f13.net

So I've just loaded up LOTRO to have a play about with it, and lo and behold, all my legendary items and all their bullshit has been refunded since I last played. Unfortunately, the whole LI system is something I just find off-putting, since I don't have the time or interest to theorycraft my way through any or all of that bullshit, or run back and forth to the blacksmiths or whoever the fuck it was that breaks down the old ones and so forth.

The whole fucking overcomplicated and convoluted system makes me want to log off in fact, which is a shame, since I've only just logged on and I'd like to just play the game a little. Is there's a really simple and easy idiot's guide to these things anywhere on the net?

Yes, faced the same deal not too long back.

There is a decent 1 or 2 page guide on the lorebook.

Shorter version:   Load your points into DPS first. Then load up the settings, runes, gems, and other legacies with whatever looks the best for you from what you have. Go kill stuff.

I don't know what's going on with the new system, but I decided the best course of action was to not overthink it and just have fun.

Basically, the new system is much more forgiving, as you can, over time, alter or improve most every stat on your LI not to your liking.  So if the whole thing seems too byzantine and convoluted for you to worry about, you can pretty much ignore the bulk of it without really gimping yourself at all, and allow yourself to learn the details organically over time.  As a start, just follow what Nyght said and you're covered.

The part that makes my eyes glaze over is the chain of material conversion.  I'd do well to see a flowchart of how the materials move through the system.  I know I get LIs as drops, and from turn-in items.  I can then break these into runes... I think.  Need picture.

Let's see if I can describe this simply.  You get LIs from drops, and from 'tokens' that also drop in the same fashion.  The only difference is that, well, tokens are better, because you can choose what kind of item you want from it when you turn it in.

Relics, which you can slot in to your LI, are 'crafted' by breaking down LIs at a relic-master.  The higher the level of the LI before you break it down, the more relics, and the higher the quality of relics, you get.  LIs leveled to the same 'tier' will give you the same amount of relics, so the only times you want to break down a LI are levels 2, 11, 21, 31, etc.  The most efficient point to break them down is 11.

Higher level relics can be obtained by combining lower level relics together.  This also takes place at a relic-master.

Breaking down a LI at 30 or above will also net you a legacy scroll.  Basically, you choose which legacy on the item you want to keep, and you can then apply that one to future LIs you obtain.

if you have the cash, buy a bunch of relics and mats off the LotRO store to play with if you are unsure about the system.  You can still screw up and lose items easily.

For example, when you slot a relic, they no longer unslot automatically on reforge.   Also, they no longer unslot at an item's cap.  I haven't played in a few months, so someone should confirm the latest.


tinfoilhatman says these designs help Turbine get cash goodness, but who knows?

There's a Turbine Points item to unslot all the stuff from a weapon I think, afaik that's the only way to do it. Relics don't seem hard to come by though so it doesn't seem like much of a tragedy if you lose some random tier 3s you had slotted in a weapon you're not leveling with or whatever.

Note you also get a big fat heritage rune from deconstructing a high leveled item, I have not figured out if that is the same at each tier (11, 21, 31, etc.) or if it is just a flat % of the xp the item has.

Like Yegolev, I need to see a visual flowchart of it to understand it. I also have no intention of spending cash money in the lotro turbine store to try and figure out their convoluted system. Hey, I may as well send the money to you instead!

In the meantime, I'm considering buying the Isengard pack this weekend, and will probably continue to ignore my existing, equipped legendary items while punching goblins and such.

I'm glad to see you've picked at a thread which you can pull until it turns into another round of raging against LOTRO.

I thought that kind of behaviour was only acceptable in the SWTOR thread.

It's covered pretty well here: http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Legendary_Items_Guide

Basically, just toy around with the system by leveling and de-constructing LIs you find, and then experiment with the resulting parts you get. You'll catch on pretty quickly, and it's unlikely that building the best min/max LIs will really matter with Isengard and 10 levels just a few months away. It feels like the LI system is a bit bulkier now, with more scrolls, relics, and ways to create them, but once you get the hang of it the system is much better than it was before.

you're an idiot. What it comes down to is that I just want to be able to jump on and play the game without worrying about the sub-game of levelling up and traiting and maxing out my items.


