My plan for my F2P Turbine Points

So I posted this question a couple days ago (the poll is still open) but I figured I’d share my plan.  I’m expecting to have at least 5000 Turbine points just counting the Loyalty rewards, but I know I will also get more for the various new deeds that are implemented for Reputation as my 3 mains each have a quite a few factions at kindred rank.  Initially I plan to focus on Captain, Minstrel, and Warden but am sure that my Champ (more about her later) will get some attention too.

I know that the Wardrobe will be a big help to offload some of my storage issues but currently I’m using the Shared Storage as an extension of a couple characters vaults so I will have to end up getting some more Vault space.  I really want to get to a point where I can use shared storage as a replacement for mailing items between toons, but currently it is overflow 😦

On my Captain and Warden I’ll be finishing off Zeal to Rank 10 which is a bit more painful on my Captain but certainly worth it.  They’ll also both be getting a bank space update as their banks are packed and I need the space for crafting.

My Captain and Minstrel are also pretty low on a couple Virtues but mainly Empathy and Innocence so a big chunk of my points will go to max those out.  I will probably look and make sure there aren’t any low hanging traits there that I can grind in game, but Innocence is not one of my favorites to grind out.

The virtues that I’m focusing on I’m doing for two main reasons.  First off, melee defense and armor value are universally important and make a pretty substantial and measurable difference to your characters’ survival.  The second is that in all honesty, they’re a tad painful to grind out as those are mostly quest deeds and even worse they’re the top end of the tiered reward system for quests so I’d have to do 40 some odd quests in a zone to get the virtue.

Hopefully after all that I’ll then have enough leftover points to get at least the riding skill on my Champ such that I can avoid that riding quest 😉  And I might buy a better horse as I’m a bit poor from trying to power through Scholar and Weaponsmith.

After all that, my priorities for my 500 point allowance and whatever else I earn are:

• More Shared Storage
• Stat Tomes
• Larger Wardrobe – I might not need this as I know I have similar items many times across my toons
• Virtues for my Champ
• Cosmetic Items
• Housing Items

But once I go through and clean up all my vaults and such to take advantage of the Wardrobe I might find that all I really need (or want might be a better word) to get are the stat tomes.

So far though, the results of the poll show that I”m quite in the minority in my thought process 🙂  But, if you’re thinking like me, go vote and help me prove to myself that I’m not crazy.

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Good Warden End-game Gear

This will probably have some spill-over for the other classes as well but I wanted to start keeping track of not only some of the better gear options but where some of these things drop.  The forums are a great resource for this kind of information but sometimes it can be hard to find and even lost due to forum wipes.

The armor sets are a little easier to keep up with and follow, but I do have some spreadsheets for Wardens, Captains, and Minstrels comparing the various sets statistically and visually.

When it comes to jewelry and cloaks it gets a little bit harder for 2 main reasons.  First off there’s just a lot more variety in these areas with crafted, drops, quest rewards, etc that all can be viable in certain cases.  But probably the tougher part is that many of these are random boss drops that don’t always drop so it can be hard to not only track them but remember where they dropped from.

I will have a separate page on my blog for this information here, in a similar fashion to how I’m archiving forum posts..

And for comparisons, if you’d like to see what I’m currently wearing you can look at the MyLOTRO pages for my Warden, Captain, and Minstrel.

Most of the information below is from the following thread on the forums – Best in Slot Discussion and there’s also some other good stuff over on the Codemasters Forums. In addition there’s another good resource over on the LOTRO Gear site.

Finally, even though I’ve posted some other items that are coming with the F2P launch, I’ll add those in later in case they tweak them again.

