The Other Bounty Quests

We've had a discussion about bounty quests before, but did you know that in addition to the IXP bounty quests in Esteldin, there's crafting related bounty quests in Breeland (and perhaps other places)? While adventuring with Massive Hobbits in the Barrow downs I ran across three repeatable bounty quests that reward single-use recipes to whichever type of crafter you are. One of them even rewards the particular shard (in this case sapphire) that you need to complete these recipes. Of course, that means you'll have to find two other shards for the other two recipes you get, but that's not unreasonable. Indeed, these quests are an excellent way to get some good recipes for some nice jewelry early in your tier when you couldn't otherwise make a crit item with good stats. I do hope to see more of these for the later tiers.

Psychochild's Legendary Evaluation

Psychochild, a game developer named Brian Green, has put up a blog post evaluating the Legendary item system in LOTRO and what could change to make it better. I thought I'd point it out and respond.

He points out two problems with the system. First, its randomness, and second its negative affect on crafting. I whole heartedly agree with his assessment visa-vie crafting. Lucky for us, Siege of Mirkwood will expand the current craftability of legendary items. Depending on what is implemented, this could be a moot point. On the whole, I feel the randomness is generally well balanced, especially with the most recent changes to allow the choice of legacies (out of two) to add or upgrade. In essence, legendary items as a system actually aren't that bad right now. But I do think I would have preferred a different approach, one that would have required implementation of legendary items from launch. Such wishful thinking, however, is futile since the past cannot be changed now.

Despite the system being "not that bad", could Psychochild's suggested improvements help? First he advises to make legacies slottable instead of inherent to the weapon. Like the relics. This immediately eliminates any difference between relics and legacies and therefore should become one and the same - slottable stats. I like the idea but there needs to be a way to keep the current level of randomness present. If we can choose our legacies out of a pool like the relics, then we have too much freedom to create "uber" weapons. Now, of course legendary weapons should be some of the best weapons in the game, but not to the point where freedom to customize will lead to them being overpowered. Psychochild doesn't have any ideas on keeping the randomness, but that's because he thinks there's too much randomness at present. I would suggest that once you slot your legacy, it cannot be removed - only leveled, like present. There is mention of removing the legacy, but I think that keeps the pool of legacies too powerful and perfect. Perhaps removal is permanent - you lose the legacy. This is really only delays the inevitable super collection of legacies. Players will eventually quest enough to get any legacy the want. And since it's not random on the weapon, they will gain the "perfect" weapon relatively quickly.

Honestly, I don't think changing the legendary item system in this manner will bring about any improvement from a game mechanic perspective. From the player's point of view, they'll certainly like it better because they can now really get the weapon or item they've always wanted. But because the grind is virtually eliminated (aside from collecting legacies/relics and leveling) it has less utility for keeping players engaged.

This of course begs the question - is a grind with this system the best way of engaging the players? I would argue no, there's got to be a better, more fun, way. And I think that way can be in part linked to the crafting. Incorporating more playstyles into the legendary system will help it, regardless of the grind. If we can get crafted legendaries to speed up the grind a little, we'll see a little bit more fun.

The root problem, I think, is the dichotomy between randomness and an actual legendary weapon you would keep with you, like Sting or Glamdring or Anduril. With as much randomization as we have, it necessitates burning through legendaries we don't want to find the one that will suffice. Retaining a weapon for a long period of time, as a truly legendary weapon would, requires it be less randomized to ensure desirability on first acquisition. The latter isn't good, as I said above, for retaining interest in the mechanics of the system beyond leveling.

I think the ideas would be good to put on hold till we see how exactly the legendary system improves (or doesn't as the case may be) with SoM. Still worth thinking about though.

Massive Hobbits Week 2

Another week has past. Massive Hobbits are still getting fatter! Too much pie... wait, there can never be too much pie.

Anyway, this week the readers over at Massively voted us to do the rest of Book 1, culminating in the Chapter 11 instance in the Great Barrows. Turns out this quest was made considerably easier since most of us had last done it. Signature mobs throughout instead of elite. That meant Sambog's master elite status was greatly diminished. We owned him. Or rather, Bombadil did. Did you know he's a Rune-Keeper!?!

And that brings me to my next point: I made a video of our little escapade through the dank tombs of fallen warriors - as promised. So, if you're wondering why I call Tom a Rune-Keeper, just check out the video and you'll see. Or, if you've done the instance, I bet you can guess. But that's not all! There's bonus material too - an outtake. Poor old Kabbage, hardened Burglar, had his wits muddled not by brew, but by a prancing, dancing, dandy... er, Tom. Luckily he got the brunt of the jokes rather than Kabbage.

I definitely look forward to next week's adventure. Book 2 might not be on the docket since it starts with a level 26 quest (solo). Man, there's a big gap between the two. I think I might suggest waiting for the kinship. Not sure where the revamp to this part of the game is in terms of release (Orion was only just talking about it) but Book 2 does get a facelift. And perhaps we'll get to do a Rivendell run since that was number two in the vote.

