Update 50 Release Notes

Here are the Release Notes for Update 50: The Wolves of Mordor, released on Wednesday, October 28th, 2026.

Of Special Note:

The Wolves of Mordor has arrived!

The Free Peoples of Middle-earth recover from the hardships of the War of the Ring, believing their victory over Sauron's forces to be complete. But in a distant corner of Mordor, beyond the plateau of Gorgoroth, the fiery hatred of an ancient bloodline has been rekindled.

Not every shadow fled when Mordor’s fires dimmed, and some of the Dark Lord's oldest servants issue forth to threaten those who caused their master to fall. As terrible howls pierce the night, the were-wolves of Mordor emerge to rend the peace with teeth and claw!

The Start of a New Epic

And the Verses of Victory… begins a new chapter for Middle-earth's heroes. The Ranger Orthonn of the Grey Company has received worrisome tidings from afar, and he seeks your aid to investigate the danger that rises in Mordor. To begin the new storyline of ‘...and the Verses of Victory,' look for Orthonn outside the city stables of Minas Tirith (Midsummer). It is recommended, but not required, that you have finished 'The Song of Waves and Wind' before beginning this new storyline. Your character must be Level 160 to begin this storyline. Players can swift travel to Minas Tirith (Midsummer) by speaking to major Stable-masters throughout the game world, including in South Bree, Edoras, Thorin’s Gate, Michel Delving, Rivendell, and the Beorninghús.

Survival Instincts

Master a new character progression system available to every class. Learn Tactics, Lessons, Skills, and Enhancements from the people who call Draugardh home, then mix and match them to build your own playstyle across all your characters on the server.

Neighbours Come to Housing

Bring your homestead to life with Neighbours, companions who move in and become real friends through stories, gifts, and daily missions. Each is shaped by twenty personality traits and a dynamic mood system, so no two friendships ever look the same.

The Hidden Corners of Mordor

Explore three regions long unseen by the outside world: the black hills of Heledhris, scorched by the fires of Mount Doom; the jagged plains of Parth Rhavas, home to wolf-revering Easterlings; and the mist-shrouded depths of Nan Ogol, ruled by were-wolves and forgotten horrors. Experience more than 200 quests, 90 deeds and 30 Missions!

Journey Farther with Expedition Supplies

Get immediate access to Expedition supplies to enhance your journey! The Collector's Edition includes five Reputation Acceleration Tomes, a Virtue XP Accelerator, five 100% XP Accelerators, and a Rare Crafting Component x5 Selection Box. The Ultimate Fan Bundle also includes 25k virtue XP, four Virtue XP Accelerators, and an Ultimate Carry-all Selection Box. Expedition Supplies are limited to one per account.

Exciting Bonus Items in the Ultimate Fan Bundle

Enjoy other great features in the Ultimate Fan Bundle, including: immediate access to all 4 Neighbours, 10 slots of extra shared bank space, Were-wolf Hunter’s Armour, Were-wolf Hunter's Eclipse Milestone Style, Were-wolf Hunter's Weapon Aura, Were-wolf Hunter’s Steed and Warsteed, ‘Scar’ The Hunter’s Hound pet, XP Boost Earring, and Housing Teleporter.

Learn more about The Wolves of Mordor on LOTRO.com!

News and Notes:

  • The Virtue cap now goes up to 104 for level 158 or higher characters.

Festivals & Events:

  • Veil of the Nine
    • We have added two more rewards to the top tier of Amelia's offerings on the Veil of the Nine Legendary servers. These are housing objects portraying the Nazgûl standing and posed in a ring formation, and all nine mounted on their steeds preparing for a charge in a line. Once claimed, these are shared across your account.
    • Fixed an effect error on the Ringwraiths that could occasionally cause their AI context to crash.

