LotRO's Rangers And Ruins Update Adds New Zone, Erebor Housing, And Legendary Item Track

Update 32: Rangers and Ruins went live in The Lord of the Rings Online yesterday, and while it adds a lot of notable content to the game, the biggest news is probably that it's got its own page on the LotRO site. No longer will the patch notes for major updates be buried on the forums! Hey, it only took 15 years...

On to the actual stuff, which primarily falls under three headings. There's a new zone for characters level 40 to 45 to explore, the Angle of Mitheithel, "a wild land of rocky hills and deep pine-woods, and a graveyard of ancient kingdoms." Rangers prowl the area, keeping an eye out for dangers from the north. It's free to VIPs and available for purchase from the LotRO store.

Erebor housing also comes with this update, with the tagline, "The Mountain may be Lonely, but with all these neighbors, you won't be!" Fine, I made that up, but it should be the tagline. There's also a new reward track for Legendary Items, which was described in full a few days ago. It's an account-wide track, so you won't need to grind it out on a per-character basis, and is the latest step in the work Standing Stone Games has done in the past to revise its Legendary Item system.

The patch notes promise that the Hiddenhoard of Abnankâra Raid is on its way soon(tm), with tiers one and two opening at noon Eastern next Tuesday, February 24, and three more tiers coming in the following weeks. The raid culminates in a final showdown between Durin and Hrímil Frost-heart and is available to players who have purchased the Fate of Gundabad expansion and reached level 140.