Please let me know what I’ve missed 🙂

Earring

• Glowing Aureate Hoop of Combat – Crafted
• Tolloch – SG 3rd boss
• Bregloch – SG 3rd boss
• Ernil – Dungeons of Dol Guldur
• Certhloch – DN Mistress
• Diamond Stud – Igash in Grand Stairs
• Glowing Aureate Strand of Might – crafted

Bracelet

• Aglar-dor – HoC
• General Talug’s Gift – FG
• Insidious Cuff – Grand Stair
• Ninn-Ranc – Warg Pens
• Manadhechor – DN Mistress
• Lorechor – DN Istum
• Sergeant at Arms’s Armlet – rank 4 in Moors barter
• Peerless Turtle Shell Bracelet – crafted (with drop from Turtle)
• Glowing Aureate Armlet of Morale – crafted

Neck

• Necklace of the Wild Fire – Forges
• Tinc-Iaeth – HoC
• Mor-Gurth – SH HM
• Gond-Barad – BG LT Hardmode
• Warrior’s Greenwood Necklace – Crafted
• Glowing Aureate Strand of Might – crafted

Pocket

• Treasury Stone – Vile Maw
• Black Pearl – Vile Maw
• Memorial Plaque – FG
• Miniature Brass Anvil – HoC
• Painted Vane – GS
• Glass Flask – SG 4th Boss Hard Mode
• Guard’s Charm – Ally Standing with Iron Garrison Guards

Ring

• Ril-Mir – SG 4th boss
• Toringor – SG 2nd boss
• Glowing Aureate Band – Crafted
• Faeringor – DN Mistress
• Amber Ring – Forgotten Treasury
• Murb-khed – Vile Maw

Cloaks

• Pendevig-clog – Brumbereth on left side of Skumfil
• Cloak of Shadow and Flame – drop from last boss in Volume 2 6.8
• Saelchol – 1st boss of Warg-pens
• High Herald’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• High Officer’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• Heroic Noble’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• Lothlorien Stalker’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• Lothlorien Sentinel’s Hooded Cloak – crafted

Shields

• Superior Warden’s Shield of the Golden Host – crafted
• Superb Warden’s Shield of Lothlorien – crafted
• Bregram – Sword Halls
• Warden’s Shell Shield – Turtle Raid

Good Off-tanking post

There’s a really good post on the Guard forums outlining not only the idea of what off-tanking is but good tips and suggestions for actually doing it.  Chazcon from the forums does a great job of explaining things and I’ll admit I do struggle with this at times as I think in many cases it is easier for me to main tank as opposed to off-tanking.  Now this is a bit more focused on the Guardian, but there are a number of parts of it that are quite general in nature.

One of the big issues with this for me is communication. I’m sure if I was in a “static” group and knew the other tanks better this would be easier and of course being on voice chat also makes this even easier still.  But while PUG’ing, I’ll usually error on the side of more threat as opposed to sitting back and focusing on our other roles.

That’s on my Warden though, I find it much easier to off-tank on my Captain and probably will play a similar role on my Champion too as they’re just not set up to be main tanks and as such do better at burst agro control.  On my Captain, I’m mainly watching out for the squishies and tossing out a quick forced taunt to keep them safe until the tank can round up that mob or the group can burn it down.

In addition to posting the link, I’m also going to copy the content here and start a bit of a forum repository on this site for tanking purposes as I know we lost quite a bit of information with the previous forum purging.  I’m not sure of the best way to do this, but so far I’m just setting up another page on my blog for Good Forum Posts. But if folks have a better idea, feel free to let me know!

New Treasure Category on the Classic Skirmish Vendors

I saw a thread on the Minstrel Board about these new items and figured I’d go check them out.  The way it works is that each instance “cluster” now has a Treasure category for it that has various weapons, shields, and jewelry available for barter.  I’m a bit torn by this honestly as I do like the chance of randomness in instances but this does give a reliable way to achieve what you’re looking for.  For the most part, I’m ok with this split implementation they’re rolling out with F2P in that the current instances will be “random” and the level scaled instances will be more deterministic in their loot.  The other nice thing about this implementation is that you do have a list of what’s available as opposed to wondering if/where something drops.

There’s a bunch of drops there, so I’m just going to post some of the higher end gear.  I’m also not posting the various weapons as honestly I just don’t know if they’re viable compared to others since I haven’t looked at off-hand items at all.  I’ll have to do some more checking on the comparisons to my current gear but there are some nifty items.

The other cool thing is that they’re adding in the resist potions and food that were previously only available as a one-time quest reward for various Helegrod instances.  I always saved these as I figured there’d be a good time to use them, but currently you can only get a fixed amount and they’re BOA.

