Today’s update to Bullroarer

As I quoted yesterday, Sapience indicated that some of the items in the store have been tweaked.  Now granted, I will admit I may be a build or two behind on some of these but I did want to talk about a couple of them as there was a new patch up today.  However, nothing earth shattering on the patch with only a few notes in total.

First up, I’m happy that they did add in a helm to the Annuminas Heavy Armor set.  I’m not super excited about the look, but it is nice to have another option including the cloak to get the full 6/6 bonus which this set really needs to be comparable.  I’ve updated my spreadsheet but am really struggling with Google Docs so I’ll probably wait until launch and post a final version.  But certainly take a look below for the stats and looks of it.

I do think the armor set costs might have been dropped a bit (or maybe not as these match this post on the forums) as the Annuminas pieces only need 1 Annuminas mark and 3 of the level 65 special marks with the Helegrod items being 2 and 5 respectively.  However, the pieces are pricy on the normal marks at 1,896 for the Annuminas pieces and 2,370 for the Helegrod pieces.  Considering I can get a few hundred marks per normal single person skirmish it is looking like a piece or so per run through the appropriate instance.  Which when you compare it to normally getting armor pieces this is a MUCH quicker pace as previously you had to not only complete the instance but get lucky on roles and most groups only allow one piece per run per person.

I already talked about the reputation mounts, but you can buy the normal initial mounts for 695 points which I think is a nice option as I know many folks sometimes struggle to save up enough gold for that purchase.

I didn’t notice any real changes on the stat tomes but the Virtue tomes have been changed to all be a constant cost as opposed to a sliding scale.  In total, to max out a virtue from the store it costs the same as it did previously, but now each rank is 295 points versus a small amount for that first rank.  I know I will be topping off a few levels on my toons so this does make it a tad more expensive but I think it makes sense.

I’m still a bit on the fence with the Morale pots as they’re now 300 points for a stack of 10.  These potions stack with the normal potions and with the duration of 20 seconds combined with a 20 second cooldown you can essentially boost your ICMR (or ICPR) by 3600 or 60 points per second.  I can see these during tough boss fights and in all honesty I’m still not sure these are expensive enough.  These potions will essentially allow you to power through a tough transition or stabilize the group for a couple of minutes.  I do think this will make some fight mechanics much easier for certain groups and the potions could become requirements for certain raiding groups.  I guess I’m seeing these as a “crutch” that could be used for raiders in a similar manner to how the various hope quest turn-ins were used back in the day.  I think requiring groups to have those pots purchased is a bad thing, but I’m on the fence as I do like the idea of providing a not totally game breaking crutch to get groups over the hump in certain areas.  As long as Turbine continues to put out challenging fights like BG, and it sounds like the instance revamp will be even more challenging, these could really help folks speed up the learning curve.  After a run or two, I would imagine these pots wouldn’t be as needed until a new instance was attempted.  Oh, and I’m not even going to touch the moors implications as that will just make my head hurt 🙂  However, I don’t see these as a long term issue but a short term emergency tool.

Other than that, the store seems MUCH faster and responsive and they’ve cleaned things up quite a bit, but granted it could be that I just hopped on during a quiet time 🙂

I am starting to formulate my plan for what I’m going to be using the store for and will have a post on that soon.

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Promising news from Turbine Regarding Horses in F2P Store

So there’s been some talk on this one by both Mordor or Bust and Casual Stroll to Mordor but I did want to post the confirmation post from Sapience:

Reputation mounts were removed based on beta player feedback.

For those of you who think betas or our feedback don’t matter, here’s another case where they do.  I’m quite happy that they’ve been removed, although I would’ve been ok if they figured out a way to make them gated behind reputation.  A couple posts down Sapience continues to mention that they’re still tweaking prices based on player feedback and there will be another update before launch.  Good stuff and I’m happy to see the direction they’re moving in to try and balance the store out.

Latest F2P Update from Massively

So part 2 of Massively’s coverage of the new fall content and F2P switch (Part 1) was posted this morning and it covers both the new festival and the store.

The haunted cellar sounds really cool and very fall-like  I’m actually quite intrigued about not only how it will look but the themed decorations that will be available with the token rewards 🙂  Hopefully they’ll use the fear logic from BG such that you can be feared and randomly run around and trigger more fun!

