a bleed by default, and correctly gains it from the 'In for the Kill' trait.
  • Rapid Fire T10 now applies +5% Ranged Damage (on top of prior bonuses).
• Lore-master
  • Pleasant Breeze no longer breaks target stealth when used.
• Mariner
  • Shanty skills which buff or heal your allies will no longer break them out of stealth when used.
• Minstrel
  • Gift of the Hammerhand is no longer immediate.
  • Perfect Performance: Minor Ballad now increases all damage, rather than just tactical.

Combat & Monsters

• Reduced damage on goblin sapper fire puddles.
• World Boss - Rotwing's Building Shadow->Shadowburst effect will no longer occur unless the target is in Rotwing's general vicinity in order to prevent exploits of this effect.

Quests, Deeds, & Adventure Areas

• Elendil will no longer refer to you by your name when turning in 'Lost Lore of the Great Alliance,' since you're technically not present.
• Issuriel has been reminded of Mazog's correct lineage and will no longer confuse his family tree in Volume II, Book 8, Chapter 2.
• Gave Cucheron's banner for hindering the enemies' defences the correct effect during 'Instance: Midnight in the Drownholt'.
• Removed the Volume I Book 3 Foreword from the list of quests that can get shared to your Fellowship to prevent unintentionally blocking your fellowship members.
• The Gundabad Allegiance Mission "Chapter 2: The Mountain-home" now requires fewer banners. Banners now remain after being placed. Due to these changes, this Mission will be versioned on release and incomplete progress will be reset.
• Fixed a typo in TSoWaW Chapter 13.8: Last Words.
• Removed the Volume I Book 3 Foreword from the list of quests that can get shared to your Fellowship to prevent unintentionally blocking your fellowship members.
• Gave Cucheron's banner for hindering the enemies' defences the correct effect during 'Instance: Midnight in the Drownholt'.

Instances & Skirmishes

• Ost Dunhoth
  • Wound Wing
    • Blood-hand Blight now have -25% morale. Blood-hand Renewer now have -25% morale.
    • Blood-hand Stalwart now have -25% morale.
    • Dunhoth Stalker now have -25% morale.
    • Dunhoth Warden now have -25% morale.
    • Wound Wing challenge time limit is now 10 minutes (up from 7).
  • Disease and Poison Wing
    • Gredbyg Queens now have -33% morale. Kergrim now have -33% morale.
    • Dunhoth Lake-lord now have -66% morale.
    • The Disease Wing challenge now allows for up to 18 Bog-lurkers to be killed.
    • Bog-lurker damage reduced ~20%.
  • Fear Wing
    • The Tier 1 Balrog chest can now drop armour tokens at level 65 as intended.
    • Silvertine Trolls now have -33% morale.
    • Silvertine Morroval now have -33% morale.
• Sari-surma
  • Drugoth's Beorning stolen skill now deals Common damage and will be mitigated as such.
  • Whirlwind initial damage has been reduced.
• Cosmetic pets are no longer permitted in the Dol Gulder instance group, In Their Absence instance group and Tower of Orthanc raid.
• Festival tricks are no longer permitted in the Dol Gulder instance group, In Their Absence instance group and Tower of Orthanc raid.
• The Minstrel skill "Still as Death" is no longer permitted in the Dol Gulder instance group, In Their Absence instance group and Tower of Orthanc raid.
• The Moria quest instance "Cease to Resist" now allows players to leave the instance via the initial door.

Missions & Delvings

• Weekly mission quests "On A Mission (Weekly)" and "On A Continuing Mission (Weekly)" have been updated to incorporate new missions. This will cause these mission quests to reset upon release.
• Delvings will now be available at level 160. Progress will be reset on the weekly quests "Delve Deeper", "Delve into the Darkness", and "Delve Deepest" upon launch.
• Landscape treasure caches no longer appear in the Elderslade Mission "The Roots of Decay".

