f13.net

Curious as to what people are working on.  There is a shit-ton of content in this game and I'd like for us to have a bullshit thread for talking about our exploits.

I saw something from Arzo about surviving with 20 morale last night, and that reminds me of yesterdays trip into a Great Barrow instance.  My wife got a lv18 epic to go into the Great Barrow, so we both went in and had a pretty good time.  The most memorable bit for me was running too late, at 23 morale, and hauling ass back up the barrow with two cursed wights on my ass.  My wife, god bless her, was able to get those things off of me before I died.  She kept saying "where are you going" and I kept saying "the fuck outta here" then "come back down here" which was met with "fuck no, you get these things off my ass".  Good times.  Of course we both died later in what I assume is the final room where we get loaded up with Dread and gang-raped by wights.  We might try it again and I will try that Radiance horn I got from the Moria pre-order tokens, maybe it will at least keep the screen from going all dark and maybe we will panic just a little bit less.

Just finished everything in Bree area and BD's except for the 3 Great Barrows quests.  Next up is the Great Barrow and/or driving ruthlessly through the Lone Lands quests.  Also, unrelated, opened up North Downs and finished my Journeyman Scholar quest.  I had to "make a poem" with items both dropped and 1 item found (quest item in North Downs).  Nice quest content, good storyline. 

I have yet to meet any cockblock, quest, area or challenge I couldn't attempt alone or with a PUG (and PUG's in this game seem to always be available).  Honeymoon for me in this game is still on.

Edit: meant to also say, "I have yet to meet any cockblock" -- none, nothing, nadda.  Level21 only, but zero grind so far.

I feel that the fact I got to the end of an instanced level 18 Fellowship quest with just a hunter duo speaks volumes.  And it was fun!

My wife wants me to catch up to her in the Epic line, but I really want to see what sort of trouble I can get into in Lone Lands instead.  I'm doing grey quests in Combe and Staddle, but there a couple of green ones in LL that are tempting me.  Also I need to get the twisted wood for my woodworker quest!

I am in love with the legendary system and working on getting 6 tied to me so I can level them up then nuke the for RUNES.

The battle last night was in Moria; I was questing in a random location and Marween showed up to do what he does.  As we waved hello some random person ran by with an elite Orc Leader on his ass; we decided to assist the person in taking it down (none of us were grouped). 

The random person was busy healing herself (Minstrel) while Marween and I started hacking on him; since we were not grouped I decided to only aggro as needed, even backed off a couple times to let Marween take some hits.  Well, the random was down to maybe 10% health, so I let out a scream which bound the mob to me for the time being.  From there Marween and I hacked it down as best we could; finally I had to hit my HOLYSHIT RUN FAST ability and dip.  Marween let out his scream ability and took the aggro right before I went down; I dove between some orcs and managed to get out without taking a fatal hit.

It was really quiet exciting to say the least!

Just getting back into LOTRO, taking it slow, so only a level 16 Guardian so far.  Forgot how much I liked this game in beta, current plans are to get to 35 for a mount, then go back through the low level zones to pick up as many deeds as possible before heading for 50 and Moria.

Irrelevant to you guys, but I'm running instances! :) They're so much better in Moria, the small ones in Eregion (School and Library) are a blast to do with queer (like LM+Burg+Capt) group compositions.

Turbine are pretty fast learners it seems, the grind to reward ratio has been improving rapidly since launch.

Good choice, IMO. :)

This should be everyones plans.  Traits make a difference, but you need level 4+ to really see it.  You on Brandywine?

Also - 2 handed weapon 4tw as a guardian.  Trust me.

Guardian here as well; just picked up a sweet 2-H hammer and was flooded by memories of my old DAoC blunt polearmsman.  Definitely plan to give the 2Hers a go now, thx.

No G something in the EU.

Gilrain. :)

So... what's wrong with Laurelin, hm, HM?

Laurelin is Roleplay, I can't face that.

Why twohanded? When I last played 1h Axe and Shield was the way to go. 2h buffed so that it offsets the missing block chain abilities?

As of what I am working on. Hunting down the last missing platinum ore for my master ring, doing Jewellers Guild faction quests and inching towards 41 while doing so.

Guardians got Overpower stance with their class review. It disables Block and adds 15% to damage. It's practically a two-hander stance and really gives Guardians an edge solo. In addition, the parry reaction line got Salt the Wounds (large bleed DoT when applied ontop of Thrust) and various tidbits.

I'm level 48 and my wife is level 45. She's doing Volume 2 Book 1 to get her first legendary. I ran into Moria last night to work on Book 2 just for the hell of it and spent a ton of time saying "Hun! Look at my monitor? Isn't that cool/beautiful/scary/big?" depending on what I was looking at at the time. They have done a good job with scale in Moria for the most part.

I'm starting to realize that I am going to level cap without seeing all of the content. I've barely set foot in Eregion or Forochel. I have done maybe 40% of the Angmar content. Maybe 60% of the Misty Mountains and Evendim content.

I  :heart: legendary items.

There really is no grind in this game to level. The grinding really is in deeds and reputation. I'm trying to decide which places to grind my rep in. So far  Weaponsmithing Guild and Bree seem to be my two favorites. Though I'm going to work on rep in Moria as well I think.

Tried it, but unless I get a kickass twohanded axe I rather go with the self heal from the blocks for longevity.

In other news I got enough money to liberate my house again and my keg is still there. Onwards to drunken exploring. Man, I forgot how much I love the little things in this game!

I more love the fact that booze isn't just a tacked on thing like it is in every other game.  There are quests, orgs, and seasonal events planned around getting wasted.  Plenty of respect to Turbine for that one, someone on the team loves their beer.

The pub "crawl" was fantastic.  I loved how the people you had to speak to were also getting more and more drunk.

I haven't been able to get on since the weekend.  Sigh.

The pub crawl is awesome, that introduced me to exactly how bad the drunk effects can get.  There was another great event during their spring event where you had to get smashed, and then run along a crooked fence, which also included a jump or two, and it had a timer, so you couldn't just take it easy. 

There was another sorta cool quest during the summer festival, where you planted mushroom spores. If you went back to the same NPC when she came back for the harvest festival, you got a decorative pot of black mushrooms to put in your house.

*proud owner*

Is there a Christmas holiday event? i seem to recall one, but it may be usurped by the Moria expansion.

Yes. It's on the Calendar. It's starting I think the 17th and ending January 6th.

Nope. I was wrong. It starts the 11th!

http://forums.lotro.com/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=144&day=2008-12-11&c=1 (http://forums.lotro.com/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=144&day=2008-12-11&c=1)

"You seem to have misplaced your pants. This makes you sad".

Debuff icon - a sad panda.

Thats what I am doing right now. Becoming an online alcoholic for laughs!  :grin:

That quest was awesome, but the fact that the reward is usable furniture was even more awesome. I had a couple of sessions just seeing where the party would go next.

was this a seasonal quest?

The fence one was, that was part of their spring event.  The pub crawl I don't believe is, but I could be wrong.

edit:  here's a writeup of what was in that spring event:
http://www.gaxonline.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1511077%3ABlogPost%3A103677 (http://www.gaxonline.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1511077%3ABlogPost%3A103677)

I got my pirate hats and eye patches from this event, which I'm still wearing.  They're rad.

I didn't see chickenball mentioned in there, but I'm pretty sure that was also active in that event.  Basically, soccer with chickens.  Stop and ponder the insanity.

Well, I got in good with the Inn League by doing the booze run associated with the Fall Festival at the Party Tree.  I don't have any idea how to get in otherwise.  Once I finished it up, I think I was Acquaintance with them and had ten or eleven of the twenty-three local brews for the deed.

My wife said I had to catch up with her on the Epic line, so yesterday I took the time to finish the Prologue quests that I had not done... which brings me to a complaint that I should not be able to so easily jump ahead in the Epic chain.  I do think that people should be allowed to do so if they want, but it is so easy to get ahead of yourself that I would like to see some sort of warning system in place.  I was just fucking around and
That aside, I got up to about Book 1 Chapter 7, at which point she changed her mind and wanted me to help her do Bone Man.  Didn't get to that, will do it later.

Then I had some weird desire to play my Weaver.  PvM is sort of fun, but I feel very underpowered.  The complete lack of death penalty, other than being teleported away, is nice but my spider walks too slowly.  Seems that way, anyway.  I am Bregigil, if anyone else does some monster play.

After that I spent a little time getting my Guardian, Fatwing, from 9 to 11 by doing hobbit-quests outside Staddle.  Next I will take her back to Chetwood and see how much of that can be done without a PUG, but I'm thinking I will have to get one.

Finally, I went off to get some twisted wood from that jerk in Lone Lands so I can get ahead in my Woodworking.  I took about nine-hundred quests at the Forsaken Inn, and I'm glad I did because I can't find damn Mithrinost or whatever and I'm chewing through lots of things I am supposed to collect shit for.  It's funny to see a gang of lv 19 pussies creeping into one of those goblin forts while I cruise through the same place solo... but I guess they were mostly LM, I suppose.

Is this in Minas Eriol, where the Goblin leader and statue thing were?  That took me about 2 hours with a disasterous PUG, and the end wasn't all that satisfying (we'd made it to the last mob of goblins, had a 51 minstrel come in and help us finish, it was still touch and go).  I would have been level 23 or so, and iirc, it's a level 21 or so quest. 

So yeah, if it was those goblin ruins (or at least that section of it), I don't blame the 19's for creeping into it.  And if you can solo that area, I bow to you. 

I am talking about the goblin fort directly south of Forsaken Inn, and I'll point out that I only went in as far as the first big left turn to the north and I was atop the wall on the south.  I cleared the top of the wall and jumped down to watch a duo who came in with me finishing up the lower path... shortly afterward I decided to get back to finding that twisted wood and exited the same way since visibility is much better on top of the wall.  On the way out was when I saw a full group of 19ish people at the entrance, so maybe they were just gearing up to go All The Way.  If the goblin concentrations and levels increased further in, I'd probably have to get help.  I'll check it out after I find that damn wood.

Instead of wood, I found an elite dwarf (Shornbeard clan?) that managed to kill me.  Bleh.

Edited in a bit of clarity.

That's Minas Eriol.  Farther in and southerly all the gobs turn elite.

Found the twisted wood.  Not sure why Harmon wanted to die, but apparently he did, and so did his elite dwarf outlaw buddies.  Hit level 22 sometime around then while doing Forsaken Inn quests, and after we poisoned some goblin food my wife went to bed.  She told me to not play without her, but we negotiated that I could do the Woodworker quest without her, which makes plenty of sense, and I did.  I even made her a yew bow.

Then I talked to the crafting guild guy in Bree-town and he said I should go see Viola, but he didn't say where she was except that she was in Esteldin.  Couldn't be Michel Delving, it had to be a hidden city in a place where the wildlife was all red to me.  Big thanks to Cheddar for leading me in and also killing something nasty that would have eaten me.  Now I'm in the Woodworker Guild and I need about 170 more yew. :awesome_for_real: 

I have a similar deal with my wife. I only log on to craft and stuff without her. It makes things more fun for both of us if we get to duo alot.

Do you ever log in to find your wife is mysteriously a level above you? :awesome_for_real:

Cheaters: World of Warcraft.

Nah. I'm about 2 1/2 levels above her. She's an MMO newbie so I tend to outlevel her without really trying.

My spouse and I have a clear agreement not to level our main's without the other, so we harvest and play alts when the other isn't available.

We did "Retake Weathertop" last night with a full group.  A complete team with everyone in the right level brackets (21-25 I think) was really refreshing.  And we curbstomped the mobs all the way up.  Amazing how things cook when you bring the recommended team size and composition.

But that end boss Mountain Troll -- holeeeeee fug he was hard.  Was a really satisfying win when we brought it down first try with no deaths.

Played this on trial a few months ago.  Actually kind of enjoyed it.  It's purty, the combat is easy.  Was thinking about giving it an actual go.

How's the leveling curve these days?  What's the easiest to play (i.e. overpowered)?  Lack of PvP is somewhat disheartening, but not a deal breaker.  But it looks fun.  As always, the people make it more fun. 

I might be a redneck asshole here but I'm a good gaming buddy, honest!  :drill:

Wardens are good, DPS and high durability, although sorta FotM as they came with the expansion.

Otherwise hunters are good levelling toons thanks to DPS and teleport skills. Really though, the only class I'd avoid for decent levelling is lore-master and possibly burglar.

Loremaster is extremely easy leveling if you're good at pet-control + crowd control type gameplay (warlocks from WoW basically).  You can survive things that a lot of other classes just plain won't, and cheese your way through some of the quest encounters, but it does come down to whether or not you're good at that type of gameplay.

Well, true enough that they're very -survivable- (roots, stuns, debuffs, self-heals, ka-pow!), but they aren't fast grinders compared to pretty much any other class.

I should know, after all. ;-) Maybe I suck though...

Weathertop is a wonderful quest most people miss.  I am now working on making moneys (AH + crafting) along with levelling my rune keeper minstrel.

I just re-fired this up after getting Moria.  I don't really know why I always drift away-  it is a stunning game and very well done.  Maybe it is the PVE thing, I don't know-  well, maybe it is because I started with a burglar, which are tough to play.

Anyhoo, I am trying to level up my Captain.  This is by far and away my favorite "class type" that I have played in any of the diku type games.  It is completely different than anything else I have dealt with.

the Warden is pure leveling luv.  If you need to be convinced by the game and get its idiosyncrasies try the Warden to get past 10 or 15.  It's WoW leveling speed fast or close enough to WoW  to shame a lot of other MMO's.

I only say it's fast because there are some tricks you can use on the non-grind quests to complete things a lot faster than most other classes.  The big one is sending a bear in to grab all the mobs, and then grab the item on the ground they were guarding and pray the bear doesn't die before the timer finishes.  There are more than a few quests around like that where you can just walk in and complete it in seconds where it'd take most other people 5-10 minutes of clearing mobs to do safely.  Not to mention you can safely solo a lot of fellowship quests, which may or may not actually speed up your leveling, I've never really done any checking on that.

As far as speed goes, I've been doing about a level a day (on the days I've been playing) at a relatively casual pace since I restarted.  But I've also constantly got at least  half bar of rest xp to work with.

For straight grinding, there's no point to play anything other than a champion or hunter though >.>

Absolutely, but I imagine a burglar would still be more useful for that... often you can actually use quest items while remaining stealthed. :drill:

So how do these destiny point things work?

You get destiny points by leveling up (Freep; Free peoples) and by doing monster play (Creep). Monsters "level up" by destiny point. Freeps can use them for temporary bonuses of many kinds.

(http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/Guide-Screenshots/destiny_perks.jpg)


This has been expanded for Moria.

I can use destiny points from my main character to level up a monster character?  That's nice (depending on how effective it is).

monster toons for PvMP depend on destiny points to gain new (passive) skills (e.g. more armor, damage, evade etc.)  That's how they advance.  They are already at the cap (60) when you start with them. 

Monster play is the MAIN way to get the destiny points. You get them instead of "XP" for quests and kills and whatnot. As a free people (non-monster) you only get like 200 when you gain a level.


Fair warning, after the Moria patch, Monster play is a little....wonky. Other than questing, i would avoid freeps for right now, you will loose. I expect a substantial patch for monsters at some point, maybe just not right now.

No that's fine thanks for the info, I did a bit of monster play in beta.

Last time I was creeping, there were zero freeps on at the time.  Not that I was some sort of elf-killing machine before Moria.

Also you get DP from each of your freep characters, not just the main.


So far I have failed miserably at selling things in the AH, but I'm not a high-end crafter so maybe that's it.  I am considering starting a guardian alt to be a historian since I'm not fond of the LM, but I needs my potions.

AH is tough - you have to kinda play around and find your niche, then rotate items.  Either sell stuff for mid teens to mid twenties or high end items; there is zero market for 35-45ish armor/weapons/jewelry.

Its EXTREMELY expensive to level crafting - you will want an alt camped at the ingredient NPC's to do the repeatable ingredient quests.

Scholarship is good because you can make weapons AND potions, plus misc other items.  Potions = money, weapons = money.  FYI - for awhile there I was making low level bronze purples for 75S, and they sold decently.

we've been making good coin (nearly 6 gold) by selling raw ore and wood.  Maybe an alternative.

That makes the most money - drawback is you have to spend time gathering.

I currently make phat loots by buying ore off other people and making whatever the flavor of the moment is (Jeweler here with a Weaponsmith and Scholar to fallback on when things get slow). 

Woo, pub crawl is back.   :awesome_for_real:
Guess that measn I'm working on my hangover!

Don't forget to pick up the yule wallpaper. The one with wreaths. :-D

if anything, i would focus on consumables (All schools have some). While armors and weapons that are crafted have "Spaces" to fill in the grand scheme of loot, it seems that they are narrow, and a lot of people are going to out level what you can make/sell them easily with drops ETC.. Not to say its worthless, some of the  Recipes drops are good, and rares/single use (Recipes) are even better. Still with all that in mind, crafting weapons and armor is not worthless in this game as in others. All crafting schools have usable items at all levels, so its always viable to craft. There are a ton more Recipes than what is given to you, or sold by the NPC's, drops are in the 100's.

