f13.net

So... I've played two toons to 10 and I'm left with one question: Am I missing something? 

The world is beautiful.  The story is interesting.  I just feel like my 2h play sessions are nothing more than running all over the countryside pressing my 2 attacks and a debuff. 

Do things get better?  If so, when?  I'm starting to feel like I did playing WoW shortly before I quit. 

Several Deeds and Levels unlock new skills.

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Skills
http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Traits
http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Deeds

Thank you! 

Sometimes I'm glad that I ask stupid questions.

To get a fair taste of the classes, stick it out till 20 atleast, in my opinion. The combat is sorta slow so it needs more time and skills to be appealing, but it does have some great depth to be a hotkey masher.

The game in general takes a while to get rolling, really. At 15 you do your first class quest, you get surnames, housing, cosmetic armour and start acquiring your first pieces of nice gear. Around there you can also try to get the first purple crafted set which is really good and will last you some way beyond 20.

Alot of classes don't really come into their own until the 20-30 range also, skill wise.  Most classes continue getting class defining abilities all the way up, sometimes including the legendary traits you can't slot until 41.  I just got my armor debuff at level 42 on my Loremaster, and that's a significant ability.

Some classes also have problems with abilities that don't feel like they do much at lower levels, because they're % scaled to be effective at max level, mostly with debuffs.  Loremasters can debuff things into the ground at higher levels, but they didn't feel like they did much before 30ish, the numbers they affected just weren't significantly large enough to notice.

Class diversity also starts coming in more as you unlock class trait slots, since those all affect different gameplay styles for each class, especially now with the class trait set bonuses.

Ard beat me to it.

A lot of the skills of some classes don't make sense or are really useful until you are grouped.

A lot of LotRO combat is strategic, skill-queued -- burgs start conjuncts, minstrels chain cast # of short term buffs (5 secs) to unlock a better #+1 buff that last longer, etc.

Also, certain class combinations have absolutely absurd skill synergies in small groups. 

I mostly duo with my girlfriend as loremaster and hunter, and between us we have so much crowd control we can keep groups of mobs pinned down indefinitely, barely able to hurt us.  No tank other than my bear that can't keep aggro off a hunter, but works for offtanking, no real healer other than my emergency heals.  We only die doing stupid stuff like full fellowship quests above our level, although we did managed to kill that stupid Master level signature Drake that wanders in the North Downs north of Estelldin in our high 30s.  That felt good, I thought we were just going to suck and die, it has like 14k health.

Also was running with another group last summer as loremaster, burglar, and champion, I think.  Again, no real tank, no real healer, but used conjunctions from the burglar to do utterly stupid things, along with tons of crowd control from both of us, while the champion burned everything in sight to the ground.  We were pulling off full fellowship quests above our level without any problems up through the mid 20s when the other two burned out.  I think the only thing we couldn't do was the Weathertop fight by ourselves, but that one is just rough even with a tank and healer.

Anyhow, point is, while there IS the holy trinity type setup still, it's not even remotely necessary for non-dungeon related stuff in this game, although my viewpoint as a primary loremaster might be a bit biased, since that class alone enables some utter stupidity.

Running all over the countryside is rammed down your throat with a passion, it gets much worse as the zones get bigger and then the quests have you start running between zones.  I think I got to about forty or so...

And I hope you like killing boars of every shape, size and colour.

At least the scenery looks amazing as you run down the same path for the tenth time.

20.  Burglar is awesome when they come into their own.

I think I used the same two skills with my RK for many levels, then a third one, but that was mostly because I was soloing and because I hadn't gotten into the bit about laying the HoTs before I got into a fight.  Really I did not need them much, however later I was able to get where I made use of the healing turret and saved my own ass.  Also the first two healing runes stack, and that's pretty nice.  Lately I have been experimenting with using Static Touch(?) to paralyze enemies for a bit so my cooldowns can catch up or so I can heal a bit.  Yes, starting out as a RK (and most other classes I assume, definitely with the Guardian and Hunter) you do just zap things a lot at first because new skills open up gradually.  Now I have a few fire and ice skills that I actually don't think I know how to use properly.  I probably need a fire- and ice-attuned runestone to make proper use of them.

Please to be seeing book 7 dev diary =)

Developer Diary: LOTRO Book 7 New Player Experience  (http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/340-developer-diary-lotro-book-7-new-player-experience)

There's still a lot of hoofing in Lord of the Runs.

There is.

