LOTRO Legendarium: LOTRO’s Update 41 plans monster play reward track, birding hobby, and coop crafting event

Yesterday’s Lord of the Rings Online dev stream was a particularly informative one as SSG’s Orion made an appearance to talk about what’s coming in this summer’s Update 41.

Monster play bounties and reward tracks

• Expect big changes to monster play to help boost engagement
• This includes new competitive Ettenmoors quests (three to four daily quests where freeps and monsters compete over objectives) for a new part of the monster player experience which feeds into…
• Update 41 will also add a monster play reward track two different buy-in costs for VIP and non-VIP players. This track rewards titles, skins, shared account currency, cosmetics, and a seasonal reward frame.
• This should bring back a measure of what the game used to have with destiny system.
• By participating in this system, you’ll benefit your main account.
• Another addition is self-imposed player bounties or “gloryseeking.” When you accept a quest to do this, you’ll put an icon over your head and on map as part of quests. This also gives the gloryseeker a damage buff that ramps up over time as you go on a rampage. If you can survive the 20 minutes and complete all the stages of your quest, you’ll get a 30-minute huge buff for more commendations and currency.
• Also expect “significant” balancing of freeps vs. monsters
• Another project involves improving the elf camp and the lumberyard to make them more important.
• No new monster classes in the Ettenmoors “yet.”

Birding hobby

• Nothing to show off yet, but the studio has “real good plans for what birding is going to be.”
• Birding will be available for everyone in every region (where birds can fly) so that all players can participate. The team is adding up to 600 birds in the game to find.
• Through this hobby, you’ll access new rewards, titles, housing, and places to go.
• A strong possibility is that birding will tie in to some festival systems as future quests.
• The studio might be able to add in transitions/migrations later on.
• Birding will follow a lot of the same structure that fishing does.
• It’s an active system that you drive the ability to find the birds you want. You’ll use a spyglass or some sort of birding kit (binoculars?) that fits within Middle-earth lore and then vocalize bird calls to try to find your quarry.
• You’ll actually see the bird flying by your character.
• The team is utilizing the collections panel to track which birds you’ve discovered.
• We won’t be killing the birds to stuff them!
• SSG hopes to get this in front of players within a few weeks with the June U41 beta.

A new crafting event

• Community-friendly event involving prospectors and cooks right outside Thorin’s Hall.
• Gets all players to complete objectives together, including those who don’t have those professions.
• The more quests and sub-quests you complete, the more currency you earn.
• Each hour, this event will run for 20 minutes.
• It’s the “exact opposite” of the forester event.
• It’ll add a whole new suite of rewards, including prospecting tools.

Other topics addressed

• Update 41 will include the fourth crafting profession slot for each character.
• The team wants to look into ways to bring in older cosmetics that have been out of circulation through a bartering mechanic.
• The 64-bit servers are still being worked on due to ongoing bugs.
• U42 will include a new host of missions with some new mission types.
• The team is not currently planning on adding more trait points due to balance issues.
• The team is considering more taxidermy options closer to U42. Wanted to do this back in Umbar.
• The new whimsy walking emote should be fixed so you can hear footsteps.
• Hunter and Lore-master classes will get the most attention with U41.
• A gear swapping system is something SSG would “love to do” and has on its whiteboard.
• With the fall expansion, SSG is moving toward account-based interaction, such as possibly sharing reputation bonuses for hitting thresholds on a single character or moving some inventory objects into a collections panel to free up space.
• “When and if” news about a legendary server comes, Rob Ciccolini is likely to be the one to announce that.
• Other hobbies are “entirely possible.”
• The Elf revamp looks to be coming with the expansion.
• The studio’s talked about a level crunch but doesn’t really want to do it, as it would take a whole lot of time. Would rather investigate down-leveling to hang out with lower level players.
• Looking at working on more stagnant festival elements next year.

Every two weeks, the LOTRO Legendarium goes on an adventure (horrid things, those) through the wondrous, terrifying, inspiring, and, well, legendary online world of Middle-earth. Justin has been playing LOTRO since its launch in 2007! If you have a topic for the column, send it to him at justin@massivelyop.com.