The Dread aura sound fx has been disabled, and the visual effects have been significantly changed by popular demand.
The first iteration of the music system has arrived!
All players will be able to learn one musical instrument passive skill from their trainer, and Minstrels can learn to play any instrument.
With a musical instrument equipped to the ranged slot (they can be purchased from Bards, or crafted with new Woodworking recipes) type “/music” to begin playing.
Your number shortcuts now correspond to musical notes, and you can start jamming away!
For those that tire of hearing your minstrel friend plucking out that riff from “Stairway to Valinor”, there are options to disable other players’ music.
Introducing Adoption!
Players now have the ability to adopt other players! With the use of the /adopt command, you too can adopt a player of your very own!
o A player can set their generation via the Bio page in the Character Journal. Generations range from 1 to 20, one being the eldest generation, twenty being the youngest.
o A Player can have up to two adopted children.
o Adopting a child grants titles to both the parent and the child (Elrond, Father of Arwen / Arwen, Daughter of Elrond. Please note that Dwarves are referred to as Father and Son).
o A player can only adopt a player of a younger generation than they are. This means that Generation 1 players can never have a parent, and Generation 20 players can never have children.
o Generation can only be changed when no relationships exist.
o Relationships can be terminated by visiting a Notary.
o Terminating a relationship revokes all titles associated with the relationship.
Dueling is now known as sparring, and several changes have been made. See the Gameplay section for details.
All major instances (Great Barrows Major, Garth Agarwen, Fornost, Urugarth, and Carn Dum) have had major updates and changes to them, so expect them to play differently.
Smoking has been added to the game:
When you /smoke, you now pull out a pipe and smoke.
When you /smoke1 you cough on your pipe smoke.
Pipeweed items now put you into a smoking induction, which ends with you blowing a smoke-ring shape. Placeholders currently used for the shapes; full fx to come later.
Elves are in tune with nature and do not scare off critters. Likewise, they revere the natural world and have no great bloodlust to kill the natural fauna of middle-earth. As such, Elves cannot bring themselves to kill most of these unthreatening critters (with some exceptions, such as for sickly creatures).
Gameplay
Sparring
Players can now spar by doing a /spar (but /duel is still around).
You can ignore sparring requests and disable the ability to spar by toggling these options in the Options menu.
Players will no longer take an item wear penalty from being defeated by another player when sparring.
Players can no longer spar in the Shire, the town of Bree, and in Rivendell.
Potions can be used in combat, on a 2 minute recharge.
Some creatures in the world are now wary of the coordinated attacks of your Fellowship, preventing you from attempting them too often (Conjunction attempt frequency on a single opponent may be limited).
Fixed a bug that was causing monsters to fail to attack targets at times, they would reset and heal to full instead.
Fixed a rare bug that was leaving characters permanently unable to move and/or parry, evade and block.
Burglars have been taught how to accept items they win from loot rolls a little more graciously. They will no longer celebrate so loudly that they lose stealth when they do.
The Burglar has access to three class items: Marbles, Stun Dust, and Caltrops. Previously, they shared a cooldown timer of 5 minutes. Now they have three separate but longer cooldown timers. This is to encourage Burglars to use a variety of these items while also limiting excessive reuse of a single type of item (I\'m looking at you, Marbles!). Also, the Caltrops item has been changed to become AOE. Now it will apply its effects to the target and several other enemies nearby.
Skills
The Guardian\'s “Warrior\'s Heart” Max Morale Buff now lasts for 1 minute.
The Guardian now obtains “Guardian\'s Promise” at level 38
This skill allows the Guardian to create an acorn whistle they can give to a fellow. The fellow can use the whistle to call the Guardian to them if needed.
The Champion has a new skill, “Merciful Strike,” available at level 24
This skill can be used on a target with less than 10% health. It does a large chunk of damage and generates 2 fervour.
The Champion has a new skill, “Fighting Dirty,” available at level 26
This skill can be used on a target which has less than 25% health. It does damage along the lines of “Wild Attack,” and puts a buff on the Champion for 30 seconds which increases the damage of the Champion\'s next AOE attack by 25%. Using an AOE skill removes the effect.
The Champion gets a new cosmetic skill at level 40, “Boast,” which is for entertainment purposes only.
“Hamstring” & “Hedge” have been moved to level 36 & 38, respectively.
“Savage Strikes” still takes 3 fervour to use, but only removes 2 fervour on use.
“Brutal Strikes” still takes 4 fervour to use, but only removes 3 fervour on use.
The window of opportunity for players to use their defeat response skills has been increased slightly.
“Devastating Blow” now applies a Defeat Combat Event on a successful critical.
“Devastating Blow” and “Pressing Attack” now dispel a Captain’s Battle-Readied State regardless of whether or not they connect.
Captain Heralds have had their DPS and damage mitigation reduced.
“Words of Courage” can no longer be used on yourself
“Words of Courage” and “Rallying Cry” can now be used to heal NPCs.
Captain Marks now cost 5% of your maximum Power, as opposed to a flat number.
Captains have a new skill, “Command: Focus” available to them at level 38.
Captains have a new skill, “Command: Respect” available to them at level 40 (this is purely a cosmetic skill, but does, indeed, command respect).
Captains can now train the following skills at the following levels: Call to Arms: Herald (lvl 10), Pressing Attack (lvl 12), and Words of Courage (lvl 14).
“Enraged Shout” has been renamed to “Battle Shout.”
The buff from “Cry of Vengeance” has been shortened to 20 seconds.
Heralds summoned to Captains with the "Captain\'s Hope" Trait will now add 1 point of Hope to those around them, in addition to their previous effects.
Burning Embers doesn\'t enable auto-attack by default, since it generated confusion with an out-of-range melee auto-attack. So expert Lore-masters, don\'t forget to enable your auto-attack if you want to swing the minute a create comes into range from a Burning Embers pull.
"Track Mines" & "Track Wood" skills are now correctly listed under the Ability Skills category rather than Buff Skills.
Two new skills for the Hunter: "Cry of the Predator" @ Level 12 & "Camoufl