In an effort to resolve the ill-will that was generated by the initial integration of the store-only armor into the game, it was announced yesterday that starting in Update 5.2 Turbine will be adding the current store-only Relic Removal Scrolls, Morale Potions, and Power Potions to the Lock box system.  They will also be increasing the drop rates for both Lock boxes and keys as one of their “first steps” into integrating these items into the game.  They will also be discussing further ways for players to possibly obtain the store-only armor outside of the store.  In the meantime you can expect that these items (as well as some other suggested items ) to be appearing in upcoming lotteries.  But while Sapience stresses that these are “first steps” to resolving the issues surrounding these items; he also explains that not every solution that is suggested will actually be implemented. (I for one would be surprised if the store armor was ever made craftable.)

On a personal note, I can appreciate this note from Sapience as well as Turbine’s decision to try to find a way to integrate these items into the game.  I’m not entirely sold on the idea of the Lock box system being a good solution to distributing these items, but as long as they follow through on their stated intentions I can take a “wait and see” approach to the whole ordeal for the time being.  What I’d really like to know is what you all think about the statment.  Is this a good start?  What else can be done to remedy the situation?  Please leave us a comment telling us what you think.

The Staff Picks:

Bard Services 1-hour
Ever come to a raid with the wrong traits on? I have. It’s really embarassing. Sometimes, you just forget.  It happens to the best of us. However, instead of taking the “Long Walk of Shame” back to the Bard consider grabbing this instead. This way you can continue onwards with the right traits without causing a delay.

Store Location: Goods & Services > Town Services > NPC Services

75

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: This isn’t exactly a bad pick, but it’s certainly not a “critical” item to use every time you raid. Many times a group will take a while getting started (likely checking GLFF for another raid member), and that’s the time to be checking your traits. Ask the raid leader for advice if you have to. But don’t waste your points on an item that will expire in an hour–you know, right around the time when you’re likely to need to re-trait to try a new strategy or different wing of a raid.

Note: This item disappears from your inventory 1 hour after you buy it.

Travel Maps

Getting there is half the fun, right? Wrong. You should be on-time, or early, if you’re going to a raid. Don’t hold up everyone by being late. That said, if you need to move across the world rapidly, a Travel Map is a great choice.

Store Location: Travel & Housing >Maps & Skills > Travel Maps

50

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: No. Just no. Instance Join will get you into the instance, so you should not EVER need to trek your way to a raid these days. If you need to leave the raid to visit the bard or something, just leave the instance by selecting that option from the drop down menu found by right clicking your character’s portrait on the vitals bar. Of you can use your map home. (Just try not to abandon your group in the middle of a boss fight, even though those maps do work in combat now…)

Remove Dread

No one likes to wipe, but it’s a fact of raiding life. Wiping excessively though may slow things down thanks to the addition of dread. Keep one of these tomes on hand and wipe the shadow of anxiety off of your face before it affects everyone else.

Store Location: Buffs & Boosts >Dread & Defeat

100-450

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: Minstrels have a skill that can remove dread. It’s called Chorus of Restoration and it will remove dread from your entire group. No need to spend Turbine Points, just ask one of the minstrels in the group to help you out! Another alternative to the store dread removal is to use your Destiny Points to purchase the dread removal perk (VIP only).

Vault Upgrades

While not entirely specific to raiding, you can never say no to more storage.  You always need to put your epic raid loot somewhere!

Store Location: Character > Vault Storage

195-995

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: I fully endorse the purchasing of more storage. My raiding main has purchased as much as she can get. However, it has nothing to do with raiding, but more with the fact that I also do a lot of crafting on that toon. Buy more storage if you need space to keep your stuff, but not because you think it’ll make you a better raider.

Repair & Sell Services 1-hour

Finally, I’m electing this item almost exclusively for the repair aspect.  Dying means gear damage and you shouldn’t be running around in a raid with broken equipment.  Of course, you should have fully repaired before even beginning the raid, but this item is certainly great if you’ve suffered a few wipes, or want to get some trash out of your inventory.

Store Location: Goods & Services > Town Services > NPC Services

75

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: I’ve used this from time to time while raiding. It can be helpful, but more often than not, if your raid has wiped often enough that your gear is starting to break, chances are you aren’t the only one in that situation. Typically this will lead to the raid taking a break between attempts at killing that one pesky boss, and then everyone can go take a moment to visit a vendor.

Note: This item disappears from your inventory 1 hour after you buy it.

Ketani’s Picks:

Bear in mind, while I’d say that these are more critical than the LOTRO Staff Picks suggestions, I wouldn’t say that you absolutely need these items to be successful in a raid. I’m just saying that they’d be a lot more useful than maps and store dread removal…

Morale and Power Potions

Store Location > Buffs & Boosts > Potions > Morale/Power

95-330 (Prices based on the level 75 potions. I don’t know if the prices are different at other levels/tiers.)

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: These potions are nice because they use a different cooldown than the crafted versions, and because they have an “over time” aspect to them. They will give you an initial burst of power or morale and then weaker pulses of more for a few seconds afterward. It can be helpful in situations where you’ll be taking damage over time to have a potion that will replenish your morale (or power) over time, too.

These potions have a 20 second cooldown (compared to the 2 minute cooldown on a crafted potions) and the heal over time effect lasts 10 seconds.

5% Attack Damage

Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat > Damage

9-195 or

3,000-5,000 Destiny Points (VIP only)

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: This buff will let you do an extra 5% ranged, melee or tactical damage for between 60 and 90 minutes. The buff will not be cleared upon defeat. These are especially good for those boss fights that are DPS races where you need to kill the boss in a certain time limit.

Tome of Defence

Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat > Armour & Defence

75

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: This buff reduces the amount of damage you take from ranged, melee or tactical sources by 5%. A very nice buff to have in your arsenal, especially if you’re feeling that your character is a little week for the encounter you’re facing. It’s a benefit to your whole group in that the less damage taken by you is less healing your healers need to do, and therefore more effort that can be redirected to keeping everyone alive.

The tome lasts 90 minutes and the buff will not go away upon defeat.

Tactical and Physical Mitigation Tomes

Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat > Armour & Defence

50 or

4,500 Destiny Points (VIP only)

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: These tomes will give you +450 mitigation to either Tactical or Physical damage types (depending on which you buy). At this price you’ll get 5 of these tomes with 90 minutes duration each and as with other similar tomes, the buff persists through defeat.

Item Wear Reduction Tome

Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat >Item Durability

40-75 or

  2,250-7,500 Destiny Points (VIP only)

KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: These tomes will protect your armour and other equipment from being damaged by combat and defeat. They will greatly reduce (and in some cases, completely prevent) a large repair bill after lots of raid wipes. I like to use these when going up against a boss I’m not very familiar with, because that usually means lots of death, and with heavy armour on, that usually means repair bills that are close to a gold or more. These tomes won’t help you fight any better, but they do save time needing to repair. 40 TP will get you a single 60 minute tome and 75 TP will give you five 60 minute tomes. By preventing damage for longer periods of time, they’re more effective in my opinion than the previously mentioned Repair and Sell Services that expires after it’s been in your bag for an hour.

As I mentioned earlier, these store items are certainly not necessary in order to raid successfully, but they can help a lot. I don’t use all of these every time I raid, but I will use many of these when learning a new part of a tier 2 raid. I know a lot of people don’t like the store potions because they feel they take business away from in-game crafters, but for myself, I use both types of pots. If a situation is dire enough to need a store pot, I’ve likely already got a crafted pot on cool-down. I also keep my local crafters busy with my need for food, defence and offence scrolls, and hope tokens.

• Monday through Friday: 10:00 am to 9:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
• Weekend Coverage: 12:00 noon to 9:00pm Eastern (GMT -5)

Phone Number: 1-781-407-4020

Previously weekday coverage was from noon –8:45pm and there was no weekend support. I always thought it strange that gaming companies would have no weekend support (it’s common across many games I’ve played). The only time I’ve ever needed to talk to account support was when I was having issues when playing – which happens to be primarily on the weekend for me!