I'll probably buy the Isengard pack with money to get the cosmetic outfits and horses and items etc, but I won't waste TP on items to experiment with. I'd rather use those to expand inventory and buy pretty cloaks, etc when these things are on sale.



Thanks Rokal.

Not quite the flowchart that would be ideal, but it's at least slightly helpful. Unfortunately, being a 7,000 word document, I'm not likely to read much of it or care enough to take much of it in. The whole system seems needlessly complex, unfortunately. I guess it gives people who enjoy theorycrafting something to do.

I have a bunch of item XP tokens I'd been saving. Is it worth dumping these into the items I have now, or should I save them for down the line?

In that link, skip to "Identifying Legendary Items" and then read from there until "Relics: Settings, Gems, and Runes". Most of the guide can be skipped, and those sections are all you really need to pay attention to.

Most of the item XP scrolls/tokens only work on items "up to level x". So, burn them now, as it's unlikely you'll be able to use them on LIs from 66-75.

Like I said, you might just want to forgo the guide or any sort of tutorial and just equip some LIs, deconstruct them when they get to a high level, and see what happens. This isn't really something you need to research, experiencing it first-hand is pretty effective. If anything, the system is more forgiving than before, as you can't really invest in an LI that is completely useless. Every item has some worth, even if it's only found when you deconstruct it.

What I did on my champion was just equip one decent LI weapon/accessory, and then level other LIs and deconstruct them to improve or change my equipped LI weapon/accessory. It's only as complex as you need it to be.

Hm, ok. I'll check that out in a bit.

Another question - is it always beneficial/advised to be using a Legendary weapon over a "normal" weapon? My wife's hunter has a hunter's legendary offhand club in her bank, and is instead using a blue crafted item, that seems to massively outstrip the LI. We're both level 56, so I'm aware that there's always something better, later, but at the same time I don't want to be massively gimped.

Usually the LI will be better, since legacies that are leveled high can give you bonuses like +50% crit damage, or a big damage boost to one of your main abilities, etc. Of course, if the non-LI weapon you are using has like +40 dps on the LI weapon you have, you'll probably be better off with the non-LI.

LIs are almost always better, unless the non-LI is considerably higher level item.

No, I'm an asshole. I remember however many years it was of you in *every single LOTRO thread* complaining about the game and shitting them all up. I'm just seeing visions of a month from now when everyone's buzzing about the pros and cons of the expansion in measured fashion and you zooming in like a divebomber to shit them all up. You're free to try and prove me wrong but I don't think I will be.

Years? No, my love. The game's only been F2P for about 9 months, and until about a week ago I hadn't posted in this forum for at least a couple of months.
Asshole? No, you oversell yourself. You're simply a mildly annoying fuckwit trying to take enjoyment in shitting up and derailing this thread "that I've picked at", (despite starting it).
I was quite annoyed with a number of the changes, so I criticised aspects of the F2P game. I'd look up the posts and dates to prove your stupidity, ("years", "every single thread", lol, etc) but frankly I can't be bothered. Prove you wrong? Again, you overestimate how much I care about you or your opinion.

Now go find yourself a nice car fire and fulfill your destiny.  :oh_i_see:



The non-legendary in question Has basically tons of everything stat-wise over the LI including health (or whatever HP are called here), which has next to nothing. I'd link them so you could see, but I'm not sure how (or if there's a Wowhead-alike database for lotro). Being 56 I'm wondering if it might just be a better/simpler idea to keep using these until we hit 60 and replace them with a new one when we get there. Problem is that not really understanding the system, I'm not sure when to upgrade them rather than just reforge, so I would almost end up using the same ones till we hit 65 or whatever the new Isengard max is.

Wouldn't worry me too much, but I'm fairly sure that would entail gimping ourselves pretty badly...

Maybe you should just level up the legendary in one of the slots provided until it's better than the item you're using?  Those leveling slots do still exist don't they?

