6-Month Update

 6-Month Update

Expansion:  The announcement for Kingdoms of Harad was given at the end of September and surprisingly did not have a FAQ with a list of details of when and how much the expansion will be offered in the Lotro Store. Scenario started his Casual Strolls through the expansion regions each week in the beginning of October. The virtue cap was increased to level 100. Like before, many questioned why there was only a reforge at 151 and not 156. The item level of the legendary items would gradually increase from its initial 555 count as more content is released. When the initial instances released, you could reforge again at any time between 151 and 160 to increase to the new 560 cap. Just make sure you have enough gold for the upgrades.

Orion had to remind players that delving gear does not update until after T3 of the raid is released. This exact thing happened before when the level cap went up to 150. Numerous players were announcing their frustration and departure of the game after learning this on multiple platforms. Though, I have a feeling they will be back eventually since Orion mentioned that the next expansion should not increase the level cap to 170.

The expansion released on December 3rd and a quick patch was made on December 10th. How long would it take to release the instances? Fate of Gundabad released the first two of their instances 8 days after release while Corsairs of Umbar released all of theirs at once four months later due to a couple of team members leaving to join Blizzard. That is when Orion was assigned to work on raids. The two 6-man instances were made ready to be tested on Bullroarer December 15th, but the 3-man instance still had problems of falling through the floor as seen during Scenario's stream. It was made available to test on January 14th after they returned from their holiday break but problems continued to persist. The team had a hard time pinning a date as Update 46.1 was pushed week after week until February 4th.


"I just had to pick her up" - Orion 

Legendary Items: When the expansion was on Bullroarer, one thing players literally freaked out about was the new level caps given to all legendary items. This meant that all items that you might have collected for the past two years would only be applicable up to level 150. The developers quickly reverted this change to permanently start happening after the launch when the level cap increased to level 160. Numerous other changes like how certain legendary items are now given out to their appropriate level instead of scaling through quests and deeds also was applied. Any items in storage would automatically update when pulled out into your inventory. Unfortunately, any caught in the mail system would have to wait until versioning in Update 46.1.

Of course when Update 46 launched on December 3rd, there was a massive problem with how legendary items stopped showing their traceries. The developers shut down the servers, and Vastin spent the entire day updating people in the Official Discord. At noon, he stated that there could be a versioning error but not everyone was affected. At 1:35, they acknowledged the data was not broken and a rollback was not required. By 3 o'clock, Vastin confirmed a problem with the static legendary items and the UI. They later opened the servers and offered a code to help smooth things along. An official fix was given later on. 

Transfers: Transfers to 64-bit servers was quite extensive. There were still people thinking that the really old servers would come back even after they closed down the data center in August. Dark transfers began in October after they spent some time hooking them up into the new centers at Las Vegas and Rotterdam. With the free code and announcement of the expansion, they also issued free transfers off the primary servers. Both of these were extended for quite awhile beyond the issued date up to the end of the year.

Lalia's Market: During the annual housing stream on Discord, Scenario and Celestrata announced a new way to promote premium content. Instead of Housing Writs that are kept in your inventory, new Homesteading Coins would be kept inside your wallet. Nearly everything you would have seen in the Lotro Store for housing is now conveniently listed on a barter in Lalia's Market. New house decoration bundles were constantly being thrown out. Scenario mentioned that there was approximately 500 decorations in all avenues being released just with Kingdoms of Harad. 


"Thats new and that's new and..." - Merchant in Lalia's Market 

Legendary Servers: One year passed since the introduction of the Veil of the Nine mechanic on the new legendary servers of Angmar & Mordor and already players were asking when new ones would be introduced. They have a plan for what to do next but are not ready to talk about it yet. Even though the schedule only shows up to September so far, Cordovan mentioned in the Official Discord on March 12th: "We have not yet stated when Angmar and Mordor will wrap up their Veil of the Nine experience, and we are not yet in a position to do so today. It is true that historically we have closed the Legendary Worlds when they reach level cap parity, but Angmar and Mordor are the first based on a particular part of the story, and that story ends before the current live game level cap." A dialogue spurred on for days whether players would be able to obtain the exclusive legendary server items at level 130.

