Minstrel

There has been quite a bit of change lately with Isengard, and I wanted to put up a post that combined some of that for folks.

First up, for those of you out in Dunland you may have interacted with an NPC Andred out in the Gravenwood.  Personally, I had a horrible time trying to find the last two quests (the set is part of a deed) so I’m sharing the snapshot below to show you where I was standing when I was able to get these last two quests:

Looking for those last 2 pesky quests?

There’s also an “annoying” quest where you’re given 3 tasks which you believe to all be in the same camp – however they’re not.  “Into the Dragon’s Maw” is the quest, and camp you’ll want to head to is Rhuvel-cadlus (80.1s, 13.4 W) not Uvel-cadlus where the other 2 quests are.

For those of you having issues with the Pit of Iron, check out this thread on the forums, warning as there are quite a few spoilers.

On to some interesting developer posts:

Graalx2′s post on B/P/E partials talks about the changes here in that partials will no long be additive, but multiplicative – which is a good thing.  There’s a nice equation on the post as well that makes it pretty clear this is a good thing – 100 damage 60% mitigation + 50% partial mitigation = 100*(1-.6)*(1-.5) = 20 damage.  So for you tanks out there – stacking partial mitigations is a good thing to think about.

Graalx2 also clears up Physical Mitigation by explaining that although Physical mitigation only applies to Common damage, the majority of monsters will have some portion of their attacks as common, even if it isn’t their primary.  It is for this exact reason that I’m working to balance out my Physical and Tactical mitigations, instead of just stacking one or the other.

Orion posted on various Minstrel items and I suggest all minstrels take a look at it as there are some intended items, some bugs, and some things that were not included in the patch notes.

With regards new skirmish goodness, JWBarry clears up some of the Raid Skirmish questions in that the reset is weekly at the same time as other raid locks, Thursday 3AM Eastern.  As for the actual loot in these skirmishes a couple of good resources:

• Lengthly Forum Thread
• Google Docs

And finally, this just in from the Monster play side of things, the Art of Warg site has posted comments from Kelsen regarding creep damage, essentially agreeing that they didn’t quite scale it well enough.  I have to admit, this one is another pretty surprising one for me as I would’ve though this would’ve been easily seen and noticed.

Some of you may have already seen these (or passed right over while leveling) but I thought they were helpful for me and figured I’d share.