You can do that without wielding it? Like I said, I haven't played for months, and I'm really just getting to grips with the new system (and was never a master of it before for that matter).

edit - ok, I figured out how to do that. Now it works if I keep it in my inventory even if not equipped, right? How does xp get split up between the various LI items and my character?

Item XP is separate from character xp. Read the dark blue note after a kill or quest sometime. The Item XP is split among the number of LI you have slotted the same way base xp is split among a group. That is to say, there is a multiplier for more then 1.

Yeah, you pretty obviously don't care.

EDIT: Christ, see what you've done? You've made me as tedious as you.

I'm just saying, I can see it now: you're going to be right back complaining about every single annoyance like it's the end of the world in four months. And I'll put down five e-bux that it starts with the LI system.

Yep, I knew it was split between the LIs, I just wasn't sure if the LI xp was also split off my character xp total per kill.

MA - I doubt I'll be actively playing in 4 months. Lifetime sub = no pressure felt to play constantly. I just bought Isengard tonight for both myself and my wife. I figure I'll play around with it for a couple of weeks while I'm on break from work, then put it down again for the most part when I go back. Not enough time for MMOing when work is on these days. If I'm lucky I'll be logging on for a couple of hours a week at most. You should probably ease off the caffeine, though.

Keep in mind the crappy LI that seems like it doesn't have any stats will get better as it levels, gaining new and higher rank legacies, and giving you more points to level the legacies and dps. Like others suggested, there is no down-side to keeping it 'equipped' in one of your LI slots, but just keeping it dormant in your inventory. You can toy around with it as it levels and see what the system is about, or deconstruct it when you find something better and use the resulting parts on your new LI.

like a lot of MMOs, you don't need to really care about LI's until the end game.  And then only if you really worry about min/maxing for raid/PvP/PvE.   The only genuine criticism I've heard against LI's now is that Turbine has relied on them too much for class balance, which I guess is kind of true depending on your experience.  For me, I just wish the LI's were a little more legendary, and not as common as rock chips in Moria.  Making them disposable as craft items for relics really  sucks out the esteem I think the system was originally hoping to inspire.  But again, they are mucho fun to level at 45+ since you do get a tiny bump in performance in PvE.

I agree, the system probably would have been better if you more often found pieces of LIs (like relics or shards), or broken LIs that could only be deconned. Would have made it feel a little more, well, legendary when you did find one, and it would make more sense within the context of the game (ruined places often have ruined weapons).

Then f13 would be caterwauling about how only the catasses have decent LIs.

Here's another renoob question - what are tasks?

I noticed the last 2 times I've played that all the stuff that used to be vendor trash now has "can be turned in for tasks" on it. SO I've kept them instead of selling, so I can figure out what they are and if I want to use them as turnins or sell them for money (which I have little of again).

Just a way of getting rep for all those obsolete factions, pre-50 factions. You can basically follow the logic to whatever faction is dominant in a given zone.

Personally, I take the cash unless there's a really rad horse I want.

I just sell it all. There's more than enough xp from killing/quests, I'd rather have the cash in general.

Thanks - the horses all seem to be much of a muchness really. Some look a bit nicer but there's not a whole lot of wow-factor in the LOTR horses compared to, say, WoW's menagerie of mounts - but I guess that's in keeping with the lore and theme. Even Shadowfax was a plain white horse that didn't even have a blanket, let alone a saddle! I got the Minas Tirith (?) premium horse awhile back with the extra speed and HP, and now with three Rohirrim horses on top of the summer and Winter festival ones.. probably not a big deal now.

still.. is there a site with pics of the various factions' horses?

AS A MATTER OF FACT!

The greatest mount website in any game, ever.

http://www.lotrosteeds.com/

What a load of fucking shit! The horses all look like arse, and they all need you to grind endlessly like some fucking cockmonkey, but then the greedy cunts roll out the "buy with Turbine points" ticket to suck the cash from your wallet, BUT THEN the ones you buy with real money don't have as many hit points as the others so you're forced to grind like an arsehole (that's you, you asshole!) anyway so as to not be gimped after they've already taken your money. Oh, and Legendary Items! I guess they suck, too!

