The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game - Definitive Edition News

A few weeks ago we discussed the upcoming Full Release on Steam coming August 8th, as well as some upcoming changes to the game such as new Save Game behavior and a new Tutorial Quest 4 (Deck Building). You can read more about that in the original news story here.

The changes are in testing currently and will be rolled out when we roll out the next Encounter—Gundabad Awoken—later in July so that we can resolve any issues with this rollout before we go to the Full Release.

Additionally, you may have noted that we've updated the Steam Store description for the game. We hope you like the changes.


Let's take a deeper look at Gundabad Awoken, the free new encounter coming in late July. This new encounter takes place in the hills and mountains near Gundabad, and we've crafted all new locations in which you will be adventuring.

Hold Back The Horde!
One of the new features in Gundabad Awoken is the “Horde” objective. Now, we can’t give away too much of how or why you might encounter it, but we can talk a little bit about what it does and why.

(Click on the image to see it full size...)

Locked and Timed with a Bolster frame in this case means that each round the value of this objective will increase by one to reflect the growing hordes of Sauron’s minions that bear down upon you.

The Upkeep ability is where we are trying something a little new. This card will pull from a random pool of effects, with each point of value on the objective being an extra roll of the dice. If you let this effect stick around for too long, you will be overwhelmed by its effects.

Here are a few examples of things that this Horde might to do you…

1. All Enemies gain +1 Attack for this round
2. Summon an Enemy from a random pool of choices
3. Sauron gains +1 Resource

We have more than these available to us, but this is just a taste of what you can expect in Gundabad Awoken. We wanted to create a new experience with our third encounter, since encounters allow us room to challenge both ourselves as designers and you as our players. We look forward to seeing what you make of it.



Locations
The first location we want to share with you is part of the Mine of Gundabad, which is currently controlled by hordes of Orcs.

(Click on the image to see it full size...)

This next location is deep within the mines of Gundabad where the Dwarves of old once forged mighty works.

(Click on the image to see it full size...)



If you need technical assistance for the game, please remember that if you don't see the answer within the forums or on discord, you can always file a Helpshift here:

https://asmodee.helpshift.com/a/lord-of-the-rings-acg/


There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.

You can check it out here.



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 tomorrow, Wednesday, July 3rd. Make sure you don't miss this broadcast, as we'll have a special guest with us to talk about the game's evolution.


That's all we have this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!

A few weeks ago, we gave a sneak peek of the upcoming Hero releases for Campaign 3: The Witch King's Grasp. This week we want to show you the actual cards. Though we are still a ways out from the launch of this expansion, and these cards are a work in progress subject to play testing and balance, we wanted to give you an early view of to the upcoming content as we get closer.

Let's start with Boromir, a Tactics Hero of Gondor.



Whenever Boromir defeats an enemy, he may grant every other character +1 attack or Block for the current round.



Next, let's examine Frodo, a Spirit Hero of The Shire.



He is a hero with Stealth and a new keyword; Achieve. Achieve is a bit like Vanquish, but for resolving Objectives. Whenever Frodo resolves an Objective, he gains +1 resource.



Our third hero is Rossiel, a Lore Hero from Lothlórien.



Rossiel can use her power to recover 1 of your non-unique Allies, drawing them from the playing field back to your hand.



Our final hero is Sam, a Leadership Hero and faithful friend from The Shire.



Sam has a higher attack when he has an active Guard. He also steals a resource from Sauron whenever he defeats an enemy.



Keep in mind that these stats, threat levels and powers can—and likely will—change once we have these heroes in testing. However, you can start imagining deck strategies with these heroes included in the mix.



Now let's take a quick look at the upcoming Gundabad Awoken Encounter. We will be looking at this new quest in more detail in the weeks ahead, but for now we wanted to give you a likely confusing sneak peek until you learn the details of what it means.

Meet the Goblin Sneak...



and the Pit Goblin...



What do these new ally cards mean? Keep in mind that this is part of an Encounter as you ponder.



If you need technical assistance for the game, please remember that if you don't see the answer within the forums or on discord, you can always file a Helpshift here:

https://asmodee.helpshift.com/a/lord-of-the-rings-lcg/


There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.

You can check it out here.



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, July 3rd. We have a special guest joining us this time around, so make sure you don't miss this broadcast.


That's all we have this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!

We are pleased to announce that we will be coming out of Early Access into full release on August 8th!

We've had an amazing year listening to your feedback and using it to directly improve your gaming experience in Middle-earth. We feel that the time has come, however, to take the game from Early Access to Full Release.

History
We've come a long way since August 28th of last year in how the game plays and have added a lot of content along the way. We've added 34 individual new Vault cards, two free encounters, a whole new Tutorial campaign, and a host of new features since then, not to mention a second DLC campaign. We couldn't have done this without your support and feedback.

We had originally intended to be in Early Access for only about 5 months, but when we changed over from a free to play model to a premium experience back in September based on user feedback, we also made the choice to also revamp a number of systems, overhaul the UI and add new features such as the Save system and give you additional free content along the way.

Though we have a few new items coming before the August 8th date, we feel that the time is right to make the switchover. The annoying Early Access banner will go away and we'll shake off the training wheels to support the game with new content.



