LOTRO Book 8 for EU on Thursday

By Robert Purchese Published 23 June, 2009

US today. Many dungeons inside.

Codemasters will introduce Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-dum to Lord of the Rings Online this Thursday, adding a new raid, new small-party instances, gameplay tweaks and a Summer Festival. The update launches in North America today.

The story follows some sorcerer bloke who wants to do evil things in the depths of Khazad-dum, which is also known as Moria - the big Dwarf place that Gandalf fights a Balrog in. Small parties will try to put a stop to this in a host of new instances, and there's a Dark Brotherhood quest arc that culminates in a 12-man raid.

The Summer Festival provides light relief to all this, tickling hairy toes with costumes, quests and Inn-based challenges.

Plus, as a thank you, Codemasters is offering a 20 per cent stablemaster discount to all active subscribers from 30th June.

There's no meaty list of gameplay tweaks just yet, but keep a Sauron's Eye on the European Lord of the Rings Online website for the Book 8 patch notes.

Pop over to Eurogamer TV for a Book 8 trailer.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • iokthemonkey #1 3 years ago

    Lovely.

  • Grim #2 3 years ago

    Ahhh... another festival...
    Hopefully I can complete the Shire pub crawl this time......!

  • Bleh #3 3 years ago

    I hope they sorted out the horse race. One of my alts is still running around with an ugly looking mount.

  • levitate #4 3 years ago

    You can always trust Lotro to deliver.

  • berelain #5 3 years ago

    Seriously, other MMO developers really need to take a leaf out of Turbine's book with LOTRO. The book updates add so much stuff, and with such a great balance of high-end content for the hardcore and fun activities for everyone its hard not to be impressed with every new realease.

  • W0ssname #6 3 years ago

    One thing that's not mentioned in this article is the massive overhall of the entire crafting system plus a increase in stack size for most useful inventory items.

    Read the full Book 8 update notes here:

    [link url=http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Release_Note s_Volume_2_Book_8_Official
    ]http://lo rebook.lotro.com/wiki/Release_N...[/link]

  • Spekingur #7 3 years ago

    Sadly, Turbine has changed LOTRO into a raid game - they are heading in the same direction as WoW. Albeit, not so large raids or that take as long but still it is far from what they said the game wouldn't develop into.
    I still enjoy it though, I play mostly solo or with a handful of friends of which only 2 are "serious" players - that have acquired the best equipment for their mains they can get. Actually, before Mines of Moria things were pretty good. You had a selection of 'top level' equipment to choose from and various ways of acquiring them. Today, however, the best equipment seems only to come from large group raiding. For me, this is a fault that Turbine must plaster.

  • HMAN #8 3 years ago

    Today, however, the best equipment seems only to come from large group raiding.

    Thats not true at all. Its so easy to get at least 4/6 Radiance. Each of the hard modes for those instances takes between 20-40 mins in a 6 man instance so if you can't dedicate that amount of time you won't be doing the radiance gated content hence there is no problem

  • Spekingur #9 3 years ago

    @HMAN: The instances are 6-12 man instances. It will maybe take 20-40 minutes if and only if you are in a fellowship that knows what it is doing and knows the instance.
    And the bigger point is that there aren't the same choices of top level equipment to choose from. There is just Radiance Armour and then "other stuff".