Bounty quests are a new style of quest that will make their way into each region as we continue forward on our revision to the lands preceding Moria. Each of these quests is repeatable up to three times and has distinct rewards that tie into our new crafting changes. Each will allow players to earn new crafting items and recipes to assist them with their chosen vocations.

Bounty quests are quest given by NPCs that target creatures in a given area. The Barrow-downs targets wights, barghests and then a general mix. The key is that they are repeatable and will always yield crafting materials and recipes for rewards. Collect shiny or not-so-shiny object of target and turn in for good rewards feeding directly into the vocations. Rewards are scroll cases with the one shot recipes.

There are more than two bounty quests. They are each repeatable up to 3 times. They reward you with the new alternate component fitting into the new crafting system and a choice of a scroll case for any vocation you choose.

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Last month EU players had a chance to ask Turbine developers about the new player experience and streamlining game-play.
Orion-Turbine, Senior Designer, gave us some directions about speed of leveling, changes to quests and changes that may or may not be made in a future update of Book 8 Scourge of Khazad-dum.

Continue reading Dev Corner

The new system coming in Book 8 for the new instances assigns 1 token to each player in the party after successfully completing challenge mode. You must loot the chest to receive the token. Similar to how a quest item drop works. Depending on the instance you will need 4 or 7 tokens to trade for the radiance item.

The older instances will continue to use the current method of distributing 1 barter item per successful challenge mode completion. We are looking at changing this to match the new Book 8 mechanic (taking away a large portion of the grind for most players) but it won't make it into Book 8.

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Mmmeow.net is finally online with a brand new design, functionality and awesome news.

Thanks to the generosity of Sapience and Turbine, MMeOw has six digital copies of The Lord of the Rings Online to give away. Each prize is a download code for the full US version of the game, which includes Shadows of Angmar, the Mines of Moria expansion and 30 days of free play.

The rules are very simple - leave your comment (just ones!) at this page, and wait till June 12th at 12 PM Central Standard Time.
For more information visit mmeow.net

Good luck!

New day and new Dev Chat Transcript. If you have missed yesterday's Warcry Dev Chat click here to find answers to some interesting questions.

• Are there any plans to add more hobbies to the game in the near future?
• Crafters can't make radiance armor and they can't make LI weapons any better than random drops. Any possibility to involve them somewhow in the future?
• what is the highest priority?
• Are there any plans for a leveling alternative to the North Downs (approx. 25-35)? Can you tell us about skirmishes?

With latest LOTRO Book 8 Crafting Enhancements, Turbine has released new six screenshots for the next free content update of the upcoming Volume II: Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-dum. These screenshots illustrate the new crafting halls, which will be added with Book 8 in June.

Click here to take a small tour through Crafting Halls.

Every class should have it's Zombie_Columbus. After some updates for Burglar that were listed in Book 8 Preliminary Release Notes , few hours later,  ZC has announced much longer list in Book 8 Burglar Changes. Also, Hellfanger has been kind enough to offer us a sneak peek at the newest Burglar Lady's Secrecy set.

Today Zombie_Columbus has announced few quick Burglar updates:

• Quite a Snag now reduces attack speed by 10% and increases incomming damage by 3%.
• Small Snag still reduces attack speed by 5% and now increases incoming damage by 2%.
• Gamblers Strike no longer is guaranteed a tier 4-6 damaging Gamble. It's odds are better them other Gamble application skills, but not as consistent as it was. Existing Gambles on your foe will still be upgraded to max tier (including Damaging Gambles applied from other sources)
• Stick and move now properly buffs Evade partials.

During Book 7, the Legendary Trait skills were buffed up rather significantly to increase their usefulness. In Book 8, the decision was made to drastically reduce Recovery time of the skills to allow them to feel more like parts of the Burglars skill rotation. The combination of increased duration/potency and reduced recovery time proved a little too potent in the above cases, one aspect of the skills needed to be reduced. In the case of Quite a Snag, it was felt being able to maintain the debuff on a single foe would be more useful then having a stronger debuff active for a shorter amount of time. For Gamblers Strike, the upgrading to tier 6 gameplay was strong but not overpowering. However, being able to throw a high tier damaging Gamble each ~20 seconds, with the Book 7 Gamble damage enhancements, was too good. So, the Gamble application aspect of the skill was reduced to allow the upgrade component to shine.

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New journey within upcoming Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-Dum continues to the next surprising level. If you have noticed in Book 8 Preliminary Release Notes  there is a new aquatic swift-travel route between Tinnudir and The Eavespires for 25 silver!

We wrote about Rippentuck awesome idea - Swift Travel by Boat but as Berephon has pointed out: it would be very resource intensive to actually make happen.

Scenario has announced:

First, don't get your hopes up too high. This is simply the addition of a much requested travel route in Evendim - no "boat pants" or unique travel mode.

  We would like to thank Elderban for this screenshot.

The first teaser trailer for Mines of Moria, Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-Dum has been released! Take a peek at what awaits you in the depths of Moria! Delve deeper into Moria than even the Fellowship dared with the latest gameplay footage from The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria™!

Featured Video: Book 8 Teaser

Chat with Jalessa, Graalx2, Fantus, and other members of the Turbine team this Wednesday at 8:00PM Eastern (-4 GMT) for a developer chat hosted by Warcry!

Where: irc.chatspike.net 6667 in #warcouncil (you’ll need an IRC client to join the discussion)

Can’t make the chat? Submit your question now and devs might answer it during the chat!