So how was that? I hope it suited your needs.  :oh_i_see:

Anyway, thanks for the link. There's a few there I quite like the look of. Question though - when they list the price as 5g whatever - does it still cost that when you already have your horse licence? I recall it used to me much cheaper once you already had a horse licence - 1g or something like that. Is this the same or has it changed to become more expensive?

Either way, I'm quite happy with the Steed of Minas Ithil and the Rohirrim mounts for the meantime, but some of those others couldn't hurt.

5g on top of. All of the faction mounts cost. Prized Thorin's Hall Goat is all you'll ever need.

I've been playing this a bit recently and just got up to lvl 18.  During the course of play I had earned 95 turbine points so I unlocked riding and went and got a Summer Fest horse.  500 silver and a few minutes jumping styles for a nice looking 62% speed horse.

I don't feel like I need a whole stable so this is the horse I'll probably use until I quit the game for new shiny.

If you make it to Moria (i.e. level 50 or so), then you're going to want a goat. The Mines are no place for a pony.

Where's my Visio diagram of the LI system?

It needs one.  I bet Turbine has a nice one pinned up to a wall somewhere.

Why here it is. (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1217291/LotRO/LotRO%20LI%20Relic%20Grind.png)

Note: this is just the part where you loot LI's, level them up, break them into relics, and then combine the relics into higher-tier relics.
In other words, the parts of the system that I've used so far.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/bob_lick_lips.gif)

Is that Miner or Guard rep?

Is Level 11 a "sweet spot" to break them up? Any others?

It was 21 prior to the changes for effort to reward. 31 you get one of the item legacies as a scroll that you can slap on a new LI.

I suppose at first it's a good idea to get to 11 so you can get a swath of relics.  Or whatever they are.  I don't really have a ton of LIs.

11 or 31 is general rule of thumb.  If you want to swap LI's then you definitely want to go the 31 route.

Pre 65 I just nuke @ 11.  @ 65 I tend to go the 31 route - though may sstatr doing 51's so as to snag easy XP runes for when expansion drops.

The XP runes are limited to level 65 items so I don't know that that will help.

I've pretty much just been skirmishing and pvping for tokens hoping I can trade them in for goodies once the expansion hits.

11 is the sweet spot if you are just grinding relics, 31 is for if you are going for legacy scrolls.

Damn, most of our relics are hitting the 18-20 range, but we've also got a ton more to swap in at some stage. Is 21 still considered a good time to explode them so we can start running them to 11?

21 gets you more actual stuff than 11 does, 11 is just more efficient, so yeah 21 is totally fine.

Remember not to slot any gems/settings/runes in a LI you destroy.  You can only change them out at reforging at 10, 20, etc.

I like this (3rd?) change to the LI system.  Selecting you own legacies is more satisfying.  Plus I like the shard system and this encouraged me to get ride of 15 LI's that were clogging my vault. 

If you've got some LI's that are 18-20, you don't have to wait until 21 to deconstruct them.

According to this page (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Legendary_Items), you need less IXP to get a fresh LI from 1 to 11, than it will take to get one from 20 to 21. So if your goal is to get more relics faster, blow up your 18-20 LIs now, and slot some new ones.

edit: blow up the LIs, not the relics o.O

You can't take gems/settings/runes out at reforges anymore either, though there's a store item to do it.

Heh, of course.

To be fair, it's the one high profile thing they did where something formerly a very free, very natural game mechanic was turned into a nickel and dime store item.

Is this the point where I insert my rant?

 :why_so_serious:

Probably a good thing I didn't reslot anything into the LI's I'm using when I started playing again. New LI's to start using when we hit 60 in 1.5 levels/6 months. Then, it might take 10 or so LI levels to get them to a usable state.

Maybe. I dunno, I couldn't get worked up about it. They give you so many relics now and you have more control over what you get. With the old system, I'd probably get pretty annoyed since you were at the mercy of RNG and there was no guarantee that the awesome top tier relic you had was going to be replaced.

