The Lord of the Rings Online Developer Diary

Turbine’s official The Lord of the Rings Online website has been updated with a new developer diary that covers changes being made to the game’s high-end instances in the Book 14 update.

We’ve also made a few tweaks to flow and balance in the Angmar instances. We won’t give all the details here, so consider these only a taste of what’s to come!

Urugarth
The overall flow of Urugarth has not changed, but we have revised some of the fights there, such as the Gruglok arena fight and Lhugrien’s battle. We have also tried to better convey what is going on with burning the various totems in the instance, so how that affects the final fight is better explained.

Carn Dûm
Of the Angmar instances, Carn Dûm has seen the most significant. One of these is the addition of a new bridge that leads into the “city” section of the space. If you have the proper keys, you will no longer have to go down into the pits to enter the city and castle of the Witch-king. In addition, we have reworked the Helchgam fight to be more fun. Helchgam will no longer heal while you try to bring a pillar down – but he will pull down pillars a lot more frequently.

Barad Gúlaran
We felt the Barad Gúlaran space was pretty good, especially after we removed the puzzle section of the Castellan fight. The final fight with the Rogmul still represents the hardest fight in Angmar, so why change perfection?