Annuminas

Mirhigil – Necklace – intriguing for a melee class

Golden Spear-Head – Pocket  – Attack and Resist boosts

Feredilloch – Earring – interesting item, not sure who this would fit

Silver-Strand Necklace – another decent melee class item

Armband of Giants – struggling with this one, might be a tank or Minstrel item

Ring of Fulfillment – Looks nifty for a moors Minstrel

Wall of Annuminas – I know little about heavy shields but the 805 Morale heal looks handy

Arastan – Medium Shield – Nice ICPR and some other interesting stat bumps

Flame-Ward Shield – Warden Shield – No ICPR but some other nice stat bonuses

Eregion

Mentors Earring – A highly desired earring for many classes because of the crit boosts.

Tattered Bookmark – Interesting pocket with Fate and Resists.

Beaded Gemstone Bracelet – Nice tank bracelet but lacking ICPR.

There are also barter options for some of the housing cosmetic drops.

Helegrod

Skull of Thorog – HUGE housing item that I’ll admit I can’t wait to get – it is expensive though 🙂

Necklace of the Worm – Intriguing for a tank but probably a hefty morale hit

Cold-Bear’s Canine – Pocket – pretty nice for a caster type

Cold-Bear’s Claw – Pocket – maybe for a hunter or RK

Daeramath – Warden’s Shield – not too shabby of a shield

Stoutwall – Heavy Shield – Again, I don’t know much about heavy shields but the common damage negation is always nice

A Couple Other Place to Find Me

Just a quick update this Monday morning, but I should have another post out today with some new goodies on the Skirmish vendors over on Bullroarer.

I posted a new version of my traits discussion over on the LOTRO Reporter which took a slightly different approach from the post I did here a while back.  The one over on LOTRO Reporter is a bit more high-level while the post on this blog is more detail oriented.

I also joined @Theobor on his latest episode of the Gondor Awaits Podcast chatting about Minstrels, so if you’re interested in my take on that class head on over there.

Also of late I’ve started working on a new toon as I came to the realization that ranged classes aren’t for me.  So after all my bad mouthing of them, I decided to work on a Champion to see how they play out.  I’m only to level 12 but so far am enjoying the class, nothing like running into lots of mobs and mowing them down.  But I anticipate that mentality might get me into a bit of trouble soon 🙂  I’m not sure how quickly or how much I’ll play my champ but you’ll probably see a bit more Champ focused posting here as I go.

Beta Event and Instance Join

This week a bunch of my playtime was actually over on Bullroarer and I enjoyed it quite a bit for a number of reasons.  I did get in a partial DN run on my Warden but that was relatively routine.

First up was the Beta Stress test on Wednesday which after some initial bumps got off to a pretty decent start.  A bunch of us were chatting over Twitter so we were able to join up in game.  This was pretty fun as I got a chance to run around with folks I don’t normally get to play with but talk with frequently.  They briefly pulled the servers down but only for a few minutes and then left them up for the duration of the event.  Nothing too interactive from the devs as I think they were mainly trying to stress test the store and work any of the kinks out of that.  It does seem like they’ve worked some things out as it does seem to be more responsive and a bit smoother, but I still think there’s some work to be done.  One very cool thing they were testing out was the “Ripcord” capability which allows Turbine disable all Lua scripts globally from the server side.  This allows them to maintain control and quickly disable things if they find a loophole or some undesirable script floating around.

After some of the “scheduled” stuff, the group of us just roamed around Enedwaith for a bit checking out the areas.

I took some screenshots and managed to do a little building climbing as well.

One thing I thought was pretty cool is they finally found a home for the old crystal dwarf instances that were pulled from Moria!

I always thought those were cool spaces so I was happy to see them back in.  Also, I tried to get a decent shot of the new drakes as those are some pretty cool looking monsters!