Besides the grouping, Kabbage has also been burning as fast as he can through the Jeweler craft, leveling to make some appropriate level shinies for himself and his kinmates. Really, I have to comment on the wonderfully generous people in this kinship, sending on mats to Kabbage and even making him some armor. I really appreciate all the sharing.

Happy adventuring!

Massive Hobbits Week 1

Looks like a week has come and gone since the last check in with Massive Hobbits. Well, not quite, but the next write up has been posted over at Massively. Do head on over there and read the wonderful narrative about Gibbi and his friends.

I unfortunately could not participate on Sunday when Massive Hobbits invaded Breeland. By the looks of the vote thus far (don't forget to vote on the next adventure), we'll be finishing up Book 1, although I'd love to see us make a Rivendell Run as well, since that won't take as long as the Book 1 questing.

Kabbage has been attempting to level his Jeweler profession in order to supply the kin with some nice jewelry. He'll be hard pressed to keep up with the leveling curve, however. I've been spending a lot of time during the week just gathering mats and crafting. We'll see how that works out. I'm not one to beg for mats from my kinmates, but if any of them read this, they're more than welcome to send Kabbage copper and silver ore. And any recipes too.

Last on the agenda is finding out where everybody is at for Book 1 and catch up. I really should run through the prologue in the Shire first, so it looks like I'll be putting crafting on hold for a bit.

Happy adventuring!

Book 8 Patch 1 Notes

Most of you already know about the Book 8 Patch 1 Notes but I thought I'd link them here on the off chance someone does not know about these yet.

The big news, of course, is the crafting of legendary weapons, called "Reforged". That's not to say crafters can reforge legendary items as a gameplay mechanic, but from a lore perspective, it would be... less epic if everyone and their cousin could make legendary weapons from scratch. So we can merely reforge them. Still a tremendous feat in and of itself.

Not sure yet how these recipes are acquired, be it rep grinds, random drops, or the vendors themselves. Regardless, this is an excellent addition to the game. Crafters really got the short end of the deal with both legendary items and radiance gear. Now they'll get a little bit back. Can we see some crafted Rad gear though devs?

Post Book 8 Impressions

First off, I have done only one of the new instances given to us in Book 8, and that one bugged out. Haven't tried it after the hotfix. But I have been looking around at the revamped content in Breeland and Ered Luin, and I'm very pleased with the result. Not nearly so much running back and forth (which got annoying without a horse, if in such a small zone as Ered Luin), the quests are better written and more organized - they flow better. Great job Orion on the revamps. I particularly liked the tour of Bree, getting players familiar with the town. I remember being sent to the Prancing Pony and looking up where it was in my copy of the Lord of the Rings (kudos for putting everything in its proper place!) after I somehow managed to miss it. No missing it now with the pointer quest to the tour.

I've not participated in the epic book continuation either, as I'm a stickler for doing the books in order, and I'm currently on 2.5.5. Hope to catch up soon. Still, what I'm hearing is good. Rarely have I found an epic quest that sucked. They might have been hard, there might have been complaining, but the fact remains they're some of the most well-crafted content in the game.

There is one thing, however, that I have to comment on, negatively. The names of all the food items have been changed to include a container or amount in the name. Like "Jar of Mint Sauce" rather than just "Mint Sauce". That means that everything at the vendor is completely rearranged and the alphabetical order is no longer logical. If there are Jars of stuff, it's all together, if it's Bottles, that's together too. But it could be a Jar of Mint Sauce and a Jar of Vinegar. Those should be near the m's and the v's respectively, as before. It's almost like alphabetizing books or movies with the word "The" at the beginning all in the t's. It doesn't make sense because it's not the significant word. I can't find anything anymore at the vendors... Of course, I'll eventually relearn the order of things, but someone got a little overzealous on their modifiers this time around.

All in all a good patch. Book 8 of course fixed a lot of bugs, and the patch notes were extensive for this. I hope to see continued quality, with a little more forethought in some areas, such as the food items, or the larger issue of raid/instance design/rewards/progression.

EDIT: This is becoming a bad habit, post post editing. Anyway, Yeebo's comment reminded me that I have spent a good deal of time fishing for the summer festival deed. I tweeted that I now have the title "Sunshine" (with the requisite "Hello Sunshine" replies) which involved fishing in four different areas, a little over an hour real-time commitment. And these timed fishing excursions are repeatable, meaning you can get summer festival tokens simply by fishing. An excellent way to invigorate the fishing scene again.

Book 8 Patch Notes Review

I mentioned before I would wait to talk about the Book 8 patch notes until they were finalized. That time has come. This is going to be a epically long post. You have been warned. The format will be as follows. I'll hyperlink the relevant note I'm discussing, summarize what's necessary, and commentate. I'll not be going over all the notes, of course. That would just be insane. Instead, I'm picking and choosing what seems to be of most interest to me. Therefore, I'll be skipping much of the class specific information (aside from captains, because I play one), and a lot of the minor bug fixes. "Major" news is the idea with this post.

