The Lord of the Rings Online Volume II: Book 8 Preview

The folks at WarCry have put together a quick hands-on preview of Turbine’s Volume II: Book 8 update for The Lord of the Rings Online.

In Book 8, adventurers will be returning to Moria, and – after past content largely directed at solo players – will be returning to group content (albeit content for all different sizes of groups). There are two 3-man instances coming in Book 8, and for both of them the Turbine team has grabbed inspiration from the Zelda series. In the Mirror-halls of Lumul-nar, adventurers will go to the mountaintops above Moria to route sunlight into the depths with a series of mirrors, and figuring out how to position the mirrors will be a puzzle that the group will have to put together.

Like the Mirror-halls, the other 3-man instance space – the Water Wheels: Nalâ-dûm – relies on puzzle-solving. Instead of bouncing light off mirrors, though, they’ll be routing water through wheels and canals by pulling levers with the proper timing. Campbell also showed me a boss fight with what seemed like a giant aquatic Balrog amidst a forest of gigantic pounding pistons – you could lure the boss under them and it would take damage and be stunned. If nothing else, the ancient Dwarves of Moria certainly had an eye for dramatic setting.