None of the quests are anything past 'bring foozle/kill ten rats' but the epic questlines are engaging and interesting and will lead you from zone to zone, the crafting isn't too bad if you pay attention to it (or at least 2/3 of your vocation) as you go, and the combat is fun once you have enough abilities that you're using 5-6 in any given fight and more when the situation calls for it. Deeds are a good side-distraction but apart from the immersion/epic quests and the end-level PvP there isn't a whole lot that is different from WoW. The Ettenmoors are very reminiscent of DAoC pre-ToA and if you enjoy that kind of PvP LotRO delivers (balance considerations for Freeps vs Creeps are always there, however, but they don't make it unplayable) very well.

If you aren't enjoying it beyond level 20-25 (when you have your mount are still a turtle), start up a Monster Character and see if you enjoy that. Other Monster Players are usually more than happy to teach people new to the Moors and if you find you enjoy it, it could give you motivation to level up your Freep.

Mounts are at 35.  :oh_i_see:

It's been a while.

Forgive my bad memory  :grin:

I want to thank all of you for the thoughts and information.  I didn't want to abandon this game without giving it a solid try.

Alternately, make friends or play with or as a Hunter.  Teleport everywhere and often.  They get their runspeed buff in the teens, and their teleports and evac starting in the 20s.

Wardens also have an always-on speed buff.  Much luv there.

More than in at-release Age of Conan?

I can only compare to beta Aoc, but the answer is YES!  LotRO requires you wear a brown jumpsuit and drive a panel van.

Didn't I see some mounts you could get with faction rewards at level 25? Something from the Men of Bree that you take to the stables out in north Bree-Land.

I know there was some sort of founder reward of some sort at some point in the past, but I have no clue how it works.  All your characters get an item they can trade in for a low speed horse at 25.  I got it, was a founder, and played after launch, my girlfriend didn't, and wasn't a founder, and another friend of mine was a founder, but didn't activate the game after launch, and didn't have it either.

If there's a rep item similar to that, I haven't personally seen it, and I don't see it listed on the lorebook page for the faction.
http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Reputation:Men_of_Bree (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Reputation:Men_of_Bree)

edit:  found info on the horse in question:
http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Item:Bree-Horse (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Item:Bree-Horse)

edit again:  I see this on the mounts list, but I can't find any info as to what it is or how you get it:
http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Item:Tame_Bay_Horse (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Item:Tame_Bay_Horse)

edit some more: pictures of various mounts, still no listing of the mount in question
http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Mounts (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Mounts)

I think the Bree horse was a reward from purchasing the gold edition of the game or something similar. How about the festival horses though, never grabbed myself one, but did those need riding skill and level 35? As I think we'll see Spring festival about the same time book7 hits the public.

From what I remember hearing, you need to be 35 for a festival horse, unless you were a founder, in which case it was 30.  I don't know how much truth there is to that second part.  You still need to have purchased a horse to trade in though, so it's not exactly like a free mount.

Helpful thread - thanks Nebu for the dumb questions.

I just picked up LoTRO as I was bored of WoTLK and I have just upgraded my gaming box to DX10 capability so I thought I'd check it out. Enjoying it very much so far, it's astoundingly good looking. I had the same problem (Level 10 Hunter/Level 8 Warden) in that I thought the combat was a bit slow, but it wasn't a big deal for me, I kind of made a decision to take this game slow (started re-reading the books for the umpteenth time when I subbed).

Anyway I'm on Brandywine and will ping the Kinship when I can. Good game so far.

If you're running DX10, remember to update your display drivers to a smoking hot release. After Moria there has been some issues (flickering) with dynamic shadows, but they work as of the latest ForceWare release. Don't know about Catalyst nor if they ever even had the artifacts.

Heh I had that problem. v182 drivers fixed it up nice :)

Another dumb question: Is there a built-in web browser in the game, like there is in EQ2? If so, how do I get it? Alt-tabbing is easy enough, but not having to alt-tab is better when I just need to spoil a quest for myself.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: In-game lorebook is coming in book 7. There is already a browser of sorts (for bug reporting) that some people have made browse other sites, but I'm not sure how they've done and Google is letting me down. Then again, once book 7 arrives with the quest guide and all, data mining sites will be sort of superflous in that regard.

I think this was the most enjoyable aspect of the game for me. Great scenery, a world that really feels like a world with a nice sense of scale and not separate zones. Quite relaxing.

Warden is a really fun class too, lots of variety in attacks even at the relatively low level of 21 that I reached.

Quests themselves were "meh" ... I know people praise the storyline in LOTRO but it just didn't interest me. I opted to not subscribe past my free month. I found it an enjoyable gameworld to explore, but just never really felt that attached to my character, the experience was relaxing but not compelling. Just didn't grab me enough for a monthly fifteen bucks.

