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The Developers from Monolith released a ton of free features with the Shadow of War July Update – new skins, gear, market was removed and a lot more. Let’s take a closer look!

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The Middle-earth: Shadow of War July Update arrives on 17th of July and is completely and 100% free to all players, who own the base game. The patch introduces a huge amount of changes and some new features to the core gameplay, the level cap has been raised and the most important one – the Microtransactions have been completely removed from the game.

FOR NEW SHADOW OF WAR PLAYERS ► THE DOs AND DONTs – A BEGINNER’S GUIDE

MARKET IS GONE

I’ll begin describing the major changes of this free DLC with the Market. The developers decided it was time to move away from this model and removed it. As of 17th of July the Market is no longer accessible. However, all cool things you have earned previously will remain yours. All chests you have unopened, all XP Boosts and Training Orders, all of your Orcs in the Garrison – they will not get lost. In fact, the Garrison is now visible in the main menu of the game, where the Market used to be.

Gold is no longer available for purchase or earning either. All the Gold you have at the time of the patch, will be converted into Gold Chests and the best part is that the amount of gold you have will be rounded up. For example, if you have 5 Gold, this will still result in one Gold Chest of the lowest tier.

When you play the game, all achievements that used to yield Gold, have been reworked to grant you either directly items or Mirian. More on Mirian in the Garrison and Training Orders section. Keep reading! :)

LEVEL CAP AND NEW SKILLS

Talion can now gain up to 80 levels (up from 60). The progression doesn’t stop there, though. As you keep playing, you will still get one skill point each time you fill up the progress bar at level cap.

A new special “Prestige Skill” has been added to each one of the skill categories. These Prestige Skills can be upgraded endlessly with some form of a diminishing return on the bonus you receive for each upgrade. Here’s what you get for each category:

Combat Prestige Skill – Gain 2.50% Might Recovery per hit

Predator Prestige Skill – Gain 2.50% Increased Critical Hit Damage

Ranged Prestige Skill – Gain 0.50 Focus Recovery per hit

Wraith Prestige Skill – Gain 2.00 Health Recovery per kill

Mounted Prestige Skill – Gain 3.75% increased Mount damage and defense

Story Prestige Skill – Gain 2.50% Wraith Recovery per kill

The values mentioned above may change with future updates and they are valid only for the first point spent. Each one after that will cause bigger and bigger diminishing returns. The devs confirmed that there is a hard cap on these, but it’s so high, it’s practically non-existent.

Talion’s new level cap reflects on the Orcs as well. The population of Mordor can now go up to level 85 – same as before – 5 levels higher than Talion’s max. An adjustment has been done for the EndGame, which is especially important for the higher difficulty modes (Nemesis, Gravewalker). When new orcs spawn in Mordor, they will not all be level 85, but some might be lower than Talion, others might be higher. There wont be always a need for you to Shame your opponents first if your goal is something different from killing them

RELATED ► Fortress Assault and Siege Defense Guide

Tweaks have been made to the way you earn experience points. Nemesis Missions (the red icons) will grant a lot more XP now than they did before the July Patch. This will help a lot with bringing some balance into the EndGame, where before the patch the main way to earn XP was through the Fortress Assaults

GEAR IMPROVEMENTS

With the new level cap, your gear will also get better. Each item can now be upgraded up to level 80. Legendary gear can be upgraded too. The important thing to note here is that the upgrade only relates to increased numbers – both main and secondary bonus as well as attack power for weapons and defense for armor parts.

When it comes to gear modifications, you can now do more things with each piece of gear than ever before. You can still opt to destroy it and earn Mirian from it, but the other two options are new. You can spend Mirian to upgrade the piece of gear to Talion’s current level or use a Gem to re-roll the gear Bonus and receive another one in its place. The gems type depends on the gear piece you are re-rolling stats for. These two options give you even greater flexibility to get the exact build you are looking for much quicker and easier. The re-rolls on Epic and Legendary weapons happens on the secondary trait. You can keep doing this as long as you wish or until you get your desired bonus.