Source: LOTRO Forums

First, Orion states that there were three goals with this update:

• Improve upon and highlight the strengths of the Stealth Warg
• Provide Wargs with a secondary method of playing the class that gave them more survivability though a little less damage
• Highlight that wargs are pack hunters

Also, as Orion is prone to do in a revamp, he is giving the Warg class two stances; Shadow and Flayer.  Much like the Champion and Minstrel, these stances will “accentuate” how the Warg is played and grant different benefits to existing skills depending on the stance you are currently in.  However, unlike the Freep classes if you attempt to switch stances there will be a delay between your being able to cancel a stance and enter a different one.

If you switch out of one stance, you will be delayed from entering the other stance, the benefits and merits of the two stances, while complimentary, coupled with the linear design of monster players would make the ability to quickly switch between the two simply overpowered. We’re not backing down on this one. It is set in stone…

Shadow Stance will be the “stealth” stance which will increase damage, in-combat power regeneration, and will be “…the primary driver for stealth skills.”  Flayer Stance will replace Shadow Howler and will disallow stealth, but will increase armor, tactical and physical mitigations.  It will also add a small “morale bubble” on the Warg that will attempt to refresh every 7 seconds.

If the bubble is still present this results in healing the warg for 5% of its max health. If the bubble is not present, the bubble is re-applied. When the bubble breaks the warg is healed for 1% of their max health. Grants access to Brute and brute bonuses.

To me this sounds like an incredible change and I can see why there will not be any “stance dancing” allowed.  If a Warg was able to switch between these two stances at will they’d be fairly unstoppable.

Also included in the post were various skill changes which will have a different effect or even become an entirely new skill depending on the stance the Warg finds itself in (including no stance at all).  And while I myself am not a Monster Play expert, I will however The Art of Warg blog where our friend, Mr. Warg is taking a close look at the proposed changes and what they could mean to Wargs everywhere and Monster Play in general.

Let us know what you think about the changes below.

PDF Version

I have two pet peeves when it comes to MMOs: spawn-campers and gold beggars.

Spawn-campers are generally jerks.¹ Gold beggars are generally lazy. Both deserve to be slapped.

Seriously, if you’re taking to the general or kin chat channels to ask people for money, you are either lazy, really lazy or just too darn lazy to figure out how an MMO economy works.

Yes, I know that at low levels, money can be tight, but that’s what low levels are for. When I started playing, a buddy of mine hooked me up with what I thought at the time was a king’s ransom: 500 silver. What I found out later was that he was selling crit Lothlorien waybread at several gold a stack. Still, this initial start-up capital helped me get some better gear, but it wasn’t really necessary.

The bottom line is that making money in an MMO isn’t much different—or more difficult—than in real life.

If you search the interwebs, there are all sorts of guides out there which will tell you how to make money in a game.  They’ll also charge you real money to tell you how to accumulate not-real wealth. Don’t bother. Here is Vraeden’s Guide to Making a Ton of (Fake) Money in an MMO.

The Easiest Route

Buy gold over the interweb. There are sites you can go to where you will pay real money so that someone will meet up with you in game and give your character(s) fake money.

Don’t do this.

Ever.

Seriously, don’t buy gold off the internet.

You are opening yourself up to all sorts of credit card fraud. You are supporting child labour in Third World Countries. You have more (real) money than sense. Some MMOs will ban your account for buying or selling fake money for real money. You will grow hair on your palms.  Chicks don’t dig guys who buy gold over the interweb. Your draft stock will drop. You’ll shoot your eye out. Every time someone buys gold via the internet, God kills a kitten. They will hack your account.  Dealing with gold farmers is illogical. Mr. T will pity you, fool.

Whatever rationalization you need to tell yourself, buying gold from a site on the internet is a bad idea.

Earn it in game.

Simple Economics

If you like money in real life (and I suspect you all do), and you want to accumulate more, there are two basic strategies which will maximize your bankroll:

1. Increase revenues.
2. Decrease expenditures.

That’s all there is to it.²

The people who have a lot of MMO money are the ones who are selling stuff, but not buying stuff.

Where is Your Money Going?
Near the end of some (but not all) pay periods, my wife will say something to the effect of, “We’re getting close to pay day. Don’t buy any [action figures, new cars, computer equipment, etc.] until Friday.”

This is not really my house . . . yet.

What’s strange about this is that in the fourteen years or so we’ve been married, we’ve never had lower fixed monthly expenses and we’ve never made more money. So where does all our money go? The fact of the matter is that up to a certain point, you will spend as much money as you bring in (sometimes more). You might buy a bigger house, a nicer car, eat out at more expensive restaurants, buy a pair of Darth Maul Force FX lightsabers which can be combined into one double-bladed lightsaber to go with your Star Wars Celebration costume, play more golf, or use that money on whatever your particular hobbies are.

You may have that same issue with your MMO characters. What are you spending money on?

Trail food? Fire-oils? Health potions? Crafting materials? Pie?

There are some expenses in LOTRO that are fixed. Crafting costs money. Refining relics and breaking down LIs costs money. There is an expense associated with training new skills. You cannot change these.

But there are some things that you don’t need. The Winged Circlet or Gossamer Dress at the AH. A house (and its upkeep).

Where is your MMO money going? How can you reduce your expenditures?

If you are a new player, you might find yourself spending money on crafting materials, consumables or items you cannot make yourself. Generally speaking, the best items in the game are crit crafted items. I think this is good, and the way it should be.

The problem comes in when you need/want hope tokens, fortifying food, bling, off-hand weapons, scrolls, etc. and you 1) don’t have anyone to make them, or 2) you do have toons who can make them, but you don’t want to spend an afternoon of your real life watching grass grow as you farm the black barley or running all over the Misty Mountains looking for ancient iron and ancient silver.

If you fall into the second category, all I can say is this: The AH is the price you pay for convenience. More on this later.

For those of you who don’t have crafters, here’s where you will have to invest some time and patience, but in the long run, it pays off.

It takes four toons to have complete crafting independence from the auction house. That is to say: With four characters, you can have all seven of the crafting skills and all three of the gathering skills. If you want a character in each guild, you will need seven toons, but you can make yourself almost completely independent of having to buy things from other people with four characters.

If you have a Woodsman, Tinker, Historian, and Armourer, you will never need to go to the AH for crafted items except for things that can only be made with guild recipes (ie—Sealed Symbol of Morale).

The caveat is that since RoI, they have gated some of the Tier 7 crafting recipes so that you need reputation that can only be earned in Dunland. This effectively eliminates the Tier 7 master craftsman who are of absurdly-low levels,³ but that is a new issue, and that’s where the time and patience comes in. I think they just want to make everyone into an alt-oholic.

So if you find that the majority of the money you are spending is going to crafted items, the quickest way to eliminate this expenditure is to start making your own stuff.

What else are you spending money on?

Sometimes, the items that are going off for the highest amounts are the super-rare drops that are needed for the best LIs currently available. When they first came out, I think I saw a Symbol of the Elder King at the AH for something like 500 gold. Before you could buy them with skirms, a Symbol of Celembrimbor might run over 100 gold. Greater Scrolls of Empowerment aren’t cheap, either.

The question then becomes, do you buy these items, or do you earn them yourself? If you want to stop paying others for their hard work, then get grinding!

I Want Other People to Give Me Money
This leaves us with the second part of the equation: How can you increase your revenue?

Basically, take everything I told you above and look at it from the other perspective. If there are things out there that you want, there’s a good chance that other people want them, too.

The key to making money (real or fake) is to find something other people want (or that they think they want) and do a better job at giving it to them than other people.

Use this same approach to making money in an MMO.