Elf:
(http://i35.tinypic.com/29qmexz.jpg)


Hobbit:
(http://i36.tinypic.com/2rnbp08.jpg)


(http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/3816/dwarvenyulefestwalleq1.jpg)

(http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/397/screenshot00589smzk2.jpg)

Scanning across the lotro forums this morning (as ya do), I came across a post about Santa. Apparently some caring soul created a dwarf character named Sainte Nicholas and was giving out presents to characters under 10 in the shire this morning.

(http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a207/M0stAwes0mest/santaSmall.jpg)

Selling consumables is where it's at.  It is not at selling hides.  No one wants to buy hides since you trip over them outside any town.  I would sell wood but I end up using it all at the moment... except rowan and I don't know that anyone would buy rowan.

I was going to sell stacks of crafting crit items but that is pretty hit-or-miss.  Also I don't have a lot since I am not specifically farming them.

Hopefully I can get some Yule shit tonight, like drunk.  Wife is sick.  Maybe she will forgive me if I go on without her.

Woo hoo, got my yule horse token last night.  Now to just come up with the remaining gold I need to actually buy a horse in the first place... oops  :awesome_for_real:

You with us on Brandywine?

Did that pub crawl quest, excellent, really well done quest.  Did lots of the Yule quests, got a lump of coal, what's that about eh?

No sir, all my characters have been on Windfola since launch, and while I'm somewhat tempted to move to Brandywine, I don't want to have to transfer all my low level crafters as well.  That'd get expensive fast. 

And anyhow, I can get the money for the horse, I've just been busy doing non-lotro stuff  :oh_i_see:


They know what you did last summer.

could be worse -- could've been a potato  :uhrr:

Before I talk about what I have been doing, I want to say that I don't have the slightest clue on how to do this dance event.  The best I have managed was to get the quest in the tracker, only to have it quietly disappear when I started dancing and ending with me getting zip.  It might be an improvement over an outright failure to a programmer, but I still don't have any racial dances.  Dammit.  I don't want to have to look it up somewhere.

Alright, I have done some Yule things.  I didn't get the Festival Run correct, but I only tried one time.  I have six tokens and I'm really hoping I don't get a lump of coal... like my wife did.  I suppose Santa saw her ninja-looting from her own husband.  The new Shire quest around Lobelia was fun and not terribly bothersome, not when compared to the pie run at least.  It did not raise my wife's considerably-low opinion of hobbits at all, though.

When my wife retired for the evening recently, I took Fallia back to Ered Luin to knock out some grey quests and do some more sweet, sweet deeds.  Somehow she ended up coming over there with me and we finished off all of her quests.  I still have a few.  After that she wanted to go to Bree and do some things, which I somehow interpreted as "let's go to the Barrow Downs".  I come over to the BD and notice she is in Bree, where I suppose she is unloading crap, so I ask her if I should wait for her or meet her in Bree... but my wife doesn't read her chat.  I should have called her, but instead I start wandering around BD and I suddenly stumble upon the Bone Man... and I kill him.  I wander around some more and stumble upon Malin, but I quickly wake up outside Tom Bombadil's house instead.  I mentioned to my wife that I found Malin and she said "WITHOUT ME?!"  Whoops!  I didn't tell her about Bone Man yet in the hopes that she won't notice and will not yell at me.  I also hope she doesn't read this post. :awesome_for_real:  Communication is the key to every relationship, my friends, even the virtual ones.

lol, awesome stuff.

I'll just give you a hint then; there are more dance moves than just /dance. :D Perhaps there's another clue in what she dance leader says...

If I screw that up, it tells me I failed.  I managed to figure that one out during the Fall Festival.  So maybe I'm reading the dance calls wrong, or taking too long, but when the caller says "do dance three" then I think I should do /dance3.  I also think if I fuck that up, the screen would say YOU FAILED... which it has.  So I am thinking maybe it is in the timing.  My wife had the same problem, and neither of us seem to have the patience to stand around for twenty minutes to try again.

Sound like you're doing it right though. I have gotten mine that way.

ok, here's my walkthrough:

1) make dance buttons.  Here's how:

This will place a button titled "dance1" in quickslot #51.
Make sure quickslot base #5 is "always shown" from your options, unlock it and move the new button wherever you want
Repeat and replace ;dance1 with ;dance2 and ;dance3, and equivalently add /dance2 and /dance3.
You should now have 3 separate dance buttons

2) make a sequence reminder

This will send you a tell if you are too lazy like me to actually write down the steps per sequence.

Tips:
1) stay in area -- NPC quest giver warns you not to leave, so don't
2) keep the NPC quest giver targeted otherwise you wtfpwnfail after the first step (giant fail sign appears, nice)
3) press each button when they say "step one... step two... three"
4) when they say "take a breather", that's the cue for the next stage to begin shortly.  There are 4 stages, as shown above (steps 1, 2-3, 2-2-3, 3-1-3, which are /dance1, /dance2-/dance3 etc.)
5) win buttery emote

I O U One Beer for telling me how to make my own buttons.  Take that, Horizons!  I'll report back on this dancing project.

I should read those slash commands more closely.  Making buttons for the dance moves helped, plus I also realized exactly how I was failing.  First off, I was typing too slowly and not getting STEP PERFORMED, which I was pleased to see existed as an indicator.  Second, when he said "Now the second dance.... do step three here" he meant do /dance2 then /dance3.  I had been just doing /dance3 because I thought he was simply introducing the second set of dance moves.  Now Dwuli can do a dwarf dance.

Other than that, I did some dwarf-quests with Dwuli since I have not had the pleasure of experiencing Thorin's Hall before now.  I'm also getting into the finer points of murdering things with the rune keeper, and I'm loving it more and more.  I do miss some hunter perks like the tracking and movement skills, but overall it is a blast.  Pun!

I haven't found any damn scholar jars around Thorin's Hall.  I'll just have to wait until I get out into Ered Luin proper before I go whole-hog into scholaring again.  Already sent everything of importance from Uluphant to Dwuli.

I got some racial dances and a TATER.  I am not sure if there is a funny hat this time but seems like I won't be getting it.

Otherwise things are fairly standard.  Lone Lands Leveling with a little alt-play.  The Yule stuff is derailing most serious attempts to do other things.  I think I can take Fallia back to wrap up all that Old Forest shit I need to do since she is now 24, but I'm not sure the wife is too keen on it.

Oooo, i can help, Trucegore is 26 Lore master.

I really wanted the hats from Halloween! I did however buy some fireworks off a guy who kept them over from spring. So those are for Wed night!

(http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/29/halloween.jpg)

(http://lotroimages.akamai.lotro.com/media/misc/Caption_Contest/caption_04_1009s.jpg)

Oh man I want one of those bunny masks.   :awesome_for_real:

Those are man-rewards, yeah?

They are from the harvest fest, and i believe they are race indiscriminate. I personally want the bucket helm, but i could not find an image of it.

Festival ends today, so I'd better get very lucky!

Fuck. Still haven't managed to get the Hobbit wallpaper and Elf wreath.

I lucked out last night and got the Bree and Elf Snowglobes, completing my set. It had been almost a week since I'd gotten anything else I wanted. I've been doing dailies every day with at least two characters, and running both races with my only 35+ character. So 4-6 gift boxes a day, and I still didn't manage to get everything I wanted.

Got lots and lots of trash loot outfits, though. The only ones I kept were Mariner's Hauberk and an Exquisite Short-Sleeve Dress. The latter appears different from the image linked in the "what's in the box" thread - it lacks the horrible Disney Snow White poofy sleeves, leaving it a bare-shoulder strappy thing.

Yule Festival ends on the 7th, you've got time.  :awesome_for_real:

Ah, yes indeed.  I'm used to decent calendar software.

Also, Broken Alliance is fucking hard.  I figured out that ass-load of orcs is all elite, so I'm definitely going to need at least a tank.

Excellent.

And I got the Hobbit wallpaper last night.

Just need the bree snowglobe to complete the set, have all 4 wall papers, missing a few other things but nothing I'm that bothered about.

Arthur, did you get the Yule tree from Lobelia?

Yeah did that with two characters, it's easy enough even at very low levels.

Took a little break this week to tool around with the FFH scenerios (and let my rest XP build!)  I will be back hot and heavy beginning next weekish - so if anyone needs something let me know!

Between Marween and myself there is no reason you should not be able to complete any quests; having a couple 50+ Champions is nice!   :awesome_for_real:

I gotta say the Yule festival presents have left me with the first discouragement since rejoining.  I turned in maybe enough for 7 or 8 boxes (maybe more, lost count, it's a blur) and out of that I got only a hauberk.  That's a lot of my time for something you can buy or get free on a promotion.  This was surprising.  I thought Turbine would either increase the success chance after New Year's or with the number of dud presents you got to at least improve things slightly.  This random gen stuff was sad.

If you get something bad, zone and wait a few minutes before opening another present.  I got a lot of doubles if I clicked too fast.  Not sure it is entirely random, it seems very strange that I got all 4 snow globes and all 4 wallpapers with no doubles, even when deliberately trying for doubles by clicking fast on the next present after opening a globe later on.  I was waiting till I had at least 6 presents from the same faction before opening anything in the end.

I'm not as MMO-hardcore as you, Arthur. :awesome_for_real:  I did two turnins and got a red box and a tater.  Personally I think putting taters and coal in there was sort of mean.  This isn't EQ, and I'm certainly not grinding for festival tokens.

Ched, I'm going to try to get some help from you or someone this week.  My wife and I tried 1.11 again and while we did make it father, we were still wiped out at what I hope is the end.  I blew the +10 Hope (Radiance?) horn in the prior room when we were totally dreaded up but I could not tell that it made much difference and I spent several seconds cowering in fear.  The next room, however... that lich king was a total cockfag.  I was dropping some of his helpers, I see my wife bite it and when I turn around he was at full health.  Then again, she might not have been attacking him.

I want to break my hairy foot off in Tom's ass.

Is that Great Barrows?  That one is a tough one, but has awesome rewards.

GB is definitely worth the effort for the rewards. 

Now, push ahead 10 lvls to Garth Agarwen (Lone Lands) where we are.  Fug.  That is all.  Appropriate that such a timesink is drawn to be a swamp.

It takes a while, but you can get some awesome loot in there (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Weapon:Ferchu).

I would be down for doing it again.

I have never done that instance (Garth one).  My level 35 min is definitely interested!

Yes, 11.1 is Othrongroth (http://lorebook.lotro.com/index.php/Quest:Vol._I,_Book_1,_Chapter_11:_Othrongroth), which most people call the Great Barrow and some people call the Great Burrito.  In my case as a hunter, it seems the mid-twenties are about when I start having to actually get a fellowship together to do fellowship quests.  There's a /lff for 11.1 every few minutes during primetime, so next time I'll see if I can persuade the wife to get into a PUG.  I think PUG are great in this game, but then I've been playing MMOs since they were text-only so my standards are very fucking low.

In the absence of wanting to do 11.1 or Broken Alliance, my wife and I did a couple Old Forest quests that required us to report to Buckland, after which she went to bed.  I looked at my Quest sheet for a good, long time before deciding the Thing To Do would be to recall to Ost Guruth (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Landmark:Ost_Guruth) and have Fried-egg teleport me to Trestlebridge (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Area:Trestlebridge) and I could do some North Downs quests which were getting very blue.  That worked out great and I completed several quests with a minimum of retreats.  Now I think I'm basically left with fellowship quests again, but I got from mid 25 to mid 26 and I have lots of tasty deeds to do, including re-murdering those ghosts in Fields of Fornost (http://lorebook.lotro.com/index.php/Area:Fields_of_Fornost) who are yellow and easy to kill.

I think we will end up going back to Lone Lands during our next session and doing even more quests out of Ost Guruth.

But very in keeping with Tolkien.

Dinged 20 last night on my Captain.  My highest lvl LOTRO toon. 

The herald system is kind of interesting.  Have some guy follow me around or throw a herald on the ground.  The bonus on the herald is nice, but having the guy around to leech health off of if need be is kinda cool too.

I bought the Heavy Armor skill since I want to be a slow 2 hander (halberd), so I'm going to have to shop for some armor soon.  Anyone play or know a crafter with some good deals?

Thanks much!

Feaniad - Captain

What server are you on?

Brandywine.  I'm in Riders of Middle Earth.

Fatwing is a metalsmith but not high level.  If you see her on, ask about what I can make and we will see.  I don't have a lot of materials, either, but that can be remedied kinda quickly I suppose if we run around Lone Lands for a bit.

Oh, hi there =)

I took Fatwing (lv16) to Trestlebridge for Happy XP Gain only to find out that I can't grab most of the quests.  I got as much as I could, though.  Then I logged in Fallia and went into the meat of the Esteldin quests, making lv27.  I'd be making more progress except for Persona 4.

My wife keeps saying that you should not be allowed to do the Epics out of order.  I disagree but she does have a point in there about organizing things for people who don't care to read. :oh_i_see:

Without some significant redesign, it would break the high levels for soloers. You have to do Book 6 to get into the eastern half of Angmar, and you have to Volume II Book 1 to unlock Legendary items. Both of those are designed to be solo-able -- so they're the only ones I've finished.

Forced grouping is so 1999.

She was referring to being able to get the starter quest for Books 2 and 3 without finishing Book 1, to which I say "Fuck the Great Barrow." :awesome_for_real:  There's some merit but as you point out, the current design is for the best when it comes to Fun.

+1 Turbine?

Definitely.  I want to finish Book 1 before I start on Book 2, but if I could not then I would be somewhat irritated.  Also, I seem to have the starters for Book 2 and Book 3 already.  Saves a bit of time.  For my alts, skipping 1.11 is entirely probable.

Holy shit I (almost) finally finished the shire....

Except now I need to kill some spiders for a deed and do the epic quest which I neglected.

Fuck.

Cheddar put Dwuli in RoME yesterday.  While I was hanging out, I did some fishing and was surprised that I caught a few trophy fish.  I remember not catching a damn thing when I first tried it in Bywater, but I had much more luck outside of Noglond for some reason.  I suppose I will mount one of each and the post the rest on the AH.

Had some fun doing the dwarf-line the correct way, too.  Knowing where to find all the things for the various hunting lodge quests was a real timesaver, and he is now halfway to 12.  Still not able to gather scholar ingredients with impunity, or regularity, and fighting for them with my other characters is soul-eroding.

Anyone want to do some Ered Luin quests?  :oh_i_see:

I'm trying to wrap up some shit in Angmar before (fiiiinally) moving my 50 Loremaster to Moria. I still have many, many incomplete "grind mobs" traits from all over the game. None of my virtues are above 6 or 7, and I only unlocked Strength of Morale and Proof Against All Ills in the last week. I've been knocking off low-hanging fruit since Yule-fest ended.

I caught two trophy minnows back to back while bored and waiting for my girlfriend in Evendim the other day!  You bet those are going up on my house walls next to my goldfish.

I'm not in the Brnadywine kinship, as I play on Elemdir, but I am currently knocking off quests in the Shire.

I and my wife are on Elendilmir.  My main is a 36 Mins ("Pavo").  PM if you need something.

I did a few more things.  Notably, I'm still not really doing Scholar craft since it's damn hard to get the materials until you are able to wander around ruins with impunity.  Can't do this as a level 13(?) RK.

Also notably, Fallia is now a Proficient Expert (?) in Woodworking.  I cannot remember the stupid name for this level, since it's so stupid how crafting works, but I can now use Superior Workbenches.  Have not tried it yet.

Did a few North Downs quests, particularly the ones in that elf refuge south of Esteldin (http://lorebook.lotro.com/index.php/Area:Meluinen) and a few more in that dwarf town north of Esteldin.  Later, my wife and I both did the next hunter quest in Ost Guruth, after which she went to bed and I ground a bit off of some of the Lone Lands slayer deeds.  120 wargs is a fuckton of wargs.  I'm not even halfway, unlike the crebain and spider slayer deeds.

My main is a Scholar which is tough to level, but the ability to make potions and scroll buffs is terrific.

Also, if you have the coin, roll and alt and take Cooking/Farming.  With cooking alone you can level it with money and the food buffs in LotRO are better and last longer that WoW.  And farming allows you to fund the cooking with resources.

Over the weekend I unlocked Valour 5 in Trollshaws, and did a lot of grind-grind-grind on other grey mob traits in the area. Then I got bored and, on my way up to Rivendell, detoured into Eregion for the first time. It's quite beautiful - they set up some awesome southward vistas, and I love the luminous white clouds in the eastern night sky. I also noted it's the first place I've seen framerate lag on my new machine, probably due to the density and diversity of frills and shubbery. My computer can run every other location in the game with all settings maxed.