Epic Book Continuation

There's no surprise here. Like always, I'll say the epic books/storyline is one of my favorite parts of this game. Sounds like this book will focus on small fellowships.

Summer Festival

The seasonal content is a nice diversion for a couple days. I think we'll still be seeing the token drops. Really long period of that. I'm no longer a fan of the tokens since they're not scaled to level 60. Now they just take up space in my bags, if I even choose to collect them. Still, festivals are always fun, and sounds like there will be new activities.

Lothlorien Gift Boxes

This has been an issue since Book 7. The drop tables weren't right or something. Looks like these will be more friendly, though chances of a first age are completely gone. I like the changes, but I'm don't really care about first ages. My current third age weapon will be hard to beat as it is. And I'm not really grinding legendaries at the moment either.

First Age Legendaries

They're acquired by barter items now, gained through the instances/raids. Much better system as it eliminates getting first ages for the wrong class. Good change here.

Vendor Stacks

We can buy partial stacks from vendors! Yay! I always hated filling up to a full stack by clicking one at a time. Nice convenience change that just makes our LOTRO lives better. Like it says, it's the little things that count.

Boat Keepers

About bloody time! That lake is beautiful, but swimming across Evendim multiple times gets tedious after a while. Just like a swift travel route. Nothing fancy, but oh so nice. More convenience changes. Gotta love em!

FM Change

Hmmmm, I don't know if this will really affect things much. I don't play in fellowships often enough to really see what causes a FM induction - stun, knockdown, or on purpose (burg skill for instance). I guess it's not so nice we have one less option for FMs, but then again, we can induce them ourselves with the right class(es).

For your convenience (word of the day it seems) I've linked to each class's patch notes:

• Champion
• Guardian
• Hunter
• Minstrel
• Captain
• Burglar
• Lore-Master
• Rune-Keeper
• Warden

Captain Commentary

First on the list that interests me is we can once again rename our banners. Yay! I'm all for fluff changes and I like naming things. I miss it now that I no longer use Heralds (Ruth is so lonely).

Our Cry of Vengeance skill will now have a 10 second window of use and longer range. This is a very good thing. Nearly 2/3 of the time I use that skill, I'm either too late, or not in range of the downed player and it's completely wasted. Very helpful change, especially since the In Harms Way nerf. Makes up for that just a little bit.

Lastly, we can once again use Gleaming Striker, Flashing Bane, and Shining Star scrolls from the solo legendary instances in the Dolven View. When I saw that we couldn't use these post Book 7, I was annoyed. There was no longer anything to modify the Emblems. That was a mistake, obviously, not an intended change. Finally we're getting the fix. Good deal!

All in all I think the captain changes are good this time around. Repeated nerfs will wear on you.

User Interface

I'm happy to see that there is now a /ui command that saves your ui, which you can then load as a new character. Seriously, this is such an awesome feature. I hated going onto my alts (not that I did very much) and having to rearrange my ui all over again. I've done so many tweaks to it on my main that it takes way too long to change it all over again with another character. And then I don't even remember where I put half the stuff that's not visible all the time. Good stuff here.

More skinning options. I don't use skins, finding the default look satisfactory to my gameplay. But many people do, and unleashing the creativity of the player base is always a good thing.

Effect icons will once again pulse properly when running out of time. I don't know when they stopped pulsing, but it became hard to see when an effect was almost complete as sometimes the icons would stay opaque, and sometimes they would stay transparent. Makes it hard in high stress, distracting activities like instances or raids to quickly see what's going on. And that's important - getting the information to the player as fast and as efficiently as possible.

Quest Guide

Indicators on the map now pulse. I always made them pulse manually by moving my mouse on and off the item in the quest guide so I could more clearly see where it is I'm supposed to be looking, especially when I have multiple, large-area quests active and overlapping each other. Nice to see refinement like this.

Housing

Lockout fees will increase each week a house is in lockout (from not paying your bills, lazy bums!) until it reaches 90% of the purchase price. Not so bad for you normal house people, a bit expensive for the deluxe house. I did loose my house once before they were unloosable (That is not a word, I know) but I got my money back from that. I learned my lesson - pay my bills on time. Or rather, log into the game at least once per week to check on it. I got distracted by my school work at the time so I have a legitimate excuse for getting evicted!

Raids

Exploit fixes here. Good to see they're still working on this issue. I wish they had been faster at fixing the initial problems with the radiance instances post MoM release. Let's hope they've learned from that situation and will rapidly develop hotfixes for major issues like that.

Crafting

We're seeing a lot of changes to crafting here. The basic system stays the same, but things have been much more streamlined, such as use levels, crafting materials, tool tips, etc. There was an excellent dev diary talking about the changes, so check that out rather than these notes for the scoop on crafting re-vamp.

