It's a huge update (whooping 1.2 GB in size) and so are the patch notes. Here are some of the things I found most interesting and for the full patch notes you can go here.
Introducing Housing!
Houses are more than an apartment interior floating in the ether. Houses in LOTRO live in gorgeously landscaped neighborhoods, complete with yards!
- Four different racially-styled homesteads, with distinctive architectural styles and environs. (A "homestead" is a style of neighborhood – Elf, Dwarf, Man, and Hobbit.)
- Neighborhoods can be accessed through a gateway located near Duillond, Thorin’s Hall, Michel Delving, and Bree.
- Options abound! Up to 250 neighborhoods are available per homestead so you can settle down near your friends!
- Thirty different houses per neighborhood: 4 kinship houses, 10 deluxe personal houses, and 16 standard personal houses.
- Over 250 decorations to mix-and-match, including paint for walls and floors, rugs, bookshelves, welcome mats, scenic paintings, even background music!
New Content:
- Continued the epic quest arc!
- 13-quest arc for Book 11
- More musical instruments!
Introducing a new level 50 epic 12-player raid: The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu
- In the far northeast corner of Angmar, the Angmarim in their desperation have opened a long-sealed door and begun mining for obsidian and iron in a place simply known as The Rift. They have uncovered long since forgotten tales and evils. The Rangers of Gath Forthnír, led by the Elf-lord Iorelen, are now keeping tabs on this expedition and need your help!
Month of the Lore-master and Minstrel. Both classes get their lvl 40-50 skills filled. Lore masters get a new pet and 8 critter pets (they don't attack - just stand there and look cute - some say they are chick magnets)
- The camera position when mounting or dismounting will no longer return to its default setting. Using a mount, while mounted, will now dismount you.
- You will no longer open corpses when auto-looting if the only visible remaining items are being rolled on or assigned to someone in your Fellowship. (yay)
- Roll/Pass has been re-added as an option for fellowship looting! This is in addition to Need/Greed. The default for a new fellowship is Roll/Pass. (comment by Beleglin: now this just goes to show that if you whine enough about something the developers will surrender and go against all logic to provide you with a useless feature)
- Fixed "Feign Death" so now monsters that happen upon you while you’re playing dead will not attack. (!!!)
- Boar intestines, used for some crafting recipes, were dropping too frequently and will now drop less often. In other news, pork belly futures are through the roof! (sneaky developers with their funny comments ...)
Metalworker and Tailoring
- Over 400 new armor recipes for Dwarven, Elven, and Westernesse variants of existing craftable armor can now be found in treasure. These new recipes add a ton of visual variety to the already large list of craftable armor types.
- Avast! The hat, eye-patch and combo from "The Tale of the Shipwrecked Mariners" quest can now be dyed to be more col-arrrr-ful
- There were two rings named "Coblaiths Folly." The one from Book 10 has been renamed to "Strange Ring." No other aspects of the item have been changed. (comment by Beleglin - an original item name for sure)
- Frame rate display! Press CTRL-F to see your current frame rate. Use ctrl- and drag the display around.
- The character-generation UI now has a 'Movie Library' option. This can show all possible movies, or only those that are unlocked. Movies are unlocked whenever any character on that account views a new movie. Existing player accounts will be updated with unlocked movies (based upon previously completed quests) upon logging in.
- You can now try on items that are linked through chat in the Dressing Room. Ctrl-left-click on an item description in chat window.
- Deeds can now be added to the quest tracker. On the Deed Log, there is now a button to manually add or remove a deed from the quest tracker; and from the Main Menu, under Options, choose UI Settings, and in the Panels section there is now an option to automatically add deeds to the quest tracker.
- If you are in a fellowship, we now show the quests that are shared among other members of your fellowship in your quest journal. An icon will appear for each person that has the quest and if you mouse over the icon you will see the name of the player. If you see 5 icons, that means everyone in your fellowship has that quest underway.
- Some existing emotes have been enhanced! /look will now have you peering forward into the distance, and /lookaround will have you looking to the left (to the left) and to the right.
And the nomination for the best patch fix evah goes to:
-Our NPCs have recently attended a group therapy retreat, and you will generally find the voice-over used by our Vendors, Stable-masters, etc., to be a bit less gloomy/angry/scared.
Finally I will not get chronically depressed when speaking to NPCs.
