Lord Of The Rings Online Starts Testing Before The Shadow And Several Surprise Features
Standing Stone Games has started public testing of the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Before the Shadow, on the Bullroarer server. The expansion will open up two new low-level zones – Cardolan and Swanfleet – along with a whole host of new features and improvements that were kept as a surprise right up until the start of testing.
These very welcome surprises include the highly-requested quest tracker expansion which will allow up to 10 quests to be tracked all at once. Players will also have the option to choose (or avoid) a tutorial zone along with a big change to how class traits are awarded which players could previously earn from a variety of sources. With Update 34’s release, however, players will automatically receive class trait points exclusively through leveling.
Standing Stone advises players to take screenshots of their current and favorite class trait builds as they will all be reset when the expansion comes out.
Another new feature coming to the Lord of the Rings MMORPG with Before the Shadow is the new difficulty-scaling Delving system. “Delvings are a new mechanic debuting with Before the Shadow’s missions,” the devs explained. “When you complete your first new Before the Shadow mission, you’ll get a special Delving gem called an Unnerving Zircon, which sets you on your path to additional challenge for additional reward!”
All of the above-mentioned features and content are now available for testing in preparation for Before the Shadow’s scheduled launch on November 9th. You can check out the latest Bullroarer release notes on the Lord of the Rings Online official forums.