Classes: Skills and Traits:

  • Burglar
    • The skill 'Burgle' can now be used on trolls and giants, in addition to evil men and orcs.
  • Lore-master
    • The ‘Ancient Master’ skill and charges have been modified to make it an active player choice to spend charges. ‘Ancient Master’ charges are no longer immediately active when earned. Clicking the ‘Ancient Master’ skill (which now has a one second cooldown) will spend one charge to activate all empowered skills. After using an empowered skill, your skills will return to normal and you will need to activate ‘Ancient Master’ again to spend another charge. This should help prevent situations where you actively avoid using many of your skills so that you can hold onto a charge for a particular moment in the future. It also means you'll be able to build up more charges more easily during regular gameplay.
    • ‘Ancient Master’ charges are now earned after 5 critical hits, down from 6.
    • ‘Call to the Valar' (when specialized in the yellow-line tree) now grants 5 charges of 'Ancient Master’ upon activation.
  • Warden
    • When Warden players enter mounted combat in ‘Red Dawn’ stance, the use of the fire and light oils will no longer swap out to Rohirrim skills.

Quests:

  • Mithril travel now works correctly in the Imhular quest "A Plague of Ordâkhai". This quest will be versioned upon release: if the quest is in progress, quest progress will be lost.
  • Fixing some incorrect directions in “The Black Book of Mordor, Chapter 9.2: An Expedition to the Anvil”.
  • The quests "On A Mission (Weekly)" and "On A Continuing Mission (Weekly)" will version on release. This is to accommodate the addition of new missions within Draugardh.
    NOTE: Partial progress on these quests will be lost.
  • The location of Natkam is now easier to see on the map in the North Downs quest: “Breaking the Front Lines”.
  • In the Mur Ghala Instance: “A Gift for the Future”, the instance quest will now fail if Mesheget is defeated.
  • The billboard text on objective seven of the Ered Mithrin quest “Travellers on the Dark Road” has been corrected to describe Bofur as standing next to his goat.

Deeds and Reputation:

  • Added new slayer deeds and titles for defeating River-hobbit players in monsterplay. Defeating River-hobbits no longer advances existing hobbit slayer deeds.
  • The deed Strength in Diversity -- Raid, from the Barrow-downs: Survival instance should now properly progress with Beornings, Brawlers, and Mariners.
  • All Neighbour quests containing missions acquired from the community boards within Homesteads of Middle-earth now count toward the Weekly Mission quests.

Items and Rewards:

  • Legendary Items for characters at level 160 can now advance to item level 570. Don't forget to reforge your Legendary Items!
  • Soot-coated Adventurer’s Essence Boxes are now available for barter with the Adventurer’s Quartermaster, and have a chance to drop from Adventurer’s Steel-bound Lootboxes!
  • The minimum usage level for Sul Madásh crafted foods has been corrected to 151.
  • Newly acquired Adventurer's lootbox gear, for level 160 characters, will now scale to item level 567 - 569. This change will also impact newly acquired Delving gear.
  • Fortunes now show up under Festival category in the Auction House.

Crafting and Hobbies:

  • Level 151+ special Tracery recipes have been added to Delving barter as an alternate way to acquire these recipes in addition to featured instances.

Housing and Decorations:

  • A few hanging banners being sold at Lalia's Market have been fixed and can now be purchased and used without reputation requirement.
  • The Zajâni Oven housing decoration can now be used as a camp-fire facility for crafting.
  • Neighbours
    • Changed dialogue for all Neighbours when speaking to them.
    • Neighbour missions now provide a skill to summon the scout to complete the mission. Scouts will appear behind the player and can be used to complete the mission as normal.
    • Addressed an issue with the Neighbour mission “Many in Need” where the level of the bears would sometimes not match the player in the space.
    • Teleport locations upon completion of "Mission: Haldo Rushbank, Chapter 5" and "Mission: Emmathron, Chapter 6" have been fixed.
    • We have added a visual cue to handing gifts in to neighbours.
    • After your neighbour appears they should greet you more quickly.
    • Fixed a bug that would leave the give gift button enabled in the neighbor UI even when no valid gift was selected.