Adding a "make all" button is a good refinement, as well as fixing the stupid default to 0 thing. That is annoying.

I've included links to specific professions for your convenience:

• Farming
• Scholar
• Prospecting
• Cooking
• Weaponsmith
• Jewler
• Tailoring
• Metalsmith
• Woodworking

Jaxom the Yeoman

Jaxom is quite happy to see the critical items for farming have been reduced to 1 instead of 3. This does come with a price increase, but that's understandable. Nice to use stacks of mats up equally.

Jaxom is also happy that farming fields produce optional critical cooking ingredients. Looking forward to trying those out.

And Jaxom is elated to see food can stack to 50, and crafting ingredients stack to 100. Less trips to MD for cooking as he can store much more food on his person. Must have one of those portable coolers.

Legendaries

Happy to see that auto-combine on runics will pull from the most populated items rather than randomly. That way mutiples are used up first. Just common sense here, but something easily overlooked. Glad it has been changed.

Loot System

Rare Lothlorien monsters now drop Mithril Flakes. About time! You mobs better look out. There's a whole host of levle 60 players that are now gunning for you... er, swining their swords and firing their bows.

Rolls on keys will only apply to players who have not added the key to their ring. Why someone would purposefully roll on a key they already have, I don't know. Accidentally, well, that makes more sense. Glad to see this "fixed".

Graphics

Elated, yes, elated to see the lighting issues in Moria have been cleared up. They were visually annoying, having the ambiant light at your feat and partially through the ground in certain places. I'm a oogler of nice looking graphics, and when things don't look quite so good, I get cranky. Well, not really, but I love it when things do look nice, and LOTRO is a nice looking game.

Creature Pathing/AI

The only reason I bring up this bit is because here we find the lovely humor of whomever it is that writes up these patch notes. I will, for lack of a name, attribute this to the company as a whole. Turbine has a wonderful sense of humor:

"Moose in Forochel will no longer stand around and allow themselves to be turned into Moose-burger."

"Burrow Mobs Take 2! Once again, monsters which "burrow" (Cave-claws, Shades, Dark-waters, Neekers) will no longer do so when they are near death, because that's annoying. Our first attempt at fixing this was equivalent to a 9mm; it should've been enough to get the job done, but it wasn't. *This* time we’re pulling out the Desert Eagle .50, that outta stop these jerks."

Conclusion

Yay! I'm done. Whew! What a set of notes. I heard one comment that LOTRO patch notes give EVE a run for it's money. I assume that means EVE has long patch notes. I've never played it. I don't know how helpful or entertaining this was. Probably not much. On the whole I'm quite happy with the Book 8 changes. It doesn't address some of the larger overaching concerns I talked about in the last couple of days, but that's not something you see in a free patch. More like an expansion scale, or over a longer period of time. And I think that's what needs to happen with a lot of the critiques - Turbine needs time to look over the data, feedback, etc and come to the conclusions themselves. I think they will, considering the past track record with this game.

I'm looking forward to the patch. I really need to get back into the game for the epic quest, which I'm currently sitting on 2.5.5, I think. It's been that long since I looked at it. The only "new" content that I would participate in this time around is the epic storyline. I don't raid, and I haven't gotten any radiance gear anyhow.

Keep up the good work, Turbine. Glad to see the effort in this patch.

Book 8 Crafting Dev Diary

Perhaps one of the best dev diaries ever written, the Book 8 crafting diary is full of wonderful new information about the changes to crafting coming with the Book 8 update. I'm very much looking forward to this overhaul, not that I craft much. Indeed, I'm a cook, but it looks like cooks (and farmers) are getting some love. We're such a neglected group, especially the farmers. Do check this out - there's a wealth of information and it's even something you might want to bookmark for a while until you memorize the changes. Nice tables included!

Unfortunately, I did not see anything about crafted gear becoming better in relation to the higher end gear. I think we're never going to see that again with the whole radiance level gear check going on with the raids. Adding radiance to crafted gear would negate all the hard work done on the instances giving the radiance gear as crafting would be easier. Unless they somehow made crafting harder, which would be... well... hard. Still, this is a much needed upgrade to crafting

Are Gear Checks Inevitable?

This is an extension to my crafting post yesterday. Considering that the "supreme" end-game content is raiding, and therefore the "supreme" gear should be acquired from raiding, should we just expect to see crafted gear fall by the wayside? And should we accept it?

I don't raid. I'm not against raiding, I just don't like sitting down at games for large amounts of time wholly focused. I might do it casually, if such a thing is possible. As such, I can't objectively evaluate if gear checks are a good thing or not, as they're usually always associated with raiding. A fundamental goal of raids is to extend the end-game by creating group grinds. Adding a gear check into the process is a very good way of making raiding a grind. Only one person gets a piece of gear per run, therefore one has to run the raid multiple times to gear up every participant.