Slaughtering greys in Angmar and Trollshaws had been profitable. So had mining and BreeBay'ing dwarf-iron (which, mysteriously, still sells for more than higher level ores). But Eregion is just sick with loot. With the exception of Dunlendings, every critter I killed dropped one or more trophies worth 2-3s a piece. Even after paying for equipment repairs, I ended the weekend with over 10g (up from ~6g on Friday).

I'm about to do just that, and a jeweler as well since I need some things that I suspect jewelers make.  Between my wife and myself, we have the "stuff you dig out of the ground" part well in hand.  I think my farmer is going to be a hobbit burglar, but I don't know what to do with my jeweler.

Dwarf-iron is used in some T5 recipes in addition to the T4 recipes.  Also, I think there might be less landmass where Dwarf-iron is available and generally less population wandering that landmass.

I got a 3 day ban from AC, which is enough to break my love for it.  Was banned for macroing - for some reason the irony is making me grin.

I will probably reinstate this evening and get back into the AH!

I am so glad I am back playing LOTRO. I have just started playing through the Eregion content with my Captain.  It has been mostly delicious solo content wandering from small quest hub to small quest hub and following down a storyline about hiding the tracks and traces of the fellowship. Lore nuggets like rescuing Bill the pony are excellent little touches as I am getting closer to the gates of Moria.

Solid game to say the least. This game is definitely about the journey, rather than the end game...which is a good thing. No reason to rush through it. If someone were asking me what North American MMO they should play, there are 3 easy choices - Eve, WoW, or LOTRO - depending on that person's taste.

Summary of LOTRO:

- Solid game-engine, very little hiccups - with some amazing vistas. Bree would be a rare exception.
- Fantastic Storyline and setting, albeit an IP. Sometimes the adherence to lore can be a bit strangling to flexible development (wild boar, feral tasker, ferious pig)
- More tactical combat, although a bit slow for some tastes.
- Excellent additions and mechanics that make it stand-out a bit in the crowd (Music system, housing and neighbourhood system, hobbies, etc).
- The development team seems pretty communicative.
- Classic DIKU - if not generic, which is simple enough for new gamers and just general Tolkien fans to grasp gameplay.
- Easily soloable with any of the classes - and enough group content to still provide an interesting experience.
- Not enough raid content for poopsock raiders - grindy for raid equipment.
- Leveling is seemless - it goes about as fast as you put into it, leaning towards too fast. Sometimes I would like to turn off the XP like EQ2 to do quests at the  appropriate level.
- Grind only comes in the form of deeds, which are pure evil for a completist like myself - has driven me away from the game on a few occasions.

I have only done limited PvP in LOTRO, so I can't really comment on it.

(all this post needs now is a fucking chart)

I don't know if it is because I have been playing WAR for the last few months, but I have been playing the shit out of this game in the last week and loving it. I am looking forward to checking out the 3-man instances, it's a very good design decision - more games should offer this. 

Main complaint from most people is that combat feels slow and underwater.  At higher levels though you realize things ARE a bit slower... because your decisions make a huge difference.


As stated in other threads loading your 4 favorite skills as 1-4 then randomly mashing them is pure lose.  This game is a LOT more strategic.  To the point that moving behind/to the side of an opponent DOES make a difference, as does taking the high point. 

Finished up Vol 2 - Book 2 last night.  Volume 2 - Books 1 & 2 are solo.

Book 1 is a storyline about helping the dwarves enter the gates of Moria.  It introduces you to the concepts of Legendary weapons, as you need a special weapon to defeat the monster lurking in the water outside the gates.  Excellent Book!

Book 2 centres around establishing the dwarves within Moria, and finding a special forge. Quest reward was a nice pair of Heavy Boots with +5% out-of-combat runspeed.

The Mines or Moria are very impressive visually.  Although I think I like the outdoor zones more - as Moria is pretty dark zone.  So far there is a plethora of solo quests, so it seems you can pretty much solo to 60 without difficulty. I am leveling WAY to fast for my liking.

Next up: clearing up some deeds in the Eregion region, trying some of the 3-man instances in Eregion (Mirobel School and Library), and trying out some of the guild crafting (cook).

I had to agree with Sanya. Being told to go from the Gates of Moria to Thorin's Halls (eastmost to westmost points of Eriador) to unlock the weapon... and then going right back to Eregion to find critters I can get XP from... was embarrassingly clumsy content design. Particularly given how tight the rest of Eregion and Moria have been.

Incidentally, I finally made it into Moria, only four months after buying the expansion.

It's very dark. Impressive. But dark.

And i am really, really creeped out by Gredbyg Spitters.

Not that i have done it yet, but perhaps its where story trumped design (well, travel time that is), i mean, i gather, story wise there is a reason you are going to thorns hall.

You can also go to Rivendell for the initial ident. Atleast if you're something other than a dwarf.

There is a story as to why you have to go to Thorin's Hall (actually twice, or once to Thorins and once to Rivendelll).  I think though the same story could have been told without all the traveling, as there is a full band of dwarves outside of Moria. I guess it makes it a bit more epic - or time consuming.

I think a better idea would have been to send the player to the Mirobel Ring-Forges in Eregion. As a game writer, I'm all about story. Five years at BioWare has taught me that sometimes, gameplay has to come before story.

While grinding the weapon to 10 irks me, I understand the importance of teaching about reforging. What I might have done is give the player a Heritage Rune to take them halfway to 10. Those last few levels of whacking blue Angmarim were just irritating.

Hey, I can armchair design too! :P

 :awesome_for_real:

Perhaps you should write them a strongly worded letter forum post =)

Or something like that.  You should see my stuff on Jedi unlocks in SWG!    :why_so_serious:

I had a quest in Ost Guruth which wanted me to do some work helping out Trestlebridge.  When I accepted the quest, it warped me directly to Trestlebridge.  That was pretty handy.

Aged Scraps of Text are a real pain in the ass to get.  I finally got Dwuli into Kheledul (sp?) and spotted one of the urns, but when I went to dig around in it I noticed that it required Journeyman Scholar skill!  Fuck me.  I never really noticed but I didn't think resource gathering was restricted by craft level.  I guess I will have to stump it back to that goblin fort up in the mountains and see if I can get anything up there, because buying Aged Scraps on the AH is a chump's game.

I also made some instruments for a guild minstrel.  This was neat because I have not crafted things for guildies in a long time.

Also I rolled a hobbit burglar with the intention of making him a jeweler alt.  I don't remember his name and he won't show up on my.lotro.com until I play him a bit.

There is (was?) a ton of gems and what not in the Kinhall, mostly from when i changed professions.

Resource gathering, outside of scholar, isn't tied to your crafting level, it's tied to your resource gathering skill level, which requires very little effort to level up (other than plants, which anyone can pick, and not just farmers).  Scholar is an odd fish, and a pain in the ass to level in general.  I finally got it to Master last week, and have all the dye patterns, and that's all I really wanted... to be able to make myself a pretty pretty princess in the colors of my choice  :drillf:

I saw some gems... where do I get the Something Sapphires for making the Awesome Crafted Bow?  I had thought that was from a jeweler since I don't recall ever seeing one in the wild.

Sounds like you might be talking about Sapphire Shards.  There's a different type of shard for each crafting level and they're only used by the Single-Use Recipes.  They drop from rare Signature mobs wandering around the world that typically range in difficulty from challenging to eat your fucking face off (if your roughly the same level as the mob).

You can search by Sapphire Shard on this site to find the droppers:
http://www.lotrolife.com/rare_crafting_component_list/

I could use a level 40 crited instrument - prefarably from a 1 use recipe.  I can get you whatever supplies this would require.

You are correct, sir!  HEY-O!


Well fuck.


Not quite there yet, I'm just now able to make things from lebrethon but I don't have any of that.

What type pf shards are you needing?

I know of a couple mob spots, and i am a hunter, so i could track then for you, and hop around to where they spawn to see if they are there. (most of them do have long respawn times)

Then what good are you to me?   :why_so_serious:

I laugh at your jokes and don't report you to the authorities.

Sapphire.  I am also a hunter, but I'm confident I won't just waltz into the Barrow Downs and find one of the mobs up AND get the shard on first kill.  Sounds more tedious than deeds.  If you happen to find one, I'll take it off your hands, how's that?

I picked up LoTRO tonight after having had a break for a few months.

I noticed a quaint detail about Lone-lands after my absence. There's no wind. The trees don't sway, the grass barely bends. No wonder it looks so damn desolate. Thought it was a great touch. :)

The shards drop every single kill.  The trick is finding one up, I usually find them up completely at random while doing quests.  I've got like a dozen different ones banked on one of my alts, but I'm on Windfola, so they're not exactly as crowded as Brandywine.

Hobbit stealth trait. :drill:

lol, yeah i recently got this too, while not as good as a bugler, it does help in some situations.

A little sneaking is better than no sneaking.  My wife will be jealous and will ask how I got it.  I want to see the look on her face when I say "I killed over 240 spiders".  Then I will ask her to craft a suit of lv16ish light armor.

The scholar advancement quest wants me to go to the hills north of Weathertop, so I guess I'll just be leveling Dwuli (Dwarf RK) for a while (currently 16).  I am going to try to pass through The Shire without doing three hundred quests, but I'm weak.  I guess I can horse-it to Bree-town and run from there.

Hobbit stealth rulz.  My wife and I (both hobs) snuck through half of Trollshaws and Dol Dinen and lived every time b/c of this trait.  In fact, at 38 (?) I used it to get into a ruin in Angmar (45+) and retrieve the item for the Master Scholar quest.  Ride in, train off mobs, sneak, map out, win.  There's a pocket quest item you get I think in Trollshaws that gives stealth+3 -- keep it forever, swap it in and use it as a stealth buff.  And for clarity, neither of us are burgs.  Oh and the best thing about this trait is there is no *timer*.  You stay stealthed until something breaks it.

I hear Sylvan Shadows is as good. Dunno.

Yes, i have it on my lore-master. Basically the same.

She's playing an elf, so all she has to do is kill a bunch of shit. :awesome_for_real:

Woo, I finally got all my legendary trait books.  There was some serious price gouging for Lore of the Blade going on here in Windfola.  Some guy was buying them all up and reselling them for 2 gold, when most of them sell for 50 to 100 silver.  This is the one that lets Loremasters dual wield, and is pretty much THE trait to have.  I finally got lucky on a non-buyout auction and got it for 50 silver.

I started to make a character on Windfola since Brandwine doesn't want me to log in.  Came to my senses later.

I had the Brandywine queue error (#5000) last night, I just relogged and it went right in.

Same.

I had to try several times this morning, so it doesn't seem to be due to load... unless there are a lot of people playing around 0930 Eastern.

I got that once last night, but was then able to login when I tried again.

Spearking of things I'm working on, I started on my crafting today (Explorer). I must admit, the early crafting goods are not only not crap, they were all an improvement on the drops/store-bought stuff I was using at level 10. That may or may not continue through the whole thing, but it was a nice bonus. Also, the way the crafting is handled I like. It's a nice happy medium between EQ2's overly complicated bullshit system and WoW/DAoC's more simplistic system.

Don't come to Windfola, as far as I know, it's the least populous server.  I'd transfer off of it if I didn't have a bunch of crafting alts I'd hate to lose.

Can't you transfer all of them?

$$

Crafting is a unique beast throughout all tiers in LOTRO, the critted gear is always among the best equipment to have.  I can't speak specifically to Moria (51-60), but it does hold true to for 1-50.  Raided gear is a bit different and more raid centric (ie. Incoming healing bonuses etc.), while the PvP gear has more PvP bonus (crits etc.).  I am not saying that crafted gear is THE best, but it is among the best (and much easier to get). It will definitely be adequate until you start catassing a bit at 60.

Yeah, exactly.  I'm looking at a minimum of $75 to transfer my characters, and that doesn't include my fiancee's.  I asked her if she wanted to reroll on Brandywine when we restarted, and we opted to stick to Windfola for now.

Oh, i would have thought they would have done a group or account thing... I didn't know ether way.

Nope, still $25 per character, which is still annoying, and means I'm staying on Windfola until I get bored with Moria and feel like I can reroll elsewhere.

If you are starting out (Haemish and folks) if you can swing it I would get an alt Cooking ASAP. 

You can spend time picking up spare veg that lies around, but the Apprentice and Journeyman recipes for Cook are really reasonable.  And several of them you just source from a vendor -- you don't need to Farm them at all.  Vendor will have all the components you can buy.

You can make good quality buff and regen food at low levels that IMO really helps.  And its cheap enough that you turn out buffs for several hours with just a few silver.  This is why a lot of early quests give food as an extra reward -- help the levelling.

Still working on completing Eregion completely, before I delve any further in Moria.

Went through the 3-man school instance a couple times.  I am impressed by these instances (not that I want to run them over and over though). The school basically has 3 boss battles, with 3 chests containing one purple piece of equipment (bind on acquire), and numerous legendary upgrade runes and legendary chests for deconstruction.  Probably takes about 30 minutes to do, 45 minutes if the group has never been. 

I am most impressed with group flexibility - even in a 3-man group.  First time was Captain, Minstrel, Guardian - traditional group, a bit slow going but pretty safe.  Second group was Captain and 2-hunters, a little bit chaotic with little aggro-control (I am heal-specced Captain), but got it done considerably quicker than the traditional group.

For the next week I can likely be found still in Eregion, obsessively grinding out the deeds and completing the library-instance quests/quests. 

More than likely also working on Cook Guild faction.  I would be more than happy to provide food for any RoME guildies - just let me know what tier and type (Regen food and/or Stat food - Agi/Vit/Might) - all food will be provided in superior form.

Eregion is pure genius, I ran most of the area this weekend.  I would love to try out a three man instance.

Dinged 55 and got my goat.  Nuked my legendary weapon and amongst my runes I got an item to add 30k xp to a legendary - extremely useful! 

By contrast, the fellowship quests in Lone Lands are brutal for a duo even at lv 29.  In Bree-land it's mainly just 1.11 but this gets worse as we level.  I am going to have to go around my wife's back to get these done since when I mention we need a group she says we should go do something else.

Started another alt named Fallto who is going to be a farmer-cook.  Or a cook-farmer.

I got sick and took two days off work.  I slept almost the entire first day and spent a lot of the second playing Dwuli (RK).  Basically got him from 16 to 19 by following the epic line from Ered Luin to the end of Book 1, with some level-60 help with 1.11, and doing select juicy non-epic quests.  Got bogged down in The Shire for a little while doing deeds (Buckland is too close!), but I managed to tear myself out of there before I got completely wrapped up.  After 1.11, I went with a kinsman to Forsaken Inn and did many of the easy ones, plus helped him with a couple BD quests that I passed over (Bone Man).  Also did the RK class quest which happens to be a cool Weathertop instance.  I ended the day's adventures in Ost Guruth after talking to Radagast the Brown to wrap up Book 1.  Level 19 is too young for Book 2, plus most things east of Weathertop would eat my lunch, so I'll backtrack to the Inn and do deeds and whatnot for a bit.

Overall Dwuli had a great day of XP gain.  Next, I say I will do more Forsaken Inn quests but I will probably go back to Ered Luin and kill 100 Dourhands for the Enmity deed, then take a slow walk through the Shire.  I can't help it.

I got to the outskirts of Lothlorien last night. Still tons of stuff to do in Moria, but I wanted to see mallorns. I visited Haldir up in his tree.

Mayda's now 58, with a 22 Second Age Staff ("Emerwen"). I'm able to survive solo fights with 2-3 orange orcs now, which - as a Lore-master - I could never do before.

The pie has a strange and terrible call.

I am addicted to the repeatable solo quests in Dolven View - they are a blast!  Good XP for yourself + legendaries.  Each one takes around 20-30 minutes.

Genius!

Struggling here to hit 45 in Forochel so we can bugger off to Eregion.


So, 1 week away and I come back to die several times this weekend from lack of timing.  The "delay" factor people are always complaining about (skill queue) was suddenly really apparent.  Basically, you can't insta heal with potions in this game -- you have to queue them up.  So it takes some re-getting used to.  This kind off pisses me off a healer... I'm noticing I missing a lot of heals from just stupid things already in the queue.  Or heals taking too long.  They need to fix that.

They also need to fix the UI.  It is bad.  As in, I can't change a group window to a horizontal alignment?  Come on.  I need to target my heals faster (or just key mash).

On a brighter note, I started PvMP with my 44 last night and it was a blast.  More than 50 freeps and creeps were on for old time DAoC mosh pits at TR.  Great stuff. 

I don't know what a group window is. But F1-F6 targets your other group members automagicly.

I mean the large rectangular window that holds a fellowship's vitals.  I know you can key mash selections, but I prefer it I could just rearrange where people's vitals are shown.  It's a big deal for a healer.  Too often you can select the wrong key.

This - plus remember the healer is also the buffer.  Like I said in other threads Mini takes more concentration then any other class. 

Maybe because I had never really done a repeatable solo instance before, but I too thought this idea was pure genius, I find myself thinking 'I sure hope I get another garnet, I really want to do that again!'

(Take note Blizzard)

Woo, got to 45 this weekend for the first time.  Got my first upgradeable legendary weapon, and actually got half decent stats on it, and watched the balrog put the smack down on my girlfriend who didn't feel the need to follow the simple instructions.  Fun times.