The meat of what I wanted to write about was the info on the store.  Now I realize this is all subject to change as we’re still in the beta, but I’m sure there will be LOTS of upset folks over the addition of items to reduce the in-game grind.  In certain cases I’m all for it, but I see them handling it two separate ways, one I like and the other I don’t.

For virtues they’re offering a way to speed up the way you earn that title such that you need (I’m assuming) half as many mobs to complete the deed and get the virtue.  I think this is a good compromise and would even be happy if I could outright buy a virtue level (I know, I’m probably in the minority here) as there’s no reason I can’t do that in game I just choose not to because I don’t enjoy it.  I think speeding up the virtue grind is a very welcome addition for anyone who wants to get their characters and alts tweaked out the way they want to and still enjoy the content and game the way they want it.  My 3 mains are all in various stages of their virtue completion and I’d love to have an option to bring them all to the same level.  Another option I’d support would be to allow the purchase of virtue ranks only up to the maximum you have on that account such that’ you’d have to grind it once, but only once 🙂

Now the part I don’t like is the ability to purchase reputation mounts as I think this is taking the above concept a step to far.  I’m all for using the store to buy mounts as long as it isn’t your first one but I don’t like the idea of removing the reward for the reputation grind many (like me) have completed.  I think those mounts should only be available if you have the appropriate reputation.  What I would like to see is similar to the traits discussed above, a buff that grants double reputation for a period of time such that you could more quickly accomplish your goals.  Another option would be to allow purchasable reputation which would mimic my thoughts on Virtues, which if done properly I could support as well.  Now this may only be showing the mounts available for that character, but I see no clarification and as such I’m purely posting on what I would have a problem with if it stays like this through beta.  And even if the system does work like this currently, there’s still lots of time for them to flesh out the details and make changes based on the community feedback.

I will update this post as I’m sure there will be some dev clarification on these topics based on the feedback from the community, this thread on the F2P boards seems most likely to be the one to kick up some dirt but I’m expecting more as the day goes on.

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LOTRO Summer Festival and Anniversary Token Updates

First up, I wanted to clear up something on the Anniversary Tokens as I was wondering when they would stop dropping.  According to will Sapience, they will stop dropping on the 30th of June but the vendors for trade-in will remain in game until the 7th of July.  For those of you curious, I seem to have the best luck with the vendor in the Moors as they have the option for the Delving Stones required for various rewards in the Ettenmoors.

As Sapience also mentioned in his post, tomorrow is the start of the Summer Festival! Returning for this year’s festival is the Keg-races in Frerin’s Court outside of Thorin’s Hall and the Taste of Hobbiton race just north of the Party Tree.

There’s also the Summer Horse race in both Bree and Michel Delving for the new mount as shown in Cithryth’s YouTube video.

The scavenger hunts and fishing races are both back in this summer as well for those that prefer those events.

It seems like the only new addition are quests associated with the bitter rivals of the beer drinkers of Middle-Earth.  Yes the Inn League Association and the Ale Association both will have new quests added with the chance of maxing out reputation with both factions.

For me, I will be getting the new horse as I am a tad of an addict in that regard and will probably hold off on the drinking games until I see what all’s available from the various vendors and special rooms.  I wasn’t all that impressed previously, so we shall see what’s new this time around.

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Back from a crazy couple of weeks

So things have been pretty quiet here for a bit with a combination of work travel and some actual vacation time as well.  I have a bunch of things to catch up on and I’ll have a few posts coming out this weekend but I figured I’d update on a few things first.

Aside from the travel craziness I have been playing some but just not nearly as much as would warrant writing about.  I’ve been working on the Ale Association quests and I’m intrigued by not only the titles but what they might put on that vendor 🙂  This new quest line seems to have drawn some comments from folks that they feel bad doing bad things in the Shire and I’ve actually taken a bit of a different slant on it.  I’m looking at it more like a friendly rivalry between two bars (ala Cheers) and the Ale Association is just launching the first line of the pranks 😉  Now if they continue this, I’d love to see the hobbit retaliation!  I do like the upcoming changes coming that will put negative reputation for the opposite faction.  This makes sense as we’re really not all that sneaky when poking holes in the kegs and stealing recipes 🙂  I am enjoying this festival as they are pretty quick things I can do and I still always enjoy running through the Shire as it is so beautiful and relaxing.