I think that's perfectly fine. Raiding is a particular game play style and system where a grind such as this is accepted and perhaps even embraced. In this sense, gear checks are inevitable. But raiding isn't an isolated feature of the game. It's connected through the gear progression, and in some cases through the quest chains. And because of the experience gained in raiding, be it gear, grouping mechanics, etc, players who participate in raiding approach other content differently. That's normal.

Because of this connection, there's more to it than just a gear check. So, perhaps raiding should be designed differently to acknowledge this connection. On the other hand, is this connection only superficial and meaningless. Why care about a gear check if you don't raid? I realized my goal of getting radiance gear wasn't necessary if I wasn't going to experience the watcher raid. Sure, the extra stats would help me in the rest of the game but my current gear will probably never be the death of me in gameplay other than raids.

So, to answer the question, yes. I had thought it might be avoidable, but actually, despite my desire to see gear crafting be important again, I also like the extra dimension a gear check like the radiance gear requirement gives to the raid game. However, like anything, it has its side effects. Cost benefit analysis anybody?

What Happened to Crafting?

Heyo! You, armorsmith! You, weaponsmith! Cancel my order, I just got this epic second-age weapon off an orc, and this awesome armor from some deep, dark, dank place in Moria. Your stuff is crap.

The other day I commissioned a level 58 critted halberd from one of my kinmates. Why? Actually, the DPS rating is a lot better than the level 57 third age "legendary" I currently have, despite the almost perfect legacies and some tier 6 runes. I also want an alternative damage type weapon for when I might go back to places like Sarnur or Haudh Iarchith with mobs that require certain damage types for effective combat. As an aside, I'm curious as to what happened to that idea and why it doesn't play a more active roll in the legendary weapon system.

Anyhow, I'll be getting a Peerless Thain's Halberd for a backup weapon in these unique situations. I would have preferred a weapon with light damage, such as the Mirrored Ancient Steel Halberd I once had before legendaries came about, but alas, the new critted crafted weapons don't have that option. It's either Westernese like the Halberd, Ancient Dwarf-Make, or Beleriand. That means I'll probably commission a Peerless Thain's Greatsword and Peerless Thain's Great Axe at some point to have my bases covered. Again, why? Well, those special circumstances, but mostly because I can. And I don't want to believe that crafted weapons and armor is completely useless.

Actually, the crafted armor is useless to me. I've got a full set of the Captain gear acquired from the instances, bought from the AH before said armor was Bind on Acquire. I'm a bit disappointed that crafted armor is no longer "comparable" to the epic sets gained through group play. Certainly the Mirrored Armor wasn't as good as the Rift Armor, but it still was a viable set for combat. With the new enemy types and behaviors in Moria, this became less true. And you could run the Rift in a set of Mirrored Armor just fine, but you cannot run the Watcher raid in crafted gear. No, you'll be dread-killed. You need the best armor in the game, the radiance gear acquired from not just running all 6 instance and winning the roll, but doing so in hard mode.

I'd like to see crafted gear become viable again. One of the big pushes with LOTRO was to make crafted items useful, and equalizing them with raid gear was exactly how to do it. They weren't perfectly equal - raid gear was marginally better. But it worked for who played what type of content. The more "hard core" players went raiding and therefore cared more about getting the best of the best gear, even if it wasn't massively better than the crafted gear. The more casual players went after the crafted gear because it was easier to gain without grouping. And they could deal with it being slightly less than the best because it would still function in whatever activity they wanted to do, even if they decided to do a casual raid run, just for kicks.

Bring back the crafted gear market. Show our hard working laborers that their product is important. Let's acquire crafted gear because it's useful, not just for the heck of it like me.

Working on the Meta

So I spent most of today in LOTRO not in LOTRO. That is, I was working on my cooking price guide. The last time I updated it was before the launch of Mines of Moria, so there is a new tier of recipes, not to mention the price changes and added food items. Oh, and with that whole new combat revamp stats are different meaning all the listed effects have to be revised. That means virtually every line in the spreadsheet needs to be changed. Alas, if only I was a programmer and could just use the new tools Turbine provided to dynamically update my cooking guide. So, all this is pretty meticulous work and will take me longer than an afternoon. I'll be working on it for a little while.

Oh, and I'm fully aware of this work done by a LOTRO player but like my guide, it's out of date and I prefer the way I'm formatting my spreadsheet.

Fortifying Food

With the release of Book 7, cooks were able to collect Fortifying Food recipes, or more commonly referred to as Soup recipes, since all the Fortifying Food is soup. These food stuffs give you a bonus to fear, disease, poison, or would resists, with the higher bonus for the higher level food. I've now collected every recipe for every tier except Journeyman. There have been no Journeyman level Fortifying Food recipes on the Auction House (where I collected most of them) and I'm a level 60 so I'm not naturally questing in the level range that Journeyman recipes would be found. I'm assuming that since they are so low, people just aren't selling them, but it still seems a bit odd that none has ever shown up on the AH as far as I can tell. I wonder if these four recipes didn't make it into the game for some reason.