MMO players, especially those who have things like kids or spouses or jobs or social lives and other out-of-game commitments, can only devote a finite amount of time to playing a computer game. I’d wager a fair chunk of someone else’s paycheck to say that those people are willing to pay for the convenience of not having to stand around farming or making khazad-gold ingots because they want to play in the limited time they have and not spend that time making tokens.

Yes, they may have a KSM farmer and cook, but if they’ve only got two hours to play when their daughter takes a nap on Saturday afternoon, I think they’d probably prefer to squeeze in a Draigoch raid or a Barrow-Downs Survival run than spend it crafting.

Use this to your advantage.

Learn how the auction house works.

Find out what is in high demand. Fill that demand.

Here’s a quick recap of macro economics:

1. Decreased supply = Increased demand
2. Increased Demand = Increased Prices

If there is a ton of something on the AH (like khazad-tin) don’t waste your time gathering/refining/selling it. Find something else.

Like eBay auctions, the prices at the AH are determined by what buyers are willing to pay. If someone lists a stack of dwarf-iron ore for 3 gold and someone else lists a stack for 2 gold, the price just went down. If someone lists a stack of dwarf iron for 3 gold and it goes off in 10 minutes, they probably could have gotten 4 gold for it.

Before you list any items, you should see what the going rates are. Charge about the same (maybe a little less) as your buyout price and see what happens.

Crafting materials
In my experience, the things people need/want the most, and are therefore the things they are will to pay the most for at auction, are mid-level crafting materials.  Alt-oholics typically have a bunch of low level toons at various stages of leveling.  They also tend to have a couple or five max level toons, but not much in between.  This is typically because after they leave the starter areas, they power-level their toons and don’t take much time to smell the flowers and do things like level crafting.  So they might gather up a bunch of tier 1 and tier 2 crafting materials, but not much for items from tier 3 through 5 (and now 6).  Max level toons often have tier 7 drop and node materials out the wazoo.

So spend some time farming dwarf iron or ancient iron/silver.  There’s a circuit I run through the Angmar, Misty Mountains and Eregion I run where my level 65+ toons won’t aggro any mobs and there are lots of ore nodes.  While there, I also sweep through Eregion looking for khazad-copper (which you can never have enough of).  Find the places where there are lots of scholar nodes or concentrations of animals which may drop two hides at a time.  If you can’t find a location, search out on the interweb and you’ll find them.

Crafted Items
One of the nice things about LOTRO is that for the most part, all of the professions can be lucrative, although it is true that some are more than others.  Find out which crafted items are needed the most, and concentrate on those with your toons.  Have them join the guilds for the best recipes and such.  You should be aware that some professions will cost you more to level up front, but in the long run, they may pay off.  Cook comes to mind.

Know that there are some items which will cost you money to make. In instances like ore or hides, there really is no upfront cost to you, other than item wear. With these, I charge whatever I think I can get for them.

However, there are other items which have a substantial cost to the seller which cannot be avoided. Cooked food usually falls into this category. Many recipes required farmed items plus vendor items, and some even require lower-tier crafted items which use both farmed items and vendor items, too. In some cases, tier 6 and tier 7 food may cost the crafter 7-25 silver (or more) in vendor materials alone.

If you are selling these items, know what your costs are so that you don’t sell a stack of 100 for 1.5 gold, but the actual cost to you was 1.75 gold. That’s bad business.

No one begrudges people who make a profit at auction. What people hate are the price gougers. You know, the people who buy up the three stacks of gold ore that were listed for 1 gold each, then re-lists them for 2.5 gold per. When this happens, the only thing I can tell you is to wait for prices to come down (because they eventually will).

I’ve noticed that prices are the lowest on the weekends because that’s when the most people are on. Yes, that also means there are more people buying, but you will also have more sellers who will undercut other sellers. Yes, their profit margin may be lower, but if they are moving more product, their overall profits are higher (this is Wal-Mart’s approach).

Other Ways to Make Money

Vendor trash
For those people without high-level crafters or without the inclination or time to wheel-and-deal at the AH, there is another way to make money in LOTRO: vendor trash.

This has been somewhat offset by the use of taskboards, but simply selling vendor trash is a very underrated way to make money in MMOs.

Basically, you sell everything that drops for silver. At low levels, this isn’t very lucrative, but once you get to Moria and beyond, the value of simple drop items goes up dramatically. In pursuing slayer deeds in Mirkwood, I ran around until my inventory was full, then sold everything that dropped for over a gold. The prices of vendor trash went up in Dunland. You can easily make two gold in a couple of hours just by selling crap that has no other use in the game.

Or maybe you’ve got an inventory full of tier 6 hides that aren’t selling well at auction and your tailor already has them out the wazoo. Just sell them.

What may throw a monkey wrench into the gears on this is that the taskboards have taken some money out of the game. Items you may have previously sold as vendor trash are now being turned in for tasks with an associated reward of XP and/or faction reputation. This makes it your call as to what’s more important. Of course, if you and all of your toons are kindred with Theodred’s Riders already, then there’s no reason to go to the taskboards any more.

Skirmishes
In all skirmishes and raids, bounties are dropped by lieutenants and some mobs. These are turned in for money. Part of the intent is to compensate the skirmisher for item wear, since normal vendor trash doesn’t drop in skirmishes. I remember doing the three parts of the Helegrod run and getting a couple of gold worth of bounties.

In addition, during skirmishes, you’ll be accumulating skirmish marks in addition to bounties (and accumulating kills towards slayer deeds), so that’s like eating several pies with one spoon.⁴

When Income > Spending, You Win

There will come a point when money will not be an issue for you.  The fourth of my toons to get to level 65 was an RK, and by the time I did, he had about 70 gold in the bank, and I really wasn’t trying to make money.  That was from quest rewards, skirms and vendor trash.  I was at the point where I simply wasn’t spending money because everything he needed, I could make myself.

At this point, because I don’t really need anything, when I buy things at auction, it’s for the convenience of not having to do it myself, but the fact of the matter is that if I had to, I could.

Just try not to forget the macro economics lessons your social studies teachers tried to pass along.

And don’t buy gold off the internet.

The first thing you have to do on your path to becoming a monster is to leave the Free People’s behind and be prepared to fight for the enemy…I mean our great ruler Sauron.

While some might find it easy to just pick up and leave your character on the Freep (Free People’s) side; I decided to try to corrupt my champion instead.  I just can’t leave my champion behind even if that means destroying everything I worked so hard to do.  I decided to use my sword to find the nearest orc.  After looking around for hours my sword finally turned blue and I told the orc to take me to his highest in command so I could become a monster.

See it is blue!

After several hours of waiting in Saruman’s tower, I decided that I could not do that to my champion even though that would give me an element of surprise against the Freeps.  I decided to leave the tower immediately and find how to become a monster.  It turns out that you don’t have to leave your characters behind at all; you just have to hit the huge “Monster Play” button.

Where are the magazines?

While I do recommend that you first try a creep class as close to your main as possible, I found that I do not like the reaver at all, even though my main is a champion.  At around eight dollars a pop, if you’re not a subscriber, finding the right class can be expensive.  If you find that you do not like your experience in monster play, I recommend trying a new class to see if that fixes the problem.  Just because you like a class on Freep side does not mean that it will be your class in monster play.  I think this is because your Freep side is usually not in a group as much as Creep characters.

Day 1- A Very Deep Pit

I don't think Turbine even made a bottom.

The learning curve for monster play makes a very deep pit.  Not only is it a new class, but also a new type of LotRO.  While some would argue that there are still quests that give you XP, (called infamy in monster play) it is still a huge pit to get out of.  Hopefully, like in the picture above, I can bring you to a ledge and all you have to do is strafe left.

