Recent Developer Diaries

Turbine has continued to pump out Dev diaries and I’m a bit behind I’ll admit.  But since the NDA has been lifted, I think much of this information is out there but it is always good to see how the Devs see things and get a little more insight on their process.

First up from last week was the Volume 3 Book 2 Quest Line diary talking about that portion of the epic line.  I specifically didn’t do these quests on Bullroarer as I wanted to save them for live.  I’m pretty excited about this portion of the story as not only do we get to follow the rangers path but also get to learn more about their stories.  And of course, there’s the Ranger Session play that’s always enjoyable 🙂  The new technology to show and hide people based on your quest log sounds really cool and I’d love for them to roll that out everywhere as it is a bit lore-breaking to see folks in the wrong areas.  The other big news item in this diary is the announcement that we’ll be able to re-play all the various session plays as much as we want.  There are some really fun ones, so I quite like this idea for quick play-sessions.

The other diary was today’s release of the Wardrobe System, which for me is one of my favorite features of the F2P roll-out.  I probably have a few bags on all my toons that are purely cosmetic and many are storing the same items.  This will not only allow for more storage of useful items but another way to share items between characters.  I’m glad they walked through the usage of the system as I’ll admit it took me a bit to figure it out – putting items in is easy as you just drag the item and it puts a copy into the wardrobe.  You can then feel free to delete the one in your inventory if you want.  To equip though, you need to drag the item directly to the slot on your character panel and not to your inventory.  It is also nice that you can store various color variations using one slot and just use a pull-down to select which color as opposed to each color taking up a slot.  And finally, the requirements to wear the cosmetic items have been loosened such that you don’t need the level or reputation to wear them but you will be limited to armor types.  For instance, you won’t be able to deck your Minstrel out in heavy armor but your Captain will be able to cosmetically equip your Champion’s Rift Set.

Summer Festival Horse Races Working

They are up and running (at least on Silverlode) and I was able to do both the Shire one and the Bree race, although some were reporting issues with the Bree race.  I’m not real sure what’s going on there, but I did even fall off so it isn’t like I ran a perfect race.

So I have a few shots of the horse and a couple of the items I got already.

After all my racing around I did need a break, so I took a little nap in my new hammock 🙂

And after waking up I decided to check out a couple of views in my new chair:

Summer Horse Updates

So there are 2 things in this thread:

First is a very nice snap of the horse from corrakkas on the forums, which was obtained using saved up tokens from the previous summer festival.  There’s also a cool snap of this horse while drunk 🙂

And confirmation from Sapience that things are broken and they’re looking into it.

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LOTRO Summer Festival Updates, Horse Race Delayed?

So I anxiously waited this morning for the start of the festival such that I could get the new festival horsie.  Sadly it appears they’re either delaying the horse races or there’s an issue with them.  We’ve been chatting on Twitter and at least Silverlode, Landy, and Big E are all experiencing the same “issue.”  I will be posting updates as soon as I get them, hopefully with pictures.

I also wanted to put up some links for folks to check out the walkthroughs of the various events as much of the festival hasn’t changed.  I will admit that for the festivals, I find a Casual Stroll to Mordor to be the best resource as they not only have the walkthroughs but screenshots as well.  First up there are some of the always there general quests like the Inn League, Dancing, and the farming quest.  You can check out the post on the Spring Festival as the horse races and Ale Association parts are the same.

As for rewards, you can also check out a recent furniture guide which has shots of most (if not all) of the rewards from the festival.  There are a couple new items like the hammock and such that I might end up getting as a nice change of pace from my normal decorations.

I’ll be checking things out to see what all’s new in the Festival but wanted to share some of the info up front for folks.

One thing I did want to point out is that there’s a quest to turn in your badges of dishonor from the Ale Association in for festival marks.  Pretty nice addition if you ask me, or maybe I just missed it last time.

Below are a few snaps of some of the items and new quests.

Couple of the new cloaks:

Straw hat with short sleeved summer dress

New Inn League quest (same are available for Ale Association)

Ale Association barter turn-ins

New battle outfit

I’m not as much of a home decorator in game, but I do tend to change my outfits quite frequently.  Through some previous work in the Moors and luck with the gift boxes I was able to get enough of the various spirit stones to get some of the Ettenmoors armor.  I have no desire to use this for actual armor, but it just looks much cooler then other sets.  Pretty much for those who haven’t seen it, the moors sets are the same look at the Moria Radiance sets but black and purple (by default).  The main difference is that they’ve changed the majority of the color schemes to black such that you can actually create a dark looking set.  I may end up getting the boots and shoulders if I can get enough of the Luminous Stones (need 6 more) but for the boots I need to be rank 5, and I’m still only at rank 4.  So I took a couple of shots after a trip from the Moria Keg and then dyed the set black and took a couple shots from Mirkwood.

So these two above show the front and back from the lovely cliff in the Foundations of Stone.

Above is a shot of me up on the top of the central keep in Mirkwood and below is a zoomed in view on the dressing room, which is just part of the User Interface skin that I use.

I still have a couple helms to switch between, including the rift cosmetic items as well that I play with as well as sometimes just fighting without a helm.

So this is my new favorite set – I’d love to see what others like to wear when heading to battle…

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