Then last night I joined some of the folks from the LOTRO Reporter Network and we ended up running the new Great Barrows instance.  We started it more or less on level with the 5 of us between levels 20 and 30.  Since we only had 5 we tried dialing it down a couple levels but did struggle a little bit until we brought in a couple big toons to just finish it off.  I really enjoyed the new layout of the zone and thought it was a much smoother play through.  Sadly my hard drive was having some issues and I ended up losing the Fraps capture of the run.  The Instance Join functionality is incredibly convenient as you jump right to the instance and return right back to where you joined the instance from.  Also, we only made it through 1 wing of the instance and I had enough of the special skirmish marks to get 1.5 pieces of the armor, so it seems like getting the armor won’t take too many runs through the instance.  And I’ll admit I might have missed some of the loot as I was mainly just enjoying the instance.  However, playing with folks on Bullroarer really makes me want to have cross-server instance join!

Developer Diary – Instances Part 4 – Helegrod

For me this was the most highly anticipated part of the instance scaling diaries to date as not only do I love Helegrod but I’m curious to see what they have planned for the space.  There’s a lot of good information in the Diary so check out the latest from JWBarry.

To start off, three of the wings will be 12-man spaces with the Thorog wing being a full 24-man raid.  There are no locks at all, but before being able to tackle Thorog you must complete the other three wings at least once.  So essentially, clear the first 3 and you can farm Thorog to your hearts content.

JWBarry breaks up the diary just like the raid so I’ll cover each wing separately.  Before I dive in too far, I must admit that I can’t wait to run this on my Warden!!!

The Spider wing was a pretty fun wing to begin with but they did shorten up the trash a bit.  They also added a new mob type the Spider-singer that buffs all the nearby spiders to make them more challenging.  Also in order to proceed you need to burn holes through the webs, which does tend to anger a fair number of spiders such that it isn’t just a matter of running through and killing stuff.  The Breosal mini-boss fight was tweaked such that there are more adds at the start and more come when Breosal runs away after the morale trigger.  It sounds as though the normal mode of the final boss fight is pretty much un-changed but the challenge mode sounds quite fun.  Essentially at the last wave of the Silkspinners you need to keep them alive while burning 4 cocoons, the last of which spawns Zaudru.  So you need to finish off all five in order to survive this encounter which sounds rather rough as just Zaudru alone is pretty darn challenging.

The Drake Wing was changed quite a bit to incorporate more mob diversity and better visual intrigue.  Also following what they’ve done in other instances, the lever puzzle has been tweaked to provide more feedback and better information on what needs to be done.  The final boss fight is now 3 stages as opposed to 2 with each having different levels of vulnerabilities and invulnerabilities on the Angmarim, worms, and drakes.  The challenge mode sounds INSANE as you need to pop ALL the eggs in the room to complete.  In the current room I’d say there are probably 50 some odd eggs, but I’m not sure how many will be in the new area.  Each egg popped spawns a handful of worms so this will be an AoE intensive fight for sure, Champs and Wardens get ready for some fun!

I have to agree that the Giant Wing was my least favorite portion of the raid as it just seemed to drag on forever with no real challenge.  I’m very happy about the new mobs and the addition of the min-boss fight.  If JWBarry’s pumped up about it I can’t wait to see it!  As for the main boss fight, it sounds interesting but I will admit I’m a bit worried about the challenge mode mechanics as it sounds like knockbacks could cause you to lose challenge mode.  It does require you to pay more attention which is a good thing, I’m just worried about lag causing you to be in the wrong place even though you think you’re good.

The Dragon Wing still has the three main areas, the drums, Drugoth, and Thorog.  The drums section which includes Coldbear pretty much was untouched and I certainly agree that if you can’t make it through the drums you’re in for a world of hurt.  I love the changes to Drugoth as it was a super easy portion of the raid.  Having the mirror images as you fight similar to Mordirith sounds not only challenging but a lot of fun.  Basically he will form copies at various morale thresholds but it wasn’t clear if they were 1 morale “spirits” like Mordirth or full up copies that you need to burn down.  I’m sad to see the Thorog flying mechanic gone but certainly if it was causing issues I’ll trust the team.  Removing the flying mechanic basically meant they had to re-work the entire fight.  Included in the new version are some of his old tricks plus some new things that JWBarry is saving for us to find.  Challenge mode is being designed to be the most difficult encounter in the game which is intriguing.  There are some pretty tricky parts in BG so I’ll be curious to see what else they come up with.  And I’m encouraged that they are conscious of folks not liking arbitrary or luck as key elements of fights.  Making this the hardest fight seems to be in-line with the recent changes to the radiance gear as the new Helegrod sets are pretty nice!  For those of you who haven’t seen the area or the original version of this fight check out my post on a recent adventure in Helegrod.