I decided to leave my reaver for good and bought a defiler (whom I named Andang (on Imladris)) out of the store; this is where day one starts.  Let me first say that day one was my worst PVP experience ever, out of any game.  I just kept dying as my defiler no matter how hard I tried to stay alive.  While joining a group made this a little better I still did not know what was going on.  If you feel like this in monster play, just know that it is normal at first.  I recommend asking someone that is of the same class to help you around and do fun, easy quests with you.  However on the first day, that sadly did not happen for me.  I was almost ready to quit but I decided I would give it one more day.  This easily could have been the best decision in my monster career.

Day 2- Coming Out of the Pit

On day 2, I decided that I would get in a raid to help defend Tol Ascarnen (TA) from the Freeps.  TA is the main base in monster play and is essential in order to have an upper hand in the Ettenmoors.  I was in a 23-man raid and all was going well until I got kicked out of the group.  Later I found out that it was because I did not turn on the ability to listen to voice chat.  The leader kicked me from the group because I could not hear his orders.  If you are going to be in a raid in LotRO you have to turn on this feature to stay in the group (under options/audio/voice and select voice enabled).

I did not know at the time however what was going on, but another person whom got kicked joined up with me.  While I do not plan to do name dropping on this article, Dulzak deserves some credit.  He sat down with me and taught me how to play monster play.  We did some hobbit killing quests together with some other new players in Hoarhallow (HH).  HH is a hobbit village much like the shire but on a much smaller scale.  We then proceeded to join up with a warg pack and kill some Freeps.  While the wargs were all in stealth me and Dulzak acted as bate.  We even started jumping up and down to be more enticing to a Freep group (and because the raid leader told us to).  After around ten Freep kills we decided to go and quest some more and then called it a night.  After turning in some quests, I did it; I achieved rank one status on my defiler in just two days and was out of the pit.  After having someone come down into the pit and bring me out I now understood monster play and was ecstatic for the next day.  Hope this helps you out of your pit and into your monster’s career.

Waiting on hobbits to finish baking thier pies, then we steal them while in stealth.

Next time I will go in depth on how to have fun in a raid and what do do when you reach rank one by learning from Day 3 and 4.  For now though I recommend checking out some of Merric’s posts from early last year on monster play.  These are great if you are undecided on your class, don’t understand abbreviations, or you just want the Ettenmoors map explained to you.

This week Goldenstar’s Monday Dum Group is finishing up Volume 1 quests (hopefully now done in Forochel). She did extra credit so her burglar followed along and got some reputation items for the hated lossoth. In other news, Goldenstar the minstrel is level 74.5! Actually she’s now level 75 but during the broadcast she was not quite there.

Merric didn’t do much this week. Going through the Isengard quests and has found Quickbeam’s quests.

Town Crier

• Warden Update 6 Information
  • Part 2
  • Part 3
• Information on Mounted Combat
  • PC Gamer
  • Eurogamer
  • War-Steed is included with RoR
• Bullroarer Loaded with Update 5.2
  • Relics not included in current build
• Lotteries Updated

Store News

• Weekly Store Sale
• Store Exclusive Horses Return for February

CSTM News

• “I am a Rockstar” Video Contest
• Skirmish Refund Tip
• New Writer Andang: Riders of Rohan – A Monster’s Perspective

Raise Your Glass

Roselindea

After the changes to skirmish rewards in Rise of Isengard, many of us are confused. While it is simpler in terms of only three types of barter bits (marks, medallions, and seals) it is confusing because the daily reward are gone, the campaign marks are gone, and there are additional confusions with using the instance finder. Is it possible to get a rundown on the new skirmish rewards? In particular: what rewards do you get for running at various group sizes? Many of my kinnies are either solo or small group oriented and are trying to find methods to collect medallions and seals…can skirmishes help? Thanks!

Roselindea

[rose] {LIN] [dee] [ah]

OR call me “ROSE”

Response to Rose from Elborigorn

Skirmish Rewards:

-Rewards that used to exist in the form of the skirmish daily request are now spread through out the entirety of the skirmish. By doing this, Turbine eliminated the “penalty” of receiving less rewards for running the same skirmish more than once a day.

-Old campaign marks and other barter rewards were replaced by Medallion rewards on encounter monsters and a random chance of mark rewards on Lieutenants

-Raid-sized skirmishes still have a weekly quest that works the same way it did previously except that now instead of 3 superior 4th marks, you get 6 seals (also if you’ve already done the quest for a particulay raid in that week you’ll be inelgible for loot drops from that skirm until it resets on thursday).

-Other than getting seals once per skirm per week at the raid size, the medallion rewards for skirms are more or less the same at all sizes (and quite low at that)

-Skirmishes are designed as the primary way to get the “mark” type currency and are therefore quite low on medallions and seals.

The best way to get medallions and seals, especially for people who are small-group oriented, is to run the new Isengard instances:

These isengard instances have twice weekly resets on the quests that grant seals: Resets take place on Monday and Thursday mornings.

3-mans: (14 seals each if done on T2 Challenge)

Fangorn’s Edge
Pits Isengard
Dargnakh Unleashed

6-man: (25 seals for t2 Challenge)

Foundry

Other scalable 3 and 6 man content such as School/library, GB and Annuminas are great for medallions. GB and Annuminas will also grant 1 seal per challenge success (daily cooldown).

Zeke Iddon

Hey mate,

How’s it going? I’m just getting in touch for a couple of reasons.

First up, while I admittedly only visit the site once in a while, I’m a fan of A Casual Stroll to Mordor and wanted to send out an email high-five. It’s very obvious that a lot of work has gone into it, and I’m sure I’m not the first to say that I hope your services to the gaming community continue long into the future.

Secondly, I wanted to raise awareness to a fun charity drive I’ve recently launched. Iron Man Mode is a comedy gaming blog in which a bunch of us blog about playing stuff like Minecraft, Syndicate, EVE etc. with only one life – once we’re dead, the blog and game is over completely. It’s more for fun than anything, but we’re also using it to raise money for the Child’s Play Charity; details here:

www.ironmanmode.com/donate

Yours in Awesomeness,
Zeke Iddon

p.s: I’m kinda new to the whole Twitter thing. If you’d like to follow the site’s official Twitter you can do so @IronManMode. I’ll be sure return the favour in the spirit of networking.

Player Achievements for the Week

Thank you to Nicholas F. for his donation!

Contact Us

• Visit our blog at www.casualstrolltomordor.com
• We welcome your email to podcast@casualstrolltomordor.com or leave us a voicemail at 520-261-CSTM (2786)
• We are available to follow on both Twitter and Facebook
• Please leave us a review on iTunes or Zune Marketplace and we would really appreciate it!
• Listen to us live every Saturday at 9:30 pm Eastern on Middle Earth Network Radio

The LOTRO Game Servers, http://myaccount.turbine.com, myLOTRO, and the forums will be offline for maintenance on Monday, February 6th from 6:00 to 10:00 AM Eastern (-5 GMT). Thanks for your patience, and we’ll see you back in the game soon!

Source: LOTRO Forums

Fellowship in the Great Barrow

By cleartrampoline

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

We have a wonderful opportunity for you to win some Turbine Points! Thaladus has offered up a Turbine Points he’s purchased himself just for you to create a great LOTRO video.

This will be a Lotro in-game video montage with the theme of “I am a Rockstar”. The rest of the story is up to you to show us in a original video. Entrees may be serious or funny. We mostly want to see creativity!

Creating Videos

There are many methods for capturing and editing video game footage and we really don’t have any requirements you must follow for creating your commercial. Use whatever you feel comfortable with. So long as we can watch your end product and it meets our rules below, we are satisfied.

If you are not sure where to start here are some links that may help:

• Our post series “Records of Battle” covers using Fraps or Xfire as recording options.
• Other recording options:
  • Wegame: http://www.wegame.com/
  • LiteCam: http://www.litecam.net/
• Windows Movie Maker is a free movie editing tool that you may want to look into if you do not already own editing software.