Yah, this is me. Three characters sitting low 40's. After a few months away, the patch will take my warden to 43 ( if I am reading the new exp curve correctly) and I'll start up again. For the time being, just hovering and hoping to pick off a missed piece of an epic and maybe a 41 quest or two.

And watching the forums warrior bitch. Now that is entertainment.  :oh_i_see:

My guild has returned to lotro after getting bored-as-heck [again] with WOW, and so far we're really enjoying the new changes. (Plus, I replaced my router, so the disconnect problem resolved itself. Sorta. :awesome_for_real:) Our characters are in the low-mid 30s on Silverlode, but a few of us are rerolling for the new preciousss moria classes. We'll probably do a few instances and epics this weekend; overcoming the timezone boss is the hardest of them all.

I'm liking that I have a ton of abilities and there's no clear 11121113 rotation to maximize efficiency, and I like the flexibility of classes in general. However, I second the frustration about the UI. In fact, the robust / customizable UI is the thing I miss most from WOW: as a LM I have a ton of situational reactive dispels, and not having a Grid-like debuff view, a focus frame / castbar, cooldown alerts and whatnot makes CCing / offhealing / dispelling while trying to do damage / debuffs a micromanagement PITA. Maybe it'll get better when I unlock the aoe dispels though, and the two lower-level instances we did a while ago (barrows, GA) were fairly straightforward and didn't need that much target-switching.

In more recent news, I hit 35 yesterday and got my horse yay! I also murderized eleventy billion wargs for the bree teleport. BTW, the horse race can bugger right off with my 150-200 ping... I got it on my second try though. :p


Out of curiousity, does anyone here "do" monster play? If so, how is it? I was a fairly big pvp nut in GW/WOW/WAR, so I'm interested to see whether it can be fun (talking about small 1-3 person monster groups mostly, we don't have too many pvp enthusiasts in guild)


-- Z.

Just to clear something up fast, debuff curing as a loremaster is made drastically easier if you have the trait that turns Leechcraft and Tend the Sick into party spells.  You can't hit anyone outside your own party anymore, but you hit everyone at once instead, including pets.  It eats a trait slot, but damned if I'll ever be without it from here on out.

Edit:  trait is Proof Against All Ills, and it also lets you use Leechcraft in combat.

I'm working on that trait at the moment - probably a day or two away from getting it. Is it really party-wide, or just AoE as the descriptions says? If the latter, how big is the AoE?

There's a range, but it's pretty damn large.  I'm not sure of the exact size, but when in actual combat with a party, I've never missed anyone.  The other upside is that you also don't have to target anyone.

Fantastic, thanks. Guess I'll slot it straight away, rather than wait for a new slot to open.

I'm in Eregion with my wife. We're pretty much down to just the School and Library stuff. I'm wondering if we could duo it (we're both 51) or if I need to find us a third. We're a Champ and a hunter so we can put out the hurt. I'm a man so I also have my 2k heal, plus the champs dire need heal plus another heal that I can't remember, so I have a ton of survivability in emergencies. Her huntress...not so much.

I think you need third fellowship member for Tham Mirdain at your level. I've myself only done school so far as duo with my minstrel (lvl60) and a loremaster friend (lvl56) when our hunter had a long disconnect and we got impatient. Tham instances aren't so much about optimal group, but rather adopting tactics for the current one so about any class would do, but in your situation I'd try to pick minstrel, captain or loremaster as the third.

We have a friend who has a 56 Captain who skipped those quests and will probably come back and help us. Or his wife who is a 56 hunter. I may also do what they did and leave it behind. I have the feeling I'll hit 60 in Moria easy even if I skip these last few quests in Eregion.

You will, but it would be a shame because they are really quite fun, compact (30 minutes) instances to do.

You'll hit 60 in Moria with a couple hundred easy solo quests leftover...

I'm working on finally picking a class to level past the 20's with Ingmar's captain. I can't decide! I never thought it would come to this, but apparently Ingmar is finally MOTIVATED.  :ye_gods:

If you find one, let me know.  I get bored with every class I've tried by about 20.  Too much running.

Nebu what times do you play mostly? I am not much farther then you level wise it sounds like (a couple low 20's and others) but the game is so much more fun with at least someone you duo with regulary. Yes you can solo but then it's lots of running by yourself and you have to skip the group quests. Me and a friend of mine play pretty regular weeknights 9ish to 11ish PST. Welcome to join us.

That's my problem.  I don't have times that I play mostly.  Some days I'm on at 8pm, some days it's 3am.  I work a lot so my play is spurratic. 

The bottom line for me is that if the game isn't fun solo, then it's not for me.  Right now, I spend more time running than doing "fun stuff".  If that doesn't change in another week, I'm out.   Shame really... the world is beautiful, the classes seem interesting, and the story is decent. 

If travel time is really getting to you than I would say to go with Hunter or Warden.  Both have nice run speed buffs and additional travel options (teleports basically).  Moreso the Hunter especially if you're like me and use their escape ability (Desperate Flight) as an additional method of travel.  Hunter also has the bonus of Tracking which can really cut down on travel time when you're doing a quest that requires killing a specific mob or mob type.  The only downside to the Hunter is the sheer number of them.

Hunter's what I went with, and yes, it's a really good solo class. The run speed buff (level 13? 14?) is a big help, the teleports as well. I've also found that using the LFF channel to find a group for group quests works fairly well most of the time.

Yeah my Hunter (new to LoTRO) just hit 15 last night. It's a great solo class and the tracking skill is really useful on quests like finding the crows in the Barrows or Wolves in the Old Forest. On Brandywine anyway there's not too many young hunters so it hasn't been too bad. But I know that will change - saw some data suggestion 20 - 25% of players play a Hunter main. I can see why, it's a really fun class so far.

Also have a lvl 4 Warden that I'm waiting for Book 7 to play. Was going to do a Rune Keeper but it just seems to similar to a Hunter in playstyle (solo particularly) ie. ranged DPS.

Nebu, as you already know, book 7 (Tuesday March 17) has an XP change, a refracting and ordering of the lower level quests (less back and forth to the same spots), new horse routes, horse rates have been lowered and more quests in the 1-20 range. I THINK this address most of your current issues. Here's to hope =)

Just to chime-in

GROUPHUGLALALALALA    :awesome_for_real:


When I first started in LotRO I also made a Hunter.  It's by far the most solo friendly class, although the Warden's ability to heal in combat at low levels is pretty sweet.

Go Hunter.  Get fire potions (ought to be cheap because there are Tier2 level grind item for Scholars).  Get food.  Wait till Tues XP and travel luv.  Go crazy.

I just read about the whole dwarf-digging-up-the-balrog session play. I now have a Goal.

For some reason the hunter REALLY did not do it for me. I actually made it further on a loremaster, which I also intensely disliked.

My candidates are basically the minstrel (I somehow clawed to 19-ish solo, now she's 20 but got left behind so I'd have to solo a little to catch up), the guardian (level 24, a hobbit, and adorable), the champion (level 21 or something) and a captain (level 26, my highest evar!). I feel like any of those could work fine with a captain.

Or I could level my level 13 burglar. Or a warden.

CAN'T DECIDE.  :uhrr:

But that's essentially a good thing, isnnit? :awesome_for_real:

Rerolled Warden.  It's better so far.  We'll see after 10.

(name is Tyrk)

Not totally, it more means I'm indifferent to all the classes than :heart: LOVE :heart: all the classes in this case. It there was one I felt really passionate about, odds are they'd be higher than their 20's. :P


EDIT: Mm, that probably comes off a bit harsh. What I really mean, I guess, is that none of them are so awesome they help me get past some of the things I don't like about LotRO. The classes themselves are fine (the burglar's skills, for example, amuse me to no end). I also get frustrated that Ingmar and I can't seem to DUO TO VICTORY on fellowship quests like we can in the other MMO's we've played, and I can't tell if it's a classes-we-prefer-just-suck-as-a-pair thing or what.

not sure if this helps, it's meant as helpful from painful experience also trying to DUO fello quests...

"fellowship" quests in LotRO are almost *always* designed for a full, 6-person team at or near +-2 the level the quest specifies.   Even when you have a highbie with you that does not guarantee success. A highbie can still be overwhelmed by greys and can't heal, for instance.  I've seen in happen.

there are "small fellowship" quests which are supposed to be manageable for a 3-person squad, but so far I've seen two of those bugged.

Not to disagree - but at 15 I've managed to duo all the FS quests I have with another solo character, Maybe we're low enough level that it doesn't matter but I've done all the FF quests to level 16 in a pair no prob so far. I'm sure I'll be a liar next level :)

Warden's are fucking retarded good soloers. You won't kill some evil big mob fast but you will kill it. I promise you will kill it. Four stacking self heals, two dot/heal combos, hitting the defense cap, passive +786 in-combat morale regen...

I'll just back-up what squirrel said; a few nights ago a friend and i did the Bree "get the chest out past the Bone Man quest thing" with a Warden/Runekeeper combo both at lvl16 - the Warden tanking like 6 of the wights at a time. Not sure if that's good or not, but i seem to recall having a lot more trouble last time around with a bigger group.

Warden is sorta overpowered at the moment.

And yeah, early fellowship quests are easier than later fellowship quests, probably to take into consideration that low-level players can be rookies. Later in the game quests doable with 2-3 people are flagged as small fellowship rather than full.

I'm probably going to start a Elf Warden Tuesday night after the patch.   I have a 12th Men Warden and it's a fun class but I want to check out the new elf story line.  Also going to play my Minstrel and see how much gooder the patch makes playing them.  My RK is 21 and is fun but is in the Lone Lands, which I dislike (too much running around).

yeah after 20 things get harder   :grin:

So... if I level this warden up am I going to run into umpteen bajillion other wardens when I try to get a pug for fellowship quests? 

If so, I'm sticking with the burglar.

I think another of my problems is that there are so fucking many fellowship quests. And a lot of them are in quest chains, which drives me insane. Unless you're sending me into an honest to god instance (or the epic storyline, I can deal with that too, even though I won't really like it), I should not need an entire freaking group to finish a quest series. I have this problem with other MMOs, so it's not just LotRO, but LotRO seems to do it a lot more often.

And yes, yes, I know I don't have to do ANY of them if I don't want to, but I hate starting a series without finishing it, and I DOUBLE hate having the rings taunting me every time I go to that quest hub until it finally turns grey. And fellowship quests take forever to freaking turn grey.

Clearly I need a minimap filter to turn off ANY AND ALL fellowship quest rings.

There are a lot of Wardens in the lower levels because it was a new class and everyone has one for an alt (oooh new shiney).  As you level up though their numbers start to thin out and you'll find there aren't that many in the upper levels (no more than any other class at least).

They're not overpopulated and there are even less good ones. It's not a hard class to play (because MMOs are not hard) but it's hardER than most others. There's a little nuance and planning to doing the warden thing well but a good warden is fucking amazing.

Thanks for the input.  I think I'll stick with it.  I like the tank idea and enjoy using the ability sequence.  It keeps me engaged.

Not sure if it will help much, but apparently they've gone over the early game zones and redid them to improve the flow to address exactly that, the "i do more running than having fun" feeling. Also tweaked the curve for mob morale and such, to increase the levelling speed at early part of the game. The changes are included in Book 7 update, scheduled to go live either in few days or couple weeks, depending which side of the world you live on.

I'm fine with the rate of leveling.  What is annoying the hell out of me is that even when I plan out my quest routes to minimize running, they invariably send me all over hell for the following steps.  In a pve game, I'm not in any big hurry to level as long as I'm engaged by the world and the story.  Speeding up the levelling also has the problem that, unless you have a rich main, you often outlevel your armor at a crazy fast rate.  Hopefully that won't be a big issue.

The fellowship quests didn't start kicking our asses until Lone-Lands. It pretty much seems like we shouldn't bother with them at this point, which makes me sad (QQ), in particular because don't all the Book Whatever, Chapter Whatever quests end in a fellowship quest?

Lone Lands is more group oriented, North Downs solo oriented.  Your mileage may vary.

Yeah, it's annoying how most questlines either turn into fellowship quests or start as such. I play during Euro times on a US server, and sat in LFF during my weekend playtime to try and get some of the 25 [!] fellowship quests from north downs / evendim / book 3 out of the way, but no luck. Are they changing any of this stuff with the patch, or are they sticking to newbie areas?

In other news, I ran Garth Agarwen (full run, though split over two days; most of us don't have more than an hour or two per day) during the weekend with my kinship and we learned several important things:
- Bosses really like summoning adds.
- Going with 2 minstrels and a LM specced for animal mastery (healing traits) with only an underleveled hunter and a burglar for 'pure' DPS is a bad idea.. but that's what we have, so we'll have to live with it and/or respec for future runs, I guess :p
- Having the aoe wound / disease cleansing as a LM is an absolute must (as was pointed out in this thread... we must haves it, preciouss!!), but of course I was capped at 270 tend-the-sick uses before the instance run, so no luck.
- Does anyone use fellowship maneuvers other than 6x blue during boss fights? (unless they have a decisive advantage) I found it a pain for my clothie self to move into melee range for red, especially against mobs with knockbacks, aoe melee attacks and whatnot.
- Oh god, the adds...   :ye_gods:
- The instance was REALLY long, reminds me of Maraudon from WOW. Not a bad thing (esp since a large number of areas / bosses are skippable), just unusual after the BC/WOTLK conditioning we all went through.
All in all, it was fun, if a bit quirky, and definitely a nice break from WOW-style buttonmashing... wonder when we'll be high enough level to try Fornost. On a related note, are level 50 dungeons still 'active' after Moria, or do people skip them?


-- Z.

That's not even the coolest session play in Moria IMO.


Oh, and I finally finished book 8 last night. We had 2 hunters, 2 champs (including me), a Captain, and a Rune Keeper for the final dungeon instance. We finished it in about 15 minutes and the only death was when one of the hunters walked into some lava because she wasn't paying attention. It was great fun.

Almost all the boss mechanics (almost, not all) boil down to some combination of chain stun and summon adds. Instance scripting is Blizzard's strong suit and Turbine's weak point. Though I found the Library pretty enjoyable so maybe that bodes well moving through Moria.

But you found out why I keep my WoW sub open: instances.

With out getting into a debate, i have to disagree.

I'd like to thank Grimst (Bloodworth) and Issa for helping my wife and I finally finish Book 1 Ch 11 on Sunday, also apologies for the RL interruptions and the fact that my wife does not read the chat. :oh_i_see:

Conceptually, the new Moria instances are pretty similar to tBC instances. Short and to the point, mostly. 16th Hall is the longest at 1½ hour, most have a boss within 15 minutes from the start of the instance. I haven't played all of them, but they've felt fresh this far.

An example...

6 blue is popular on the boss fights with the group I hang with, because as you mentioned, getting in to melee range can be a pain. If you can do it though, 5 reds and 1 blue to finish also gives good power to everyone, and really speeds up the fight.

AoE wound/disease removal is *very* nice, but not required in GA. We got through it without - but now that I have it, I won't give it up for anything.

The wheels (going around in a circle around the buttons, red-green-yellow-blue-red-green, etc) are obscenely powerful, but also extremely hard to pull off unless you're playing with people you've practiced it with.  It's just not going to happen in a pug.  I could have sworn they were about to nerf them hard in the patch today, but I can't find mention of it anywhere in the final patch notes, so maybe they didn't.

I use them all the time, issa is a burgler, and she pops them off when we need them, this is while duoing, or puging.

Conjuncts are invaluable to learn.  For those who don't know, they are similar to EQ2's Heroic Opportunities.  Check lotro-wiki for details.  They are serious buffs/heals/DoT's in group combat.  Almost necessary on heroic bosses.

Firstly, don't worry if you miss the first one -- there's a bug that everyone has the first conjunct lag and often misses it.  Hopefully you can get an other.

Secondly, usually before the "readiness check" (a nice simple good LotRO design) we always set the conjunct in a PUG.  The leader can do this by going into their char sheet and selecting the skills tab.  There is an other tab I think for fellowship skills.  All conjuncts are listed under there in a tree widget.  Choose the one you want by the check-box, and watch as the conjuct-list appears on your screen and everyone in your group for a few second.  Toggle the checkbox as many times as you want to spam the choosen conjunct to your team.  This way you can teach the PUG what to do this way before starting.

Thirdly, you get to choose non-combat (non-red) conjuncts after I think a certain group size (3+).  As a healer, I always demand a green or a blue since I don't melee often.  Depending on your group size you can select various combinations instead of the usually "straight" (all one color).  And it helps to have everyone /say what color they will choose before battle. Simpler.

Finally, some conjucts you need to unlock.  See the lotro-wiki for details.  If you can start a conjunct, pick one you don't have and then earn it forever if it's successful.

Developer Diary: Conjunctions & Raids (http://lotro.turbine.com/plugins/content/avreloaded/mediaplayer.swf?file=/media/videos/dev_conjunctionsraids_04.flv&abouttext=LOTROcom&autostart=true&rokbox=.swf)

Oh holy crap.  I forgot they added that when I was gone.