The developers were pretty consistent on keeping the current ones going without the opportunity of any transfers being made off onto standard servers until level increases stopped. Players were not happy with OnnMacMahal group-oriented changes to Moria, Mirkwood, and the In Their Absence instances. Some were even stating that playing them on normal servers has become impossible, even though the exclusive gear on the legendary servers barely gave players an advantage. The legendary servers received a boost to character experience as they hastened to level 85 in December, level 95 in January, and level 100 in February. The newest rewards in Update 47 brought baubles that summon "effigy" mini-ringwraiths that roam around on the ground for a short time. Troubles continue to brew as the Osgiliath instances were closed temporarily due to a problem with selection boxes giving very low level gear.


"You up for a beer?" - Friend who hangs out with you too much

UI: After years of not having an engineer on hand to handle the UI, the company finally obtained one after the transfer work to 64-bit servers. While we noticed a couple things as far back as Update 42, there was finally a big update for Update 46.1. Unfortunately, a few outsiders who didn't pay attention to the details vented their frustration when not everything fit to their 4k resolution. This was only the start of changes, and they were not going to wait around until all the work was done.

There are approximately 50 new different options available to scale. Something Cordovan liked was how transitional screens no longer stretched across the screen but instead had borders. Maps can be scaled smaller or larger. While there still persists problems with post-processing disabled, your cursor does now have a scale option. While the focus of the patch did not take plugins into consideration, the developers did open a new channel in the Official Discord for feedback. LUA support was initially disabled but then re-enabled with scaling disabled.

One thing that slipped past almost everyone was the kinship calendar. Orion mentioned that adding this to Update 46 was neither premature or unintentional. We knew from Bludborn's 3-hour interview in April 4th, 2024 that Orion submitted a 44-page report about kinships. In June 2025, the back-end work was tested on Bullroarer. There is no telling what else we will discover in the months to come.


"I need to write down when to have all my hobbit meals." - Hatric 

Spring Festival: Like how they added the island of Furtherholm for the Midsummer Festival and The Understaddle for Farmer's Faire, MVP has added some new quests in Clegur for the Spring Festival. Like the great Whelsh, these new quests are centered around the handling of Daffodils. There were a few problems: the characters offer both regional and festival quests at the same time, the banners (both decoration and quest) defaulted to the standard skirmish ones, and people were lining up to pick up the water bucket because it wasn't respawning fast enough. The biggest problem had to be the new Maramam Bacon Pie deed to which MVP defended his decision on making them only obtainable each day on each character from the quest instead of providing a recipe. The 75 count didn't help much either as it would require you to log into 5 characters for 15 days to obtain the bauble on one character.

Cordovan Activities: As the primary person who handles the articles on the website, Cordovan has been quite busy keeping us informed. The 32-bit client was deprecated. The old forum was cut completely with end of service. There were two new Supporter Packs: Jaunty with a new musical instrument and Gilded Caravan with a camel mount. He participated in his annual Extra Life campaign with the return of the Fashion Maven titles. He published the Public Schedule for the year.

January 30th was Cordovan's last weekly Cord of the Rings stream, at least for awhile. Since his appearance was not sponsored by the company, his time was all off the clock. What's worse is that Fridays were when the company had their weekly meeting, which explains why you didn't normally see developers like Severlin on. This extra time would help him organize the Content Creator Program, update new shorts, re-upload sheet music to an old Gundabad article, and post full soundtracks on Youtube. 


"I'm looking for a lamp big enough to hold a tiny person." - Drunk Customer 

Future Content: Orion and Scenario decided to combine their streams into one. Their We Have a Cave Stroll covers Update 48 with The Hatokali Fells. This quest pack will have a staggered release. Even the 6-man instance won't be made available when it releases. Just north of the Green Sea, the mighty cliffs that are dangling south of the regions from Kingdoms of Harad will have an interesting new "landscape" dungeon.  

A few years ago, rumors started to fly about a new low level quest pack that would fully connect Angmar through the Iron Pass to Gundabad. Plugins recognized the new landmass built between the sections, and some who were able to manipulate camera control were able to notice a connection between six points in Hithaeglir. Scenario talked about this Moria alternative region many times in 2023 but recently stated nothing was official. They just didn't have the time to make it happen. They felt they leaned too heavy into low level content. 

Orion posted the Letter to the Players and discussed some topics during the weekly stream. The only hints to this area "in the North" for the expansion was from a couple of streams such as the size of villages you will find and whether you will be wearing sandals. 

