In Mines of Moria the maximum level for a character was set to 60. The level cap has been raised to Level 65 in Mirkwood, however there are only limited changes to skills and traits with this change. Essentially each class is either getting one new skill or one improved skill as part of the upgrade. The major changes come in terms of the increased stats due to level increases and the ability to collect new higher level weapons. This has lead to a bit of discussion on the forums, (and here). The major discussion point is that the new levels seem more like a gating operation rather than an opportunity to acquire something new, and the new weapons therefore an unnecessary grind.
New levels added in Siege of Mirkwood
November 22nd, 2009Site updates, Siege of Mirkwood NDA lifted
November 22nd, 2009
With the lifting of the NDA of the Siege of Mikwood beta players earlier in the week there has been a release of new information about the expansion from both players and Turbine as they have published a number of developer diaries. I’m updating the site this weekend with links and summaries of the information I’ve found most interesting, I’m aiming to avoid too many spoilers (so you won’t find information about the story line here) but you will find information about the new game mechanics including changes to radiance. I’ve split the stories by topic and made sure that the revealing information is not shown above the break in posts. So be warned, if you want to keep the changes as a surprise don’t read the whole story!
Siege of Mirkwood : Beta videos
November 22nd, 2009Two users have now posted videos of them playing siege of Mirkwood. Moomur from LOTROCast, has apparently been in the beta the whole time and has posted a couple of videos showing how skirmishes work. Turezuretei demonstrates the new wardrobe interface, which gives almost a full screen mode for you to kit your character out before stumping up cash or tokens. The videos are embedded from YouTube after the break.
Mounts 2.0
November 21st, 2009
Changes to the mount system
Siege of Mirkwood will see a radical overhaul of the mount system as detailed in this dev diary. The key change is that mounts are now skills rather than bag items, this means that you can collect them all. To help with the collecting the price has been reduced for secondary mounts. The good news is that you can convert any existing mount into the new system the first time that you use it. In addition you will be able to travel through portals mounted (as long as the mount can be used on the other side) and interact with doors and NPCs.
Legendary Item Legacies
November 21st, 2009
Since legendary items were introduced in Mines of Moria there has been a raging debate on the quality of some of the legacies. It seems that with the changes to the system in the Siege of Mirkwood these will only continue (and here). A recent dev diary lists the new legacy pools and the legacies that have been dropped or added for each class. The pools are used by the random weapon generator as described in an earlier dev diary. Group A legacies are most likely found during item identification and are supposedly those that are most valued for the class. The first three reforges will now all identify new legacies primarily from group B but with a small chance of a group A legacy. Read the rest of this entry »