Lord Of The Rings Online Starts Testing Corsairs Of Umbar’s Final Set Of Instances

Standing Stone Games reopened the Lord of the Rings Online test server earlier this week to put Update 39 through its paces. Testing is now in full swing for nearly all of Corsairs of Umbar’s final set of instances, except for The Streets of Râhal Bakh three-player instance, which the studio says will be coming soon to the test build.

The rest of the so-called Arenas of Conflict instance cluster is now available for testing on the Bullroarer server until February 16. That includes the Isle of Storms three-player instance, the Dahâl Huliz, The Arena six-player instance, and The Depths of Mâkhda Khorbo 12-player raid up to the second boss.

The test build also includes the Delvings-converted Elderslade Missions alongside an extensive list of other gameplay changes, tweaks, and improvements, including a welcome change to party buffs.

“All offensive, fellowship-wide buffs across classes have been adjusted to apply to the entire raid,” notes the devs. “For optimized raid groups, this won’t make much of a difference to your total possible damage output, but it should make it easier to organize players in groups without forcing a DPS/everyone-else split in order to maximize the power of these buffs. The one notable exception is the herald of war buff aura, which for technical reasons still only applies to its captain’s fellowship.”

Details can be found in the Update 39 Bullroarer release notes. There’s still no release date for the update itself, but it’s definitely close at hand.