  
"His feet made little imprint in the snow." - Frodo Baggins 

Rivendell Housing: One thing is constant - players will always want more houses. It seems like the public is always asking what the next neighborhood would be regardless if one was just released. The developers mentioned that they like to space them apart to not overwhelm players as you can see from their 18-month release schedule from previous houses - Rohan August 4, 2020; Erebor February 16, 2022; Lyndelby August 28, 2023. And yet, a new neighborhood has not been released since then.

We won't know the official pricing until the patch hits live. Even the Lyndelby houses went from 285 MC or 12 Housing Writs on both Bullroarer and the stream to 213 Mithril Coins or 9 Housing Writs on the live servers. Scenario says it is better to price a little high before adjustments instead of having players see them a little low and become more expensive. 


"Welcome to Rivendell" - Elrond 

March 27, 2024 was the first time Scenario slipped news about Rivendell Housing. Despite the breadcrumb of news, players were adamant that this wasn't considered "official" since there still wasn't a public article about it. The year of 2025 was full of news including how the original house developer (in the classic neighborhoods) was taking a shot at the new neighborhood. An article and the number of slots with what the interior looks like was just posted. A preview of the neighborhood will be shown on April 1st.

Update 44 brought new Elvish decorations in the Reward Track. The new gate to the neighborhood was seen on Bullroarer and released in Update 45.7. It was so shocking for players to see that rumors were spreading like wildfire that the new houses were already available. Although a new set of housing items were shown with the Update 46.1 Bullroarer update, they did not release to live servers until Update 46.2 on Cachunir. Update 47 brought new maps for Rivendell and the Rivendell neighborhood. The Spring Festival also brought along a few new fun items.  


"New shipment just came in" - Cachunir

Reward Track: Season 17 of the Reward Track is the first time there are no new housing decorations. Instead, they introduced the first accessible weapon aura and war-steed trail tracks. The Monster Player Reward Track changed to coincide with the 3-month period of the standard Reward Track. You still need to use Lotro Points to purchase, though VIP get a 50% discount. All monsters receive their portrait frames. The other portrait frames can be traded and sold on the Auction House. 

Class Changes: Orion made a shocking statement that they don't want immediate skills, among a list of other things, in their class changes. They had to change their skill queue messaging system to cut short those who spammed buttons at a rapid pace of 60ms or faster. Severlin stated on the Official Discord on March 18th: "Funny memes aside, we desperately needed to address skill spam to avoid reducing Orcrist capacity, which would mean long queues at prime time. In addition, those changes needed to happen to be able to diagnose and make fixes to more localized issues, which is what we are doing now."

Champions and Guardians received a lot of changes after the expansion. Minstrel Call to Greatness was completely changed in Update 46.1 and their Chord of Salvation immediate in Dissonance & Resonance stance for Update 47. Mariners no longer get stunned when the bar resets. Even the rune-keeper's Fiery Ridicule was morphed in Update 47.

Folly of Nagakhêdi: Players on the Official Discord were quick to point out that their "raid content no later than 90 days after content launch" on the official website footnote was running out. In fact, the day Update 47 released was exactly 91 days since the expansion launched. There was a lot of testing made on Bullroarer. Orion even hosted a performance test on October 15th with a new exclusive title: "Fellow of the Bullroarer" instead of the random Lotro Point giveaway Cordovan hosted a couple years ago. Scenario showed off some of the instance space during a stream.

Raids were already undergoing lock changes in Update 45.3, but players are unhappy about how the current raids function. OnnMacMahal commented March 10th: "We changed T1 raid locks to be weekly last year at the same time that we consolidated the number of tiers from 5 to 3... the reasoning this changed is that under a 3-tier paradigm, Tier 1 is a little bit more like tier 1.5 out of 5 tiers, and T1 is a bit less of a 'you can ignore all mechanics and gear' freebie. So T1 is more like a normal difficulty tier and not a no-loot throwaway/story difficulty tier, and no one could come up with a strong or compelling argument for why it should be on a completely separate lock schedule."

The actual raid was on Bullroarer for quite some time with a free pass to the bosses (with the help of some placeholder levers) to enter each of the chambers. There was some big contention in the Official Discord whether or not the QA developers should have the public T3 test of the raid, but a short window was provided by Lansu on February 24th. When the raid released in Update 47 on March 4th, T2 was going to be March 12th and T3 March 19th. T3 changed to March 26th and again to April 2nd when Orion identified a problem during development.

Other: There are quite a few miscellaneous things that have happened as well: