Archive for November, 2009

Dev Diary – Mirkwood Crafting Changes

2
2 years ago
by DocHoliday in

So there’s a fair number of changes coming up for crafting with Mirkwood as the new diary explains.  Overall there are some nice additions and changes, but nothing overwhelmingly exciting.  I also found a good legendary page on the Lorebook so check it out – link is at the bottom of the post and on my links section.

  • Multi-output Recipes allow for a single recipe to make variations of that item.  The pictures below show the item pretty well.  This is a welcome change, I just wish they’d do something similar for armor – having 4 of the same recipe is rather annoying.
  • image002_small image003

Legendary Item Crafting

  • We will still be able to craft 3rd and 2nd ages up to level 65, however as a note – level 65 2nd age items are only available through crafting!  This will be interesting to see how this plays out, but it will certainly jack up prices on the AH for them.  These 2nd age recipes also require an item found in “dangerous, dark places” which I’m assuming to mean the new Dol Goldor instances.  The 2nd age requires 2 mithril infused ingots (or comparable item), 5 legendary fragments, and the Symbol of Celebrimbor – which is that instance item, and does not appear to be on the skirmish vendor.

Crafted Relic Recipes

  • There’s a new slot for legendary items that can only be filled with a crafted relic.  There are 2 types:
    • Normal – boost agility, fate, might, vitality, will, morale, or power with one type being available per crafting guild.  However, they are not bound to your player so you can trade them.
    • Legendary – boost melee, ranged, tactical, or healing abilities with all guilds able to make all of them.  These add +390 rating to both the critical and offense rating for melee, ranged, critical, and healing.  However, these are bound to your character so in order to make these I’m you’ll need Kindred rank with the guild and Supreme Mastery, not just proficiency.
    • I looked on my characters, and metalsmiths make +might, jewelers +will, and tailors +fate – with +10 and +20 as the 2 options.  The +10 item is just ingots, but the +20 requires a “Compendium of Middle Earth, Volume 1” which is a barter item from skirmishes for regular marks and a special drop mark.  The Legendary requires a different Compendium but is also available from the Skirmish camps.

Trading up your guild reputation items is now available such that you can trade smaller items for the larger ones with the long cool-downs:

  • 7 small guild reputation items equals 1 medium item of that same tier
  • 3 medium items equals 1 large item of that tier (although Bullroarer has it at 5)

And finally some general crafting changes:

  • The required ingredients for many of the “component’” recipes have been reduced
  • Auto granted recipes no longer require items from other professions.
  • Increased crafting experience for some recipe types
    • Auto-granted recipes = 6 crafting xp
    • Vendor purchased recipes = 8 crafting xp
    • Dropped recipes and reputation rewards = 10 crafting xp
    • One-shot recipes = 12 crafting xp

So some nice changes and I do like that they’re making crafting worthwhile but there still is something lacking for me.  Full article on the new crafting changes are over here.  Also, check out the lorebook as there is a really good breakout for legendary items.

 

Updates to My.LOTRO.com

0
2 years ago
by DocHoliday in

So with Mirkwood launching tomorrow, there’s a big push at Turbine to get all the web apps updated as well.  My.LOTRO is getting a bunch of updates to account for the new things coming with Mirkwood, primarily the skirmishes.

  • Updated to WordPress 2.7 – which I’m not 100% sure what exactly it means but hopefully it allows the blog settings on MyLOTRO to be more like the ones I’m used to on WordPress.
  • Improved performance and data, which I’m very happy about as not only were things usually very SLOW but there were a LOT of missing items as well.  And things usually were rather slow to update.
  • There will be new Skirmish leader boards in addition to the already in-place PvMP leader boards.
  • It also looks like they’ve done some overall streamlining on how profile and character are viewed and updated to account for both skirmishes and awkward layouts.

Overall good stuff, and it will be fun to keep tabs on the skirmish stats.  I really hope there’s a way to pull that info somewhere else as I’d love to have my skirmish stats showing on my blog!  Maybe something similar to how the LOTRO Herald works, will have to look into that – or perhaps someone already knows the answer?

 

Dev Diary – Lone Lands revamp

2
2 years ago
by DocHoliday in

So I’m a little late, but a busy weekend with Thanksgiving, holiday decorating, and recovery taking up a bunch of my time.  A bunch of folks have already covered this, but I wanted to do a quick recap and summary of what’s coming.  For me, this is a very welcome revamp as not only was the Lone Lands a horrible travel zone but there were some ugly jumps in the Epic line that made it tough to follow.  As a whole, the main areas of focus on the revamp were smoothing out the travel issues, polishing and evening out the epic line, and making the area still challenging but more solo/small fellowship friendly.  I think my favorite part is the change to Weathertop as that was a really fun instance but I’m sure many missed out as they couldn’t find groups.  Now to some of the specifics.