In addition to the festival I have been doing some SG and SH runs on my Warden and am one piece away (16 tokens) from the full set such that I can actually run the BG raid.  They have made some subtle changes to SG and I like the pace of that dungeon.  With a decent group, it is around an hour or so which really isn’t all that bad and you can reasonably do a couple runs in a row.  I have my pseudo static group I run with late at night but in addition I really don’t have any issues finding groups (and successful ones too) for both SG and SH.  I still haven’t run the other dungeons yet and do want to check them out at some point.  I did also run SG on my Captain (only 62) which was quite stressful as I so didn’t want to mess things up for the group.  The good news for these runs is that I’ve seen 2 Symbols drop (lost both) so maybe I’m just lucky or maybe they did tweak things a bit.

I also stuck my neck out into the moors a bit on my Warden and holy cow was that a blast.  I started off soloing and got stomped on by a Warg/Warleader duo – which wasn’t surprising.  Wargs are really annoying with all their stuns and I’m also REALLY rusty out there 🙂  I then ended up running with a small group and we didn’t do all that bad in the grand scheme of things.  I really need to get out there more as I found myself falling into my tanking rotation which is just bad.  I re-spec’d full fist line with the 2 additional masteries as I think the fears could be more useful down the line then possible additional DPS.  The pace out there really is MUCH faster and it will certainly help overall to make me a better and more dynamic player.  The moors always has been a good fit for me as when I don’t have much time I can just run around solo but can also hop in groups when I have more time available and you’ll probably hear and see more from me from the moors.  I also need to keep my eyes open for other weapons with better PvP legacies…

Weekend news

So things have been a bit slow on the news side, but hopefully now that PAX is done we may hear some things from Turbine on what all they have planned for us down the road.  There were a bunch of folks (including myself) who sent a nice long list of questions to Merric and Goldenstar from CStM and they’re in the process of pulling all the info together. I’m not expecting anything earth shattering after Sapience’s comments on the forums, but we shall see.  However, Patience did chime in on a conversation between me and @wickedpt on twitter “@wickedpt Just because we are not talking about something yet doesn’t mean we’re not working on it. Stay tuned. :)” so I suspect they’re just phasing the news updates between DDO and LOTRO.  I would expect to start seeing some new diaries and such starting to filter out as we near the end of the Spring festival, although due to the horse issue that might get extended a bit.

In game for me I’ve been enjoying the spring festival doing the dirty work for the dwarves and their Ale Association.  I just hit the first tier of reputation with them and I’m curious to see what’s available from that kindred vendor.  For this festival, I’m just focusing on my Warden but I may grab a few of the rewards/items on my Minnie as well.  I have saved most of my fortunes, so those titles should be pretty transferable – and they’re also relatively cheap on the AH 🙂  Sadly though I didn’t get in too much time with my RK so she’s still stuck at 20 (or maybe 21) but I’m interested to not only see the new Lone Lands but also see what it is like to run Skirmishes from the start and not from the level cap 🙂

On Friday I mentioned a new website (well new to me) I stumbled across lotro.mmorsel.com and today’s tip was one I really wanted to stress.  The tip is regarding using the fellowship assist options to better coordinate attacks between DPS classes.  This has been in the game for a long time for raids, but didn’t come in for fellowships until more recently and many still don’t know it exists.  As a tank (and a healer) I can’t stress how important and helpful this setting is when used properly as it makes everyone’s job that much easier.  Not only does it provide a way to select the proper target, but it also gives the tank and healer a good gauge on how the fight is progressing without having to switch targets.  By focusing all your DPS on one target, not only do they all drop faster but it makes tanking that much easier as you only have 1 mob to compete with DPS on and then you just have to out agro the healer on the rest.  Using the fellowship assist not only can you set up the tank’s target and the main target for DPS, but you can also do things like designating targets for crowd control or other such tasks.  In groups that I’m not leading, I always make sure that not only is this turned on and used by the leader, but that everyone in the group has it up and knows what to do with it.  So if you haven’t used this tool before, next time you’re in a group check it out!

I still have a piece in work on comparing not only the different tiers of skirmishes but also comparing the Rift to other skirmishes as I’m now very convinced it is by far the toughest skirmish out there, excluding the Barrow Downs one of course 😉

Very happy its Friday

This has been a long week not only because of the Spring Festival but for my real life world as well, but I did want to share a couple of links while I’m thinking about them.  I also do have some non-LOTRO updates I’ll get out over the weekend but I’m holding off a bit to gather my thoughts better.

First up is my shameless plug for my article over on the LOTRO Reporter covering the journey from level 30 to 45. For me, this is where the class really started to get me addicted and wanting more as I just couldn’t believe the things I was able to pull off.  I will probably do one or 2 more level pieces before tackling some other topics like raiding, PvP, etc.  Feel free to offer suggestions if you have them.

Now as many of you have read over the past few days, I’ve been quite enjoying the Spring Festival and have hit most of the quests in the various zones.  However, one thing I haven’t done this festival is any of the Inn League pub crawls as I’m already Friend with them and I don’t think there’s a reason to progress any further.  However, Duvelmoortgat from the LOTRO forums has a fun idea for mixing the pub crawls with the new Ale Association quests into one big massive drunken adventure through the Shire.  I haven’t tried it out yet, but check out the post for all the specifics.  I may have to run a normal pub crawl first just to get my bearings straight as I’m not that knowledgeable in the Shire.

And finally, I stumbled across the lotro.mmorsel.com website while following the #lotro hash tag on twitter  There are some detailed guides up there on the various zones in Middle-Earth, topics like Radiance, leveling guides, crafting, making gold, and many more.  I have only looked through some of it, but it looks like quite the resource!  If you’re new to LOTRO or haven’t played in a while and want to catch up on all the changes it certainly is worth a few minutes to check that site out.

LOTRO Festival Drinking games

Ok, whoever is the genius behind the LOTRO kegs needs a raise 😉  A previous version of this keg, the “Sinister Inn League Keg” which is obtained from the Spring festival in the Hedge maze would transport you to various places throughout Middle-Earth including places like the Giant’s Needle which is a tad tricky to get down from.

(Edit)

So, to further clarify where these kegs come from.  The Sinister Inn League Keg comes from the Hedge maze and is a reward for the quest “The Green Challenge” obtained from Tob Sandyman, where you have to find a relic of the Inn League.  He’s standing with the rest of the quest-givers there at the entrance to the maze.  You first have to find the item, then find your way out while drunk.  There’s also the Inn League keg  that’s a reward for the “Bullroarer’s Challenge – Advanced” which has teleportation powers as well.  This quest is up in Brockenborings and may require you to do the quests at the Statue just NE of the horse point, otherwise the quest is further to the east.  This is the quest that requires you to way along the fence while drunk.  I believe the Sinister version is just a little more “un-kind” with the places it puts you as I tried the Inn League and didn’t go anywhere too bad – just a bit remote.  Both of these quests are repeatable, so you can do them again to either get the keg again, or for leaves.

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Well with the new festival they included a Moria keg version that is barterable for 12 tokens.  I ended up taking a few trips with the keg and each location kept on getting better.  By far my favorite is the spot in the Great Delving complete with a fire, sleeping bag, and empty glasses!  I took a quick video of 2 of these locations, including the drunken effect and some a bunch of screenshots.  I included some captions, but feel free to add your own 🙂

First a snap of my Kinship hall with all the kegs…

This is a shot from the regular keg, a nice pig hovel in the shire.

Here’s the video of the Foundations and Redhorn locations.

These next 2 are from the same location in the Foundations as the video above:

Possibly my favorite is this one in the Great Delving as there’s NO way to get here other then the keg.  So not only did the put these locations in they actually took time to build out little areas.

Here are a couple of shots from the Redhorn location:

As good as the Great Delving location is, the one in Nud-Melek has to be the scariest possible way to awaken from a drunken stupor.

Now how bummed would you be as a dwarf if you knew all this beer was out of your reach just above the 21st hall 😉

In addition to doing a bunch of drinking today, I did manage to finish off a couple of Spring Festival deeds on my Warden, so I was pleased with that.  I’ll probably continue the festival more throughout the time it is up but I’m not real sure how much I’ll do on my other toons.

Developer Diary – Crafting Update

Today Turbine released another developer diary, this one talking about the crafting system updates. Certainly a good read as there are lots of changes – but the main ones for me were the jeweler and cooking/farming changes.  I’ll summarize them, but certainly go check out the full notes.  A lot of this was evident from the patch notes, but this breaks it down into more detail.

All jewelry items have had not only their stats adjusted but also their looks as well.  In addition, they’re also implementing the multi-output option for jewelry just like they did for the armor professions.  Because of this, certain recipes, like the various tactics rings, will no longer exist as they are now one of the output options.  It is important to note that existing items will NOT change, just newly crafted ones.  So, if there are ones you like better make them now 🙂  For a full listing of the new stats, check out my previous post on this topic.

By far though, the majority of the changes revolved around cooking and farming.  Rather ironic as I was just doing some farming and cooking yesterday 🙂  Essentially they’re looking to make these professions more desirable and also follow the pattern they’ve set in that no profession is entirely independent.  In many ways a cook could easily provide a valuable product without ever needing another profession, unlike every other profession in game.  Well, except scholar but that’s a bit different anyway.

They’re changing it such that there will be no more store-bought only cooking recipes.  This will change quite a few recipes, including the Lembas recipe and the Lorien regen food recipe (Lothlorien Waybread).  These recipes now include “”Cup of Winter Barley Flour” which is a new ingredient recipe output for cooks that takes 2 bundles of Barley to produce 1 cup.  There’s a comparable recipe for the lower tier rations as well.  In addition, Shire apples and Golden Shire Potatoes are now from Farming only and not purchasable.

One of my favorite changes as the regen buff duration has been normalized and extended – normal is 5 minutes, crit is 10 minutes for both in-combat and out-of-combat regeneration rates (or ICR and OCR as I’ll refer to them later on).

All cooked food now has both an ICR and OCR rate associated with it, but there will be 3 different options.  High ICR and low OCR, medium of both, or low ICR and high OCR.  The shot below shows the options from the Master tier. 

Now I noticed something a little weird about the crit versions of these on bullroarer but am not sure if it is a bug or WAI.  Essentially the in-combat regen rates don’t change with a crit – see my post on the boards, but I also bugged it just in case 🙂

They’re adding new fate and will trail food which will be automatically granted to the cooks at all of the skill tiers.

New recipes including fish options for trail food.  These will provide a boost to both vitality and will which is very intriguing for many I’m sure.  However, it appears that these are only available up to the Master tier and not supreme, so that’s a bit of a bummer.

They’ve added new supreme cook trail food recipes via the Malledhrim reputation vendors!  These provide bonuses of 36 and 55 to the appropriate stat as opposed to 30 and 50 of the regular versions.  And use some of the new farming items like the green peas 🙂

And finally, farmers will get new recipes for shire apples and taters, as well as a new recipe for Green Peas which will be required for new cooking dishes.

My Minstrel in Mirkwood

So as a break from my warden, I decided to get my Minstrel up to the level cap next.  It is quite a nice change of pace from the warden, although I’ve certainly realized the hard way that I am pretty darn squishy 😉  Every now and then I go a get a tad aggressive on my pulling and grab more then 3 and think I can handle it, which usually doesn’t end well.  Right now, I’m currently running a full warrior-skald build with the capstone and 2 from the Protector of Song line which seems to be working pretty well.  The ICMR buff from Battle-hymn and extended anthem duration means I can have that ICMR buff up pretty much constantly!  I don’t seem to be having many resist issues like when Moria first launched and I’m still seeing LOTS of crits.  It is quite fun to AoE 3 mobs and hit them all for over 2k 😉  which after playing a warden as much as I do, is a substantial difference.  However, when I don’t crit and a couple friends decide to join the fray – I’m praying my feign death is still up!  I’m about mid-way through Mirkwood and 62 so far, and hit Friend reputation so I can now craft those jewelry items.  I’m currently working through the lovely are of Dannenglor, which I think is probably my LEAST favorite part of Mirkwood – lots of mobs, lots of roamers, and pretty quick re-spawns make it a very unfriendly area 🙂  That and the quest drops don’t seem to be all that frequent so you’re stuck there for a while.  Not to mention the stupid elves can’t communicate with each other or realize how much crap actually is up there that they might want so I have to make at least 4 trips.

After looking at the Mirkwood crafted jewelry a bit more I’m less impressed then I initially was.  The stats are good, don’t get me wrong, but I think I’m only going to use the Sage’s Greenwood Necklace on my minstrel.  Everything else seems to be too big of a hit with not enough of an upside.

I’m also probably going to tweak my UI a bit after reading Harperelle’s post on that topic.  Mine isn’t all that organized as you’ll see from the snaps below.  Most of my oh *#@& skills are on the vertical bar near my character with the travel and seldom used ones on the left side.  The other 4 are somewhat organized, but not very well.  Luckily I can move things around pretty easily as all my healing, ballads, and war-speech skills are done via my controller, so I’ll just re-map them.

I should have another post out a bit later with some other Mirkwood and patch related items, assuming I don’t get distracted in game.