Maybe what I should do is think about transferring (or just re-rolling) on to the server where you people all are...

Uh, yep.  :grin:

Ummm which server was that again?  I have reupped this as well..

Brandywine.

Yay!  Now someone might actually chat in the Kinship channel!

Great!  I have a Guardian on there called Rohanir, and a Minstrel called Valmorian.  I think I tried to find a guild mentioned in this post before (Riders of Middle Earth?) but the only member I could find online had no idea what i was talking about and I didn't feel comfortable requesting to be added.

And I who thought I was on everyone's ignore list :oh_i_see:

Kidding :awesome_for_real:

What? sometimes you can't get me to shut up...... I just don't play a lot.

If you need a kin invite look for Bapho, Arzo, or Marween tonight. 

Blargh, if we move to Brandywine, I have to think of new fucking names, because I KNOW all my hobbit names are going to be taken. Curse my need to be IN THEME.  :cry2:


EDIT: Brandywine has a queue right now!

hyphenate thy names

Wow - just logged in quickly to patch and see what XP gain I got. Went from 17.5 to 20.5. Gonna cost some $$ but still cool.

This... this is a patch. This is WoW 2.0 in breadth and depth. One of the top content additions, paid or free, in any MMO I've seen.

I expected Brandywine to have a queue after the patch.

I managed to sneak a few minutes with my RK, who went from 19 to 22.  One of my lightning runes now requires 3 red so I can't fire as rapidly as before, however my damage has risen to compensate.  I'm going to have to lern2play again and figure out some new combos, but that's cool.  My healing runes appear unchanged.

I really, really appreciate the coordinate readout.  Finding shards should be somewhat easier if I know I am in the right spot.

Man, transfers are kind of expensive. $25 per dude! Not totally sure I want to just reroll though.  :headscratch:

Next one in 2.5* months, if the hold to the past pace.


*i think that's about right, 3-4 "books" a year...

It's an excuse to check out the New Ered Luin, also faster leveling.

That's my problem too.  I'd have to transfer at least 3 toons and if I transfer then my wife will need to transfer and now we're talking 3 more toons.  QQ

Lol. You should see the official forums. "This is a patch? Where's our raid? Where are our instances? What's with all this lore crap? Why can't I oneshot monsters? This game is too hard! I quit! I gained 2 levels? This game is easymode! I quit!" Sometimes all by the same person.

Yeah, I hate that guy.

Funkygibbons is always a crack-up, too. :awesome_for_real:

The patch resulted in me hitting 41 from 38 in less than an hour, good stuff. This was followed by me slotting 5 animal mastery traits and wondering why I didn't get the bog lurker legendary. As it turns out, you need some sort of item from Moria to acquire it, so no tentacle monster for me just yet! /sadface

Also, did the questline starting from Aragorn in Rivendell... let me just say I didn't expect the last part of the quest to

-- Z.

I took my lv17 guardian, Fatwing, over to talk to Dora Brownlock about her chicken situation and jumped all the way to lv21.  Yeah, four levels.  Even better, I got the Undying title which saved me a lot of actual undying.

After that I logged in as Bregigil, my Weaver.  Me, I still suck but the forces of Angmar are no longer gimped to hell.  I dicked around for a while farming hobbits, then some freeps showed up, several of which were between 53 and 59!  Easy pickings, or it would be except that I kept running foul of their lv60 escorts.  Eventually someone cowboyed up and organized a raid party and we made an effort to get back the two keeps they took while we were dicking around.  Unfortunately they were more organized than we were and they held Tirith Rhaw.  Still, I earned my first Infamy totaling 99 by the end of my session.  Also got ~3500 DP from various quests which I promptly spent on making myself less sucky.

That's good to hear, i may play mine this weekend then, i always dug some PvMP. We gotta get that "Tribe" going.

Oh yeah, I've seen. The LOTRO forums make the WoW forums look like a living Library of Alexandria.

I am sure I have enough cash to buy the charter, just let me know and we will set one up, unless it requires more than two people. :awesome_for_real:

Failing that, you're always safer when with a distraction... er, buddy.

Also, I'm terribly interested in trying out the Troll session (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Troll_Session_Play).  Also also, I might start a MP thread so I (we?) can babble about "wut weez bashin on" and not clutter this thread for people who only care for PvE.

Last time we gave it a go, it requires that charter (that i have already i think) and someone with a Rank 3. The rank 3 being the problem.

I am playing my burg again - God I love that class.  I had to complete my tier 4 crafting quest - my level 33 burg slid past the 43+ mobs and snatched the item easy peasy.  Was awesome.

I made a champion on Brandywine, since that is the one class I've never played besides burglar, and I wanted something a little more soloable than a burglar. His name is Ingur because some dirty bastard already had Ingmar.

I think the burglar is the most solo-friendly class, if not for stealth alone.

I got my hunter to 22 and it's fun but thought I'd try a melee class so I'm playing a warden for  bit. Doesn't kill shit as fast but dayum once you get the in-combat health regen with the stacking hot's there's not much to fear! 4 or 5 even con mobs? No prob, gimme a sec.

Liking the class a lot, may level it as my main as there seems to be an ample supply of hunters.

Tip:  seems with the patch you can now increase your max number of quests that your quest log can hold.  Apparently this is linked to number of deeds you do.

No, that was in before. Almost no one noticed it, though (I didn't until someone pointed it out).

I think it came with book 14. I think it's a fairly pointless but cute bonus. It's really rare that you hit the original cap of 40, atleast in my experience.

 

I reach it all the time -- several grey fello quests.  But first time through that content.

I have 35 quests at any one time with my hunter.  I hit the cap and have to abandon some occasionally.  Usually I just force myself to finish some before getting new ones.

Been too sick to play lately.  Sleep is an elusive beast.

I've been more or less constantly at max quests ever since I got to the low 40s with Misty Mountains and Angmar.  Haven't even poked my head into Forochel yet, but I know more are waiting there.

I did some of the Spring quests, but my problem is that Fallia has recently turned 31, then quickly 32, and I've got a ton of quests burning a hole in my pocket.  Plus I'm broke as shit due to purchasing a few equipments at the AH and some skills.  This is making it hard to concentrate on the Spring Festival, but I just have to remind myself that Oatbarton (and the Great Barrow, and Rivendell, etc) will still be there in a few weeks.

I think most people have noticed the reduced horse-taxi prices, but I did not find out about the new destinations until last night.  This is super-duper-awesome now that I'm 32 and getting close to getting a horse.  Or pony?  Wonder if I can name him Fatty Lumpkin....

In the "should have been doing festival stuff" department, I went to the bottom of the Great Barrow with Fallia and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.  Also I killed Svalfang, he was easy enough.  After that I headed toward Brockenborings since they heard I liked Inn League quests and they put a quest in Brockenborings so I could gain rep while I quested.  Or something.  I got derailed by all the yew wood and ended up in Oatbarton instead.

I'm working on getting in.

What. The. Clucking. Bell. Queue at 9 AM EST? That's just silly.

I was going to play a bit last night, too, while I waited for Formula 1 to start and there was a queue.  Only five minutes but that's all it took for me to wander off and forget all about playing.  Maybe I should re-read that ADD thread!   :ye_gods:

Edit:  What a terrible server Brandywine is!  At least when they're having a special weekend and/or event.  Huge lag spikes, dcs, rollbacks, sever downtime.  Sheesh.  Sort yourself out, Turbine! 

Yeah a bit tougher to get on and play this weekend.  Qeues at all times of the day, including a 85 people in a 15 min qeue at 2 a.m. EST.  Even if you do get in, I lagged out numerous times in mid-fight with server issues.  Hopefully it gets sorted out soon enough.

Brandywine has had some, urr, troubles lately, yes. :oh_i_see:

I did see you log in, Tarami.  I was just going to hi when the lag swallowed me whole, chewed me up and spit me out of the game. 

So hi then. 

It's crappy that Brandywine has the queues and the laggy crowds (esp around the maze) and finding shards is something of a challenge, but it's also good to have plenty of people for when you want to run a fellowship quest or want to buy some crafted gear.  What would be neat is if Turbine beefed up the hardware so we could have our cake and get PUGs too.

Source (http://content.lotro.com/media/static/)



Hi! :awesome_for_real:

Well....I thought I'd get bored at 60 but so far it's all good. Between the epic books, rep, maxing out fishing, deed grinding, and Moria instance running I feel like I have plenty to do still.

Just getting ready to start the moria instances myself - is there progression through the instances?  I know Forgotten Treasury is pretty easy, as that is pretty much the only one I have went through.  In addition, anyone know which pieces of radiance gear come from the instances?  Is radiance gear a token system or is it an equipment drop?

I tried 2.5.5 deep-way book instance a couple of time during the weekend - two fails :( tough book chapter! especially in PUG.

Radiance gear is a coin drop that you then take to an npc and trade in for your armor piece. Actually, it's not a drop so much as you kill the boss and open a chest in his room which seems to have: a coin, a piece of armor or a cloak, and usually some IXP loot.

In addition, you have to do the instances in hard mode, which seems to consist of doing certain side objectives like say "Killing boss X in less than 10 minutes" or "Killing boss Y and letting his adds live." That kind of thing.

I've only done the 16th hall. It was relatively easy. In 5.5 I've done 21st Hall and it was challenging but not to bad in a PUG.

I just went through a powerdown/powerup of our main datacenter. :ye_gods:  Godspeed, Turbine.

Yego, you still attempting C#? I'm available for questions in-game, if you have any.

It's still on The List but various things have consumed my time such that I don't have the luxury of doing much that is fun.  Haven't even been playing games in significant timechunks other than LotRO and I'm having a hard time with that.  Also I have been sick for three weeks, haven't slept well.

Just to keep the fire smoldering, I'm looking at making a small app that can manipulate files or registry entries, since I would have immediate use for such a tool and it should be quick to write.  No time/desire for that, though, due to sickness and many projects, not least of which was the aforementioned datacenter shutdown.  Good God I don't want to have to do that again.

I think I'm done with the Spring Festival. I got all the prizes from the maze, and the flower collection seems to reward me with the same stuff I got last year, plus a shiton of Blueberry Tart recipes. Not a great signal-to-noise ratio. I'm toying with the idea of getting my Inn League rep to Ally just because I can.

Didn't have a lot of time to play over the weekend, but I did exploit the bonus XP to get my hunter from 24 to 26. She's starting to get all the cool travel powers now.

I'm starting to think that every MMG should have a class that can function like this - in addition to their main role, they can move their party around the world quickly. It's fantastic for groups, and the Hunter is a solid solo class too.

I still love my Lore-Master best, but the Hunter is definitely drawing me more than my Captain or Warden.

weekly status report 3/30:  :awesome_for_real:

1. finished Fornost.  Christ on a crutch that place blows for gear, titles.  Glad to have run through it at least once, but definitely needs rework.  Cold comfort finishing grey, instance elite fello quests when they can still wipe a team.

2. finished The Twisted Heart in Evendim.  See Fornost.  A very badly balanced quest at the end of difficult chain in a remote place that's time consuming to get to.  I wrote a whole thread about it on the official forums, but can't link it because of their DC move.  Really can't recommend doing that quest chain.

3. finished Tomb of Elendil.  Rocking PUG that finished the boss turtle with little trouble.

4. finished fishing mastery -- LORD of STREEEAAAAAMMMS!

Do post it when they're back up. The forums have lately seen sharp clashes between the casual/solo/small group players and the raider/PUG players. I suspect you may get caught in the crossfire.

The numbers say solo/small group players are correct. (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001645.php)

I'm in favor of three-man content.  The six-man groups I have been part of get disorganized fast unless someone is acting as commander, and I'm just not that hardcore about it.

I think Fornost is a pretty cool place. Not for shinies, but it has a neat atmosphere. It feels sorta authentic.

Mentioning that, I am reading the book currently.  This is literally the first time I have read a fictional book since around 1999 at latest... but that's not the point unless you are playing Yegolev: The Home Game.  What I find is that the game world is, well, pretty small and in some places just kinda weird, like Crickhollow being too close to everything.  Maybe even wrong but I'm going to have to check a couple of things if I remember to.  Can't be helped, I know; who the hell wants to take two days to ride from Bree to Forsaken Inn?  Compromises must be made.  There's just some contrast, is all I'm saying, and I'm going to just keep appreciating the game on its own merits rather than compare to the book(s).

That said, I still really like the Shire very much, and Hobbiton in particular.  Previously I think my least favorite was Midgewater, but they have very much improved the fog there, in my opinion, and it feels a lot better.  There is still a hard transition but while I'm in there it seems better.  Right now I think the Old Forest is at the bottom of my list because it just doesn't feel like a forest.

Yeah, the size of the world is much smaller and i think the (relatively) exaggerated vertical scale doesn't help it either, combined it can lead to a strong "disney world" feel every now and then. That said, the layout of things is pretty accurate... on the lorebook site there was even route of the Fellowship sketched on the game map, all way from Shire to Moria. Would link to it but site is down at the moment.

I second the hate for Fornost, at least from a player/design perspective. Rant time!


(edit) spoilered the rant to not spoil instance details for those who haven't been there yet
That said, some of the instance was enjoyable, but these issues were very disheartening for us. (if Fornost is supposed to be authentic, then Tolkien needs to l2instancedesign! :drill:) Does it get better in later instances?


-- Z.

Yeah, the Old Forest was pretty annoying. It felt like a foggy cave with too many random monsters.

It was better before, still one of my favorite areas.

Do you mean when it moved around?  I can see how that was frustrating (missed that era) but the atmosphere just isn't there now.  I am not at all relieved when I arrive at Tom's house; in fact, he is pretty damn annoying in animated form.  Doesn't help when he is often both inside and outside his house, either.  I'm more relieved to arrive in the Barrow Downs.

No map, changed around, darker overall, Mobs not so spread out, but were more logically lumped together as if living in a particular section. It was downright spooky, and i loved that it was possible to get lost. But that's just me. Its still a good zone.

Just on Fornost -- yes, I'm glad they have something there for the lore, but I think the problem is that Fornost was designed for when the game capped at 50.  With the recent expansion it now needs an overhaul IMO.  Fornost like Twisted Heart were there pre-cap to help people skill up and gear up in groups.  But that loot is now worthless from mudflation so there needs to be a better incentive to tough it out.  The amount of time you take on both instances should give at least a title, which is permanent.

Basically, Fornost is LOOOOONNNG.  And there is no great player map either to assist (think on that).  It is very easy to get lost there.  The important Morgul Hilt quest at Fornost involves 4 bosses, plus 2 required mini bosses on the way, and two optional mini quest bosses.  For those who don't know the instance, you need to kill each boss to unlock passage to the next. And there are miscellaneous other quests on the way. Last straw for me was after the loooonng quest arc at Dol Dinen with the "Master of the Tide" quest, they give you an other quest for a 40-lvl boss at Fornost... That was a hair pulling moment.  So, yeah I'm glad I did the place but I really can't recommend it to anyone who is new and is eager to get to the cap.  We stayed at it just to complete all quests in our log.

"Twisted Heart" (lvl 40 fello quest on west side of Evendum) is a whole other magnitude of suck.  Far worst and frustrating IMO.  Fornost can be entertaining because it's so big -- Twisted Heart in Evendim is just plain annoying and not worth the time.  Here's my thread on the official forums (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=258599) and the text below.  My wife and I had tried it at 40, then mid and late 40's and then finally finished it with a full team of 3 or 4 low 50's and 2 or 3 high 40 lvl players in a PUG after being unable at 51 to duo it.  We wiped three times with this full PUG before finishing the quest.  The main problem I think is overlapping objectives -- repeated boss kills with a puzzle and an escort quest (protect NPC).  Bad design, poor playability.  It's also at the end of a pretty hard chain where you defeat a 40 lvl boss (Heartrot), and doesn't feel necessary story-wise.

Good writeup.  I thought 1.1.11 was bad, this sounds worse.

My wife's opinion on lv18 epic quests that you cannot duo at 30 is that they suck hobbit cock.  I agree.  She has decided to avoid fellowship quests from now on due to this.

yeah, LotRO protip:  elite mobs in an instance are far harder than elite mobs in everyday (non-instanced) zones. 

There's no indication that the stats are higher (like resists) but they just are. 

You can duo or complete fello quests without a full PUG in the regular world, but there's no way in my experience that's possible in an instance (even if you are 10 lvls above the listed recommended fellowship level).

I do not think mobs inside instances like that are the same class of boss/mob. (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Fornost)

This is the list of all types of creatures in the game (In no particular order). Denoted by its border.

Arch-nemesis
Avenger
Defender
Elite
Elite Master
   
Hero
Master Defender
Nemesis
Signature
Swarm

Oh it's not that bad. A guildmate and i went through about 50% of Fornost with a level 51 Hunter and a 41 Captain. It just take a very, very long time.