In the mean time, now that I have all the recipes available to cooks, I'm going to be rewriting my Cooking Pricing Guide, which I'll then upload for the convenience of all cooks out there. Stay tuned for that.

Quite the Non-LOTRO Weekend

Wow, I sure had a lot going on IRL this weekend - so much so that not only did I not manage to get into LOTRO, but I hardly had time to sit down at the computer and check my e-mail, let alone blog. This is a LOTRO blog so I won't go into details but what I will do is make an update on where I'm at in the game.

I didn't make it to Lothlorien yet. I've been side tracked by my other method of reducing burn out - and that was play more with my kinship members. Last time I logged in it was mostly "hanging out" with them.

I've been camping the AH house as of late as well trying to complete my collection of the new soup recipes for the cooking profession. I got all the level 50+ recipes collected, working on lower levels. Hasn't been any for the Journeyman tier on the AH at all, and I have three or four total from Expert, Artisan, and Master tiers. I'd like to get these as soon as I can so I can update my cooking guide, which is woefully expired. My local version is more up-to-date than the one I linked but still... need those recipes.

Interested in getting a group together in my kinship to do my class quest (Hands of Healing) for the legendary trait, which is probably the only one I'd really use unless I was needed to tank. The last one, the Lead the Charge set, is fairly useless in my opinion. Got another 60 captain waiting on that quest too. Need to do a Fil Gashan run. Seems to be an unpopular instance with many of my kinmates so we'll see how far this gets any time soon. Might pug it when me and the other captain are around.

Lastly, I'm trying to get a local friend interested in the game. Been sending him screenshots lately and he says he's "really interested" but doesn't want to commit to a monthly fee and the lifetime membership is too expensive at the moment. I'm unemployed or I'd offer to pay it for him with him paying me back whenver he can. Oh well - his computer wouldn't let the game look nearly as nice as mine does - which would be a bit of a let down after the screen shots I've been sending him.

Oh, one more thing. Going to try and get FRAPS working one more time for LOTRO. I desperately want to create some video. Nasty out of memory crashes.

The Spring Festival is Here!

Looks like it's time for another promotional event in the form of the Spring Festival. To commemorate the event Turbine has released a developer diary talking about the festival.

Each season has it's own festival with each of the four races in Middle-Earth having their own particularly activities and celebration. This year's notable activity is the hedge maze near the Breefields north of Bree. There are a few different activities you can do in the maze and all are quests repeatable, but with cooldowns. A couple of the notable ones is a dwarf who wants you to post confusing signs within the maze to... well, confuse people. I had to laugh at that one. Another one is a hobbit who wants you to round up some chickens that have gotten loose inside the maze. As a lover of hedge mazes, I had a blast doing all these quests. And there's a special title for those who complete all the quests.

Each quest will gift you with a hedge leaf that can be turned in for prizes at a nearby trader. For farmers there are three potted plants recipes you can get. Also included are some housing items, a cosmetic item, and two items you can use to slap people with. Yeah, I'm not joking. So, check out the Breeland hedge maze north of Bree!

Crafting Instances

There are 6 new solo instances in the game now targeted towards crafters. They are located in three different locations, two per: The Redhorn Lodes, Zelem-Melek, and Durin's Way. If you turn on traders on your map, you'll see new blue icons specifically where these instances are located. That's the easiest way to find them.

I ran through these yesterday to get a taste of what they were like. Each instance has a bunch of crafting nodes in them for forester, scholar, or prospector. They are in Zem Melek, Durin's Way, and the Redhorn Lodes respectively. The nodes are on a cooldown timer completely seperate from the three quest givers (per instance) you'll find outside the crafting instances. These quest NPCs have repeateable quests, every 12 hours, that reward you with barter items that can be traded for Lothlorien gold leaves, which themselves are barter items that can be turned in for goodies in Lothlorien. A little complicated, but whatever. This is where those trader icons come in - they're the guys that give you the leaves for your quest rewards.

The instances themselves are well designed, artistically, and fairly linear. There are little deviations in your path that lead to dead ends that frequently have those crafting nodes. The quests are straight forward. Kill 20 of the invaders, find 8 of the lost objects, and kill the leader. The instances will have three different random mob types that will be the invaders: cave claws, grothburg (the bugs), or goblins. The bugs and cave claws are the easiest, with the latter giving you Extraordinary Hide drops, which are a pleasant side crafting oriented side effect. I don't use them myself so I'll either give them to kinmates or sell them on the AH. You can get a stack of 50 and a bit more if you get two instances with the cave claws. The goblins are the hardest because of their ranged attack type mobs. As a captain, I have no ranged weapon so I have to get in melee range. This can be a pain sometimes, but that's the nature of my class and not anything against the crafting instances.