We haven't been idle since we made the big recent update to the game's UI and systems. Before we release, we intend to make the following changes:

Deck Builder Tutorial (Quest 4) Restructure
While we are very pleased with most of the new tutorial structure and how it better prepares you for the complexities and subtleties of our game, we felt that the Deck Builder Tutorial (Quest 4) just didn't hit the mark. We have a new version of this almost ready to test internally that we feel does a better job of walking you through the options of building a deck as well as reinforcing concepts like Sphere Levels and better explaining the ins and outs of deckbuilding in a more sandbox type of environment. This update will be made before we go into Full Release so we have time to do any final fixes.



Save Game Changes
We're making some behind the hood changes to the save game system that we feel will improve that system. Currently, when you have a save game, whatever deck you were using locks out the deck from editing. You cannot change the associated deck until you either finish the saved game or opt to delete it.

We've decided to remove that restriction. When you make a save game, it will save a version of that deck with the save so that when you run a saved game, it will contain the remainder of that deck in the save. This will allow you to manipulate the associated deck separately from that saved game. However, when you run that saved session, you will still have the deck you used from the original game.

Why don't we allow you to bring the altered deck to the saved session? Since a deck lasts across an entire quest, there's no way for us to know what cards would have been used in an altered deck up to the point of the save. You are saving the state of the session as it existed at the time, so we save the deck as it existed at that time.

This will clear up some issues with both single and multiplayer save games and make it less confusing when you go to make changes to your decks.

Bug and Stability Fixes
We have a few more bug fixes and stability enhancements we're putting into the game to reduce connection issues and fix stability further.

Performance Enhancements
Our new technical art director has been unleashed on the game to optimize and he's found a number of ways for us to gain performance improvements. We've been busily optimizing each of the game locations as well as the card frames and UI elements and this will improve performance on all platforms.

Currently the game uses numerous dynamic lights and multiple layers within textures as well as complex shaders and particle effects. We've found a number of efficiencies that we can apply to each of these which allow us to retain the visual fidelity but improve the frame rate across the board. This will be coming before we go to full release.

A Brand New Encounter 3
As mentioned last week, we will be releasing the free Expansion, Gundabad Awoken. This all new 4 location quest will test your heroes as they uncover the mysteries of Gundabad and its relation to Carn Dûm.


Full Release doesn't mean we won't be further enhancing the game. We intend to continue to implement updates and make further refinements to the game as we move forward. We have numerous UI enhancements and improvements as well as new content and features that we want to take live after Full Release. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and work with you as we have since launch to improve and add to the game. We will continue to regularly update with new content as well as provide live support from our team after we go into Full Release.

Additionally, we've already announced our next campaign expansion The Witch King's Grasp, which we intend to add as DLC after we go into Full Release.


There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.

You can check it out here.



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, June 19th. We'll be discussing upcoming content, the name change and give you some behind the scenes discussion about the changes we will be making about the stability enhancements we've done and will be doing for Full Release.


That's all we have this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!

Hail and Well Met!

We're pushing a small build update today that completes the brand change over for the game itself. There are no other changes or revisions in this build- just the logo and opening movie changes to reflect the change to The Lord of the Rings™️ Adventure Card Game.

Have a great weekend!

FFI and Asmodee Digital

Hail and Well Met!

As we announced in the news on Friday, we have decided to rebrand the game as The Lord of the Rings™️ Adventure Card Game as part of our build up toward the Full Release out of Early Access and our console release later this year.

We'll provide an updated build later this week to bring the game into line with this change.





Our next content release will be an all new Encounter provided free to all users.

Legend holds that in the distant mists of the First Age, Durin, father of Dwarves, built his first forge within Mount Gundabad. Alas, in time Orcs seized control of the mountain stronghold. Though the Dwarves drove them out repeatedly, the Orcs always returned. Even unto the current times of the Third Age, their foul presence remains a constant blight upon the Dwarves' sacred place.

The threat of Orcs—and worse—is on the rise once more. Reports claim that Gundabad swells with increasing numbers of Orcs, evil Men, and other miscreants. The corrupted fortress stirs with renewed purpose… though to just what purpose remains a mystery. Heroes are needed—brave souls who will venture to this desolate place and discover what draws forth the minions of darkness.

In this Encounter your Heroes are faced with a mystery: many Orc factions, as well as evil Men from Carn Dûm and Rhudaur, assemble within Gundabad. Someone—or something—calls to them, but to what purpose? To learn the truth, stealth and guile are called for. Your journey to Gundabad is a search, not an assault. You must use disguise and subterfuge to infiltrate the enemy stronghold and glean its secret, but that's only the beginning! To find the source of the dark siren song, you'll need to navigate the depths of the labyrinthine mountain fortress. Should you overcome the obstacles along the way, you'll face a foe unlike any you've encountered before.

Choose your deck carefully, for you'll need both wits and combat prowess to defeat the foul power that rouses Mount Gundabad and its denizens.


There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.

You can check it out here.



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, June 19th. We'll be discussing upcoming content, the name change and various other surprises.


That's all we have this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!