There's no difference between instance elites and world elites as far as I know, in terms of stats. Big difference is that instance elites never stop chasing and never become completely aggroless (like greys in the world.) The reason you can often underman fellowship quests in the open world is that you can usually exploit the behaviour of the mobs in some way. If you go pull three - four elites in the world like you do in instances, you will die without a proper group.

The Shire is my favorite zone in any MMO, ever.  I can just ride around that, doing nothing, and be relaxed.

About the mob rankings, it is true that I usually just notice if it is some sort of orange.  There are indeed multiple levels of eliteness.

Working on getting to 29 or so this weekend. No more work, huzzah! If someone's in a generous mood, I'd love some help with two quests in Nan Wathren (the goblin isle in North Downs.) Pugging that is usually hell.

Well, guess it's time for my update:

Since last weekend I have gotten to the end of Book 14 in Volume 1. I'm still sitting on 2.5.5 in Volume 2.

I still haven't run any of the dungeons in Moria except 16th hall that one time. Right now the Epic questlines are more important to me, partly so I feel "caught up". I also still haven't tried any PvMP.

Oh, and on another note, I finally got my Morale a tick over 4k. I'm on the verge of getting a Sublime Dawn rose necklace which should put me around 4.2k. Unfortunately, bumping my Morale up has cost me about 20 points of might and I'm feeling it.

What class are you talking about?  Guardian?  I can't imagine choosing Morale over Agility with my hunter.

I'm having trouble with Guardian. Seem to be taking too much damage to be an effective tank. No one in the pugs I've been in seemed to think anything was odd though.

Perhaps I just suck.

Champion. Champions have been going for morale builds lately partly due to the DPS nerfs and diminishing returns with a higher might.

Trivia of the day... right now (5 PM EST), Brandywine as well over 2000 players online. If I can stay up I'll poll it later aswell. :)

I started a little warden on brandywine. Kildanor!

The new legacy and deed system seems convoluted, and half the time I can't get my combat/skill deeds to display properly. *sigh* I'm actually hoping to get past 20 this time, though!

What do you mean?

I hit deeds, and it'll only show kill deeds instead of skills half the time, and I can't find my skill deeds. Nor get an explanation of how I get some of the legacy ones from the class pages (some have little quest icons now, that's new after level 15 or something)

I played ages ago, when it first came out, and understood the system of traits and whatnot. Now I'm kind of foggy as to what these way of the ____ things are, and how to work them, or if I even need to worry about it yet. Plus I'm trying to figure out where to go at 16.

Don't worry, I'm just being **confused** because LOTRO always made me feel a little dizzy with options after you hit Bree.

There are tabs along the top (Race class, Eriador , Rhovanion, Hobbies), and depending on what tab at the top your looking at, the little shield tab things at the bottom will show different zones (for the kill deeds).

Here is an older "Zone/Subzone by level map. Its somewhat old, but at a glance looks still correct... (Excluding missing zones and jank)

(http://www.keenandgraev.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/levelguidemap.jpg) Right click to view full size.

There are basically four kind of deeds; regional, racial, class and legendary.

Regional deeds give you Virtues. These deeds are done by completing quests, killing mobs or discovering locales in the zone they belong to. Virtues generally give you small stat buffs like Poison Resist and Might.

Racial deeds give you race-wide abilities. They're done by killing a (large) number of certain mob types that are specific to your race. Elves have Orcs and Drakes, for example, I believe. Racial deeds get your teleports to your home area (Rivendell in the case of Elves, Thorin's Hall for Dwarfs) and other special abilities. With exception for the teleport, they're most of the time useless. :oh_i_see:

Class deeds give you buffs to your class abilities. Most are gained by using a certain skill a number of times, while others are gained by successfully performing a certain reaction, like blocking. A few will be gained by doing class quests at 15/30/45/60. Class deeds do things like modify the number of targets for AoEs or increase damage for skills under certain conditions.

Legendary deeds are much like class deeds, but they're usually obtained through quest chains. They usually involve getting certain drops from world mobs and instance bosses. They are in general powerful and can change some pretty fundamental mechanisms of your class (like Lore-masters get to dual-wield staff and sword through equipping a legendary trait.)

Trait lines are new with Moria. Basically, they're set bonuses for having multiple class traits from the same set (red, blue, yellow.) If you equip five of one set, you unlock a capstone trait which is a legendary trait which is normally among the most powerful traits you have. You won't be getting these capstone traits until you're entering Moria, really.

The +20 to (stat your race has a big penalty to) traits seem useful to me...

I think the problem is likely that Kild missed the tabs on the bottom of the book.

Is there a particular character name or whatever I should be looking out for to get an invite on Brandywine? It is an actual F13-owned-and-operated guild, or is it a guild that just happens to be where y'all landed?

First, Check out this link. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15670.0) Second, Its not an f-13 guild, however our numbers all most outnumber any other group (such as randoms, or original long time members). Its our guild, but the guild is not operated by this forum.

Hope to see you soon!

Oh, hi2u sticky thread.  :uhrr:

Only problem is that they're useful to about two classes each. An Elven guardian doesn't really need the Fate that's the racial buff. He will have it anyway since everything else is worse, but still.

The most useful one is the man Strength of Morale that heals you for 2200-3000 morale. That's never been unequiped since I had it.

also, the ones that buff fellowship manuevers are nice.

I would have to know what you are doing, what level and such... also I am really not the one to ask.  My guardian felt like a real tank after playing a hunter so much, but then I never played a tank in anything else except maybe WoW.  I just lead off with the defense-increasing attack and watch for blocks, throwing in a few other attack skills as they pop up and generally I'm good.  Against enemies weaker than me, I switch to a two-handed weapon and just watch for parries instead of blocks.  Also remember to use the correct stance for what you have equipped.  Wearing crafted armor helps a ton.

Edit to say what I have done.  Really not much other than work on my Cook, who is mostly a Farmer and ostensibly a Burglar.  Hobbit, of course.  I gave him two gold and so far have spent 1.1 gold to get him to Artisan Farmer and Artisan(?) Cook.  I am happy that I chose to be a burglar since the first Cook quest was to get an herb from Weathertop's summit.  With a bit of luck, I was able to get up there at level 9 and warp out with the goods.  The next one was danger-free, thankfully.  I think I will be able to get to the end of Tier 6 Farming with the money I have left, after which I will work on the Cookery again.  Maybe.

Cleaning up quests in the old zones with my Guardian so that I can finally dive into Mordor (just went there to get my first Legendary weapon and headed back out again. Even deleting all group quests (except the Storyline ones) it still takes forever. I love the quantity of content in this game, you can really entertain yourself solo without any problem.

Filled the other 6 slots with tradeskill twinks and slowly level them up as I train their skills. Basically they are just mules to hold my recipes, because I have too much fun wreaking two handed carnage with my newly discovered Overpower awesomeness (a trait that lets me use block responses with 2h - me likey).

Finally finished up Volume 2, Book 6 on the weekend - capping the end of the books in Moria.  I now have 2 of my capstone legendary abilities (herald/pet spec, tank spec), and now need to delve into Fil Gashan for my hands of healing legendary.  The Volume 2, Book 5, Chapter 5 instances (3 of them) are easily the toughest - with "Deep Way" being an exercise in frustration.  You are basically at the whim of an RNG spawn system that can easily overwhelm you.  Lots of complaints on the forums about the difficulty/random-nature of 2.5.5.  I believe it took about 5 or 6 tries on deep-way - which isn't bad comparative to the complaints .  The group portion of Book 6 (2.6.8) is supposedly difficult as well, but I think I had a competent PUG to get through it on the first try.

I plan to start heading into Moria instances to finish out quest book and see the content available.  I am not going to get into the "rad run" progression for raiding.  I love to see all content, including the occasional raid content, but screw going through instances over and over to get the radiance gear.

That damned "Our Greatest Find" quest is a motherfucker.  A god-damned motherfucker.  Oh, and PUGs are shit.  rage rage froth bitch piss

Volume 2 seems to be much niftier than Volume 1 so far. Went to poke about the start of it, and within a couple hours of play had my first two legendaries, a bunch of new gear, and hit 47. Then got et by a red goblin in Moria proper. Much fun.

If that's the statue quest at Minas Eriol in Lonelands then yeah -- better to stick a fork in your eye, over and over again.  They need to remake Minas Eriol without everysinglemob being elite.  Full retard mode.  I mean, they have Dol Dinen for that, right?  :grin:

That's the one, where it's difficult to pull singles and if you suck you get four or six elites on your ass.  A large part of our problem was that we only had a RK for healing, plus everyone else was in the low 20s.  Also I was surrounded by people who could not take instruction: I told them more than once to NOT follow me when I went ahead to scout since the gobs are all grey to me... but they followed me anyway and ZOMGDEAD.  Although it was neat that every time I (33 hunter) attacked something, it immediately disengaged and headed my way.  Sort of. :awesome_for_real:

Hunters have to watch the aggro, especially if your an agility stacker like me. That's why there are traits,skills, and bow chants that lower your threat. :grin: But yeah, that area, we avoid it.

Since you mentioned it, next time I logged in I went in alone to scout around and noticed a glowy crate.  I grabbed the statue from the box and took it out to the dicklick waiting across the bridge, bada-bing.  If I had known it was in a box instead of a goblin pocket, I'd have done that way back.

Not to be a douchebag, but I'm glad they're keeping some of the elite camps. Brings a bit of flavour to the mix.

Oh, and I want to do Dol Dinen. We should set up a DD night soon when we try to get as much as possible done. I'll take a nap and drink coffee to stay up.

CET, you're on notice :mob:

What level for DD?

31+ or so. I think the final quests are ~35.

Sweet, I'd love to come along... er wait you are not on Brandywine because you are a euro, yes?

That L31 Warden in the kinlist happens to be me. :wink:

I can't be bothered to read for myself.  Sheesh. :awesome_for_real:

Yesterday, my wife and I charged from lv33 to 35 by aggressive invasion of Trollshaws and Rivendell.  Rivendell is very cool, firstly.  Secondly, horses are fucking expensive.  I only have about 1.7 gold, and my wife is even worse off... not sure she has ever had one gold.  I'm going to spend a lot of time in either Trollshaws or Evendim, looking for cash.  Have not decided which, but I have some quests directing me to Tinnundir and I haven't spent much time there.

I don't know what the market is like on Brandywine these days, but if you can Mine than try harvesting and selling Dwarf-Iron.  You could check the AH first and see what the prices are like and see if it's worth it.

Boiled leather seems to sell pretty well. All grades, though medium sells fastest. Ore/ingots on Brandywine seem to fluctuate wildly.

That said, I bought my horse on income from Moria quests, the money starts to really flow there.

Maybe it was just bad timing but selling raw materials on the AH has not seemed like much of a gravy train to me.  My wife can mine dwarf-iron but she's using it to level.  I might see what I can do about making some Woodworker Guild weaponry and selling it, but those shards are a pain in the ass to get.  I might be able to make some money selling basic Artisan stuff since I'm up to my eyeballs in lebethron.

I've been able to finance things pretty easily just selling gathered leather and bars, etc., but I haven't passed level 30 yet on anyone.

If anything, I'd expect more return past 30, but I don't know.

It's a toss up.  On Windfola, Medium leather goes for more than Sturdy, but I know the reason behind that one at least.  Medium leather is what's used to make level 16 medium armor, and you need alot of it to crit it.  It's one of the first armor groups that most people will use to set up new players or lower level twinks with. 

Same on Brandywine, a stack of Medium Boiled sells within a couple hours at 400s, a stack of Sturdy Boiled priced at 250s may or may not sell after 48hrs.

Ah, well that was my problem: I didn't understand the demand.  Stupid crafting.

Checking out amazing looking fan film:  http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16852.0

Nope.  Tier 2 generally sells best until you get into the top mats.

So, me and issa are trying to get to moria with our mains, but we keep finding so much cool stuff to do (and some great loot in angmar) that we fear we may out level it..... Guess i need to start paying more attention to alts.

Don't be in any real hurry.  You don't really want to physically be in Moria until 52 at the soonest.  I think I was 53 by the time I finished up everything up through Eregion as was.

Oh good, Nah,its not a hurry thing. We just didn't want to out level stuff. The game is getting so wide, it feels quite possible to level to 60 with out ever going into Moria.

Nah, highest you can get is 56 or so before stuff in the level 50 instances and zones turns grey to you ;)
Seriously though, stuff in the first part of Moria will have just turned yellow for the most part when you go in there at 52.  So depending on your ability to take oranges, use that to gauge when you think you should be in there.  You'll cap out at 60 with more stuff than you know what to do with, no matter what you do anyhow, especially since they added Lothlorien.


edit: just phrased something poorly

I made the push over the past week to finish out LL and ND quests.  I'm finally starting Evendim and it's a bit different which is nice.  I spent a year off and on to get from 26-34 and now that I'm nearing 35 I'm so glad I made this push to get out of those zones.  Just hit the 4.5 gold mark for my horse which I should be able to buy tonight. 

Don't forget now. You can't just buy your horse and enjoy it after grinding for 35 levels and saving desperately so you can afford it. Oh no.  You also have to face a skill testing challenge!

Honestly, starting Eregion at 45, getting into moria at 48 worked great for my Champ, and I made 60 fast, even with lots of side trips for pages/deeds/fun with people. Moria is just overall neat, and HUGE with tons of stuff to do.

A.K.A. The Final Insult.

Heh, if only it were the final.  Horses don't like big caves.

And goats are fed on catassing.

Yeah. It's a shame they took Tolkien's cues on horses rather than the real world's. :uhrr: Real horses do not mind being underground any more than humans, maybe less even.

Playing Fatwing (lv21 guardian) for now, working on metalworking primarily and tailoring as a support for armorcraft, but of course I need a large load of medium hides.  Got tired of Shire/Breeland deed-work and decided to do some west-LL quests (skipping GB madness) with her to get up to east-LL snuff (maybe do some North Downs stuff in there), and after that get to Rivendell and then head to Evendim.  Maybe.

I helped camp Raster in EQ for well over 100 hours.  
I spawn camped rare pets in WoW numerous times for hours at end.  
I played Warhammer Online.  

All of them combined pale in comparison to the tedium involved in getting a horse in this game.  I'm nearing nerd rage.  

WHAT??!?!?  :ye_gods:

There's a reason that I played to 35, got my horse and then quit for a year. I do like the game - it has redeeming features but whoever is in charge still doesn't quite understand what people expect of mainstream MMOGs in the age of WoW.

It was pretty lame to have made it to 35 *and* had the 4.22 gold in my pocket, only to have to do four fedex quests just to buy the damn horse.  By the time they asked me to travel to the third spot, I almost quit. 

It was an unnecessary roadblock to fun that took almost an hour.  It served no purpose that I am aware of. 

/paulhogan
That's not tedium...


Seriously, though, do you just not do any of the 'kill 120 wargs' deeds?  I think the dumbass horse quests are less ragequity, although they still look very much like they were designed by the guy who wanted "everyone to run everywhere, by cracky!"

At least you weren't like my wife and I who discovered how much a horse cost after we did the second quest.

My main has most of those kill traits, but my alts don't. If they get them while playing, great, but I don't have the patience to do the grind-grind-grind again for alts. I don't think either of my 30s have any trait above 3.

It would be cool if they did a trickle down thing, as in, your mains (or most "complete") passively contribute to lesson the requirement for other Toons on the account, if your main (or other toons) have already done the deed. Kill deeds only.

I have to agree -- that run to Othrikar was worthless (didn't add anything to me, not immersive) and enraging when I died and had to start the run again from Trestlebridge.  Needs to be changed.

It's even less immersive when you hunter-travel back to Bree after each delivery. :oh_i_see:

Got my horse, yay.  Now to get onto those Evendim quests.

What you really need in Evendim is a boat, not a horse.  Painful amount of swimming, beautiful but painful.

I'm just going to skip pretty much all the across the water stuff in Evendim from now on. Pretty zone, but too many pathing issues on the hills, and hitting autorun and going to make a sandwich is not my idea of good travel in a zone.

So, the other night me and the lady were questing in the north east part of angmaur. Where we stumbled across 3 repeatable group sized battles instances. I was highly intrigued that there were flags sitting next to the NPC bestower, the first read "attempted 48 times" the second said 8, and the last said none. I assumed this was attempts across the server.

We winded up putting together a kinship group with me, issa, rattran a few others from kinship, and a few pickups. The battle itself consisted an instanced area in the angmar southern region, but this time it was different, there were battlements and 4 gates, with NPC guards that you could not let fall, but assisted in the battle. Seemingly at random times, one of the 4 gates would fall under attack (announced to all), meaning the group had to be somewhat agile, dynamically groups of mobs would spawn and attempt to enter the gates. Each group consisted of normals, elites and elite masters, some with some rather interesting abilities and maneuvers. We attempted the encounter three times, each time it was different, and each time we got a little closer to winning the encounter. Ultimately, we did not complete it due to time, and sting of death. Everyone agreed it was a good time though, and thankfully all rewards are done in the form of barter items that drop, and are granted from quest completion.

