Bullroarer - Update 45 - Allies and Adversaries Beta #3

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Bullroarer - Update 45 - Allies and Adversaries Beta #3
Link: https://forums.lotro.com/index.php?thre ... pen.21739/

Bullroarer is OPEN

Server Opening Time: Monday, June 30 ~ 4:00 PM EDT
Server Closing Time: Thursday, July 3 ~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 June 24, 2025

Welcome to Update 45 - Allies and Adversaries!

Class Changes

Hunter
Hunter class changes are ready for your feedback! Please see this thread for all details and discussion!
Hunter class trait saved configurations have been reset due to changes to the trait trees.
U45: Official Hunter Changes Discussion

Burglar
Burglar class changes are ready for your feedback! Please see this thread for all details and discussion!
Burglar class trait saved configurations have been reset due to changes to the trait trees.
U45: Official Burglar Changes Discussion

Kinship Refresh - Phase 1

This phase is the less interesting phase of what we are working on for Kinships as most of it is handled in the back end and not evident to the player. But it's also the most important, as if this doesn't work then nothing else will!

To help us test this phase, please perform the following tests using new characters, and characters both active in Kinships and not in Kinships at all copied from Live

• Perform standard Kinship functions (create, join, promote, Message of the Day, Leader/Successor, disband)
• Purchase a Kinship house and adjust permissions
  • An admin can help you with Rank. Please make a call out in /world
  • Please note admins will only be available between 9 AM and 5 PM EDT

If you find any problems, please let us know via a Bug Report, or the Official thread linked below.

Official Kinship Refresh Discussion

Ettenmoors Changes

Siege Changes

The first major change to the siege mechanic is the restriction on how and where the siege machines deploy. In order for a siege machine to deploy the following must be true: the event determining if Siege is active on a server must be true, and Tírith Rhaw or Lugazag controlled by Creeps or Freeps. When siege is active and creeps control a tower, they can summon ballista within the landblock containing either Tírith Rhaw or Lugazag. The same is true for the freeps. While the enemy controls either Tírith Rhaw of Lugazag, enemies may summon battering rams.
When a tower flips control, we are staggering the summons of defenders, quest givers, and flags denoting ownership. We are doing this to alleviate some of the server performance issues we often see with a world event change.

Quests and Tower Control

Both the Grimwood Lumber Camp and the Isendeep Mine have relevance to the defense of the towers in the Ettenmoors. This change unlocks quest access at each location, enhancing and enabling enables the Siege aspect of the tower.
While controlling a tower, owning the Grimwood Lumber Camp, with the siege world event at true, the controlling faction gains access to build a gate at the bottom of the tower. Completing the quest ten times constructs the gate, and locks defenders into the keep and locks the opposition out of the tower. Announcements broadcast as the controller moves through the effort of constructing the gate, informing the opposition of how much progress toward locking down the towers.
We have not yet completed the transition for the Cauldron quests, this will be updated in a future Bullroarer.

Defenders at Tírith Rhaw and Lugazag

We reduced the number of defenders at the towers and will be buffing them to be more dangerous in a future Bullroarer.

Hoarhallow and Grothum

In an effort to give players a reason to visit the two static villages in the Ettenmoors, we are adding two new targets that provide benefits to the towers when they are alive.
At Grothum, a goblin hero rose from the ranks and now patrols the village. While he is alive, if the creeps control TR, TA, or Lugazag, monster players and defenders receive a 5% damage bonus, and a 1% mitigation bonus at the controlled locations.
At Hoarhallow, a hobbit hero rose from the ranks and patrols near the pipe weed field. While he is alive, if the freeps control TR, TA, or Lugazag, players and defenders receive a 5% bonus to both their morale and power.
There are no plans to make these targets quest objectives. Rather, they are objectives that should shift battle focus roughly every 15 minutes.

The Forward Camps

The forward camps located outside of Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw, respectively now are capture locations. The camp north of Tírith Rhaw begins under the control of Monster Players and the camp south of Lugazag begins under the control of Players. Controlling the location grants access to The Underseaths. This new tunnel structure snakes under the Ettenmoors connecting the forward camps to their respective towers via a direct route; the opposite forward camp via a winding color-coded route; the tower on the other side of the map via a winding color-coded route; and a battle arena in the depths called The Hoarfall.
The Underseaths are not tied to the flipping respawn points on the landscape. Defeat in The Underseaths means you retreat to your main base. This should make using this new cut through alone very dangerous.
There are exits into the basements of the two towers accessible from the Underseaths.