Like the IXP instances, these can get just as boring after a while, even with the variation in mob types. If you're a crafter, it's worth going through if you need materials. If you're not a crafter, or one who can use wood, scholar nodes, or metals, it's not really worth your time except maybe for the barter items. I haven't been out to Lothlorien yet to see what exactly these can be turned in for and if that is worth the grind.

All in all, a good addition but nothing really spectacular.

Sunday Progress Report

Looks like I've abandoned Thursdays. Oh well. I said I would. Probably would. And I did. Yesterday's playtime ended up being not what I was anticipating. First off, when I logged in, it was a slow night for the kinship for whatever reason. Only three or four of us on. Not even enough to do an instance run. And I didn't feel like PUGing one because there would be no guarantee that the same six would stick together and get all of us the barter coin for the armor. I ran three or four runs last time with a PUG (the only time I did an instance run) and there were at least that many ins and outs of the group, one of whom did get the drop. Actually, I think they did one more run after that but then left. And then I had to go due to some real life obligations. I don't blame anybody for that, and I don't know their situation, but it seems like it happens more often in PUGs because there's less communication before the run about where everybody stands time commitment-wise. It's just the way it is.

So no instance runs. However, I did do some solo quests, one of which is part of the level 58 Captain quest for the Hands of the Healing legendary trait. All solo so far and I don't know what the future holds for that quest, so it's all new to me. Did a bit in the Flaming Deeps and then talked to three NPCs scattered in other parts of Moria. I also worked on part of the epic quest: 2.3.x. I got to chapter 9 which is a session play: We Cannot Get Out. I forgot that was the session that was borked and you cannot complete it. Figures, so I had to quit the session and at that point I took a break for dinner. Unfortunately, I got side tracked watching TV and didn't log in the rest of the eveing. For all I know more of the kin could have been on and I might have gotten some instance runs in. There's always another day.

And in between all that I did some exploring, particularly in Nud-Melek and the Flaming Deeps to find some of the exploration deed locations. I love exploring, particularly if I have an objective in mind (like a quest location). For example, I know A is here and I am at B, here, so how do I get there? Moria is awesome for that because of all the multiple levels. You might be underneath what you want to find but have to figure out first, if there is an underneath, and how to get there. One quest I did out of the Redhorn Lodes was like that. Good fun.

I'm still purchasing my Sublime Jewelry set. I have two more pieces to get (one if I win the auction I bid on yesterday). I really should take a break and save up for another chest in my vault so I have more space for my food stuffs but I guess I'm being vain. Besides looking pretty (yes, I know you can't see the jewelry on your character) they give me nice stats. Speaking of food stuffs, I've been using my guild recipes to cook stacks of critted restoration food (morale and power) and selling them on the AH. I'm making a profit so that's really a first for me with food and the AH. Thank goodness for guild recipes. And with the lowering of the cooldowns with Book 7 (yay Tuesday!) I'll be able to put them up more often and get coin even quicker.

So here are my goals:

• Purchase 1 more vault space
• Complete Sublime jewelry set
• Run instances for Radiance armor set
• Clear out (complete) lower level quests and deeds in old zones

I have quite a load with just those four. We'll see how things work out.

A Bit More About Crafting Instances

Want to know more about crafting instances? LOTRO Life has some answers. Looks like they've been doing some testing on Bullroarer. (See, so many people are testing that I don't even need to. I can just point to these excellent resources!) They explain how it works, although it's a bit confusing and I had to read it a couple times through to really get the gist of it. Check it out!

A Few Random Comments

This will probably be the last post talking directly about the Book 7 patch notes. I think I've pretty much covered the major issues/changes. I'm certainly not the only one talking about the Book 7 patch. You can find coverage at Under the Banner, MMeOw, LOTRO Chronicles, and LOTROCast. With that said, here are my final thoughts regarding the notes:

Captain's banners "have discovered unforeseen reservoirs of buoyancy and now float in water."

First off, I love the random humor that shows up in Turbine's patch notes. Secondly, this is awesome. Obviously not as life-changing as many of the Book 7 updates, but as a captain, I will tell you this is a very good thing. I noticed this most poignantly in the Waterworks where oftentimes I found myself fighting creatures in "deep" water, where my banner would fall all the way to the bottom. Most of the time, this wasn't far enough to remove me from it's AOE, but on occasion, the water was deep enough for the banner to despawn, leaving me with less morale and morale regen. A captain lives and dies by his buffs, so to have even a small problem like this fixed is a good thing for us.

Warg-Riders now count towards the Moria Warg-slayer deed.

This is another awesome. Those warg riders are a pain to kill as a melee class. Having them count both towards gobs and the warg deed makes it a little more tolerable. I've finished my gob deed, however, but I still have a little more incentive to take on this buggers after Book 7 launches.

Reduced cooldown on crafting-guild recipes.