First, for the epic line:

  • moving Book 2 earlier in levels such that it flows better with Book 1
  • there’s now a travel route from Gandalf to the Ranger Candaith
  • Candaith has some quests for you before heading to Weathertop which can either be a solo or group instance.
  • After finishing there, you’re sent to the Forsaken Inn to continue the book which is pretty much unchanged from there until Angamaur

The new faction line, the Eglain:

  • retroactive such that higher level toons will get credit for quests done
  • reputation will be required to finish Epic quests
  • At Acquaintance you get a crafting quest which will reward a small bit of coin and an increase in faction with the Eglain.
  • At Friend standing, players gain access to a pocket item unique to their class that is of rare quality and requires level 32 to wield.
  • At Ally, they have access to the first part of a special jewelry set created with the healer, tank and damage dealer in mind.
  • At Kindred, they can purchase the second piece of the jewelry set.
  • By doing normal content, you should get you to friend without stepping foot inside of Angamaur

Instances in general:

  • challenge mode – “new hard mode” requirements for this will show in quest log and reward  more coin, reputation, and possibly barter coins.  These are daily quests.
  • There are also optional encounters which are similar to challenge but usually only reward more coins and reputation, also daily.

Garth Agarwen revamp

  • NPCs to barter for items including hope tokens using the barter token drops
  • They broke the original GA into 3 sections, so if you’ve done GA before you should have a feel for which areas are which
  • Arboretum – The Arboretum boasts one alternate boss creature, four optional objectives, and one challenge against Grimbark. Instance is designed for 4 players and should take between 15 and 40 minutes.
  • Barrows – Another “4-man” instance which contains Ivar, another boss, and 4 optional encounters which is expected to take between 35 and 45 minutes.
  • Fortress – 6 man instance with boss fights against Edan and Esyld, Vatar, Dúnlang, and of course The Red-maid, Naruhe.   Challenge modes in the space include a survival battle against the Créoth leader Dúnlang, who has captured some Eglain and is attempting to convert them to the service of the Red-maid, and the Red-maid herself.  Expected to take 40-50 minutes.

There also was a general revamp of the zones themselves as they have been broken out into 5 sub-zones, or quest hubs:

  • Forsaken Inn changed a bit with some of the NPCs moved
  • Central lone-lands hub near Minas Eriol with Hunulf Much and the old mugwort now there instead of the Forsaken Inn.  The goblins and spiders in the area have dropped in difficulty meaning they’re now normals or signatures instead of elites.  Refr Quicksilver stands near a new public instance with some new quests
  • Eastern lone-lands – still centered around Ost Guruth, but also some new NPCs in the ruins of Dol Vaeg
  • Southern bog – trolls down there are now signature mobs with Eglain just south of OG still sending you down that direction.  Also, 3 new bounty quests from the ruins in the SW area of this zone
  • Agamaur – dropped mobs to signatures, more solo friendly.  There’s still a group zone but that’s now in GA proper.

Check out the full post on LOTRO.com.

 

Great walkthrough for Barad Gularan

0
2 years ago
by DocHoliday in ,

Many thanks to Azz for writing up this detailed explanation of Barad Gularan (BG) as this is still probably my favorite instance in all of LOTRO.  I highly recommend running this instance, and if you can do it at 50 it is a really good preparation for Moria instances.  There’s a good mixture of tough mobs, tricky bosses, and the end boss Udinion can be a very challenging fight.  It requires quite a bit of coordination, knowledge (which Azz has provided), quick reflexes, and a little luck (or just not bad-luck).  You may have also have noticed this is the sight of my kin’s epic battle with Amarthiel in these screenshots.

Full article over at Casual Stroll to Mordor.

Also, if you haven’t already check out the guest-writer’s blog – The Wizzard of Azz.

 

Good grouping guide

3
2 years ago
by DocHoliday in

This was just recently posted on the live boards, but overall I think this is a good resource – especially for those new to the game or MMOs in general.  He does a good job of explaining not only the mechanics but also the terminology which for many cause all sorts of confusion.

Even for seasoned players there’s some good info in there as a reminder of some of the things we should be doing but sometimes forget or are just too lazy.  I find a lot of these points are really critical when doing the 3-mans and I’m sure with skirmishes they will become even more important as there’s more potential to group and more things going on.

Rain’s Guide to Grouping

LOTRO Forums Discussion

I did post on the LOTRO boards correcting his LS+IHW statement and pointed him to some of my other posts to fill in the warden section.

 
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