Codemasters has announced an interesting contest for all players with an eye for landscapes!

We want to see your best landscape pictures from The Lord of the Rings Online for a chance to win a beautiful hardback book, "Lost Worlds" by artist John Howe, renowned Tolkien illustrator, kindly donated by Macmillan.

One first place winner will receive a Lost Worlds book and a Codemasters Goodie bag. Nine runners up will receive a Lost Worlds Book and a Lord of the Rings Online poster.

Lost Worlds draws together John Howe’s incredible artwork with a wealth of historical facts and mythological texts to create a visually stunning, classic title. John Howe is best known for his work based on JRR Tolkien’s worlds. He was one of two lead artists working on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. He also re-illustrated the maps of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion from 1996 to 2003. For the past 20 years, John has enjoyed success with personal exhibitions throughout the world.

Send your entries into lotrocompetition@codemasters.com with the subject line "Lost Worlds and Landscapes Contest".

Contest rules
One image per entry, multiple entries are allowed. Photo-shopping is not permitted other than to resize to a smaller resolution. Final date for entering is 2nd March, 2010. Full contest rules and terms and conditions can be found here.

If you have recently received the message "You have been booted from the world" , don't think that someone else has logged on your account and that your password has been compromised.

We had an internal issue earlier that caused a small number of players to see this message. Unfortunately you seem to have been 'lucky' enough to have it happen to you. Don't worry, your account is safe!

Sapience

Turbine has released several  Volume III Book 1 Skirmishes screenshots. Enjoy!

Epic Skirmish 1	Epic Skirmish 2	Epic Skirmish 3
Epic Skirmish 4	Epic Skirmish 5	Mirkwood Skirmish 1
Mirkwood Skirmish 2	Mirkwood Skirmish 3	Mirkwood Skirmish 4
Mirkwood Skirmish 5	Mirkwood Skirmish 6

Volume III, Book 1 brings a bunch of updates for crafting professions of Middle-earth. Improvements for Jewellers, Cooks, Farmers, Woodworkers and Weaponsmiths bring more choices and enhanced functionality to these professions.

1. Jewellery Stats Rebalancing and new icons
   All bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and rings crafted after the arrival of this update have been rebalanced to provide better, more useful stat increases, and to generally improve the quality and consistency of jewellery stats across the board! (Like:  in-Combat Power Regen, Maximum Power, Maximum Moral, Block Rating.) All existing crafted jewellery pieces have not been changed. If you are wearing or storing any crafted jewellery items, they will remain exactly the same as before. Only newly-crafted jewellery pieces will have the updated stats. Bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and rings crafted after the arrival of this update feature a variety of new jewellery icons.
2. Jeweller Recipes Multi-output Functionality for Existing
   Many Jeweller recipes in all tiers of the profession have been updated and now have the ability to produce different bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and rings using only the existing recipe! (Bloodstone Earring can output Bloodstone Earring of Fate +5 Fate or  Bloodstone Earring of Combat +44 Melee Critical Rating or Bloodstone Earring of Precision +44 Ranged Critical Rating)
3. Cook Profession Improvements
   Many Cook recipes that previously used only vendor-bought ingredients have been revisited, and the items required to execute these recipes have been updated to include ingredients obtained from Farming. Additionally, new Ingredient recipes for some tiers of Cooking will allow chefs to produce additional components needed for their recipes, like flour and more varieties of pie fillings. Note that some ingredients previously sold by vendors, such as flour, are no longer available as they are not used as ingredients anymore.
   Additionally, two products previously available from vendors - Shire Apples and Golden Shire Taters - are now produced exclusively by Farmers, and can no longer be purchased from any vendor.
4. Cook - Improved Cooked Food Effects
   The duration of all effects bestowed after consuming a Cooked Food have been standardized. All in-combat and out-of-combat morale and power regeneration benefits received from Cooked Foods now last 5 minutes for normal foods, and 10 minutes for critical foods. All Cooked Foods now provide both in-combat and out-of-combat morale and power regeneration benefits. Each tier of Cooking typically has three different Cooked Food recipes. The magnitudes of the effects for each Cooked Food have been updated as follows:
   1. Cooked Food A: Highest in-combat morale- and power-over-time effects; lowest out-of-combat morale and power regeneration effects
   2. Cooked Food B: Moderate in-combat morale- and power-over-time effects; moderate out-of-combat morale and power regeneration effects
   3. Cooked Food C: Lowest in-combat morale- and power-over-time effects; highest out-of-combat morale and power regeneration effects
5. Cook - Additional Trail Food Recipes
   Trail Food recipes for every tier of Cooking allow chefs to create wonderful new dishes that can increase the Fate or Will attributes for a while. These recipes are automatically granted to Cooks at all proficiency levels, so be sure to check the Cook tab in your crafting panel!
6. Cook - Updated Fish Trail Food Recipes
   Existing Trail Food recipes have been updated to produce Trail Foods that increase both the Vitality and Will attributes.
7. Cook - New Superior Trail Foods An all-new set of powerful Trail Food recipes is available from Maedhrusc, found in the ruins of Ost Galadh in Emyn Lum. Friends of the Malledhrim may barter for these exquisite and tasty recipes!
8. Cook - More Campfire Recipes
   New Campfire recipes for almost every tier of the profession allow Cooks to use Ash, Yew, Lebethron, Black Ash, and Mallorn wood to create campfires. These recipes are available for purchase from both Novice and Expert Cook vendors.
9. Farmer Fruit & Vegetable Recipes
   Shire Apples and Golden Shire Taters, previously available as vendor-bought goods, are now produced exclusively by Farmers. The required recipes for these items are automatically granted to Farmers at the appropriate tiers of their professions, and seeds can be purchased from the usual Farmhand vendors. New recipes for producing Green Peas have been added to the highest tier of the profession, and can be used by Cooks in a few exciting new dishes. These recipes are automatically granted to Superior Farmers, and seeds are available from Farmhand vendors.
10. Weaponsmith & Woodworker New Class Item Recipes
    New class item recipes for Superior Woodworkers and Weaponsmiths are available from Expert profession vendors and specific class trainers. Woodworkers can carve a powerful horn for Champions, while Weaponsmiths have access to deadly trap and trick recipes for Hunters and Burglars.