Rules

Here are the rules Thaladus has set for this giveaway:

1. Your video must portray the “I am a Rockstar” theme.
2. You may have up and not exceeding a 10 second intro (I will accept video clips from Fantasy movies (Dungeons and Dragons, Dragonslayer, Lord of the Rings, Conan, etc.)
3. You must have a 10 second hover over your character’s vitals before you begin your video. (You must hover over your character picture (in-world) or power/morale bars before beginning your choreograph), this is a fail-safe. Failure to provide this will result in instant disqualification of your video.
4. You must credit the song name and creator either before or after the video (at the end), and crediting yourself of course for your work in the project, self-pimps are nice.
5. No voice chats. Chat bubbles are allowed, emotes will help a great deal.
6. You may organize a gathering of people to help you accomplish your video, but they will not receive any share or stake in the prize. Your account, your video.
7. Multiple entries will be disqualified, I have methods for detecting this.
8. I reserve the right to place a limit on the number of entries to the contest. I will be reviewing most of these myself to keep this unbiased and impartial to the winner.
9. Videos must be in H.264/MP-4 video format and have a resolution no less than 480p and no more than 720p. This will keep the file sizes small for a 3-4 minute video. FLV files will be rejected.
10. Your video must be received by February 17, 2012, 11:59 EDT (-4 GMT)

Prizes

We have two points codes to give away to the best videos submitted!

1. Grand Prize winner: 2,500 Turbine Points Code
2. Runner-up: 1,500 Turbine Points Code

How to Enter

If your video is less than 5MB email it to us at contests@casualstrolltomordor.com, however you will most likely need to use a service called Dropsend.com. Dropsend.com is a free and easy tool that will allow you to send files up to 2GB in size.

Send all videos or Dropsend links to contests@casualstrolltomordor.com.

How Winners Are Selected

Thaladus will be selecting the winner and runner up from the videos submitted. Winners will be uploaded to the CSTM YouTube channel for all to enjoy!

“He’s (Saruman is) sending out these packs of mounted orcs, 40 or 50 at a time, and they’re devastating the town’s people and the landscape of Rohan – as is written in the books.”   ”And you, as a player, are meeting that challenge with something equivalent.”

This sounds amazing.  When I heard warbands from previous news, for some reason I thought that number was a lot lower then 40 to 50 mounted orcs.  Also it says that they are devastating the people and landscape of Rohan which sounds almost like dynamic events happening all the time, all around you, throughout Rohan.

The only named mounted combat skill so far is Trample, which all classes can use. There’s been no detailed description of what Trample does, beyond what it suggests. Paiz said there will be class-specific mounted combat skills, too.

I think in retrospect being so excited about mount emotes seems rather foolish now that we know we can trample orcs in the name of Rohan.  The interview continues on to say that you have both new mounted skills and you can use most existing character skills while mounted.  This means that I still can hope that burglars will be able to go into stealth while mounted on their war horse.

The article continues on to talk about LotRO’s future…

“Helm’s Deep is a big story, obviously. It’s a huge challenge for an MMO technically to have – from the books, – 10,000 orcs cresting a hill, running towards the keep. That’s a really robust effort from us and the investment is significant. “So we need time to get that tech ready for launch so we can bring it to life in a way that players will find credible and in a way that will meet their expectations.”

I am glad that Turbine is taking their time with Helm’s Deep because I want it done right.  What I think will be more amazing is 10,000 orcs being ambushed by several thousand Riders of Rohan storming down the hill into the giant mass of orcs.  Also notice how they say that we will see the orcs cresting over the hill implying that we will be part of the defense force of Helm’s Deep and not the riders comming to save them (with Gandalf and what not) yet we still may ride out with the King of Rohan.  Also I think that this is almost garanteed to happen since they talk about all the effort and investment they have put into this project.

Now on to Gondor?

Minas Tirith, the white-stoned and multi-tiered stronghold of Gondor, is also on the cards. Paiz described it as “huge”: “There’s a tremendous amount of white stone that has to be laid. They had thousands of years; I’m sure it won’t take us anywhere near that long, but it is a significant undertaking!”

This sounds like it will take a long time to build.  Also keep in mind the fact that at Gondor there were 100,000 orcs if I remember right from the books.  This could mean that we will go on a few detours before arriving at the white city so that Turbine can perfect the tech.  It does sound very impressive though as it is the largest settlement in Middle Earth at this time.  Keep in mind that they have to populate the city, then have it attacked, then have the Men of Rohan come save them.  All in all this will be a huge battle that even LotRO might not be able to pull off.  Even if they do, will there be incentive to fight against an army of that size.  Will we actually make a difference on the battlefield at that point?  Oh yeah…Gandalf will be there…never mind.  I am ready to fight those orcs to the death…and then respawn…and fight them to the death again!

I hope you are looking forward to the future of LotRO with excitement as it seems Turbine has a good game plan.

Also let me say that the Mordor expansion has to be called Eye of Sauron.

When it comes to LOTRO patch notes, I am not exactly what you would call a connoisseur. On the rare occasions that I actually read them, I often find my eyes glazing over reading discussions of improvements being made to end-game dungeons I have yet to run, and minor fixes to game mechanics I didn’t know existed. So I was a little surprised when I found myself reading the latest patch notes at all, and even more surprised when I found something of personal interest in them. Tucked deep in the notes, about halfway through “Town Services, NPCs, Vendors,” is this terse explanation: “Soldier rank traits have had their prices significantly reduced.”

Now, I enjoy skirmishing, and so even without hearing any details, the promise of a cost reduction was pretty appealing. Plus, I’d been unhappy with the way my Protector was working out in skirmishes lately, and so I signed into LOTRO to see if skirmish marks had been refunded, allowing me to retrait my soldier for free. No such luck – my points remained exactly the same. How major a change could this have been, I wondered, if there hadn’t been a skirmish mark refund? I realized I needed more information about the exact nature of the change before I could decide what to do about it. I did some searching in the forums and finally located a patch note thread which didn’t actually mention the skirmish change until about the 14th page (perhaps not surprisingly, given the low profile the announcement had gotten in the notes).

What finally caught my eye in the thread were a few people’s experiences which sounded very promising. More than one user reported purchasing a Scroll of Skirmish Refund (available in the LOTRO Store for 295 Turbine Points), getting all their marks back, completely retraiting their soldier, and – presumably due to the new lower cost – ending up with a huge surplus of marks left over. Having experienced frustration at the increasingly ridiculous prices of skirmish ranks, I decided to give it a try. After all, who wouldn’t want a huge pile of skirmish marks to play around with?

Now, at this point I ought to pause for a moment and confess that I am not intimately familiar with all the ins and outs of every aspect of LOTRO, and skirmishes are no exception. For example, just this past week I learned that training skirmish skills costs more if you’re trying to raise a skill above your current level. So for example, at level 66, it would have cost me 222 marks to upgrade my skirmish soldier to level 67. However, once I reached level 67, the cost was just 148 marks to make the same upgrade. (Presumably this is intended as a kind of built-in limiter for people trying to over-level their soldiers and run high-level content for increased rewards.) I also didn’t know until recently that Skirmish Captains sell special soldier skills above and beyond what the Skirmish Trainers sell. (I’m sure this is probably referenced at some point in the skirmish tutorial and I just missed it. Nevertheless, it was a big revelation for me – shiny new skills!)

With these two things in mind, I decided to bite the bullet and retrait my soldier. Here’s how it went down:

I started off with 2,395 marks in my barter wallet, bought and used a Scroll of Skirmish Refund which returned 19,854 marks to me, giving me a total of 22,249 marks – quite a princely sum! As I went to buy skills, however, I noticed something a little odd. As you can see in the screenshot, not all of my skills were reset completely by the scroll. I had previously traited a Warrior (during the in-game skirmish tutorial) and a Protector (after completing the tutorial). Immediately after the reset, those two soldier attributes are still listed as being at level 2, while all the others are listed as being at level 1. Weird, but not a big deal – it must just be something funky with the coding of the skirmish traits, or the way the reset works.