Overall it sounds like a very fun raid and I like the way they’re broken things up.  There are some areas of concern as I can imagine folks farming Thorog repeatedly for marks and the armor pieces.  Granted, it does require 24 people to complete so that is a bit more challenging but if you have that number ready I can see folks going for a couple runs at a time.  I’m also not sure about the knockback portion of the Giant Wing but will have to see how that plays out.  If definitely is good to see they are listening to the community and incorporating aspects of fights that we enjoy and not relying on things we don’t.  I was encouraged to see JWBarry talk about the Rift and the reasons why it hasn’t been tackled yet.  From what we’ve seen so far, that does sound like a big task but I can’t wait to see what they have planned for the Rift.  I’m also quite happy that he acknowledges that the Balrog fight is quite broken and will require work 😉

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New Radiance Sets Tweaked in Recent Bullroarer Patch

This was a bit of a stealth update that wasn’t mentioned at all in the patch notes but all the new radiance sets were upgraded with the most recent patch.  The Annuminas sets didn’t change all that much, just a point or two here or there.  The Helegrod sets though were buffed quite a bit and in many cases are some of the best pieces around.  I’m pretty happy about this for two reasons as it shows they’re still tweaking things as well as making sure the amount of effort matches the rewards.  The appearances of them haven’t changed but if you’re interested in the stats they’re worth a look.  If you need a refresher on the looks check out the Minstrel sets and the Warden and Captain sets.

I’ve updated my spreadsheets for the Warden, Captain, and Minstrel sets so check those out if you’re a number geek like me.

Google Docs Version

Excel File Version

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Examples of the Lua Scripting Plugins

I played around quite a bit with the Lua Plugins during beta and I wanted to share some of the plugins that I really enjoyed.  I also suggest checking out the LOTRO Plugins site and keep your eye on the LOTRO Interface site for more details on the plugins and some help in how to actually script using Lua.  I will admit I didn’t write any plugins I just used them and tested them out.

Here’s a screenshot of my listing of the plugins I played around with:

A favorite for all you Wardens (and Hunters) who hate taking quickslots up with travel options, look at the right side of this shot:

It takes all the ports, maps, etc. and puts them on a scroll bar such that you can just select the one you want and use it instead of having all of them loaded.

I’m a bit on the fence about the bag-space options, but certainly I like the option to set them up in different ways.  Check out the before and after:

However, by far my favorite ones are the Plugins that allow you to re-orient how your vitals display looks.  In the below shots, just focus on the area at the center of the screen and not the Warden wheel section, I’ll get to that.  The area at the center is actually 2 plugins, Palantir and FX – FX is just the horizontal bar and Palantir is everything else.

Palantir puts up the big morale and power bars which for me are much easier to look at then the normal display.  It also has boxes at the bottom which light up when hit by a fear, poison, wound, or disease.  The FX Bar is a nicer customizable display of all buffs and de-buffs on your character.  The nicest thing for me is the “wheel” count-down that graphically shows how much time said effect has before it wears off.  I absolutely LOVE this as it REALLY helps know when things are coming on and off.  The top of the bar shows all the buffs I have up and the bottom any debuffs.  Another nice option is shown off below in that you can select buffs/debuffs and have them show bigger whenever that same effect comes up again as shown in this shot below:

You can see these in action in this quick video I took:

As for the Warden Trainer, it is a cool little script where you can right click and get a list of the gambits and it will populate the bar with the correct builders.  I can see that really helping folks out in learning the gambits or if there’s one critical gambit you always forget.  The gambit loaded below is Mighty Blow.

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Beta Armor Snapshots

I promised screenshots yesterday when I posted the stats for the new Warden and Captain radiance armor sets, so here they are.  I took them both on my Warden but you’ll get the idea.  Also, remember there’s no helm for the heavy Annuminas set.

Medium Annuminas Set:

Heavy Annuminas Set:

Warden Helegrod

Captain Helegrod:

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