Relics in the Underseaths

This new feature places two relics within The Underseaths. The first is a visage of Gil-galad, and the second is a visage of Sauron. Each hides behind a concealed door within The Underseath tunnels. The relic nearest the forward camp access from Lugazag belongs to the freeps and can only be captured by the creeps. The relic nearest the forward camp access from Tírith Rhaw belongs to the creeps and can only be captured by the freeps.
To access the relics, players or monsters players must throw a lever on the opposite side of The Underseaths, near the egress point to the corresponding forward camp. This will open the door on the opposite side of the Underseaths and allow a player or monster player to interact with the opposition’s relic.

Official Ettenmoors Discussion Thread


[HEADING=2]Release Notes - U45 Beta #3:[/HEADING]
New Notes are marked in yellow

Of Special Note

• Homesteading Coins have replaced Premium Housing Writs as the currency used to purchase premium houses and refunded when a premium house is sold. Any Premium Housing Writs in inventory will automatically turn into 5 Homesteading Coins per writ. Any Premium Housing Writs in bank, shared storage, or mail will automatically turn into 5 Homesteading Coins per writ as soon as the writs enter inventory.

Festivals & Events

• We have updated the language of the Hard Tack event create food quest to reflect that you need to finish the food in the ovens before delivery to their respective tables.
• We have made changes to the Hard Tack of Thorin's Hall: Special Brew quest to ensure that the quest will complete.
• Spring Festival flower patches now only sparkle and appear while having the quest "A Fistful of Flowers" underway.
• Furtherholm now has a dock-master that provides routes to Bree-town, Minas Tirith (Midsummer) and Umbar Baharbel
• Stuck spot in Furtherholm has been fixed
• Correct ribbons should be awarded for the forester event.
• An issue has been resolved that caused NPCs and quest items to sometimes not spawn in Furtherholm.

Classes & Skills

• Champion
  • Corrected Champion Fervour trait tooltip to properly indicate that the bonus to skill damage is 4% per tier, not 5%.
    -- This is purely a tooltip change to reflect the actual value as it has been for quite some time.
• Guardian
  • Bleed Them Dry now correctly increases all Bleed Damage by 10%.
• Lore-master
  • The Lore-master skill "Gust of Wind" in red line now correctly increments the deed "The Study of Wind-lore".
  • The Lore-master skill "Share the Power - Fellowship" now correctly increments the deed "Knowledge of the Past".
• Rune-keeper
  
  • Tale of the Storm now correctly increases Critical Chance and Damage for all Lightning skills (rather than just Essence of Storm).
  • Tale of the Storm no longer incorrectly grants +Healing Crit per pips and Fellowship Narrative no longer incorrectly grants +Lightning skills crit chance and mag per pip.

Combat & Monsters

• Fixed Rune-keeper runestones ignoring damage mods from landscape difficulty system.
• Goblin-gourds associated with the Harvestmath quest Gourds and Goblins in Wistmead now display floaty names.
• Raid leaders can no longer move members between raid groups once the boss is engaged and the combat lock is active.

Quests, Deeds, & Adventure Areas

• The Rohan quest "Edoras: The Last Cast" quest guide has been corrected to show you must fish on the dock with Dúdrad.
• In the Anniversary Event quest Year 1 Travels: Towering Monuments, the Stone of Erech in both Gondor and King's Gondor will now advance the quest.
• The Tasks Ent in Derndingle has been given a proper name.
• Tasks for the Ents of Fangorn Forest now reward players with Fangorn Leaves.
• The Minas Morgul quests "The Deep Barrow" and "The Prison of Rauniel" have had their minimum and challenge quest level increased to player level 123 and 130 respectively, to match the instances they require for completion.
• The Yondershire mail delivery quests Route: Tighfield to Nobottle and Route: Tighfield to Gamwich now have no prerequisites, so players can do the mail delivery qests in any order.
  • Changes have been made to the Yondershire mail delivery quests to address an issue where it could sometimes advance or complete the incorrect quest. The notable change is that Route: Nobottle to Tighfield and Route: Tighfield to Gamwich now have specific satchels to click on instead of the table itself, in order to begin the route.
  • Due to these changes, Yondershire mail delivery quests have been versioned and players that had them in progress will need to pick them up again.
• The descriptions in the tooltips on The Second Stone and The Fourth Stone in the Foundations of Stone have been corrected.