RELATED ► Legendary Gear Sets Guide

To be able to upgrade the weapons to Talion’s level or re-roll, you need to complete the missions and unlock their stats first

The re-rolling can only be done with the Perfect gems (the highest tier ones). Here is what gems you need for each piece of gear:

Green Gem – Dagger and Cloak

Red Gem – Sword and Armor

White Gem – Ranged Weapons and Rune

MASKS! There are new masks that will completely alter the appearance of your Talion. They take up the slot of the Cloak. The masks cover up your character’s face (for some of the custom skins too, but not all). When you go to Wraith mode, your skin-related character will be visible.

Because they are taking the Cloak slot (they are attached to the cloak, so you get both in terms of appearance), the Masks are also a part of the Legendary Set Bonus and they too have two bonus perks. The secondary can be re-rolled, just like with any other Legendary (or non-legendary) item if you have the proper gem.

Gallery: All 5 New Maskas Prev 1 of 5 Next

Here is brief info about the Masks (thanks to Uruk’s Hollow, link in the Sources section):

Mask of the Undying (Plain Ringwraith Mask) – Waters of Lorien and Spectral Dash cost no focus. Melee and Stealth damage increase by 28% for 5 seconds after use.

Mask of the Fell Rider (Helm Hammerhead’s Mask) – “Summon Graug” summons an elemental Graug based on your location – Ice in Sereghost, Poison in Cirith Ungol and Nurnen and Fire in Gorgoroth. No special Graug for Minas Morgul.

Mask of the General (Suladan’s Mask) – Consume and Drain create a curse explosion.

Mask of the High King (Isildur’s Mask) – Raise Dead summons Gondorian Wights

Mask of an Empress (Sisters’ Mask) – Wraith Execution/Wraith Chain/Chain of Shadows do 30% more damage with each successive wraith.

The Masks are a rewarded as part of the Shadow Wars stage of the late game. If you have already finished it when the patch lands, you’ll get all the masks automatically.

New Legendary Armor has also been added – Servant’s Blackened Armor (rewarded at the end of the Shadow Wars stage 3 – more on that below). It’s a variation of the Darkest Armor, which Talion gets when he turns into the Dark Talion. The Primary Bonus if this armor is absolutely crazy – allied grunts have 40% change to resurrect when they die. The armor as well as all five new masks are part of the Ringwraith Legendary set.

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YOUR GARRISON AND TRAINING ORDERS

As I mentioned in the beginning, your Garrison is still here. All of the chests you haven’t opened are in the Garrison. Here are all of your orcs. What’s new, though, are the Training orders. You can now purchase them with Mirian. Prices vary from 400 to 20 000 per order.

RELATED ► How to Get Mirian Guide

Through careful planning, you can very quickly and easily get an amazing Legendary orc to be your bodyguard, help you assault or defend fortresses and a lot more. Mirian has never been hard to obtain and now it has a much bigger value than ever before.

Yes, you have guessed it. The most expensive Training Order is the Legendary Training. It costs the whooping 20 000 Mirian, but will turn your orc into a Legendary right away. Although extremely expensive, this method of obtaining Legendary orcs can serve as a quick path to getting your Legendary Gear quickly and significantly lower the RNG element. You can simply send your newly created Legendary scary orc to the Garrison via another Training Order and then destroy it to get your Legendary Gear piece.

RELATED ► How to get Legendary Orcs and Gear Guide

Because the Market is gone and all things are purchased with Mirian now, you can play offline and still purchase Training orders from the Garrison, for example.

NEMESIS SYSTEM CHANGES

The beasts have been adjusted. They now have power equal to a level 35 player and will always be a strong match and challenge for you. As you level up, Beast Slayers will become more common. This change was based on player feedback and constant player behavior and playtime metrics done by Monolith. The goal is to have beasts be able to stand against a captain, but not be too strong to overcome everything they meet.

RELATED ► Mounted Skill Tree and Mounted Combat Explained

Orcs above level 65 (the old cap) will not just deal more damage to you. They will have a lot more variety. Each level allows them to get a new trait. Some orcs are “dumb” by default and will cap out earlier, while others will be able to gain more and more power as they level up to 80. Simply put – if an orc is a “better learner”, he will gain more abilities and traits. This is done to secure different levels of difficulty when you face high level orcs in Mordor.

Shaming has seen a significant change. The first two shames on an orc that you do now will not affect his traits and abilities. This change will allow you to bring down their level while making sure you are still able to recruit that powerful orc without “nerfing” him. If you shame the same orc for the third time, then there will be permanent effects on him. The second free shaming option is for the min-maxers out there. If you want to further optimize a “fast learner” orc, he will have a chance to learn a new trait after you recruit him and level him back up. Using “Worse than Death” still counts as one use of Shaming.

Iron Will remains unchanged. It still has a chance to be removed, so it is not guaranteed to be gone after one of two shames on the same orc. This is a bit of a gamble.

Undead orcs do not get a level debuff any more when you turn them. Undead still can’t level up any more, but at least you can now have a level max Undead orc to play with.

An option has been added to allow you to choose if you wish to be saved by your Followers or be left to die. It’s available in the Game Settings section of the Options menu.

An extra gift-giving option has been added. One of your followers might randomly show up and deliver you a Worm orc from which you can get some valuable intel on an unknown captain or issue a Death Threat to someone.

RELATED ► How Death Threat works

Some interesting changes have been done to the Blood Brothers relations between orcs. If one Blood Brother gets hit, the other one will get Enraged and vice versa. Funny thing – enraged orcs do not always know what they are attacking. The rage blinds them and they may start attacking your followers or even you.

Devs didn’t confirm how many, but there are a few new titles for the orcs of Mordor.

ONLINE MODES CHANGES

The Online Fortress Assaults and Vendetta missions now reward you with Loot Chests, no more orcs. These two missions are available in the “Endless Siege” mode, which is the EndGame after you have finished Shadow Wars.

RELATED ► Online Conquest and Vendetta Missions Explained

Completing Online Ranked Conquests now, you will gain Experience as a reward too. The more often you attack other players’s Fortresses, the more often your own Fortresses will get attacked. These will basically give you a guaranteed Legendary Orc.

Each time you defeat a Captain in the Online Missions, you will have a chance to Dominate and recruit him. The major change is that these captains will be available to you in your own world after you complete the mission.

All orcs will also appear in your Garrison after the mission. The Spoils of War chests now reward you with Training Orders.

In regards to the Online Pits, Ologs have been nerfed, while all gang followers’ power has been increased. It makes more sense now for you to spend your Training Orders on Followers, granting them cool and strong gang. Mounted orcs have also been improved and the general usefulness of Caragors in Online Pit Fights has been buffed too. Mounted caragor has more attack and defense than an unmounted caragor.

SHADOW WARS CHANGES

The whole Chapter IV has been reworked in terms that the grind is not so crazy any more. It has been shortened significantly with some new story elements inserted into it to tie things together – the fate of Talion with the current events in Mordor, the fate of the Witch King and more. The “Endless Shadow Wars” are still available, but now they start after the final credits and the “True Ending Cinematic”.

If you have started the Shadow Wars, but have not finished it yet, after the 17th July Update your progress will be reset and you will start over. If you have completed the Shadow Wars already, after the patch you will receive all new rewards and new benefits retroactively.

The number of stages in the Shadow Wars have been lowered to three from ten and the defenses required to complete the stage are now five (down from 20).

The Shadow Wars count as 10 years of the world. The whole story of Talion happens about 50 years before the story of the Fellowship of the Ring from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Each stage gives you rewards. By the end of all three, you will have earned all masks and the new Servant’s Blackened Armor Legendary armor piece.

New Game + (NG+) will not be available for Shadow of War, but once you are done with the games’ progression, you can simply open your Quests log and select any mission you wish to replay. This is not a new feature, but rather a reminder from Monolith. There have been a ton of requests for NG+, co-op and additional save slots. These three features would require a significant rework of how the whole game and are therefore impossible at this point.

NEW APPEARANCES (SKINS)

Based on player feedback and numerous requests, the implementation of Masks as part of the gear sets, act as new skins. There are several different masks, all obtained through gameplay and they all change your character’s appearance quite a lot.

The true new skins include:

This is the last major update to the game, as it was announced by the developers on 12th of July during a developer live stream on YouTube. From this point on hotfixes will be introduced to the game when needed to bring balance and fix bugs.

PATCH NOTES

Shadow of War Update 1.18 was released at 13:00 GMT on 17th of July 2018 and is now available for download. The Steam version is around 1.4 GB in size.

Here are the official Shadow of War Update 1.18 Patch Notes (17th July Update)