Rise of Isengard

It's now less than 2 months until LOTRO's next expansion, Rise of Isengard comes out, as announced back in June. I've tried to gather as much information as I can about what we can expect.

Three new regions will be added in the expansion -- Dunland, Gap of Rohan and Nan Curunir (which will include Isengard). Dunland will be located directly south of Enedwaith, with the other two areas accessible from Dunland. TheKhazadGuard has a nice map of the areas the new regions may cover.

There will be over 300 quests in the new areas, including new epic quests. The epic quests will allow you to choose between two paths to get from Enedwaith to Dunland, which will then join up again in Dunland.

There will also be a new 24-man raid which involves fighting a dragon called Draigoch.


The new areas will use phasing (the system where what you see in the world changes based on what quests you have completed). There will also be mobile quest givers that travel with you throughout a quest chain so you don't have to go back to town between each quest.

The level cap will be increased from 65 to 75. There will be new skills, and classic dungeons which currently scale to 65 will scale to 75. The virtue cap will be raised from 10 to 12, a change which has been long awaited.

All classes are being revised. Elderban's list of links points to several posts by Orion about proposed changes to PvE and MP classes.

A lot of changes are being made to stats. The caps on primary characteristics (Might, Agility, etc.) are being removed completely. The caps on secondary characteristics are being raised to 25% (for stats where the cap is currently 15%) and 50% (for stats where the cap is currently 25%), starting at level 50. But there will be diminishing returns so as stats get higher they will have to be increased more for the same effect.

A new primary stat called Finesse is being introduce. This stat will reduce the enemy's resistance and BPE stats.

The number of secondary stats is being reduced, with all resistance stats being combined into one, all tactical mitigation stats combined into one, and all crit stats being combined into one. This is aimed to make stat bonuses on gear/deeds useful to more classes.

Offence ratings are being changed to use a classes primary stat rather than always might for melee and agility for range. LMs, minis and RKs will use will for their melee offence; hunters and burgs will use agility for both melee and ranged offence; and guards, champs and wards will use might for both melee and ranged offence.

There have also been changes to the stats that appear on gear. All stats can now appear on all types of gear (rather than there being a subset of stats that can appear on helms, for example). There will be bigger steps between different levels of gear, so we are more likely to be able to improve our stats with a new piece of gear. From level 66 on, yellow items will be more powerful (although still not as powerful as purple items, so I suspect most will still be vendor junk). These changes are intended to allow players to make more meaningful decisions about the items they choose.

Gear will now drop in skirmishes as well as marks. There will be a new raid set from the Draigoch raid -- 4 out of 6 pieces will also be available with skirmish marks, but the final 2 will be available only in the raid.

There will be a new tier of crafting, and corresponding new resource nodes. Some recipes will drop in the Draigoch raid, but they will be tradable.

There will be some changes to PvMP, including the availability of monster play to F2P players. The store will now be available for both sides in the moors.

The beta opened on the 27th of July. Priority will be given to those who pre-order the expansion. There will be no open beta and no application process -- you just have to wait for an invite. I've been in previous expansion betas (due to being a founder) but so far have not been invited to this one (I haven't pre-ordered and haven't been playing much recently, so I'm not surprised). Fingers crossed for more spots opening up closer to the release date, in which case I'll be posting more info once the NDA is lifted.

The expansion is available now for preorder until the 26th of September (the day before release). It can only be pre-ordered with cash. It will be available to buy with TP but not until the game has been released.

There are 3 pre-order versions available. The base edition costs $30. The heroic edition costs $40 and includes 1000 TP. The legendary edition costs $50 and includes some earlier quest packs (Trollshaws, Eregion, Lothlorien, Moria and Mirkwood -- although not the full Moria/Mirkwood expansions) as well as the 1000 TP. All versions give an in-game title as well as new mounts and cosmetics (with the more expensive versions giving more mounts and cosmetics).

The lorebook has a nice FAQ about the pre-order with lots of information about the ordering process.

Two trailers have been released for the expansion, shown below.

Hope to see you in Dunland in September!