Shadow of War: Desolation of Mordor DLC Release Date and New Info

The second story expansion to Middle-earth: Shadow of War has a release date – 8th of May 2018. You will take control of Baranor and meet new characters as well as familiar old faces. Check out all that is known so far below!

There are no story spoilers in this article!

Middle-earth: Shadow of War gets its second story driven expansion on 8th of May. The content will be available to Expansion Pass owners. It can also be purchased separately. The base game is required for you to be able to install and play the DLC.

You will take control of Baranor this time and explore a brand new desert region – Lithlad, located to the south-east of Gorgoroth. The new area is filled with Numenorean ruins. A new set of special numenorean gear will also be available. It will be obtainable through treasure-hunting side-quests and can be upgraded and augmented.

From the new poster we can easily recognize the character sitting to the left of Baranor – Torvin from Shadow of Mordor makes an appearance. His role in the new story is yet to be revealed. If you are having trouble remembering who Torvin was – he is a dwarf hunter, roaming the Sea of Nurnen, looking to kill the Legendary Graug with the aid of Talion.

There is a new creature that simply hovers over the characters on the poster. It’s a were-worm from Tolkien’s lore. Very little is known about these creatures, but it is presumable that they are related to Dragons and were said to dwell in the Last Desert (as it was mentioned in The Hobbit).

A new mortality system is created for this story, because Baranor, unlike Talion and Eltariel, is a mere mortal and cannot teleport and resurect himself like a wraith. He doesn’t have a special ring of power either. There are two things that exist in the new progression system – “meta progression” – the progression that exists and is saved over the many (many!) runs you do and an “in-game run progression” – this is the kind of progression that is reset when you are defeated. The first one is saved forever, while the second one is reset when your character dies. More information on that will become available later.

A new feature is added to the Nemesis system – human mercenaries will be available for hire to aid Baranor in his adventure. They will have their own unique set of traits and ways of interacting with them. The way to get their services is a matter of a financial transaction, they cannot be dominated like you do with the orcs. The mercenaries will obey your command and follow instructions. There are no plans at the moment for the human mercenaries to become available in the other regions of the game.

Desolation of Mordor is expected to take you longer to complete than Blade of Galadriel (which for me was ~2 hours).