Fall Festival and Bingo's Return

There's been some drama this week with Update 21.2. This update includes two new Mordor dungeons, new max level gear, a new improved Mount Collection interface, new filtering options for quests and items, removal of the crafting quest required to unlock Artisan crafting, and many other fixes and quality of life changes.

The drama is about the new max level gear having the wrong price and/or stats. This is being fixed, but some players are not happy with how it has been handled. Standing Stone Games decided to offer everyone 50 Mithril Coins per account by redeeming the code MORDORMITHRIL at the LOTRO Store before October 22.

The Harvestmath/Fall Festival has arrived with some nice new goodies. The Autumn Leafmail armour set (hauberk or dress, shoulders, shield and a hooded or unhooded cloak) and the new steed look great and matches the outfit too with the pale golden leaf theme.

Autumn Leafmail Dress and Cloak

Steed of the Eldar Autumn

Bingo Boffin makes a return with an interesting new spooky quest-line! I hope there is a follow-up - it left me curious to know more about the Spectral Vision's threat.

Bingo Boffin telling tales around the campfire

My Burglar got the Steed of Gloaming Autumn and I'm impressed - at night its eyes and the pattern on the blanket glow orange, which looks awesome. Only 30 Fall Festival tokens too!

Steed of the Gloaming Autumn

Steed of the Gloaming Autumn (glows in the dark!)

I'm very happy about the new improved Mounts Collection interface. Finally we can see all the mounts available, preview what they look like and find out how to get them in-game.

Updated Mounts Collection interface

There seem to have been quite a few crafting changes, particularly for Doomfold crafting, such as making daily crafting recipes available to more professions that use those materials, increasing stack-sizes for food, reducing the amount of daily-gated materials needed for jewellery, and making Doomfold materials drop from some Mordor mobs and items that were previously giving Anórien materials. Removing the quest for unlocking Artisan crafting will eliminate a roadblock for many new players who get Expert Proficiency then don't understand why they can't progress any more. While I'd like to see more crafting quests, I think they should be optional and perhaps reward rare recipes for cosmetic skins or "flavour" items that are not essential but are fun to collect.

Apart from the new gear drama, I think there's a lot of good stuff in this update. I especially liked seeing Bingo return for the festival - it's like catching up with an old friend.