Greetings fair folk!
Special Announcement - A New Encounter is Imminent!
A Feast For Trolls
We have a special treat for you. We'd like to announce the release of A Feast For Trolls, our next free encounter, on April 9th—one week from today.
The Trolls are Hungry—And You’re on the Menu…
Free to all players, A Feast for Trolls is the second Encounter for The Lord of the Rings™️: Living Card Game™️.
Like The King of Carrion, this new Encounter is an ultra-hard game mode tailor-made for veteran players. Unlike a Campaign, an Encounter is a single perilous Quest designed to be very tough to beat! Plus, every Encounter is free for all players to enjoy.
Here’s a taste—so to speak—of what you can look forward to in A Feast for Trolls:
Having helped the Beornings in several dangerous matters of late, they turn to you again for aid. So it is that, during a cool week in early fall, you join a patrol to scour the wooded hillsides near the eastern entrance to the pass across the mountains from the Ettenmoors.
Jarewulf, the patrol leader, hopes to clear out any Goblins or wolves that may have grown too comfortable in the area. He also hopes to find some clue as to the whereabouts of the lost expedition of Dwarves sent by King Dáin some months ago.
You’ve been on patrol only a few days when you encounter a band of Goblins. They don’t seem to be in the mood to discuss whether they’ve seen any Dwarves…
If you complete A Feast for Trolls successfully, two copies of an all-new card are added to your collection: the Dwarven Warrior.
Take a favorite deck—or build a new one—and head for the hills starting April 9th, when A Feast for Trolls comes to The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game!
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Remember both that encounters are free to all players, and that they are typically more difficult than the regular quests. However, as part of general balance adjustments we are incorporating, this encounter will provide unique experiences at each of the Narrative, Adventure and Challenge levels so that you can choose the style of play that you desire (once that feature goes live with the bigger coming update).
Here are a few screen shots from the upcoming release to stir your imagination:
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Update Preview- Cosmetics
This week, as part of our ongoing news updates on the big upcoming game update, we focus on how to make the game unique to you!
We've always featured a few ways for you to customize the look of your game by choosing unique Avatars, Card Backs and Player Tags. In addition we're adding a few other areas for you to change the look of your game, including alt art for hero cards and unique vocal emotes to communicate with your gaming partner.
As part of our upcoming major update, we're wrapping all of the cosmetics into one location: The Vault.
So wait a minute? I thought cards are in the Vault? Currently, yes they are—but as part of our change to the UI, we're folding everything that has to do with cards, including unlocking them, into the Deck menu to allow for a streamlined and 'all in one' deckbuilding experience. We'll go into changes to that menu in a future news update, but that frees the Vault for us to focus exclusively on Cosmetics. Let's look at these changes in detail (keeping in mind that everything shown here is subject to change until actual release).
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The New Vault Menu
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
The vault now offers three options for PlayerTags, Emotes and Card Backs.
The Player Tag tab is similar to the existing cosmetic menu in game, but with important clarifications to emphasize on how they function. Here you can mix and match avatars and frames to see how they look, and peruse available cosmetics that you have yet to unlock.
All cosmetic items will be available for unlocking with your Fellowship points, with each requiring 1,000 Fellowship. Please note that all cosmetics that were exclusive to Founder's Packs will remain exclusive, and only included here to illustrate functionality.
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Emotes!
In the current version of multi player, we rely on external chat services (such as Steam Chat or Discord) between players in game. We're looking at adding a lobby system chat so that players can meet in the multiplayer Play Menu and directly connect to try multi player games.
However, we will also be releasing an emote chat system so that players can communicate with other players directly in game. By clicking on your avatar, you will bring up an emote menu system that will allow you to communicate with your fellow player.
There will be seven emote options available, each indicating a basic message, but delivered in the voice and style of your favorite characters from Middle-earth. These include:
- Apology
- Caution!
- Greetings
- Guard
- Take Action!
- Thanks/Congratulations
- Travel
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Of course, if you don't want to hear from your companion player, you can always choose to turn off their emotes.
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
What is unique to The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is that you can either choose to have all of your emotes delivered by a single character, or create unique emote profiles where you mix and match your emotes from various characters.
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
Emotes will be available for unlocking for 1,000 Fellowship required for each voice set.
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Ping
We will also be going live with a ping system so you can point out a specific location on the game screen to your partner. By combining Ping and Emotes, players should be able to communicate effectively with one another in game.
You may be wondering why we don't just have a simple chat system in-game. As mentioned, you can always use Steam Chat or Discord (or some other external text or voice chat option). In casual play, however, we are looking to limit the amount of verbal abuse that players can hurl at one another. Emotes combined with ping allow an in-lore way to communicate without devolving to possibly abusive and toxic banter, while players who know each other can make use of the external chat options mentioned.
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Cardbacks
Cardbacks will now be available in the Vault directly with both your own and Sauron's card backs available to peruse and unlock. New card backs will be unlockable and requiring 1,000 Fellowship each. Please note that all existing unlocked card backs will remain unlocked and that this only applies to newly available card backs. Additionally, though we use the Shire cardback here to illustrate the concept, it will remain as an exclusive card back to those people who bought the Shire Founder's Pack.
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Alt Art
In addition to the above cosmetic options, in the card gallery itself, players will be able to unlock alternative art for heroes. Don't like the image we chose? Go ahead and pick alternative art pieces for each hero in the game. You can unlock each alt art piece for 1,000 Fellowship.
Please note that Founder's Pack owners will be granted exclusive alternative art for the basic four core set heroes upon the release of this feature. This means that the four basic core set heroes will, in fact, have three art options if you purchased one of the Founder's packs on release.
(...click thumbnail to see full image)
Don't worry, we'll give sneak peeks at some alt art options in a future news update.
Twitch Stream
Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.
Our next stream will be Wednesday, April 10th.
Next Update
Next week, we'll continue our series on changes to the game in our big upcoming update. We have not yet announced the date these changes are coming, but will do so in the near future.
If you missed our other previews, you can find them here:
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That's it for this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your quests!