Instances & Skirmishes

• Stoneheight
  • Dale Truitt and Búbhosh-grat now deal slightly less damage on Tier 2 difficulty.
• Northcotton Farm
  • Legbarthil's Tier 2 egg morale has been reduced by 40%.
  • The Initial Damage from Thadur's Poisonous Vapours Corruption has been reduced.
• The Lost Temple:
  • The cooldown for Ferndur's Virulent Plague has been reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
  • Frûmolog's morale has been reduced by 50%.
• Sâri-surma:
  • Several Caeryg Guardian Skills no longer Stun or Daze players.
  • Coldbear's Spirit form now correctly requires and consumes 90% of his power when using Roar of the Damned.
  • Drugoth's stolen Beorning skill no longer fears players, but its wound is more potent.
• Ost Dunhoth:
  • Gortheron Wing:
    • Ivar's stolen powers have been adjusted slightly to smooth out the potency of each skill across each of their four tiers. In particular, Matumáth's stolen power is significantly weaker, and its difficulty across tiers is much more gradual.
    • Gortheron's Challenge Mode condition now clearly tiers up from 1-20 and has 5 visible tiers from 21-25 which allow you to see if you have any buffer to kill adds without failing the challenge.
    • Gortheron's Challenge Mode chest should now spawn correctly in all appropriate circumstances in which the challenge is completed.
    • Gortheron's morale has been reduced by 25%.
    • Some adds in Gortheron's encounter now have slightly reduced health.
  • Wound and Fear Wing:
    • Mammoth morale has been reduced by 25%.
    • Wound wing enemy (other than mammoth) morale has been reduced by 33%.
    • Silvertine Troll Damage has been reduced slightly.
  • Disease and Poison Wing:
    • Baleleaf and Dourbark morale has been reduced by 30%.
    • Birch-hound morale has been reduced by 25%.
    • Raging Stone-troll Damage has been reduced slightly.
    • Frothmar morale has been reduced by 30%.
    • Dunhoth Nemúl morale has been reduced by 33%.
• Addressed an issue in The Wold quest Instance: Meet Harding that caused Harding to sometimes fall through his chair.

Missions & Delvings

• To address an issue with Lalia spawning into Anniversary Mission: Lalia's Safe Passage at the incorrect level, she will not be present when players first enter the instance. A lantern has been placed on the ground to help you know where she will appear.
• Banners in the Gundabad Zhélruka Allegiance mission "Chapter 2: The Mountain-home" are now easier to see and hang, and persist through the end of the mission.

Items & Rewards

• Hooded Cloak of the Wise Wanderer and the Hooded Cloak of Roäc now correctly show the hood's texture on female avatars for Race of Man, River Hobbits, and Beornings.
• The Hound Housing Property Guard is now correctly categorized as a beast.
• Fixed several new backpack cosmetics that did not accept dye colors correctly: Sophisticated Birder's Pack, Mushroom Hunter's Pack, and the Pack of Whimsy.
• The pack of the able angler can now accept dye.
• Light, Medium, and Heavy barter vendors at Glân Vraig have a new set of cosmetic armour available. These are the old Eldacar, Causeway, and Armoury sets in cosmetic form.

Housing & Decorations

• By popular request, Lalia's Market now has new Rug housing decoration bundles sorted by color/style instead of by size.
• New "Farm to Table" market goods housing decoration bundles can now be found in Lalia's Market.