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All Turbine games will be offline on Tuesday February 23, from 4:00AM - 4:00PM Eastern Time (-5 GMT). Websites, including myaccount.turbine.com, forums, wikis, and social networks will be available, but players may be unable to log in or access their account information during this time.

The following release notes (2/17/2010) apply to the Bullroarer server only .

General
* Addressed a number of typos.

Instances & Raids
Water Wheels
* The Challenge Quest to Kill Caeryg and Caerlung will now complete properly.

Skirmishes
Lieutenants
* Storm crow has been renamed to Blood-rook.

Today Turbine has announced new Developer Diary: Volume III: Book 1 Skill Upgrades by Brian "Zombie Columbus"

The goals for this project were:

1. Enhance underused skills.
2. Give bonuses that are exciting.
3. Don’t greatly alter relative class balance.

Burglar: Mischievous Delight replaces Mischievous Glee and gains a 20% chance to add a Power over time restoration in addition to the heal over time. All buffs that increase Mischievous Glee’s healing, will also increase the Power restoration!

Captain: Watchful Shield-brother replaces Shield-brother and gains a buff to morale and power regen. The skill now provides a moderate amount of in-combat morale and power regeneration. This buff is not massive, as it is on a maintenance free toggle skill, and will assist with both healing and power costs on a lucky fellowship member!

Champion: True Heroics replaces Heroics and gains a self-buff based on your active stance. In Book 1, True Heroics will also grant the Champion 30 second self buffs, based on the stance they are in.

• Fervour - +30% incoming healing
• Glory - +15% melee damage
• Ardour - +60% to in-combat Power regeneration

PS: Using this skill with no stance will give no buff. So don’t do that

Guardian: Warrior's Fortitude replaces Warriors Heart and gains a self-buff based on your stance

• Block – Increase block and partial block by 1% each (not rating, a flat increase that will stack with everything!)
• Parry – Increase parry and partial parry by 1% each
• Threat – 2% decreased incoming damage from all sources
• Overpower – Increase melee critical by 2%

Hunter: Beneath Care replaces Beneath Notice. The power cost of the skill has been removed and now restores power over time.

Lore-master: Continual Air-Lore replaces Air-lore. This skill is now a toggle skill with a power upkeep cost. For the level 64 version of the skill, Turbine removed the need to remember to re-apply the buff by making it a toggle. To keep the skill balanced, an upkeep cost was added which is lower than the power cost of re-applying the skill once every minute.

Minstrel: Lyric of the Hammerhand replaces Lay of the Hammerhand and will now negate all induction knockback. Note this does not prevent interruption effects. Remember that Lay has a long cooldown, drains a lot of power to keep active, drains even more power when you are hit and is turned off if you are stunned.

Rune-keeper: Armaments of “Element” replaces Weapon of “Element” and adds a bonus to tactical and ranged damage. You can now choose to spend some power on upkeep to gain a bonus in tactical damage.