Items & Rewards

• Beorning's Forest Bounder's Gear 4-piece Armour Set bonus is now: Increase damage for all finishers by 15% and reduces the cooldown on Nature's Salve by 5s.
• Brawler's Armour of the Peerles Hand-fighter's 4-piece set bonus is now: enhances pummel to increase the frequency of criticals with Fist of the Valar and a 10s cooldown on Bracing Guard.
• Lore-master's Raiments of the Spellweaver set bonus is now: Increases the duration of Water Lore by 4s.
• Lore-master's The Ancient Master's Armour 4-piece set bonus is now: Increases the duration of Water Lore by 12s.
• Lore-masters Armour of the Amaruith 2-piece set bonus is now: reduces Ents Go to War cooldown by 10s.
• Lore-masters Armour of the Lavanhebron 4-piece set bonus is now: reduces Murder of Crows cooldown reduced by 30s.
• Hunter Armaments of the Impossible Shot 4-piece set bonus is now: reduces Intent Concentration by 20s.
• Hunter's Armourof the Faron 2-piece set bonus is now: Increases the initial damage of Barbed Arrow by 10%.
• Hunter's The Huntsman's Armour 4-piece set bonus is now reduces: Heart Seeker cooldown by 15s.
• Dark Clay dye has returned to its original color.
• Beorning, Brawler, and Lore-master incomparable armours from the Tower of Orthanc now correctly require you to complete different bosses from the raid before they can be equipped.
• Isengard Equipment Sets:
  • Mariner's Draigoch Armour of the Serpent's Bite now has a set bonus.
  • Beorning armour sets of the Tower Smasher and Echoing Roar now have the correct equipment pieces associated with them.
  • Beorning and Brawler Orthanc sets now have two class-based bonuses, matching the sets other classes can acquire.
  • Burglar's gamble chance upgrade no longer implies that it can affect the deprecated debuffing gamble.

PvMP/Ettenmoors

• Fixed an issue with the completion of the Tyrant and Captain-General quests being swapped. These should now complete for the correct sides.
• Levers on the inside (stairwell) of the towers of Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw can now be used to open the inner door during combat. This should allow defenders to engage as needed.
• We made some small changes to how Lugazag, Tírith Rhaw, and Tol Ascarnen handle the swap state. When the defending side loses the location commander, all other defenders will immediately despawn. The new controller's forces will arrive within fifteen seconds of the control switching state.
• The gates constructed at Tírith Rhaw and Lugazag will now correctly drop out of combat with players after they move beyond 20m after ~10 seconds.
• The hunter lords now use ranged attacks.
• Ballista damage is increased to make them more deadly.
• The heroes of Hoarhallow and Grothum should no longer be defeated if they load into the world and then later unload from the world.

Misc

• Misc floating objects have been grounded.
• Terrain texture issue in Entwash Vale has been fixed
• Stuck spot in Furtherholm has been fixed
• Lothlorien Docks route from Landlocked Dock-master can now be used
• Ethring is now listed as in the Ringlo Vale on stable-masters, instead of Lossarnach.
• Stuck spot in the Old Forest has been fixed.
• A stuck spot in Old Forest has been blocked off. Any characters currently still in this location will need to Milestone or /stuck to remove themselves from this location.
• Vale-ore for the Rohan quest Preparing for the Siege are no longer buried within a boulder.

Localization

• FRENCH
  • Translations for the titles Farmer, Wanderer of the Free City, and Proud will now display properly in French.
• GERMAN
  • Translations for the titles Sublime Stalwart, Dragon Slayer, and Adept of Shadows will now display in German.

Art & Avatars

• Elf and High Elves now animate correctly when using the 'Golden Passage Milestone' skill.
• Added 2 new options that will allow players to change the color of hotspot area guides.

Miscellaneous

• The Sandpiper cosmetic pet SFX will now sound like a sandpiper instead of a chicken.
• Hand-knell volume has been lowered a bit to be more in line with other instruments, and Ab2 is now closer in tone to surrounding notes.
• All avatars should now play SFX correctly when using the Milestone of the Golden Passage.

PREVIEW ONLY

• Bobo is now a Notary and no longer bestows obsolete trait points.
• Aerin is now a Clerk of Kinships.
• Kiote now gives players a Veil of the Nine Allowance.
• Scarycrow no longer offers obsolete Relic services and is just a Forge-master.
• Budgeford no longer barters for obsolete Legendary Item ...items.
• Dust's title has been changed from "Ash" to "Embers, etc." for clarity.
• Matthieu Jackedarmes in the crafting hall now trains Birding in addition to Fishing.
• Combo effects updated to allow for the skills to overwrite on the sorceress study correctly.