More importantly, in game quest helper is also coming in book 7, which should cut down 90% of my game related web browser needs personally.

This may be enough to keep me from quitting.  The directions on the quests are so vague as to be frustrating.  I played for three hours last night and about 2.5 of it was spent running around.  Not really my ideal. 

I just have to wonder, do you ever read the posts before you stress in to make a point? :-P

Sometimes I miss words, most of the time, I'm just incoherent and bored at work.

In the continued spirit of dumb questions: I'm getting to believe that Burglar is a very group-oriented class.  Should I consider something else if I'm going to primarily solo/duo or will I do better later?  In encounters with lots of aggro I get curbstomped when evade/stun/daze are down.

You will get much more survivability at 20 (medium armor) along with additional skills/traits that will help you solo and increase DPS.  I never had an issue as a burg - key is to pick your battles and use your tricks to maximize the battle.

I got medium at 10 along with dual weild.  Getting stun and evade at 12 helped a ton too.  I think it's a combination of learning the mechanics coupled to craptastic armor/weapons that is doign me in.  I'll keep at it. 

I played a hunter and a warden to 10 and both seemed to be much easier to solo.  Perhaps I need to use my tools better.

Invest in food and really good daggers/clubs.  I found I could buy purple lvl 10 daggers for a few silver.  Crafters sell good stuff lower too.  Gear unfortunately really helps I find in grinding solo.

Also, remember to keep at the class deeds. No first-hand experience with burglars, but a couple of class traits can make a huge difference and I imagine this is true for every class.

Browse through them and pick a few to focus on. Then try to adapt your playing style to using those skills as often as possible.

Edit: You will get your first class trait slot at 15, make it count!

More dumb questions from  a noob!

Housing

Hit 15 last night and did a tour of the housing zones. Still way out of price range (sub-prime hasn't hit LoTRO) but have some questions.

• When I buy a house for my first characters can other characters on my account use it? Seems silly to buy more than 1.
• Other than looks is there any benefit in saving for the 'deluxe' versions of the houses - they don't seem that much more expensive.
• RoME has a Kin house I've visited. Are the portal skillls on the same timer - ie. personal and kin house travel need to be an hour apart?

Monies

I seem to be perpetually broke, although it's obviously early days. No surprise there, and since I'm a Hunter I'm not surprised to see bow's really $$$ in the AH (supply & demand). Any tips on making dosh that I might not have thought of, I'm having to skip training weapon skills as I seem to be outlevelling my wallet? I'm an explorer and have been mining/smelting and creating Rowan lumber but haven't sold any yet. This is probably covered in another thread so I'll dig.

'Alt' questing

I generally like to have 2 'main' chars in game - one ranged DPS and either a tank or melee DPS. I'm planning on creating a Elf Warden when B7 goes live. Other than the main Epic quest line is there an alternative to the Archet -> Combe -> Bree progression for 1 - 20? Not a huge deal repeating them as they were mostly fun but if there's other low level content I'd like to see it.

All toons on the account use the same house. Deluxe has more storage, and larger "hooks" for items. The port skills are separate.


Pick up everything, and i mean everything, all vender junk. Also, if you are not crafting, stacks of even light hide (50) go for around 150 silver, and it just goes up from there.


Yes, in each starting area you can jump to any other (one silver, instant travel, see the stables), there is no reason to start at your racial starting area. it does converge in Bree land around 15-20, however you can branch again going to the north downs or forochel and evendim. This of course excludes the book quests, there is only one line for those, HOWEVER you can skip to any book chapter you want, or never even do one. IE: You can just level as you want, and then pick up book 3 just for kicks with out doing 1 and 2.


EDIT: Wrong thread for Nebu response.

Cool ty. Is that just raw skin or the hide created by tailors? I have tailoring and have been turning them into things to skill up but at that price I'll just sell em!

EDIT: Bored at work or I'd just log in and check for my damn self!

Raw, people use it to skill up, for light hide, it takes 2 lights to make a boiled, so, 300 silver is not an uncommon price for a stack of 50 (Boiled hides), of course check prices in the AH, and all the other AH considerations. 150 and 300 are steady averages at best, and based on my own experiences on this server.

Like i said, if you yourself do not care about crafting, there is an ass ton of money to be made in collecting and/or refining crafting goods. Even higher level items will require lower level mats, its quite well designed.

At almost all levels (more so at low levels, as they come frequent), new skills (From the trainers) themselves will be one of your largest drains on coin.

you can make a stupid amount of money selling hides

at any Tier.

My wife is a tailor but sells off stacks of lower Tiers.  We're talking 250s for Tier1, 500s Tier2... at least.

And the damn things DROP no matter what.

Thinking of resubbing... ($29 for 4 months is a bargain). 

Is there enough to do solo to keep busy without feeling like a complete second-class citizen? 

you can without doubt solo to 45 if you wanted (60 is the cap).   The leveling curve is shorter and flatter to 50.  If you had some love from food and scrolls and potions, you would sail to 45 in 3 weeks (?) of steady casual play.

If you don't care about skipping group level content then the *only* thing that will possibly frustrate you are the Epic Book quests which unfortunately do need often 6-man Fellowships to complete.  But luckily you can force march to 45 or even 50 before entering Moria without worrying about Epic Books at all (and solo them when they are grey).

Short answer - yes.  A LOT.

There's never a point where you have to do group quests while leveling up if you choose not to.  At the upper end, they've added a bunch of solo and small group content and instances also.  The game is alot easier duoing than soloing though, I've found.

More fun with a group, though I pretty much solo'd to 60. I'm grouping with kin as I move the rest of my toons up in level.

Thanks for the help.  I'm just debating if I want to treat LotRO like I did WoW; a game to solo until I run out of solo content followed by a reroll or leaving. 

I appreciate you all taking the time to voice your opinions.

I will just to repeat what others have said; yes, it's possible to solo all the way to 60.

BUT! LotRO has much more interesting group dynamics than WoW has ever had. It's just not as rigid and stiff and therefore more fun. A bit of a shame if you didn't try to group once in a while.

I'm tinkering around with this and trying to find a class I like. Are there any that have just too high a population? I'm mostly interested in the Warden, Burglar, RK and Hunter.

I'd say that hunter, warden, and RK are pretty common.  Mostly because they appear to be very solo friendly (and a bit overpowered).  Burglar is a nice class for solo and grouping and I didn't see many of them about.  They do rely on constant gear upgrades though. 

I believe you just called out the four highest-population classes, but maybe not burglar.  Captain?  Guardian?  They all have rather varying playstyles so you'll still have to decide how want to play whatever class you choose.

The thing about the classes, I find, is that you will want to get up to lv30 before you can really get all of the meaty abilities for most of them and start seeing how you can use them in varying situations.  It's not like previous MMOs that I played where I pretty much knew what my role was from the get-go (although WoW is pretty good about having distinct builds for classes).

Also you have to consider traits, which trickle in slowly as you level.  My hunter, for example, is now lv37 and I have two main concentrations I could pick, I think: there's the low-threat, low-power-use direction and the high-damage, high-power, high-threat direction.  Currently she's traited for DPS, DPS and more DPS, which is great if you are solo.  In some groups, I find that I take aggro off of most anyone within two shots despite a threat-reducing class item, and that's without using any consumable buff like Fire Oil.  There's also a trait set which involves traps but honestly I have not investigated that one a lot.  I'd like to see a dual-setup mechanic for this very reason, since it requires a trip to a bard and cash to rearrange traits so I won't be doing it just so I can run a group instance.

If you are asking this because you are worried about getting into a group, don't worry.  The only class I ever see requested, and this is rarely, is Minstrel.

From what I've seen on Brandywine at 60, the overpop classes are RK, Champ, and Hunter. Minstrels, Burglars, and Captains seems to be in the most demand in groups.

I think I'm going to play up a minstrel just to see how it goes.

Gotcha. Thanks.

My intent is to find a fun class that isn't saturated. I have this aversion to playing overpopulated classes. I think I'll try the Burglar next.

Burglar's got potential as does Loremaster. So, I'm playing with those now.

But! A dumb question! Is there a way to manipulate the default UI? Like, more hot keys, moving windows around (other than chat) and all that? Are there mods for this game? In other words, how customizable is the UI?

CTRL + \ (for moving things)

http://www.lotrointerface.com/

In Options you can find the UI settings and in there somewhere is a place to Always Show Hotbar X.  You'll want to turn those on to get extra bars to put things in.  Also note that with CTRL+\ toggled, you can also toggle the bars between horizontal and vertical.

I was trying to heal a pug last night.  The UI is brutal.  Decent healing mod would be great.

I found that I really need to fuck around with the hotkeys to do anything productive with targeting fellows.  Not that this helps healing very much, but targeting fellows with, say, F2 instead of CTRL-F2 is at least something.

Excellent. Thanks.