Warden: Unerring Strike is a new 5 Spear gambit that is difficult to block, parry or evade and leaves a damage over time effect that stacks with other Spear gambits. This skill is very much an upgraded version of Mighty Blow. It has the same Gambit requirements, with one more spear on the end to make it 5 (Spear, Shield, Fist, Spear, Shield). It bypasses enemy avoidances, and leaves a common damage DoT on the foe. This damage over time effect will stack with the other two spear-based DoT’s, Mighty Blow and Power Attack, to help fulfill all your DoT stacking desires!

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From February 2nd through February 23rd Mirkwood players can invite friends to a fellowship and play in four different Skirmishes exclusive to the Siege of Mirkwood Expansion, even if they haven't upgraded to Mirkwood yet.  Play as many times as you want!

Haven't upgraded to Mirkwood? Get ready for the war! Any Mirkwood player you meet in game can invite you to participate in four Skirmishes:

• Survival – Barrow-downs
• Thievery and Mischief
• Defence of The Prancing Pony
• Ford of Bruinen

A few days ago Zombie Columbus wrote a Mini Diary about Skirmish changes and fixes with latest Patch 1.

• Item wear on defeat has been reduced while inside Skirmishes.

While individual results may vary, we feel overall Skirmishes are providing a reasonable amount of rewards. As jwb has implied, we will be making more adjustments in Book 1, mainly focused on Tier and group size. For patch 1, we wanted to take the step of reducing the amount of gold lost when getting defeated in a Skirmish. We believe this will not change the high end amount of gold players can achieve, but will raise the average. If in the past, high item wear kept you out of Skirmishes, now is a good time to try again!

• The monster kill XP buff inside Skirmishes now has a buff icon associated with it. The Skirmish Monster Kill XP buff will remain in effect until the release of Volume 3 Book 1.

Monster kills in Skirmishes have always granted 25% more XP then landscape. We put this buff in place because we were concerned that questing would be too lucrative relative to Skirmishes. In retrospect, this 25% bonus was not needed, and has helped make Skirmishes a bit too efficient vs. other gameplay styles. To combat this, we changed the XP bonus to be a visable buff, the "Skirmish Boon." This buff will be in place until Book 1, when it will be removed. It will come back from time to time during promotional events.

• Herbalist and Bannerguard healing will no longer be reduced by armour.

As was pointed out, and confirmed, Soldier healing was being treated as "negative damage". This led heavy armour wearing classes to gaining less healing then light armour classes. The bug has been globally fixed, and should greatly benefit heavy classes who pair with a Herbalist or Bannerguard.

Besides that, I just want to re-iterate that we have been working or tails off to cram lots of goodness into Book 1, and I can't wait for the dev diary on it to drop. The Skirmish system is here to stay, and we will be updating and adapting it based on player experiences.

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Codemasters Online and Turbine Inc. today announced details of the next free content update for subscribers to The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood.

The War continues to rage in the North and your skill and bravery is still needed in Mirkwood. Return to Dol Guldur and fight in four Skirmishes with new 12-person mode in the shadow of the Necromancer’s Tower:

• Breaching the Necromancer’s Gate, at the Necromancer’s Gate, a powerful Olog-Hai thinks he’s king of the hill, and your force must prove him wrong. 
• Assault on the Ringwraiths’ Lair, before the Gate of the Ringwraith’s Lair, creatures of nightmare seek to lay a deadly trap.
• Protectors of Thangulhad, man the catapults! A powerful force seeks to capture the outpost at Thangulhad, and you must drive them back into the darkness.
• Strike Against Dannenglor, in the dungeons of Dannenglor, captured elves face torment and destruction, unless you can rescue them from the Enemy!

Plus, fire and madness waits in the Depths of Nurz Ghashu, an additional new Skirmish where you must rescue a brave fighter from flame and shadow. To help you meet the dangers ahead, you can now craft items up to level 65.

In this deadly new Skirmish, you must brave flame and madness to rescue a Ranger of the North who has been called to aid his future King. The Rift of Nurz Ghashu, otherwise known as just The Rift is a twelve-man raid found in northeast Angmar and was designed for level 50 characters.

New level 65 recipes and crafting updates:

• Make your own power with new Level 65 recipes and updates to crafting abilities.
• New icons and updated stats for all Jeweler recipes
• New recipes and more powerful products for Cooks
• New class items for Weaponsmiths and Woodworkers
• New crop recipes for Artisan, Master, and Superior Farmers

Volume 3: Allies Of The King, Book 1: Oath Of The Rangers will be available to subscribers of The Lord of the Rings Online soon.