Ettenmoors

• In order to restore a measure of parity to the March! for Monster Players and Mount skills for traditional Players, we have increased the induction duration on the March skill by .75 seconds.
• Quests to build gates at Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw now require the tower owners to also control the Grimwood Lumber Camp.
• Lugazag, Tírith Rhaw, and Tol Ascarnen are now their own areas of the Ettenmoors. This provides more control over buffs and debuffs present at these locations.
• New supplemental defenders at Tírith Rhaw and Lugazag have been adjusted to drop sergeant loot profiles.
• Modified the skills on the new Captain-general defenders at the same locations to bring them closer to the function of the creep analogs.
• Added chests to Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw that spawn after holding the location for 1 hour. Controllers can then loot the chest. Looting the chest places a flag on the player/monster player that lasts for 2 hours. You cannot loot the chest again within 2 hours. Loot in the chests is currently placeholder, as is the duration of the loot debuff. The intent is to add a source of Marta within these chests for both sides of the battle in the Ettenmoors.
• Defenders added to the forward camps.
• All Ettenmoors buffs from the new vendors at outposts should be removed when leaving the Ettenmoors.
• The Warleader skills Aura of Command and Aura of Protection now extend to 8m.
• Akúlhun's Brand and Lainedhal's Insignia should now remove all negative effects upon use, provide 20s of silence and disarm immunity, and remove all negative effects for the next 5s seconds.
• We have removed the necessity for owning the mine to start and complete the cauldron quests at Lugazag, Tírith Rhaw, and Tol Ascarnen.
• Based on feedback, you will be able to ride goats and boars in the Underseaths.
• Capturing Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw now provide players with a key when the tower flips.
  • This key unlocks the new chests appearing at the towers after holding the locations for an hour.
  • You can carry only one of these keys at a time.
  • Using the chest still applies a "recently looted" debuff on you to limit how often you can loot the chests.
• Fixed the mismatched sustenance tinctures. Power now labeled for power and morale for morale.
• Addressed the issue with the incorrect blocking effect for the battering ram. This will stop them from being deployed immediately next to one another.
• Addressed an issue with the Relics in the Underseaths despawning every two minutes.
• Addresed and issue with the Relic of Gil-galad not respawning correctly.
• Banners at forward camps now consistently spawn and despawn when used by players or monster players, and the defenders at these locations also spawn in correctly.
• Battering Rams now deal significant damage to the gates. They will destroy a gate in 10 hits, unless the gates are reinforced.
• Batter Rams can no longer bee summoned near one another - the fix called upon an incorrect flag to stop their summoning.
• Language on the schematics now clearly calls out that Ballista can only be used on defence, and battering rams can only be used on Offence.
• Elf Camp is larger. You should no longer be able to climb on the rocks, or walk through walls.
• The relic bearer buff from the Underseaths is now correctly bestowed and correctly removed when a player or monster player achieves the completion of cleansing the relic.
• The relic bearer buff from the Underseaths is now correctly applying the tier down effect when the current version expires.
• Underseath Relics respawns were adjusted after a bug was discovered that kept removing them from the world.
• Landmarks for the forward camps should now appear when controlled.
• The Captain-general and Tyrant occupying the Grimwood Lumber Camp have wizined up. They will no longer chase you outside the modest shelter of the encampment.
• The new outpost vendors summoned when you control an outpost now sell the Marta buffs for Commendation or Marta.
• Buffs granted by the Marta potions will overwrite store bought equivalents, and a warning has been placed on the potions alerting players that this will occur.
• Levers in the Undersraths are now labeled to inform players of what they control.
• Ballista will now fire consistently every 8 seconds.
• Range on Ballistas was reduced to 50m.
• Cauldrons are no longer triggered by friendly gates.
• Cosmetic outfits and goat/boar mounts will now function in the Underseaths. Yes, this time they will, there was a second set of files that needed adjustment.
• Altered the Battle Promotion for monster players to front-load the effects of morale, power, and damage.
• We have added quests to Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw to reinforce and upgrade the doors.
• We removed the restriction of controlling the Mine to get and complete the various oil quests in the Ettenmoors.
• Revised the skills for the heroes of Grothum and Hoarhallow.
• The goblin now brings an entourage of pale folk.
• The hobbit now has more direct damage and no enrage.
• Battlefield promotion effects for players in the Ettenmoors were altered to apply a larger impact earlier on in the advancement path to mirror, more closely, the change made to the monster players.
• We have removed the ability for the Warleader skill "Field Promotion" to be used on session players. This means the skill can no longer be used on troll session players.
• We have changed how access to Troll and Ranger sessions in the Ettenmoors works. In order to qualify for a troll or ranger session, your side of the fight must be have 25 fewer players than the enemy to obtain a troll or ranger session.
• Damage dealt by Captain-generals and Tyrants at the towers, and keeps was increased. This should make them more threatening to attackers.
• Moved the position of the Captain-Generals and Trolls at the Forward Camps to make them a necessary impediment to taking the forward camp locations.
• Removed sleeping orcs from inside tents at the orc controlled forward camp.
• Damage output by the heroes of Hoarhallow and Grothum was increased to make the targets more threatening.
• Fixed an issue with an errant statement in the broadcasts for the defeat of the heroes at Hoarhallow and Grothum.
• Added a note on the new chests at Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw to explain that keys are gained when taking the keep and that you can only open the chest once every 3 hours.
• Fixed an issue with the range at which the ballista would attack.
• Increased the damage from Ballista.
• Monster Summoned battering rams will now deal appropriate damage to the gates at Lugazag and Tírith Rhaw.
• Added gates into the Underseaths at all the entrances to the Hoarfall. Levers on either side of the gates will open them.
• Added a landmark to The Hoarfall to let the players know when they have entered the location.

Landscape

• In Ered Mithrin Dori and Company no longer clip into their goats.
• Southern Mirkwood Roving Threats will now spawn at a location in Taur Morvith, slightly southwest of Mithechad.
• The VIP usage requirement for swift travel routes between Mossward and the other starter locations (Thorin's Gate, Celondim, Michel Delving) and Bree-town has been removed.
• Stuck spot in Ub Nishir has been fixed
• Floating resource nodes in Fields of Duragar have been fixed
• Minor physics issues in Jax Phanal have been fixed
• Floating decor in the Prancing Pony has been fixed
• Orc trapped in a rock in Fanuidhol is now free to conduct shenanigans again
• Mariner and Brawler Trainers have been added to Thrór's Coomb in Enedwaith.
• Mirkwood Taur Morvith rare boss spawns have been fixed.

Miscellaneous

• Race of Man, Elf, and River Hobbit hair styles no longer have edge brightening graphics artifacts in certain lighting situations.