PvMP/Ettenmoors:

  • An issue in the way we calculate base potency multipliers for monster player effects has been fixed. This only impacts instant damaging or healing effects, and does not impact initial damage from skills or any "damage over time" or "healing over time" effects. Effects which are impacted, such as instant heals or latent damage, will no longer have their potency modifiers (like +Healing or +Damage from traits) watered down by their effect's base multiplier. The upshot is that most of these effects will be slightly stronger after the update, but the degree of change will depend on the values of your active +/-potency traits, effects, etc.
  • Monster player base ICPR has been increased by ~160, while gruel's ICPR bonus has been reduced from 200 to 40. Monster Player gruel has long contributed too much of your possible ICPR; this change keeps maximum possible ICPR unchanged, but significantly reduces the impact of gruel.
  • CTF Events:
    • Players will be unable to attempt to pick up an Artifact while carrying a Relic, and vice versa.
    • Monster Players will no longer incorrectly get the Strength of Arms buff when only controlling their own artifact - control of both is now required.
    • Dropped artifacts and relics no longer have physics.
    • Improved state management for CTF events, particularly how it resets when servers restart.
    • The Glory Seeking buff is no longer removed when picking up a relic/artifact - but it is temporarily suppressed while carrying them.
    • FX highlight colors for relics/artifacts now properly reflect which team they belong to.
  • Delving of Frór:
    • Fixing a stuck spot in Gwaelug's arena in the delving of Frór.
    • Quests targeting the Delving of Fror are now bestowed from forward camps: for freeps, these quests are now bestowed at the dwarf mining camp east of Gramsfoot; for creeps, these quests are now bestowed at the orc logging camp west of Glan Vraig.
    • Delving of Frór daily and weekly quests now have improved rewards.
  • Sorceress:
    • Sorceress's Burning Devotion damage has been increased.
    • Music will now play in the background for the Angmarim Sorceress class
    • Sorceress Torrent once again correctly deals bonus "Torrent's Resolve" damage to targets suffering from Ignite when fully channeled. Additionally, this effect now has a more visible VFX when it occurs.
  • Fixed an issue with lesser PvMP CC-break potions (the ones that cost Morale to use). These now correctly confer brief CC immunity to the player when used.
  • Improved PvMP stun and root potions that don't cost Morale to use are now "rare" to better differentiate them at a glance in your inventory and on your hotbars.
  • Monster Player foods and buff potions now last 3x as long, but cost 3x as much to purchase (this doesn't change their overall cost, but reduces the frequency at which you need to re-use them).
  • Monster Play Reward Track rewards have been moved to a new trader, Mût. Mût offers current season appearances and title. He also has previous season appearances, cosmetic weapons, and march visual effects.
  • Warg ‘Frenzy’ no longer has an activation animation.
  • Radar issues in Ettenmoors have been fixed.

Landscape and Adventure Areas:

  • A floating rock in Furthholm has been removed.
  • A stuck spots in Emax Dul has been fixed.

Localization:

  • German and French translations for "Well-Built Cage" have been updated.
  • German
    • The "Musician" prefix title will now display properly.

UI, Sound, Art and Avatars:

  • Weapons sheathed on backs now disappear when using milestone styles that hide the character.
  • Music - lowered the frequency of how often the universal explore track plays.
  • 3D Object Portraits no longer significantly reduce frame rate.
  • Replaced the 'falling damage' slow effect on hitting deep lava with its own unique slow effect which doesn't include a constant bone breaking 'crunch' sound effect.

Known issues:

  • The current and available trait configurations are not displaying on the Survival Instincts Panel even though equipped survival instinct traits will swap with saved trait configurations (as shown in the class and virtue trait panels).

  • Maps for the new Draugardh areas will not appear in the Show Map Drop-down menu.

  • Meldir uses incorrect voice over audio in the Heldhris Instance “Predators Ahead”.