The Lord of the Rings Online: Book 12 Impressions
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One of the most interesting new additions is The Delving of Fror, an experiment by the developers in finding a ways to make raid-style content more accessible by PvP and casual players. The Delving is a new dungeon located in the Ettenmoors PvP zone. It's an extensive warren that houses a series of stepped encounters and bosses. The difficulties on these monsters range from some areas that are soloable to a final boss that will take a whole raid to take down. Any of these monsters will drop excellent loot but the real prize will be "soul stones," three levels of tokens that drop from every mob in the Delving and can be traded with item vendors for a number of armor, weapon and jewelry sets as well as consumables and crafting recipes. "Creeps" (players playing as monsters) can also use these drops to purchase new corruptions, new skills, new traits, special sessions and new environmental mods.
What makes the Delving especially compelling is that while it's designed as a raid dungeon, it's not actually a raid. The Delving is a public dungeon accessible to anyone so long as their side controls the Ettenmoors. Should control of the Ettenmoors switch while players are inside, the doors are closed and players will be forced to use their maps or other special travel powers to escape. They can, of course, continue to run through the dungeon, but once the other side has access they can then enter the Delving -- and the Delving is a PvP Zone. According to the developers at Turbine, there's nothing quite like fighting a lesser member of the Balrog family when 24 screaming player-monsters break into the room to spice up the party.