This makes me happy. Very happy. As a cook, my crafting takes longer than most to give me significant income. Because it's so easy, relative to other vocations, cooking is often given to alts and many players use their own cooks for food - limiting the demand. Furthermore, profit margins are rather thin due to this low demand. Having the craft-guild recipes that would give me a full stack of the superior version of food greatly reduces the production cost, allowing me to sell for even more attractive pricing but also give me a greater profit. Reducing the cool-down on these recipes allows me to put the goods on the market faster.

Certainly this will probably reduce the viable selling price. More incentive for cooks to craft their superior stacks means more potential competition on the AH - and thus lower prices. Still, I don't think it will hurt that much. A good thing, in my book.

New cooking recipes - soups and stews!

These new recipes will give cooks the ability to craft soups and stews which boost resistances: fear, poison, disease, and wound. I'm excited about this, though I'll have to tick off another slot in my bags and hotbar for these. A necessary evil. I don't know how much of a resistance boost we'll see from these. Hopefully Turbine finds the right balance, though I'm sure they'll be lower than most people will hope for.

Minimum level for fish recipes.

Apparently these didn't have minimums, which is odd. Not a big deal. I don't craft fish recipes because the time-sink in order to get enough fish is prohibitive. Basically, it's not worth it.

Deconstructing a legendary item at max level will now return the relics to you.

This is big. At least for me, who lost 3 tier 6 relics by deconstructing my level 30 emblem. Good move here. Before, if you wanted to retain your relics after the last reforge, you couldn't slot them into your max level legendary. If that legendary was still worth using, this means you wouldn't get as much out of the item as you should. It didn't make sense. Glad to see this fix added. Still, I am bummed that I lost my 3 relics. Took me long enough to build up relic forging to get to that point. *sigh* Tier 8 is so far away.

Monsters that burrow will no longer do so when close to death, "because that's annoying."

Amen! Pain in the butt and annoying is right. I honestly thought this was an intended behavior. I suppose it could have been anyway. Glad that's changed. It actually makes a difference if you have more than one mob on you. As a captain, I need to have a mob die to activate my "on death" skills, one of which is a fairly significant heal. This might be the difference between life and death, and when I couldn't hit the mob and kill him, it was a problem. I'd usually switch targets (why waste that time trying to hit nothing) but that meant I had to switch back and then back again. This takes time, attention, and sometimes I click the wrong thing and I'm wasting more time - not to mention morale and power. Good change.

Warg-Riders will no longer use their Hamstring/Ride-by-Attack unless they are attacked.

That makes these buggers a little less obnoxious to fight. I would change up my skill progression by avoiding using an opening Battle Shout. This is a ranged skill but two melee skills are gated behind it. So, I would hit a Warg-Rider with a ranged skill but then have to run - very slowly because I'm hamstrung - to the warg to use the next skill in my progression. Pain in the butt, and if the Warg decided to run again, I'd lose the chance to use those skills. Both of these have the potential to give me very good supercrits. And there's yet another skill gated behind those - one that is my mob-buff cleansing skill. Basically, these guys are a pain. should be a little more manageble now.

That's it. You'll certainly notice I skipped a lot of notes. I clearly concentrated on the ones that affect my captain (who, if you hadn't guessed, is a cook). That's necessary. For one, I wouldn't know what I was talking about if I covered other classes, and two, it would take way too long to read and comment on every single note. And many of them aren't worth commenting on. I hope you enjoyed my patch note coverage. This won't be the last time I talk about Book 7 changes, however. Other bloggers might inspire me to a topic, and there's always upcoming dev diaries and forum posts.

Kindred with Cooking Guild

I reached Kindred status with the Cook's Guild today. My cooldowns on the Large Repasts for Master and Supreme had reset and just cooking those two items you get 9000 reputation points. And that's exactly what I needed for reaching Kindred. With Kindred I have now learned all the cook's guild special recipes. I'll be using the Large Repasts to craft full stacks of Superior Lembas and Superior Racks of Lamb with Mint Sauce to sell on the AH. It should bring in a little bit of money hopefully. It would be really the first time I make money on selling food stuffs.

Generosity at My Expense

I already asked if I am too nice. This time, along those same lines, it's "am I too generous". You see, I give needed materials to my kinmates for crafting. I don't use nearly all the materials found as drops because I'm a cook and farmer, getting all my stuff in one area and nearly all from one NPC. I just forward it along. However, many of these materials can get a lot of money on the Auction House.

My philosophy is, I love to give stuff to people. It's fun for me. And I'm helping my kinship. But would I be helping my kinship better if I sold some of that and, for instance, bought better equipment on the Auction House. In that case, I'd be better equipped for helping the kinship on various quest tasks etc. So, there might indeed be such thing as too much generosity and I might not be helping the kin as well as I could. What I thought was a selfless act could be considered a short-sighted act. Food for thought in the near-term. Now I have to decide how to digest it.