I have considered making a kinship night that focuses on the encounters, could be a good time.

The Battle for Aughaire (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/The_Battle_for_Aughaire)

Yeah, that was the first attempts at that type of instance.  They are now used for numerous quests (Vol 2, Book 5 being the most notable).  There are also battle instances in Lothlorien (haven't done those ones yet).  Entertaining and quick paced, sometimes they add in too much randomness (different spawns) that make them seem impossible.

I'm finding pathing problems on the east side of the Brandywine which caused us much grief as the anti-exploit mechanism kicked in for tomb-robbers which we were standing on top of, inevitably all waking up at the same time and bum-rushing us.  I'm hoping it's not a general area problem, but at least I'm done with that particular ruin's quests.  I think.  If I run into it again, I'm going to start logging bug reports on it.

I hear the anti-exploit issues are due to "you" entering and exiting water. For some reason, coming out of water (no matter when that was) is somehow related to triggering the exploit bug. But, its being actively worked on.

Well... put in a bridge? :oh_i_see:

Edit: maybe if I log of/on on the east side of the river, it would fix things?

Evidence, and dev postings say yes.

I think they need boats there, and epic boat encounters! (and to fix the ??? issue)

Hit 36 on my Guardian last night.  Finished the Aragorn Rivendell quests and some of the western Trollshaws quests.  Then I headed off to Evendim which I have nearly everything open, easily 20+ quests in my log for that zone right at blue or white.  Should be a fun couple of days. 

It does NOT fix it. There are pathing issues in several areas, Evendim being the worst. I tried everything suggested in various threads when I was trying to do the Guaredan quests, nothing worked. Pathing/anti-exploit is just broken in some areas.

Yeah, I read about the 'defend' instances, reminds me of guild wars. I hope we'll be able to do one of them, but interest in LOTRO is waning fast across the guild.. :/

Evendim [and several other zones] have horrible problems with mob pathing, especially on the islands and the gauradan area at the NW corner of the zone. This was especially bad for me as a 'beast-mastery' spec LM, since I depend on my lynx to kill things, and there are many invisible spots where either the mob bugs out and becomes unattackable, or my pet does; in the latter case the mob will immediately go into anti-exploit mode. The only way I was even able to complete quests was by opening up with an alpha strike that'd kill the mob before it either had the opportunity to get stuck in the geometry and go into anti-exploit mode, or before my pet would get aggro and do the same. And then there are fun times when the pet get stuck and I have to dismiss/resummon it constantly... (can't do it in combat, so getting ambushed really hurts)


Edit: This problem always happened when entering/exiting water, but that wasn't a big problem -- the REAL problem areas are the salamander and brigand islands along with the gauradan place. I think there was also a coastline where this happened a lot, but it wasn't as bad as those areas.


-- Z.

Fantastic.  I'm still going to log bugs on it.

This is the first game in awhile where I've hit the level cap and not felt the the lack of non-raid content suck the life out of it. I was surprised at just how much stuff there is to do in Moria and Lorien, even the rep grinds don't feel like grinds, just things to do with rewards and +rep. Plus maybe I'll get around to finishing Book 7+ in Volume 1 and Book 4+ in Volume 2.

<edit> Not enough coffee causes typos. Be warned.

wife and I are taking a break.  But I'm not looking forward to any expansions.  There's enough in there already.

 :roll:

To Necro the deed tedium discussion, if you wait until they're grey, and find an area of high concentration, you can do it in mere minutes.  I guess I'll be doing that more now that my healer is taking a break.   :raspberry:

Well. We know who wears the heavy armor in that couple!  :why_so_serious:

If I do the slayer deeds before they are grey, I can also make a dent in the Class skill deeds which don't increment on grey mobs.

The above is sort of fresh in my mind as I have started playing Fatwing a bit more due to my wife's, uh, dismay that I was playing Fallia without her.  Nevermind that she plays without me... apparently if I'm online and she's doing a quest without me, it doesn't count. :uhrr:  Anyway, Fatwing is a Guardian and let me tell you, after playing a Hunter to lv37 it's a pleasant surprise to find that I'm just not dying.  Sure, things just move more slowly in Guardian Town, but it's nice to be able to fight off three yellow orcs at one time.

Fatwing is also a Metalworker/Tailor/Prospector (whatever that profession is) and I'm sending hides off to Fallia for boiling.  Also I can see that I'm going to be able to easily blow a large chunk of cash on recipes, especially if I want to have a matching armor set that isn't basic.  Also, needing six shards instead of one for one-time recipes is bothersome... well, if I have the recipes in the first place. :oh_i_see:

Don't bother levelling Armoursmithing. It is a giant, painful, waste of time. Or at best, cap out at tier 3/4, then just sell critted mid-range pieces on the AH, and make a killing. The end-game stuff you get out of it is crap.

I'm already wearing some lv15 quest-pants at lv21 that I can't beat, so I'm keeping things real with lowered expectations.  Then again, I'll be buying my heavy armor off of the AH otherwise.

What about crafting tools?

I've worked metalsmith up to Supreme on Creothyn, so any tools you need just drop a line. I've even got nearly a full set of blueprints for the triple-tools at level 55.

But yeah, other than a few pieces, the top end crafted armor is pretty  :uhrr:

Well I canceled for two reasons. First I'm level capped and second the game tends to make my video card overheat and shut down my laptop. :(
But I'll be back for  the next content patch.

Still haven't managed to get on Brandywine at the same time as Bloodworth, but -- any particular craft vocation the kinship is lacking? Saerthir hasn't chosen hers yet.

i was just on. I play wed nights after 6pm EST.

I don't know about kin crafting now that Marween has taken a vacation.  My own crafting isn't past Artisan on anyone, thanks completely to crafting being tied to level.

We had a tradition of making crited armor sets for new players (mostly marween did this with mat from others). I would like to start this up again, but i myself have limited playtime.

I know we have a lack of scholars, or rather a lack of people making pots, not that we don't have any. Things like potions, armor and weapons are things i would love to have stocked in the kin hall for all to use.

But really, play what you want.

My first order of business when leader transfers is to make more officers. So invites will not be so hard to do.

Dwuli is a scholar and I'm willing to make things if I can get materials.  Of course, I need to level him and need materials for that as well.  Man, I have a lot to do, and I still have to get my house out of escrow.

If you send me a list, or you yourself can do a kin-wide list, of materials for making potions (of varying levels, im thinking focus on moral and power) we can see if we cant get a farm going. At the very least people will be aware that if they dump in materials, they may pull out potions =)  2 birds one stone.

I'm about done Master Scholar with Sigis, I'll drop off all the low-level mats I've got left.

I didn't really think about making potions as I tend not to use them. I've been mostly making dyes, giving some away, selling some.

I don't use them either, but hey, apparently some do?  Me, if I am using a potion I'm probably about to die anyway.

I, eat them like candy. I just figured it would be a good thing to stock in the kinhall. *shrug*

I have been told that you die a lot also. :awesome_for_real:

He's too busy looking at the timer for his next hit of potion to pay attention to mobs!

I choose to be a Yeoman, that I may make the food.

I'll be able to give you something useful for your level... um... in a few weeks.

/hijack

Say I played the game 5 months ago on a trial key. When I log into my account on the website it says I can buy the game + moria for 10 bucks and it comes with a month free. Does that mean I can play my old trial account for a month free, and get the game + moria for only 10 dollars? Or does the free month only apply to new accounts?

Log into your account. the trial. Then buy the game for 10$, done. You should get the free time.

Wife and I made it to 60 last night.  Nice ding!


These are our first toons, and largely we're content complete in the game, except for Moria Lower, including several instances and East Angmar and its raid zones (along with Helgorod, Annuminas etc).

All in all, I think it was a good approach, but I'm glad things picked up.  It's not too good to be below the cap in an MMO too long.  But at least we have a lot extra traits we won't have to grind.  So, we took longer, but still satisfied.

Grats!  :star:

Got my Brandywine character up to 20, and Master Journeyman cooking.

She died for the first time at 19 in LL, running from a swarm of goblins 1-3 levels under her. As she ran she was whittled away by DoTs. All my heals had been used, I had to sit there and watch her die. I've never managed the "didn't die by 20" trait, but this is the second character I've had die within a half level of the 20.

got to SM Scholar a few days ago and we've started to try and

1) do the trait grind
2) Angmar
3) finish class quests

it's incredible how much stuff they have in Angmar.  And it sucks that you still need a solid group for Uru, CD or that other place (never been to the Rift).  Sad too all the work doesn't you any XP or item XP.  Still some cool things to see.

Now that Soln's mentioned it, I just realized that Angmar east of the Watcher line is the only part of the landscape I've never visited.

Technically, I've only visited the fungal portions of Moria in the Durin's Bane flashback.

Subbed.  It was either this or EQ2 again.  FR is played out.
At level 24 I have cleared North downs and Low lands of solo quests.  Is there another area?
My quest book is filling up with group quests.  I want to do them but I don't feel confident enough to put together pugs.

We can clear some out for you this weekend. If ya want.

Clearing solo quests in Lone Lands and North Downs should EASILY put you over 30 at least - must be missing some quest hubs or something? If not Evendim/Trollshaws is the next progression, but they will require you to be over 30.

no one new to the game please don't take offense to this, but make an effort to group -- if only to duo.  Your leveling will at least be x1.5 faster.  And people do respond to general quest requests in GLFF since there are so many alts out there atm.

I get all my PUGs from LFF, I don't tread into GLFF.  Of course, I duo with my wife most of the time too and we still skip a lot of the fellowship quests like that bullshit up in Garth Agarwen.

What I did when the high-end LL mobs turned aqua is I went into Trollshaws and did some yellow/orange quests over there, worked my way to Rivendell and did pretty much all of the quests there and then went to Evendim and started on the Tinnundir hub.  I don't expect this problem to be fixed until the next pre-Moria revision is released.

EDIT to ask a silly question of tazelbain: You did all of the Ost Guruth quests and are still lv24?

Good bow drop in there for your hunter.

That's fantastic, too bad I can't dig through all of those elites.

That whole area can fuck right off.  The only thing that entire place is good for is that the external section (not the GA instance itself) is a good place to farm expert level scholar materials once everything there turns gray.  There are one or two decent rewards from some of the quests, but they are almost exclusively a result of multi-tier group quests where it would be much easier just to move on to higher level zones and get your good stuff there.

That's pretty much the downfall I see of all the Fellowship quests. Unless you get run through the instance by a couple way overlevelled people, it's just not worth the effort. Even GB rewards, though awesome for the level, aren't worth the hassle of taking a level appropriate group through a long (poorly mapped and confusing, but that's a separate isssue) tedious dungeon. And the Cool Lewts in the Angmar group quests? Trivialized by early Moria quests.

I really don't know the names of these places.

Ya, I didn't know about that ranger,elf or dwarf hubs in North Downs and the Brown wizard town had all orange+ or group quests.  

So I was able to knock out a dozen or so group quests.  GB was a pain as noted else where.  I think waffel was in that group until he d/c.  I am not sure group quests are worth it xp wise but "see the content" it was alright.  Having found the new hubs in ND. I am 28 and have plenty of quests for the time being and probably going to head back to LL for 1.2.2 tonight.

I think the only part of Book 2 that gave us trouble was the last chapter.  I'm glad I did it, though, since it was entertaining but being bugged toward the end nearly caused us to :rageguy:.  Then it dumps us out into the GA hub, whereupon my wife says in /f "What the fuck are you doing, come on, let's go" and I haven't been back.

wife and I were able to complete Bks 11 and 12 over the weekend with a dedicated PUG.  God, there's 15 more!  and 7, no 8 books for Moria.  Sigh.

A bunch of the Moria books are short/soloable. 1-3&7 are entirely soloable.

Got Dwuli from lv24 to lv29 by way of cherrypicking North Downs quests this week.  Currently I'm slumming the ruins on the west side to collect scholar reagents.  When I get tired of that (soon) I will go east of Esteldin and get on some more quests.  I am gunning for lv35, and when I get there it will be time to backtrack and do deeds.

Grinding traits in the Misty Mountains.  Is there any way to make this pleasant?  Is there nothing more sad than watching a GRD take 5 minutes to kill an elite 15 levels lower than her? 

You should be tearing through -15 elites like even con sigs. Might want to check your gear/traits. I know this, as I did the same thing a bit ago until I got bored and went to do other things with my Guard.

Or put out a lff call, lots of people grinding mm deeds most times.

Did 26 through most of 29 last night on east side of the downs, mostly thanks to the much improved perfomance of having a really nice set of armor for once, similarly will be doing deed grinding once I get to  mid 30's and also feeding Bloodworth's addiction to treated wood.

What is the name of your fake person?

F13 people should really put the F13 name in the note for each toon/alt. So people like me can keep up.

Arasi. I should be on some tomorrow. I'll stick f13 on the notes...

I got Dwuli to 30 last night.  I had sent the family off to Father's Day dinner without me, but they came back super-early and I didn't level until 2am.  I have a few of the east-ND quests left to do (not counting the fellowship ones), after which I suppose I will go to Evendim, starting in Oatbarton.

Runekeepers are like Super Saiyans if you get your casting order right.

Spent the weekend mostly trait grinding and crafting on Crombert, awaiting book 8 patch and bree revamp.

Finished out bree deed traits (up to the basic level 15 stuff - no old forest flowers, orcs, barrows stuff)
Finished everything in the Shire - including Pies and Mail
Good chunk of Erud Luin done - probably finish them out tonight for the most part (except Sarnur obviously)

I have once or twice considered going back to do any new Ered Luin quests, but >_<

Last night I went to Ered Luin just to grab my favorite shirt (Thrasi's Shirt) for outfit purposes.

Thrasi no longer gives it as a quest reward.

:heartbreak:

Could it now be one of the ones they moved to outfitters (as in the visuals)?

Got a screen shot of the shirt?

I was expecting whole new quest lines for the dwarf starting area....but really didn't find that.  A little more streamlined, but no substantial changes as far as I could tell.  I got my "Defender of Erud Luin" or whatever the final quest deed trait was, and not really planning to do any more quests.  The elf starting area could be vastly different, but I have never made an elf, so I couldn't even comment on that.

Same here, finished up trailing  west side quests and ran around picking up banners. I think we're in a similar situation, although I've gotten a decent  chunk of the Oatbarton stuff done.

Well, you know how plans are.  I got a orange quest to go talk to Aragorn in Rivendell, and so I decided to do that since I wanted to turn in some Scholar Guild trinkets anyway.  On the way there I noticed the elf at the Last Bridge had a gold ring since I hit 30 and I decided to give that a try.  I did the Aragorn-Elrond-Aragorn bit in Rivendell and the guy at the entrance who says to go see Barachiel and Whatshisname in that other elf camp north of the road.  Grabbed a horse to Ost Guruth and jumped off at the Bridge, then did the Trollshaws entrance quests.  I'm about halfway to 31 now from orange quests and orange boars.  I'm going to see if I have the runes to go into the ruins and find the dwarf even though it's a fellowship quest... now that I am thinking about it I think I get bum-rushed when I find him.  Might just stick to solos. :oh_i_see:  So, I'll be in the Trollshaws if anyone needs me.

I think my wife and I put in 20 hrs of play time from Fri-Sun night.  We got 2/6 radiance gear (Skumfil and GS), half of CD finished, all of our lvl 45 item class quests done, some traits grinded, and a few basic Moria quests complete.  Plus a quick FT run.  Awesome times.  


BIG PIMPIN HOBBIT YO (http://my.lotro.com/character/elendilmir/pavo/)

STYLIN WIT MY JUBUT-RUD  (http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Armour:Jubut-rud)HAW  

Ran out of Trollshaws quests that I qualified for, so I gave the perfect boar tusk to Dingdong in Rivendell, did the lv30 RK quest in Othrikar, rode to Tinnundir and started up all of the quests that I am fairly sure are not going to give me pathing problems.  Of course, I'm hoping that won't be a problem tomorrow night.  Also I got to 31.

Also I managed to forget to bind in Tinnundir, twice.

I haven't seen anything like at the light armor or outfitters in the starting towns.

This is close to it:

(http://www.gamerdna.com/uimage/i7A26BK/thumb/possessed.jpg) (http://Stormwaltz.gamerdna.com/images/i7A26BK/possessed)

EDIT: NM, I found something of the same design at Ost Guruth. It's a Dwarf Padded Jacket.

Does the Oathbreaker come with?

finished all of 2.5.5 with a great PUG in one night.  Christ on a crutch that was hard.  End of Bk5.

Working under the principle that Saerthir is a main like Mayda, I've been obsessively doing the summer events for titles and tokens. I decided last night that I'm going to skip getting a house until I've over 50, because paying rent was a bitch for a long time. I don't want to grind just to pay rent. That means I'm pretty much done with token collection. I've got enough for the summer horse, and everything else of interest is useless to me. I spent the tail end of last night sweeping up greys in Ered Luin for traits.

Mayda, on Gladden, had banked 200 summer tokens last year (I was really into the fishing then...). I took her out once to buy all the new decorations I wanted, and I'm otherwise skipping the event on that server.

