By: Joe “jwbarry” Barry

Hey everybody. This is Joe “jwbarry” and in this, the final entry in our series of Dev Diaries about Scaling Instances, we’ll give details about the upgrades and changes to the Great Barrow, a quick summary, and then a list of everything you can find in the new Instance Join feature.

The Great Barrow Cluster

The Great Barrow, Othrongroth, is the final cluster we’ve upgraded for Volume III Book 2. It was last on the list because it is the lowest level instance in game. It’s a player’s first real introduction to instances and how they work in LOTRO, and the experience could use some love. We were also interested to see how the scaling tech would hold up across such a wide swath of levels. The Great Barrow starts at level 20 while all of the other spaces we’d flipped started at 50. Finally, Othrongroth is a gigantic dungeon and places a heavy load on the server every time a copy of it is created; it was a great opportunity to streamline and thin it down and make it less of a resource hog.

The Great Barrow required a different mindset than the other spaces. While all of the others were cap, or near cap, spaces when they were released, the Great Barrow is the first instance. It needs to be interesting but not overly deadly, challenging but more focused on teaching and introducing new mechanics in a controlled fashion. It also needs to be simple, straightforward, not overly complicated, and not too long. Like Helegrod, the Great Barrow was ripe to be winged into three separate instances, and the story already flowed for that. You have the Maze Wing with the twin brothers and getting the first key. Then there’s the Water Wing with Thadúr the Ravager, a Gaunt-lord, and the second key. Finally, you have the third wing leading to an epic second round showdown with Sambrog. Three twenty to thirty minute wings: perfect bite size chunks for your first instance experience around level 20.

The first challenge came in determining where to draw the lines. The Great Barrow is a massive place, not only serving as a dungeon but with an Epic quest that overlays through and uses a bunch of the space. The decision was made to ensure each wing had as little overlap as possible and as much unique space and ground coverage all its own. The Maze and Water Wings would start just after the anvil room, and Sambrog’s wing would start in the anvil room. The Epic would remain the same.

We also had to deal with rebuilding the way you got access. Since the dungeon was split up, the quest to rebuild the key didn’t make as much sense. Additionally, with Instance Join, we had no ability to know and enforce whether you had actually picked up the quest from the NPC. The solution again came from Helegrod’s example. There is a new deed for the Barrow-downs, completed by defeating the bosses at the end of the Maze and Water Wings. Every person who wishes to play the Sambrog Wing will need this deed completed, but also, just like Helegrod, this is a one-time gate. Once it is completed, you can play the Sambrog instance as many times as you wish as often as you wish.

The Maze Wing

We tackled the Maze Wing first. Overall, the feedback internally on the Great Barrow across the board was that it needed work. It wasn’t overly challenging, which was ok, but it also wasn’t overly interesting. The trash mobs didn’t do anything particularly memorable. With winging it, we’d removed the mini-bosses and turned them into bosses. And there was a lot of concern about how to create a space that was manageable for level 20 players that scaled in such a way as to remain interesting for level 65 players. The first challenge was making the trash more memorable. We looked across the wings at what monsters each featured and tried to get as little overlap as possible. Then we looked to add base level mechanics you don’t see on landscape, but are frequent in later on instances. For the Maze, we targeted hotspots, specifically ones that monsters place on the ground that force you to move around. We added new crawlers that would come up to you and explode, killing themselves and leaving an acid cloud which then deals acid damage to you while you stood within it. We also swapped out all the archer wights for melee wights, saving the archers for Sambrog’s wing. We then tweaked up the split-wights and regular crawlers to be sigs and normals. Also, our World-builders gave the wing a lighting pass, helping to visually distinguish it from the other areas of the instance cluster.