Anyway, this time I chose to level up a warrior instead of a protector. I started by increasing just his level (no Skills, Training, or Personal attributes yet) and soon he was even with me at level 66 … and it only cost me 1,093 marks! I began to think that this strategy might actually pay off.

Then I decided that I wanted to try purchasing one of the “Ultimate” skills from the Skirmish Captain to see if they really were any better than the regular skills available from the Skirmish Trainer. So I spent 523 marks and 111 medallions for the skill “Ultimate: Blood-Seeker.” A little pricey, to be sure, but it was worth it for the sake of experimentation. While I was there, I also purchased the skill “Whirling Wounds” for 70 marks and 16 medallions. Having slotted my new skills, I then began to level them, taking my soldier from 98-pound weakling to Buff ‘n’ Brawny Brawler in about five minutes.

And when my soldier was completely retraited up to level 66 (plus one skill accidentally increased to level 67), and my Training and Personal attributes were all at the same level they’d been before, my barter wallet contained a total of 16,369 marks. Wow!

Let’s take a look at the math: pre-update, the cost of all of my skirmish skills was 19,854 marks (the amount I was refunded upon using the scroll). Post-update, I spent 5880 marks retraiting my soldier, but 593 of those marks don’t count because I spent them purchasing the super-duper special skills that I hadn’t had before. So, in the end, what formerly cost 19,854 now costs 5,287. That’s a savings of approximately 73%! (Keep in mind, YMMV. I have no idea how much of that difference is due to the recent reduction in cost, and how much of it is due to the times I unknowingly overpaid by leveling my skirmish soldier beyond my toon’s current level. Even taking that into consideration, though, I think we can safely assume that the real reduction is at least in the neighborhood of 50-60%, which is still pretty huge. Also, the Ultimate skills cost a bit more to level up than the regular skills do, so the total amount I paid to retrait is even a bit higher than it would have been to go back to my exact trait setup from before.)

This episode brings up two related questions:

#1 – Why has this change not gotten more publicity? Did Turbine intentionally downplay the change for some reason? Or is it just that not enough skirmishers read patch notes for it to get much play? It certainly wasn’t hidden, but a change this significant feels like it should have been more prominent, or at least had some additional description, such as a comparison of the new prices against the old prices.

#2 – If the changes in skirmish soldier cost are this significant, why didn’t Turbine reset everyone’s skirmish marks for free? It feels kind of nickel-and-dimey to force players to purchase scrolls in the LOTRO Store to get the benefit of what was, essentially, Turbine’s mistake of overcharging for skirmish ranks. We don’t have to pay to take advantage of any of the other routine fixes in the game, so I don’t see why this should be any different. This is especially irksome to me as a Premium player, since my TP is limited, and is therefore quite precious to me. Even if I were VIP, though, I would probably still be annoyed at having to spend over half of my monthly allotment of TP to fix a problem that was not of my own creation.

This is purely conjecture, but given the recent news about the upcoming Riders of Rohan expansion – and the more significant role that skirmish soldiers will be playing there – the cost reductions may be merely a prelude to additional larger changes which will be coming soon. (Perhaps the new mechanics will make it advantageous to have several fully-traited skirmish soldiers available to you, for use in different scenarios?) In fact, it’s entirely possible that Turbine chose not to implement a skirmish mark reset now because they know they will be doing so when RoR launches in the Fall.

In the end, although I’m annoyed at having to spend TP to get my soldier in order, I really do appreciate the huge reduction in cost. While I enjoy the skirmish mechanic, the old pricing structure was very steep, to the point where I was considering abandoning skirmishes entirely because it required too much time and effort to upgrade every time I dinged a level. It’s definitely nice to be able to coast for the moment and not be forced to run skirmishes for the sole purpose of continuing to be able to run skirmishes.

So, I encourage everyone to get out there and enjoy the new cheaper skirmishing! If anyone needs me, I’ll be over at the Curiosities vendor using my thousands of marks to finally buy my missing major class items from about 20 levels ago…

• Don’t forget to add your character name, what server you play on and, if you like, add your Kinship if you have one.
• Please keep your posts brief. We won’t be able to read full novels of your adventures. At least make it so we can easily sum it up!
• Do not be afraid to post any of your achievements. We don’t care if you just saved Archet or cleared out the Tower of Orthanc. We want to hear from you!

These shout outs will appear in Episode 125 of A Casual Stroll to Mordor Podcast. You are welcome to join us live at 9:30pm Eastern on Saturday! First time joining us live? See our post on how to join CSTM’s live broadcast.

Comments for this thread will be closed after recording as this is a weekly thing. If you missed this week’s cut off, don’t fret! A new thread just like this one will appear next Friday.

The following items are on sale from February 3-9, 2012.

Free Sample of the Week

Travel maps are one time use consumables and there are plenty of locations available in the store to choose from. Some are level related (such as you can’t buy map to Mirkwood unless you are level 61+. However take a look and pick one you’d use and pick it up for free with coupon code SCY451.

Weekly Sale

Quest Packs

• Angmar
• Enedwaith
• Eregion
• Evendim
• Forochel
• Misty Mountains
• North Downs
• Trollshaws
• Lothlorien

Store Location: Account → Quests & Content → Quest Packs
Levels: Varies
595-795
476-636

CSTM RECOMMENDATION: If you were looking to pick up a few zones you are missing, this is a great opportunity!

Riding Skill

The skill enables you to ride any permanent mount that your character has purchased or earned. Riding a permanent mount allows a character to travel up to 68% faster than going on foot. The skill is auto-applied upon purchase and can be reviewed in your character’s skill panel.

Store Location: Travel & Housing → Maps & Skills → Travel Skills
Levels: 5+
95
76

CSTM RECOMMENDATION: Riding skill is a store only purchase for our free or premium friends. VIPs have the option to earn the riding skill via a quest but they must wait until level 20 while this can be purchased at level 5 and it is pretty darn cheap.

Mount Speed Boosts

Increase the speed of your mount by 20% for 60 minutes! Single & 5-Stacks available.

Store Location: Travel & Housing → Movement Buffs
Levels: 5+
50-225
40-180

CSTM RECOMMENDATION: I’m not really certain why I would purchase this. Best scenario I came up with is you plan to go out and gather wood/metal for an hour and you want to race around a bit faster. Is that worth real life money? I guess that’s really for you to decide but as far as I’m concerned, no.

Hurried Traveller

Reduce the recovery time (cool-downs) on Milestone Skills by 30 minutes to use instant-travel more often! Works across all Milestone skills! This is a permanent unlock for your character.

Store Location: Travel & Housing → Travel Traits
Levels: All
495
396

CSTM RECOMMENDATION: I believe this may be the first time this item has been on sale. It gets a meh only because it depends on your play style (how much you use milestones or if you’re a hunter/warden) how useful this is. The only bummer for this item is that is it only per character so make sure you buy it on the character you want to have this skill!

Bullroarer was updated today with Update 5.2.  This update is more of a “quality of life” update meaning that items are being added to the store, and some bug fixes are going into play.  This also means that there is no content going into the game at this point; which will be reserved for Update 6.  However, it’s still good to see some updates coming into fix bugs such as Creep mitigations.  The full patch notes are as follows:

General

Lock boxes should now:

• Drop better items more often, including the mount, relic removal scrolls, legacy upgrade scrolls, LIXP and lock box only weapons
• Drop a lock box key ~10% of the time.
• Have a better chance to drop more than one item.
• No longer drop items from the previously lowest tiers.

Burglar

• Clever Retort and Confound will now function when a Burglar has the “Mischief gives an ICPR bonus” set bonus active.

Monster Play

• Alterations made to Creep mitigation formulas have been reverted to their original state. All Creep mitigations ratings and percentages have been returned to their original values.