I am now Ingur the Undying! \o/

Now I can start playing the game without hyperventilating every time I get 2 mobs on me at once.  :oh_i_see:

After playing for over a year, I met my first weirdo over lunch.

"Please stop raping me" :awesome_for_real:

Wow. That was hilarious.

I can't seem to find a dress I like for Dwuil.  I might have to have her be male.

So far, with Dwuli, I've done the Thorin's Hall lost items, the Party Tree lot items, and most of the fishing stuff.  I think I will just have to collect fireworks after the fishing is complete, then if I have enough tokens I'll go back to leveling.

With Fallia, we were working on V1B3.  Failed Defense of Trestlebridge, might have to get a third in there since Nellie is a retard.  The boy came home from the grandparents early so he could play some games -- and thereby prevent me from playing LotRO, so I took him to Lowe's to get some light fixtures and almost made him help me install them.

Sunshine!  Now sleep.

Alright, with some help from the wife, I got from 33.5 to 35.0 and ended up with about five gold.  Did the horse quests (which did not seem so bad this time) and promptly traded my crap horse for a Lithe Festival pony.

After this we went to just past the Ram Duath and killed things... well actually my wife killed things while I healed her since everything in there is red to Dwuli.  I did the few quests I could for the earth kin, so next up it's just wide-open playing as I go back and catch up on things I missed out on in all the previous zones.

I've been struggling to find any time to play (I'm moving soon -- most of the weekends and evenings are spent on packing).

I got Saerthir from 25 to 27 over the weekend, gained access to superior ovens, and her wallet exceeded 1g for the first time. I cleaned up a handful of traits in Bree, and took did a bunch of green quests in North Downs.

I am still playing, but I too have had a hard time finding time to play. I just moved, and I have a few contracts to work on ATM.

And I can't find *anything* that doesn't look dorky on my lvl 35ish elf female!  I'm told there are some Lothlorien stuff that doesn't, but that's many levels away!
 

My wife seems able to find outfits she likes for her male elf (lv39), but all that stuff is apparently beyond me.  I have a nice dress for my female hobbit, a dwarf-make which I cannot remember where I got it.  Goes well with the flower tiara.

One nice thing about Moria/Lorien/Top Tier Crafted is that all the gear seems to go nicely together. ie, my mix of Sentinels/Noble/Quest armor looks like it's all reasonably matched, instead of clown shoes. Matching dyes do help that quite a bit though.

Got the Shire quests knocked out yesterday.  Not the crafting ones, I don't count those, but I got all of the other ones.

Next stop was Buckland since Halros sent me to The Prancing Pony and I saw some quest rings, so I'm starting on the revamped Breeland stuff from the west side.  I'll have to say that the whole Adso's Camp stuff makes more sense, or at least is better integrated with the zone rather than just an island of questgivers.  I'm also happy that Buckland now has something which leads you into it and especially that points out where the stablemaster is right away.  On the other hand, I'm not sure if I like the very-artificial feel of the kill-collect questgivers standing in trios around wagons.  It's a great improvement from a gameplay perspective but the way they stand there like mannequins... it was OK with the three people from Adso's camp near the front gate since they are there looking for help and investments and drumming up support for the new inn, but the three guys near the Old Forest tunnel entrance don't make me think they would really be standing there like that.  Still it is a large improvement in the flow.

Last night I got 2 of the non-f13s in the guild to group with me and bang out the 'Kill a metric assload of Trolls' deed in Trollshaws. Quite a bit of fun, +1 Zeal, and I'm going to try to do it one night a week on various toons. Some of the deeds are tedious due to low spawn, but for the high-spawn ones, should be good. And might get some people used to grouping.

If we can knock out any quests for people in the process, even better.

Finally did all of Urugarth last weekend, and actually did it on a character that was the proper level range (although most of my group wasn't).  Was pretty cool, but took hours to do.  Reminded me a lot of BRD in WoW with it's sprawling multi-winged layout.  Hoping to do Carn Dum this weekend to knock out the rest of my legendary trait items, but it's looking like it's not going to happen.

Carn Dum is really well done, one of my favourites in LOTRO.  Can be done in stages with lockouts - as I believe Uru can also be done.   You should know that Carn Dum is broken at the moment, as you cannot access everything.  Apparently it is fixed in an upcoming patch.

Welp, didn't get into Carn Dum this weekend, but did get my loremaster up to 59 and over to Lothlorien this weekend.  Stupid elves shooting at other elves, what has this world come to.  Got to up to the first rank of faction and into the outskirts of the city, still need to get high enough to get in the front gate.  Very pretty area though, and a nice change after being cooped up in Moria all weekend.

Hurray.  Finally saw the inside of Carn Dum, and cleared the whole place, including Mordrith.  Man is he an endurance fight, even at level 60.  I think I completely ran out of power twice, as a loremaster, and was potting and drawing power whenever I could.

Carn Dum is huge. like, really really big huge.

In Lothlorien, you can stand anywhere, point in any direction, and find a screenshot-worthy view.

Thanks to Grimst and Issa, my wife and I finished 1.3 on Sunday, just before the boy got home.  Once again, I'm not sure how anyone can do these epic stories until they are grey.  Besides the bullshit which is Freeing Dori, the group will have to make its way from Esteldin to Rivendell; that trip might as well be its own quest.

After the others passed out for the evening, I worked on crafting with Fatwing.  Metalworking is a pain in the ass.  Once I was done with that, I abandoned her to Thorin's Hall and went back to Dwuli who was still in Rivendell.

The funny bit about finishing Book 3 is that I haven't even started Book 2 with him.  I headed out of Rivendell, mostly confident that I could make the trip in one piece (level 38 RK) and found a perfect lynx pelt right away.  Soooo I too that back into Imladris and turned it in, but was unable to resist taking on a quest to kill snow lurkers in Misty Mtns.  Snow lurkers are very much like bog lurkers, but they are white.  In any case, I went and killed a bunch of shit in MM, made lv39, and took the stuff back to the elf who then sent me to talk to the head scholar (who isn't the head of the Scholar's Guild), who then wanted me to go get more artifacts.  So, yay for new area but I think I want to backtrack.  I also might want to wait for the revamp to do Book 2.  It's awesome how I'm just ahead of the wave here.

Unless you have a high level hunter with you (which there should now be tons of in Esteldin due to the new bounty quests), or are an elf with the Rivendell teleport deed unlocked, in which case it takes about 5 seconds.  But have no fear, chapter 4 is coming up with an all new way to make you hate life!  Stupid troll caves.

I managed to get all the way through 1.7 last night.  My kin up and decided they wanted to finish all of book one in the next week or so, so it looks like I might get to see the rest of the story finally.

Also ran the forges for the first time, and man, that's a fun arcadey type fight at the end there.

Troll caves aren't a problem, as much as "Legolas, aggro magnet" as he runs about annoying trees.

The troll caves are only annoying if you're of level where you have to fight them, then it's an overly long slugfest that just takes WAY too long, and then you have to do it two more times.

Dwuli made lv40 this past weekend, now I get to fast-travel to Rivendell which is great for scholars.  Also since my wife (Ellarran) is lv41, I don't have too many excuses to play Dwuli solo that don't involve Breeland somehow.  I wanted to go to Angmar but we ended up in Misty Mtns, which is good enough for me.

Just before the Summer Festival ended, I gave a cup of swill to that guy in Aughaire.  I have two or three drinks left to hand out and I expect I will be able to do so during the Fall Festival.  Currently they are sitting in my vault, which seems to be refrigerated since I also have some dace stored in there and nothing is rotting.

I also spent a little time decorating my house.  It is shaping up but still looks a bit like a college apartment.  With the new paintings, it looks more like the apartment you get when you get your first job.

You're missing one major accessory for an actual college apartment.

Seeing that picture, can I just say how much I hate that they flipped around the staffs when carried on the back? It looks ridiculous because Turbine didn't fix the anchor points so they just sit... weirdly.

That's a lot of fucking buttons.

Welcome to Loremaster land.  But to be fair, there's a lot of extraneous stuff in my bars.  All my teleports are there, more potions than I really need, food, my cosmetic pets, crafting tools, etc.  The bars look to be a bigger mess than they are in my head.  A lot of the stuff is situational stuff I manually click and aren't bound to buttons, and some of it is situational stuff I swap around to other keys as needed (stun removal, corruption removal, certain debuffs).

Well, I'm not going to show my UI now, it would be embarrassing.  I don't even have a mod.

To go completely off topic... intentionally... neener... What the hell is the LM class supposed to be? I've been trying to figure it out since i started playing. Its supposed to be a CC class but doesn't seem to have much of it. It reads and at least during low levels, plays like a class duct taped together from various parts. What do you do when you're in a group?

CC, support, debuffer, last string healer, off tank.

You get a good deal of non-instant CC at mid levels, as well as a mez or two, depending on what you are fighting. The bear can be used as a tank in the pinch, the linx is a single target high damage, the crow is a ranged debuff and shadow buff.... The other pets i'm not sure yet. They are great solo if you dont mind being strategic and slow at the killing. Also has healing and power transfer ability's for support, as well as a resurrection ability usable outside of combat with a item requirement.

In a group, they can fill just about any gap, they are like a glue that holds together the not typical group makeup.

YMMV.

That still sounds like a bunch of different things connected together by duct tape. Not that I can't see the potential.


So like a Captain? Not part of the tank/healer/dps triumvirate but a class that makes the core group better or fill roles temporarily as needed?

Mine isn't modded, that's raw Turbine power there, baby.

To answer Brogarn:
You're mostly crowd control, debuffs, and a mana battery.   The amount of crowd control I have at 60 is borderline insane, but part of it is my spec.  I have 1 mez, 1 instacast aoe root, 1 short delay recastable aoe root, 2 stuns, 2 aoe stuns, 1 aoe undead daze, an aoe on the ground snare, and a pet I can use as an offtank. 

The eagle pet has an in combat power regen buff for groups, and does more flanks than the other pets for soloing (which lets me self heal or do more damage).  The sabertooth is an odd pet, it does frost damage, and can potentially open a fellowship maneuver.  The bog thingy is similar to the eagle, but more damage without the power buff.  edit:  also, the eagle and bog lurker pet are both legendary traits, so not everyone has them

This said, be aware that loremaster is right at the bottom of the dps totem pole along with burglars.

edit:  and as a tangent, pretty much every class in game is a hybrid of some sort.  Captains, Loremasters, and Burglars are pretty much just the epitome of it, and this is why I love the game.  You're never really pigeon holed.

Captain is the other odd one, yes. Its not really a fill the role, i look at it more like a Runekeeper and a captain/loremaster = Minstrel. But, again, this really depends on the group makeup.

Turbine did a good job of making all classes hybrids with overlapping stuff. I have seen a good number of classes really have about 3 roles they COULD do, with different degrees.

Yes, but the real utility (not just numbers to counter numbers) is high with those classes.

Oh, I'm not arguing, I know what I bring to the table.  It's why I leveled up with my wife's Hunter.  I make it so they don't hit her, and she kills them for me.

edit:  yeah, my brain isn't working today, sorry MBW.  Also, the debuffs are beyond huge if you trait for them.  I can pretty much cut a mob's dps by half and make it easier to hit, in addition to all the other bad things I can do.

I wasn't arguing either, sorry, just pointing it our for Brogarn  there.

My main is a hunter, and my girl is a bugler, heh, the bugler ability to start conjunctions/Heroic opportunity/Fellowship maneuvers makes it so we really never need a healer =)

As a totally subjective opinion, Lore-master is probably the awesomest class I've played. The shit you can pull of as a group with a good LM is absolutely insane and it has none of that "cycle these three skills until the boss is dead." In raids and groups you have between 10 and 15 really useful abilities.

Plus that the Sword and Staff legendary is the coolest trait in the game. :grin:

/gush

Lore-Master = Astromech Droid.

You can do damn near anything. Personally, I have my pet tank (I have two pet buffing traits equipped) while I sit back and stun/debuff.

Thanks for the replies, folks. I've just never been able to wrap my head around this class for some reason. It just feels clunky and slapped together to me in the lower levels. I think I might give it another go since my Minstrel is dedicated to a three man group I have with a couple of other buddies and I need something else to do. Frankly, I wish I could play the Minstrel all the time, but my group only gets together every now and then and I don't want to roll another Mini. I have a Captain and Warden, both at 31, but have stalled out with both. Can't put my finger on why, to be honest. Guess its time for another alt! Wee.

Well, another big problem with loremasters at low level is a large chunk of the debuff abilities are % based, and the numbers don't really seem noticable at low levels, so some people don't think they're worth using.  This changes significantly at higher levels.

/cast Fire-lore

Turbine from launch has had them listed as "Advanced".

When I play one I use those. As a long time MMO player, I certainly understand debuffs and their importance.

Thinking on it further, it might be the staff attack that throws me off and confuses me a bit. I understand the ranged DPS, crowd control, and debuffs. Its like an EQ Enchanter. But then you throw the staff swing in there and I go "uhh.. what?". So it confused me as to what I was supposed to be doing to be efficient and play the class well. Am I supposed to be mixing it up? What about PBAE attacks from mobs? Shouldn't I be way back? But I have this "SMACK" I can use. Do people even use it?

Then it all fell apart from there. I know... I'm weird. I just like things to be symmetrical and have synergy and "make sense". The staff swing was like the loose strand of a sweater. I pulled it and unraveled.

Staff Strike is actually the loremaster bread and butter attack at high levels for non-group situations.  It's low power cost.  If you trait for Improved Staff Strike, it does extra damage, and does light damage if your pet flanks.  You can get it on an even faster recycle if you can get your hands on the right legendary item trait.  It starts doing absurd damage pretty fast.  Obviously, you don't want to be doing this against anything with pbaoe's, but that's not a trick Turbine abuses as much as Blizzard does.

Read through this thread if you want the details and the math, and to actually understand what I was just talking about:  http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=287383 (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=287383)

Melee DPS is quite important to an LM the way I play it.

Make sure you have a high-DPS staff at all times and slot the trait Master of the Staff. You're quite a bit more durable than one would expect from a cloth-wearer.

Also, use your Staff-strike when you get flankings from your pets (turn on combat indicators and wait for the purple arrows around the mob and the "boing" sound) and you'll practically double your DPS that hit (additional damage plus it becomes Light damage instead of Common), and if it crits at the same time it's really great DPS. Also, if you cast Sign of Battle: Wizardry when the mob is flanked by a pet, you will get a small heal which is very handy since our normal heal can't be target self.

Sweet. Thanks!

Yeah, I love my LM, the class's complexity and potential was definitely one of the high points of lotro while I still played. Also, Ard's screenshot is kinda tame, I had -all- of the easily reachable keys bound to skills on my LM [1-9, shift1-5, alt1-5, ctrl1-5, q, e, z, x, c, r, f, v, two side mouse buttons, and the six G-15 keys], and still had a ton of them left over (consumables, pet summons, tracking, etc). My LM wasn't even level 50.  :awesome_for_real:

At low levels, the LM plays mostly like a squishy nuker/melee with debuffs, though staff strike is your most efficient attack no matter what (and since all mobs will be trying to close in on you, it makes sense). You definitely want to put the 'command' debuff on everything you're fighting, along with the fire-lore when it's a tougher mob (+ your raven's debuff / air lore on ranged). Soloing raven is best due to a ton of flanking (which is great with improved staffstrike), but I eventually switched to lynx because lynxes do an obscene amount of damage to single mobs. An alternative 'safe' (but much slower) tactic is to kite the enemy with keeping snares up and have your pet do most of the damage while you run around and use your stuns when they aren't immune. You can reliably solo elites that way (unless they have ranged attacks or spells, in which case you're screwed).

In groups [mostly referring to instances], a LM can do a lot of things, but mez is one of the most important ones. I always kept one of the more dangerous mobs mezzed in a pull, kept everything else debuffed, tossed clutch heals to the healer or the tank if they got a nasty burst streak, kept the tank stun immune, cleansed debuffs, and assisted nuking on the main target. It's a very involving role, but very fun imo, and never really gets stale (since you can always switch it up). The most annoying thing is having to participate in fellowship maneuvers while doing all that, since you are typically targetting something other than the main mob AND you need to be in melee range to use your offensive fellowship moves.

During the usual Sunday session, my wife and I did Thief Taker's Bane and Tomb of Elendil.  I really thought Elendil would be a horror story but we did it anyway and just had a few deaths and only one time did my wife die and retreat.  I passed out one time but luckily a LM can bring people back, too.  In any case, we had some tough times since no one of us had done it (three forty-plus and a sixty LM) but once we figured out we needed to clear out the discrete gangs before a leader called them all together, we did much better.  Also I got better at healing in hectic situations, and judicious use of paralysis and other neutral-attuning skills, which helped tremendously against Midboss.  The boss, we squeaked by since I was swarmed by Baby Bosses and my wife died pulling them off of me, but the LM and Captain finished it off within seconds of my wife passing out... lucky since she was the DPS. :oh_i_see: