f13.net

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Release_Notes_Volume_2_Siege_of_Mirkwood_Launch_Official

My favorite so far:

• You can no longer get so drunk that you hallucinate catching fish.

• Added an option (under “Chat”) callled “Stop repeated keys in chat” - this is off by default. If turned on, then if a player has thier chat bar open and holds down any character key (like w) - then after about 20 repeats of this key in under a second (implying that you really wanted to be running or something) the chat window will delete the repeated keys from your chat box and close the chat box.

• Soup recipes can now be purchased from Novice and Expert Cook vendors and will no longer be found in treasure.

Win.

O M F G finally! EQ2 did this a few years ago and whenever I play anything else, it drives me crazy. (Particularly because I'm chatty as anything.)

Ooh.  I'm excited about the Lone Lands overhaul.  Weathertop soloable?  Elite Trolls made signature, along with the spiders?  Western Agaumar soloable?  I can stop waiting an hour for bored assclowns to help me finish up a quest line?  Sign me up.  Might run some alts through there just on principle.

Edit:
It's the little things that make me happy.

Yes, too bad I just finished Adso's quests. :oh_i_see:

- Lone-lands: The quest Weavers Beneath the Ruins now longer calls for you to organize a fellowship. Go stab the spiders on your own.

Nice.

- The quest in that place that requires the thingy drop from the whatchamacallit has been adjusted for clarity.

Extra nice.

- Bree-land: In the Great Barrow quest "Collecting History", all players in the fellowship will now be able to collect the ancient chalices in the dungeon at once, without having to fight over spawns.

Hey, I'll do this one now. :oh_i_see:

Thorny's work site has a vender now too.

Lose. They screwed it up. It takes you out of chat. But you sit there not moving until you release and re-press the key.

Just have Yegolev complain, his complaints are almost always corrected.

Nicest unexpected discovery so far?

Khuzdul Tablets and Infused Shards now have higher stack limits. Inventory recovery: GO!

My performance seems slightly snappier.  Also, I approve of the updated water.  Nen Harn and Everclear lakes look great.

The combat change is practically unnoticeable on a RK. :oh_i_see:

I don't see any difference at all on a minstrel, but I didn't expect I would.

This for sure. My work computer has greatly improved performance. The combat changes are much less noticeable on my Hunter, but I did see some differences today.

I don't see/feel any change on my Lore-Master either.

I had to look for it.  Primarily it is as advertised: certain things interrupt other things, notably my instants go off instantly even if I'm autoing something in the face with a runestone.  Previously, waiting for a cooldown meant that an autoattack could sneak in but now it doesn't matter since skills go off as soon as I hit the button... provided there isn't already a skill animating, of course.

I have been killing grey orcs near Nen Harn, so I don't know much about how my instants now interact with my other skills, such as the inductions and what-is-it-called-when-something-is-sustained.  I figure I will learn all about it this weekend if my wife and I get to play on Sunday.

Didn't notice any difference as a Warden, except spear attacks are slightly faster, which was appreciated.

Oddly, I'm getting what feels like lag (and a massive frame rate drop) whenever I kill a humanoid now. Just for about 3 seconds, but the frame rate goes to about 3fps, with the fps meter still showing my normal 60+

Very odd, and can't find any settings that account for it.

Disk latency from loading death sounds/animations?  Defrag?

Fast disk, 0% fragmentation. And it's only in the final, didn't do it in beta. Weird, but I'm sure just screwing with every graphic setting will either fix it, or make it worse.

Don't forget to select the new combat options that show optional combat animations and the one that blends animations, this gives you the cosmetic/visual feel of it being faster, which it is by the way.

Deleting my preferences seems to have fixed it.

Best thing about Mirkwood, lots of money and reasonably fast leveling. 60-62 took a couple hours, and netted me 2.5gold. Worst thing, k10rats quests. And there's a lot of them. Kill 16 crows with a low spawn rate, in a small area. With 12 other groups all doing the same thing.  :uhrr:

Nice unexpected discovery #2:

The NPCs who play instruments now play actual melodies, not obnoxious noodling.

See; guitarist in the Forsaken Inn, flutist at the new gazebo in Bree Homesteads.

I'm killing orcs in Mirkwood and not a single drop yet of the 10 items I need to unlock skirmish mode.  Any ideas?

I got my orders/list in Lothlorien, dunno if they drop in mirkwood, but I'd think they should. The drop rate was pretty low, maybe 1 in 5.

As a guardian, it feels *vastly* different.  I was taking on entire camps of orcs in the beginning of Lothlorien (to get the war orders) and it didn't take 5 minutes to kill the first one!  /flex

I got mine pretty quickly from the men-and-trolls area in Trollshaws.  Could be you are fighting non-recruited orcs?

Had to drop Gondamon solo down to lv40 from 43 in order to finish it, and I still managed to lose right at the end because I didn't realize where the boss was coming from.  Third time, though, I got it with only one death.  Ended up having to pay out 150+ silver for repairs, but I got some SM and a FM, will do better next time.

I hit 30 in Esteldin, ran out to the camp, ran out into the field, and had my drops in 10 minutes or so. If they're not dropping fast my guess is those mobs don't drop them.

I went back to Moria and got my 10 quickly.  Don't know why I had no luck in Mirkwood.

Release Notes Volume 2 Siege of Mirkwood December 10 Game Update (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Release_Notes_Volume_2_Siege_of_Mirkwood_December_10_Game_Update)

Damn, I was hoping they would reenable the disabled quest in the landing part of Mirkwood. My wife refuses to finish it because she'll miss the deed due to the disabled quest.

They are reactivating it, but as they rationalize it, they're not actually fixing anything, so it doesn't belong in the patch notes.

Just as an update, Vol2Book9 is soloable from start to finish. There are a bunch of skirmishes toward the end that are gated by level (65). The storyline is somewhat  :uhrr: with bits of  :ye_gods: and  :awesome_for_real:

And then there are 12 'Book9 epilogue' missions that seem to mostly be to wrap up the story, and add some Fellow/Small Fellow instances. Overall fun, and makes me want to go back and do all the books I've skipped.

yeah great stuff -- Book 9 was terrific (even chp 16? with the barrels).  I love the skirmish design and implementation.  Having epic books with Skirmishes solves so many problems.  And frankly, it will enable so many things with the War of the Ring down the road. 

Question about Mirkwood:  Are skirmishes tied to the expansion? 

I want to play again, but I think I need to do a character transfer ($25), an expansion purchase ($20) and a subscription ($30/3months).  At minimum it will be $60 for just a single month and all the stuff.  Seems like a lot to come back to play.  I suppose I don't need the transfer, but was hoping to bring my guardian over to the F13 fellowship.

When it launched, Mirkwood was free if you had a multi-month subscription.  I'm not sure if that's still the case.

You can do something like 3 skirmishes a day without the expansion? Something like that?

And people are bitching that you can enter the Mirkwood areas if you don't have the expansion. The key is you can't get xp or something along that line.

Short answer?  Yes.

You can do skirmishes without the expansion, but only a few per week.  Unlimited skirmishes alone was worth the 20 bucks imo.

They changed it, its like 3 a day now.

Yeah, 3 a day. Before vacation I saw an exchange where a dev who'd been out of the loop said it was a week, and he was corrected by a colleague.

Mirkwood Patch 1 notes up for Bullroarer. I didn't find anything particularly interesting.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=312145

EDIT: No, I was wrong.

Resolved an issue that was causing tactical critical defense rating to affect incoming healing crit chance. You will no longer defend against heals!
Herbalist and Bannerguard healing will no longer be reduced by armour.

Good they are refunding with so many problems, i.e. lack of 4 legacies for a lot of classes

Does this mean my <35 alts who have not paid for a mount and completed that ridiculous quest chain can *ride*?  Huzzah, if so.

You don't need any skill to ride the Bitch Horse you can buy at Hengstacer.  My Guardian prefers it to walking. :oh_i_see:

My lowbie RK's pocketbook thanks you! 


This always made me sad.  A game based on a book written by a philologist shouldn't have typos! 

Finally got around to reading, and I think there are two notable things in the list.

> Skirmish Captains now have a dialog option that will explain how to open Skirmish Join.
I am afraid to mention how long it took me to figure out how to actually enter a skirmish.

> Item wear on defeat has been reduced while inside Skirmishes.
As mentioned, this is good.  I was not interested in doing any in which I might be defeated due to the cost.  Although I don't know why it's not zero, but I suppose mudflation has something to do with it.

Yes, the item wear is very welcome.

You can have mine?