UI

• Added a map to the Pit of Irons in the Heathfells

Deeds

• Fixed a condition where a deed that does not have rewards would sometimes tell you that it rewarded experience.

Emotes

• Added sound to the /toast emote.

LOTRO Store

• Corrected a number of tooltips, typos, and min levels on various store items.
• Various items currently available in game have been added to the LOTRO Store. Please share your feedback on these items in theBullroarer LOTRO Store Item Discussion Thread.

In his first change, a sort of bombshell was dropped:

Masteries will be trained on the warden from the very outset of the class. Old Wardens will need to visit their trainer to get the masteries. New Wardens will have them when they are created. Though you will have the masteries, they will not be accessible until you trait into the different lines. The unlocking process is listed in the trait information below.

This is a huge change as Masteries were previously unlocked by completing class and Legendary Deeds; some of which were painful (in my opinion) to complete.  Now that they are unlocked by trait lines, Wardens should find themselves better off for it.

Orion also included what class traits he is changing as well:

And if that wasn’t enough, there are also plenty of Legendary Item Legacy changes that are going to be coming as well as a different advancement scheme for gambits and other skills.  Again, most of this is still subject to change so all feedback is welcomed by Orion.  So, if you see something you don’t like be sure to leave a comment on his blog post making sure to leave as much constructive feedback as possible.

PDF Version

I believe doors are among the most important features of a house. It’s the first thing you see, the first thing you touch and it greets you every time you come home. Doors in the Misty Mountains were definitely up to my expectations!

Carved into the solid rock of the mountain, the dwarves created special bookcases to hold their archives and many parchments.

These two decoration items are also very representative of the population. A sword proudly displayed on a beautifully carved rocky stand and a massive shield, you can’t go more dwarven then that!

Surprisingly, mountain dwarves also have their very own linens: a stripped light green adored with embroidered flowers and tree. I love when we find surprises like this!

Another great find in the mountains: pelts. Tons and tons of pelts. It make you want to cuddle in front of the fire and sip hot chocolate.

And at last, my absolute favorite decoration piece from this region, the decorative dragon head. Oh my, my hunter wants this. Now. (Maybe some lore expert would like to comment on this one?:))

Oh and a bonus item: an pretty geometric rug. Hehe.

As you ride towards the enemy, you’ll be able to activate a new set of mounted combat skills for your horse and your warrior that will connect as you race past them. If your foe is still alive, you can circle back and take another charge. If you or your opponent takes a hard enough hit, you can be set flying off your mount, and the fight will continue. “At that point you can choose to keep your advantage of being mounted, or whether you dismount to take care of your foes with your very hands,” Kate explained.

She also goes on to state that there will be a variety of ways that we can customize our war-horse’s armor, skills, and other properties; but exactly how we will do so (other than they can be earned within the game and purchased with the store) remains a secret.  However, I still cling onto the hope that Turbine will choose a similar system to that of the Skirmish Soldiers as it seems me that this has been the most successful of the leveling systems we have seen so far; the other system being the Legendary Item system.  So while we wait for more information, I will just have to be happy with thoughts of me and my comrades roaming the plains of Rohan, mowing down any orc that we see.

Gilaran of the Mellon Nin kinship on the Gilrain server on the Prized Isengard Steed. Photo sent in by @Fayesong on twitter.

This steed is a bartered for 99 Orthanc Sigil Fragments from Gwion at Ox-Clan Merchant Camp in Isengard. It is a +68% speed, 250 morale steed.

Kotaku has a great article up about artwork by Wes Burt of Massive Black showing artwork designs done for our favorite game, The Lord of the Rings Online.

If Turbine is enlisting talent like this for their design, no wonder there my wardrobe is absolutely bursting with the costumes found in the Isengard expansion. I see designs for the pre-order armor, guardian steed, hunter steed and other recognizable items my character is squirrelling away (or in some cases currently wearing).

Visit Kotaku and flip through the designs. They are well worth looking at.

Special thank you to Carrie for sending us this link to Kotaku!

Source: Kotaku

The article speaks on a couple games but LOTRO is a bit more prominent as it is something that the author is familiar with and plays herself.

Nikki speaks with Jim Drewry, VP of digital publishing, and Adam Mersky, director of digital communications, for Warner Bros. Entertainment . Turbine/WB has never shared subscriber numbers for LOTRO and I found the response WB gave to Nikki’s question about this interesting.

“We’ll just say we’re huge, but we don’t really share too much in the way of numbers. We are adding new players every day.”

The reason I find it so interesting is I personally am hearing the opposite. I play on Landroval which is a well populated server and I know there are other servers with a healthy population as well. I know LOTRO to be thriving where I play with new folks jumping on board all the time just as the quote indicates.

However, I hear of other servers not really so crowded. Particularly from players who decided to move to Landroval is who I hear this from and they compare their previous server to Landroval’s population. To those players, they may not see LOTRO’s player base as “huge”.

I also have to bring up a question about how a Free-to-Play MMO measures “subscriber numbers”. Are subscribers anyone with an account (active or not), and account that is actively playing, an account that is purchasing goods in the store or only those paying a monthly fee? You could see how given how it’s defined could make a huge difference on the answer to the “subscriber numbers” question.

Merksy also comments on the trend to share in the social network scene more:

With social media, gamers can interact with each other and reps from their favorite games in ways they never could before, even five years ago. Mersky says gaming companies such as Turbine are “constantly evolving how to communicate with people in ways like Twitter and Facebook. It’s no longer just going to the forums.”

This couldn’t be more true for me, I dislike reading the forums and when I do go there, it’s typically just to look at the dev tracker.

LOTRO conducts contests and announces lotteries on their twitter which is great way to keep players involved with the company and of course if they win something, will keep them interested in the game.

It’s not a perfect system though. There needs to be a final resting place for information. Twitter is a medium to announce and share news, not where the details are parsed out. I suppose you technically could host all the information on a place like Facebook or Google+ but it’s probably better you don’t. Link folks to the full details back on the main site. That just pushes us back into the forums many of us don’t like (or to the beta site).

I will agree with the article that community makes up MMO stickiness. Having fun with friends (real or internet) in game is probably what is going to determine how much you play the game more than the game itself. LOTRO is great but if I found myself wandering alone with a dwindling kinship or community, I could leave LOTRO in favor of doing quests with friends in a different MMO.

I am aware that some prefer to play alone. Treat MMOs like a solo console game of sorts. They solo through levels and purposely do not join kinships. That’s fine. I’m not here to tell you how to enjoy your game and I am known to go off and do my own thing as well.

From my personal experience, when my community falls apart is when I decide to move on. That doesn’t even mean to a new game. I’ve had communities that fell apart and I’ve simply switched servers to try and find a new community in the same game.

To the general point of the article. Yeah. MMO players try new games. This is not new and I don’t think it will ever stop. People will come and go and some return and some don’t. This is true for a lot of things, not just games (*looks at her pile of unused scrapbooking supplies*).

To put it into Hobbit-thinking, just because you really really love chocolate pie, doesn’t mean you won’t try the blueberry pie when it comes out of the oven!

Source: Geek Out!

In his second post he takes a look at the Gambits for the Shield and Spear gambits and how their effects change depending on the stance the Warden is in at the time of their execution.  Also included are changes to the Legendary Skills Defiant Challenge and Way of the Warden.

PDF Version

Store Explorer Report

There are few things in this world that I detest more than the mindless slaying of animals and creatures.  Sure, sometimes killing needs to be done to keep people safe, to stay off the tide of darkness that seems to be sweeping through the land, or because you are just left with no choice.  However, despite this distaste, sometimes when you spend several hours rooting out evil from the land, you can’t help but feel like you have done a good deed; and perhaps even a little more virtuous.