The second part was to add a mini-boss battle. Halfway through the dungeon was a room with ample opportunity to do this. We sealed the exit door and added an elite master wight with a few friends. When he gets to low health, he screams and the room starts to shake. Several seconds later, two giant crawlers erupt from the ground. The crawlers deal acid damage and feature frontal Area-of-Effect knockbacks so they fling players around the room. When the crawlers reach health thresholds, they call forth regular and exploding crawler adds. Once this mess has been dealt with the path forward opens up. Next, we looked to tackle the issue of how to balance level 20 and level 65 players needing different things. We examined the existing tech and discovered we could alter which skills a monster has available to it at different levels without having to replace the monster. Within the Great Barrow, we’re trying that out to see how it feels. Specifically in the Maze Wing at 65, you’ll see melee wights gain the ability to summon crawlers throughout combat and deal shadow damage instead of common damage, decayed will gain the ability to interrupt inductions, and crawlers now deal exclusively acid damage.

The Water Wing

We next looked at the Water Wing and Thadúr, our first Gaunt-lord. Feedback here focused on the lack of a mini-boss, the boss himself not being overly interesting or challenging, and similar worries about scaling and adjusting difficulty. First, we added a mini-boss fight. It involves limrafn, spreading your party out, and timing. Don’t want to ruin all of the new tricks and challenges. Second, we upgraded the boss battle. We diversified his adds and allow him to stay in combat, but become invulnerable while they are out.

Third, just like the Maze Wing, we upgraded the trash monsters at level 65. This saw the gaunt-men now dealing exclusively shadow damage, the limrafn gaining a cold aura and damage reflect, frost-wights dealing only cold damage, and archer wights gaining the ability to heal.

The Sambrog Wing

Finally, we get to the boss of the Great Barrow, and this time around Tom Bombadil isn’t going to ruin our fun! The major issue in this space was the boss fight; it wasn’t overly interesting or challenging and didn’t teach much about what you need to know for later instances. The space also lacked a mini-boss, and the trash would again need upgrades at level 65.

At the base level, we varied up the monster mix by bringing in some of the exploding crawlers from the Maze Wing. We also gave the fell spirits the ability to channel-heal some of the monsters in the instance.

Level 65 trash upgrades consisted of upgrading the gaunt-men from common damage to shadow and giving them the ability to bring in pets. We gave archers healing abilities and upgraded the fell spirits to give them ranged attacks and hotspot creation. The mini-boss is an encounter inspired by the classic game Gauntlet. Two gaunt-men stand in the center of a large room, summoning undead. So long as each is alive, endless undead will swarm the room and continually respawn. Defeat the gaunt-men, and the path forward opens up for you.

Sambrog saw a lot of work (and rework), as we tried a few things that weren’t quite on the mark, were too time consuming, not overly interesting, or too complex for this level, until we finally settled on something solid. He begins the fight and instantly darkens the entire room. Once he’s down some health, he summons heavy damaging hotspots at his feet for moderate periods of time. Further down in health, he will begin bringing in fell spirits that will channel heal him. The two primary teaching lessons here: know when to move and know when to switch targets and gank the healer.

That’s a pretty simple fight for a level 65 boss, so we ramp the intensity with the challenge mode, doing our third fight where the composition of what’s going on changes when Challenge is activated. This time around, you use a crypt just before engaging in battle. From there on out, starting at 15 seconds and every 30 seconds after that, pairs of adds will enter the fight. These adds will continuously respawn until Sambrog is defeated and can consist of anything you’ve seen in the cluster leading up to this fight. Additionally, when Sambrog hits his health thresholds, he summons in groups of fell spirits that begin channel healing him instantly. Should make for a pretty chaotic scene!

In Summary

As you can hopefully see, there’s a lot to this initial offering, and we’ve focused not just on making the instances we’ve upgraded scale and be more accessible, but to improve the quality and game experience within each instance to match our expectations of what we’re capable of today. As time goes on, we’ll continue to march through the game and upgrade more instances, in addition to building entirely new clusters and spaces. For now, we hope you’ll all enjoy these 12 upgraded re-released spaces!

Instance Join List