It isn't really worth getting worked up about, yeah. Because you can use shards to turn relics into other relics now you can get the specific exact relic you want anyway, so its not at all a big deal if you used some random level 4 relic in your leveling weapon and can't get it back.

it's hard to understand why Turbine thinks this new LI grind is positive.  Maybe cash flow positive.  Design wise I thought it was a tenet not to make all players perform a playstyle -- not everyone wants to be a crafter, which is what the LI grind turns you into.   

Eh, it isn't like you have to skill anything up to do it? Unless you're talking about the 4th relic slot I guess.

true and it is voluntary.  I dunno, as a design it's just un-beautiful to me and has too many impacts on the game -- LI's drop off trash, get traded in like so many empty bottles -- that it doesn't work for me in a Middle Earth game.

I agree with the aesthetic argument. LIs were nothing like what I pictured and now, even though the system is way better in terms of mechanics, it's too immersion breaking. It's just... out there. It's the single most WoW thing in the game, screaming LOOK AT ME I AM GAME MECHANICS WITH NO WINDOW DRESSING HEY LOOK! It's jarring.

Still, I think they're basically in a corner now on LIs. They can't just make them go away because they're *still* more interesting than Nameless +1% Power Weapon Y. And people do like cycling through weapons. I just wish it had more elegance.

Yeah I agree, it is pretty jarring from an immersion standpoint. It is much worse in that sense than any system I can think of in WoW, actually.

I think the worst part of it isn't the mechanical aspect of level this, break down that, etc., etc., it is the fact that 'legendary' weapons drop at a ridiculous rate, and instead of being treated like special heirlooms the vast majority of them are melted down for scrap. This is not really 'right'.

To be fair, I don't think the books took into account people setting up apartments and a shopping mall in Moria.

We fight the forces of Mordor with the LI system we have not the one we want.

Started dinking around with this because, hey, it's free and I've got an account attached to Mines so why not. 

Why am I seeing L65s running around my L9 noob zone inviting me into fellowships? Is this some LI grind thing?

I wouldn't mind if they didn't get all pissy that I won't turn on a microphone when they invite me.

No idea. They will get about nothing from a level 9.

They might be doing trait deeds. Killing 150 mobs or whatever.

Yeah, that's probably it. Offering you a free deed and some xp to tag along.

In which case, don't get pissy at people who don't use a mic.

Is your character female? That might be why.

PUGS are getting more and more mic use.  Its annoying.

I get the why, but still annoying.  Damn kids and their fancy technology.

Elves are HAWT.

Hm that might be it.  I can't tell, though, it's an elf.  :awesome_for_real:

It was down to elf or dwarf hunter when I'd originally made the char and I decided to go with elf because the dwarf stuff had bored me to tears in beta.   Then I picked female because it was less ugly than the male who I couldn't identify with.

The dwarf stuff has more or less completely changed since beta (actually pretty much all the starter experiences have) just so you know!

They seem to have changed since a year ago as well, actually.

Having just leveled a new character from scratch to about ready to leave moria, I can tell you that nearly every zone has been touched or updated since last year, and certainly since Mirkwood and Moria releases. Some places quests have been dropped. Everything seems easier with reduced mob densities generally. Level 58 today likely with about 7.5 days /played. Its quick if you know your way around.

Restarted my Hunter in Evendim.  VERY improved zone with actual quest hubs and insta-travel across the lake.  Booyah!  Then went to Angmar, Trollshaws and Misty Mountains all of which need updating.  But at 47, today I went to Eregion and gained an entire level.  Booyah!

If I level up another toon, it would be Breelands, Lone Lands, Evendim, (stagger thru the saggy part of the game), then Eregion, Moria, etc.

LI's are still a goofy system "Hey I found a legendary weapon!  Melt it down!" is not Tolkienesque, but it's improved where you actually get core class legacies on your LI's. 

Ya and even better for people who dont like a specific starter zone, at some point they gave everyone the stable locations at every starter location as a freebie. So if you don't like the dwarf area (still a bit weak imo) you just hop on the horse once you exit the intro and head for bree or the shire and start your life as an expatriate. Beats hell out of release where I remember having to run my dwarf to Bree.