Today's the day the patch ripping the market and microtransactions out of Middle-earth: Shadow of War will be released. Hooray! Good riddance!

The patch is live on Steam by the looks of things but I'm not sure about PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

After the patch, orcs recruited through Online Vendettas and Ranked Conquests are stored in your Garrison, and you spend Mirian to train, upgrade and customise them.

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In addition to the welcome removal of all that guff, developer Monolith has made significant alterations to the Shadow Wars part of the game, which happens after you finish the campaign. It's now called the Epilogue and has narration from old spider-fingers Shelob, grumpy mask-man Witch-king, and scary-eyes Dark Talion (sounds a bit like "D'artagnan" read aloud).

Conquering the Epilogue rewards you with Masks of the Nazgul and unlocks new abilities to summon monsters and undead, and curse enemies. You'll also be able to keep tinkering with your armies and bases in Mordor after the final credits roll.

In addition, the follower level-cap has been boosted to 80 and the enemy captain level-cap to 85. Nemesis Mission XP has been boosted to keep pace with this, and there are now more legendary-level orcs to encounter, more ways to get training orders and, best of all, followers apparently now give you gifts.

On top of that you'll find new prestige skills, and you'll be able to spend Mirian to upgrade your gear after completing an upgrade challenge. Gear upgrades also allow you to re-roll abilities, thank goodness.

One final thing: new skins - Celebrimbor, Dark Eltariel and Baranor.