I have to admit that rooting out evil is long, arduous work.  And when I met a merchant that told me that he could reduce the time it took to accomplish such deeds I thought him either to be mad or a powerful wizard.  And so for a few special coins he gave to me a scroll that once read, would give me speed unlike that which I had known before and I would find myself accomplishing my deed in half of the time.  I walked away feeling a bit foolish, but hopeful that  I hadn’t just been swindled.

So, as I rode through Enedwaith I recalled that the Grey Council had informed me that there were many wolves throughout the area that were hampering not only their journey South, but also had been known to mindlessly slaughter the cattle of the local tribesmen.  So, I promptly set upon my task to hunt down these vile wolves and teach them to fear anything that walks upon two legs.

I happened to find a wolf roaming throughout the plains and before I set about my task of felling the foul beast, I pulled out the scroll and read it out loud.  I’ll be darned if I didn’t instantly feel a rush of confidence and speed as I finished and then the most marvelous thing happened; the scroll disappeared!

“Sorcery,” I muttered under my breath as I drew out my axes.  I began to stalk my foe carefully, but I must have made too much noise for the beast suddenly reared its head in my direction and let out a dreadful snarl; jumping for my throat.  A minute later I stood standing over the corpse of the foul beast and to my astonishment I felt as if I had slain not one, but two wolves.  I can’t really explain the sensation for I wasn’t twice as tired, but I did feel twice as accomplished.  I smiled to myself and promptly looked for the next beast to down, but to my dismay I could find none.

The merchant had warned me that the magic from the scroll would last for only a short time and I started to fear that it would wane before I had a chance to use it fully.  I stopped in my tracks, breathed deeply, and calmed myself.  That was when I remembered a cave to the East that the Rangers had told me about not two days earlier.  The place was a deep, dank cave that was rumored to be the home to many a wolf.  I ran to my steed, mounted him, and galloped of in the direction of the cave.

Summary

Slayer Deed Accelerators are something that we’ve discussed before, and it’s something that I’ve become fairly familiar with as I’ve attempted to make my Champion a bit more end-game friendly.  And while I think that they are a good buy (especially on some of the deeds requiring a ridiculously high kill count) the use of them should be used with a warning.  Make sure that these scrolls are used in an area where there is a high volume of the mobs needed.  Nothing is worse than seeing that buff tick down while you run around aimlessly trying to find the correct mob to kill.  Outside of that advice, I highly recommend considering these when you set about on your Slayer Deeds if for no other reason than to save a bit of your sanity.  (Also Netflix helps as well too.)

A nice place to fight

I first want to talk about the guarantied positives before we move on into the questions of what monster play will be like in this expansion.  In the expansion the level cap will be raised ten levels to 85.  This gives Creeps a temporary buff because we are automatically promoted to level 85.  This allows most Creeps to solo against Freeps without having to worry much about death.  This also provides an easy supply of destiny points and infamy for a few weeks.  If you have a low level Creep then this will be the best time to try to level them up, even if you only do quests and get maps.  Also a lot of Freeps will focus on the new content instead of PVMP.  This usually creates a nice peaceful zone where getting quests and maps is easy for all players and the Ettenmoors is under complete control of the Creeps for about a month.  These two things create a nice break for both sides from the constant fighting.

A major feature that is getting people excited for RoR is the conformation of mounted combat.  I have been looking forward to go into combat as a hunter and shoot enemies from afar since the rumor came out around the time of the RoI expansion was announced a year ago.  The big advantage of mounted combat becomes clear whenever an enemy gets close you can just ride away on your horse and pick him off from afar again.  I don’t know how they will get a burglar into stealth while mounted because this would imply that the horse is either invisible, or it is sneaking up behind you without a visible rider.  Anyway I think you can already tell that if Freeps had mounted combat in PVMP, then it could cause a huge imbalance that would need to be corrected.

The obvious solution is to just simply limit the Freeps from going into the Ettenmoors with their new mounts.  This creates a problem, however, if mounted combat is as fun as Turbine claims it is in the interview with Turbine from Massively’s Justin Olivetti.  I would not want to leave the new feature just to fight some Creeps in a nearly five year old zone.  This could create huge drops in the number of Freeps in the Ettenmoors.  However, it could be what Turbine is counting on and would then proceed to make PVMP open to free to play accounts.  Opening the zone to free to play Freeps was not previously thought feasible because of the advantage that Freeps have on some servers.  The new mounts might even be limited to just Rohan in which case the roll playing excuse would probably be that we were allowed to borrow the armored horses in order to defend Rohan and only Rohan.  This would be a clever excuse Turbine could use to justify a decision to keep your mount in Rohan.

Another solution Turbine could use to balance the new mounted combat system would be to give Creeps the chance to have mounted combat.  This would allow both sides to use the new feature and keep up the number of people in the Ettenmoors on both sides.  The obvious mount, of course, would be wargs.  I think many warg players would find this awkward however seeing other people riding things just like you.  This could take away some of the specialness of being a warg if every character had a warg under them.  This would make the wargs feel like a mount instead of a class.  Could you imagine if Turbine announced a new horse class where you only controlled a horse?  That would basically be the Freep equivalent of this solution.  The only other common creature that has a history of being mounted would be a fell beast.  However, having a fell beast would be lore breaking because only Ringwraiths can ride them, even though it would make mounted combat balanced (and would be awesome).

I can see our fort from here

A rumor about a new zone came out around the same time last year as the rumor for mounted combat.  While I am not saying that this is going to happen it would solve some problems.  If there was a new PVMP zone that was near Rohan, they could create it with mounted combat in mind.  Also, how awesome would it be after five years to finally have a new zone for monster play?  During the first three expansions Turbine has put monster play to the side in order to advance the Freep adventure.  Hopefully the year old rumor is true and we will be getting a new zone to creep in sometime this fall.

Also in the Massively interview with Turbine was another new system that will be coming before RoR (remember it’s RAWR!).  It is going to allow Freeps to take their soldiers to any place on the map excluding instances.  While Turbine did not say if soldiers would be allowed in PVMP, I could not help but to think about what would happen if this was allowed.  I would be okay with allowing Freeps to bring soldiers into the Ettenmoors (or a new zone) but only if the Creeps get to pick what Creep soldiers they get.  Since there are six kinds of soldiers on the Freep side there would need to be an equal amount on the Creep side.

Some people would argue that Creeps are a little under powered in the Ettenmoors so I think that Creep soldiers should be clearly balanced to the Freep soldiers to keep from other arguments from breaking out.  Keeping this in mind, my soldier selection would be a lore breaking baby fell beast, evil aurochs (way better then a light bulb), ranged spiders, mounted goblins, baby wargs and armored trolls.  Of course Turbine could just save the trouble by not allowing soldiers in the Ettenmoors, and instead make Creeps a little more powerful.  If they increased the strength of each Creep class just a little, that would be enough to justify the inclusion of soldiers for Freeps in PVMP, at least for me.  Also I think it would be fun having some easier targets for monster players than the normal Freep.

I hope that Turbine will also focus on providing new skills to the Creep side of the game.  While we do have a good number of skills it does not even come close to the amount that Freeps have.  I find this an unfortunate imbalance of the two sides that could easily be fixed in RoR.  We don’t even need more ranks; we just need new low level skills for each monster play class.  This alone could be used to balance the current low level fight in PVMP.  While all the other changes are possible, this change would be the easiest to implement and could have major balancing effects in the current conflict.  I would be surprised if turbine does not give monsters new skills when the level cap is raised in RoR.

I would like to also mention that Justin Olivetti’s interview with Turbine included Turbine saying that giving free to play players the right to play in monster play is an important change of 2011 to LotRO.  This could mean that Turbine is looking at PVMP as an important part of the game now and will look at adding in improvements throughout 2012.  It will be an interesting year for PVMP and the rest of LotRO.  I am excited to have joined the CSTM team at such a big time in LotRO’s life.

See you next week in the first issue of “How to be a Monster”.

The first step of becoming a monster is showing your allegiance to Saruman by bowing willingly.