How Radiance Works

Radiance was removed from the game in Update 2. This article no longer applies to LOTRO.

Radiance is an armour stat that acts like a buff to offset the Gloom in some raid encounters. Before the Siege of Mirkwood expansion, Radiance also offset Dread (from defeat, fell stones and Shadows of Angmar era raids) - no more. If you read a post or guide that shows a conversion of Radiance to Hope, it's probably out of date.

Bottom line: unless you raid in Moria or Mirkwood, radiance is a useless stat to you.

How Does Radiance Work?

Exactly how radiances works, unfortunately, is quite complicated. LOTRO has two "hopeful" mood modifiers - Hope and Radiance - that are similar to one another, but not identical. Likewise there are two similar-but-not-quite-the-same "dreadful" mood modifiers: Dread and Gloom. Through a maze of rules and math that would be at home on a tax return, you arrive at a net mood value on the Hope/Dread scale.

Still, radiance plays a significant role in determining your mood in end game raids. As your mood dives into the Dread zone, you become increasingly less effective in combat.

• At 1+ Dread, your morale and combat effectiveness start to decrease.
• At 3+ Dread, you start to lose effective levels, and your skills become less potent.
• At 8+ Dread you may cower every 10 seconds.
• At 11+ Dread cowering can no longer be resisted, and you will cower every 10 seconds.

In other words, raiding with Dread sucks. With more than one or two Dread your ability to function well in a raid is severely impaired. You'll want to have enough "hopeful" modifiers from Radiance and Hope to keep your net Dread to a bare minimum.

Radiance Math

You can see your mood on the Hope/Dread scale by mousing over the icon in the lower right rim of your mini map. It's listed in the top line of the tooltip. If you are in the Dread end of the scale, you'll see something like "Dread: 9"; in the Hope end it will be something like "Hope: 3" instead.

If you have Dread you'll need to add some Radiance and/or Hope to get to a level where you can function well.

I'll use a real example (the first pull in Barad Guldur) to make the calculation a little clearer. I popped into Barad Guldur wearing just 55 Radiance, and as you can see I'm already 9 deep in the Dread zone and cowering. No way I'll be able to raid like this!



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