Yeah, F1-6 targets party members.

there's no UI solution for managing heals.  Not until they completely overall the presentation layer, which may not come this year or ever.  Since my main is a healer I've had to accept this.

Best advice is I've seen from a few minnie's setups: CTL+/ to move windows; open Options and select display always-on all quickslots; make sure all quickslots are not docked; find them all and place one vertically in the upper left corner where the fellowship window spawns.  Put it against the edge of your window and pull over the fello window.  Drop copies of your main 2 or 3 heals in there.  Makes movement between selection by mouse and heals faster.  Or else key pound F1-6 etc.

Can you post an example of what it is you would want? Because i am still confused as to where its lacking in terms of healing interface. I think we have had this conversation before.

http://war.curse.com/downloads/war-addons/details/squared.aspx (http://war.curse.com/downloads/war-addons/details/squared.aspx)

Soln: that sounds pretty good.

Easiest method I found, without any ui mods, is to just make sure your heals are on the primary hotbar and put the main heals on about 1-5.

I would just select the by clicking on the fellowship member, then press number keys 1-5 (in order of magnitude), #1 being the primary heal, and #2 being the upgraded (aggro-pulling) larger heal and so on.

To each there own, but I found it to be a pretty efficient method - removes the need for the f1-f6.

OK, I was probably thinking of assisting fellows which is what I actually do instead of targeting fellows.  I occasionally think about seeing what sort of aliases and hotkeys I can set up, but I procrastinate due to wishing and hoping that a UI revamp will arrive before the end of the year.

we have had this discussion about the UI and personal preferences and challenges for healers/buffers so I won't restart it.  It's what you can manage ultimately.  But the main thing IMO is there's no nice way to detect timers on buffs -- no countdown clock.  One has to watch the individual players bars to see which icons are on/off.  It's just a challenge for that and heals.  But hell, it also adds to making it interesting to play.  One has to just accept the UI as it is.  At most you can move a few things about creatively and deskin the UI to make more room or a clearner look.  I'll post my UI this weekend and make a new thread for discussion (not venting).

Dumb questions of the day: Is there something other than questing that I should be doing at 16? Any dungeons in that level range that are worth my time? And who's in that level range and wants to group?

First standalone instance is at 20 (I mean by standalone: Not the Epic quest version, completely a side adventure), The great barrow (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Dungeon:The_Great_Barrow). If that's what you mean.

Your link is brokedededed. I'll look that up, though. Thanks!

Why would you do such a thing?  Has Brogarn wronged you in some way, sir?

I enjoyed that instance. BTW Brogarn hates the shire.  :grin:

I think I just got thrown under the bus.

Also, the Shire can suck it. Deliver your own pies, fatty. And the next postman I see, I'm stabbing. In the face. With something rusty.

What do you have against pie?

Nothing at all. Mmm... pie. It just got redundant delivering pies over what feels like a thousand mile radius to any lazy bastard who had mild hunger pains and couldn't be arsed to walk to the nearest town for a fill up.

Nah, its a good instance that's a good deal of fun, and has some decent rewards and drops (Also being revised in the bree-land revamp AFAIK, quest wise). Yegolev just has had some bad experiences in it with PUGs and has sworn it off with all the enthusiasm as you have the shire. So i thought it was funny.

I am more than happy to run it with people (takes about an hour though, with no mess ups) i just haven't had a toon around that level in a bit, but I mean, I can bring who ever.

Do you remember who ran me through the Great Burrito? :oh_i_see:

Was it me?  :?

The Great (confusing, pain in the ass) Barrow is mildly annoying compared to it's big brother Haudh (Fuck the Men of Bree faction) Icarith.

Honestly, all the "Lets make this a group required area by simply filling it with too many trash mobs, and make them elite" kinda suck compared to regular areas. Sure, killing giants is fun, but the greatly increased risk and minor increase in loot/xp doesn't really work. You're better off in a full group just fining some nice reds for better xp/loots, or trying to eat single grapes.

And for the record, the Shire Postal service is a great way to learn the layout of the zone, and how to really watch the minimap for snoopy hobbitses. It's my second favorite running-about chain, only beaten by The Inn-League Challenge.

rattran basically summarized my problem with the fellowship dungeons.  If I just needed six random asshats to do them, I'd be relatively happy, maybe even ecstatic.  My last run in GB was for Ancient Story of Evil and the group contained at least two people that knew the dungeon layout and spawn points, plus everyone other than me was around lv23... I was lv32.  We still wiped against the lich twins somehow.

More power to you. I prefer learning the map in bits and pieces while making bits and pieces of goblins and dourhands.