Continuing my posts on the updates coming with Siege of Mirkwood, I am writing today about some changes to the Instance system and the changes to Garth Agarwen that come about due to those updates. This is the post I promised you all in my previous post on the updates: Siege of Mirkwood – Lone Lands Revisited.

Changes to Instances

When Turbine rolled out the Lord of the Rings Online expansion Mines of Moria, they introduced a system for Instances known as Hard Mode. Hard Mode allowed players to return to instances and complete them at a higher difficulty for greater rewards, the system was not without its flaws however. Besides having a name that just didn’t quite fit (Turbines words, not mine!) there were also problems in that objectives were not spelled out quite as clearly as was intended; This not only lead to the change I am going to talk about, but to players maligning the system qutie often (apparently).

In order to revamp this instance system, Turbine has come up with the Challenges – here are their words from the developer diary on what these are:

Challenges are daily quests that are bestowed to all players who have not already completed them for that day, and meet all other quest criteria – prerequisites or level restrictions. These quests will appear in the quest tracker and display the success and failure cases for the players. Upon opening the quest journal, players can read the background on the quest and see further instructions on the challenge before them[Rewards for Challenges may vary slightly from instance to instance but, typically, they will be the following: coin, faction, and a barter token of some type. In the case of Garth Agarwen, the barter token is used to purchase rewards from the Eglain at the entrance to the Garth Agarwen area.

It looks like they are taking some of what is being put into the the Skirmish System and using it to beef up instance runs. For those people who enjoy this sort of play, this update should provide them with a lot more fun than the current iteration.

Turbine is also beefing up instances by adding Optional Objectives technology to the game. Optional Objectives will be able to appear within any given instance space, and target mobs within that instance – Optional Objectives may also be different for each player and may be completed daily like the Challenges above. This particular update is being instituted right away in the re-vamped Garth Agarwen instance in the Lone Lands. Here are Turbine’s words on the Optional Objectives:

In addition to the new Challenge system, we have added another piece of tech to allow for Optional Objectives to appear for players inside any given instance space. Like Challenges, these appear in the standard instances and target monsters or other targets within the instance. Also like Challenges, these quests can be completed daily and reward players with coin and/or faction for their completion. There can be multiple optional objectives per instance. The first of these quests, appearing in the Garth Agarwen Cluster, provide up to four different objectives within the instance. Optional Objectives may be different for each player..

Optional Objectives are meant to follow the main path of the instance with minimal extra effort so that groups can work together to achieve each other’s goals. Further, since the optional objectives can each be completed once daily, players will have reasons for entering the same instance multiple times per day.

Garth Agarwen Changes

Garth Agarwen was the first instance introduced into the game and, as such, didn’t have the sleekness of instances that came along further down the line. When the developers were looking it over during the Lone Lands revamp, they realized that the entire instance had to be given a complete make-over. Heres what they said about the upcoming changes to GA:

Garth Agarwen was the first instance created for LOTRO and was in need of a revision. As we set out to make the changes necessary to bring this instance into line with the rest of the game, it became apparent that only a significant overhaul would do. Thus, the Garth Agarwen cluster was born.

The former entrance of Garth Agarwen now houses a small number of NPCs who will provide players with a little more guidance for quests that go into the public area outside of the Garth Agarwen instances. NPCs in the area will also show  players the items they can earn for completing the Challenges within the spaces. These rewards include new consumable tokens to remove defeat Dread — only defeat Dread — of the next tier once in a twelve hour (real-time) period, and weapons and shields for player classes of Incomparable quality. These items can be used at level 32 and should be useful to players well into their mid- to late-30’s; but not so good that they overshadow or replace the better crafted items in these levels. To obtain these items, players must acquire a number of Challenge tokens and then turn them in for the various pieces. All pieces are unique and cost the same amount of tokens, save the Dread-removing tokens.

This sounds great to me – GA could be a serious pain in the butt to get into and through. The mobs tended to be annoyingly tough, and annoyingly close together at times, not to mention how the whole quest system for the area worked (you always tended to pick up the quests for there when they were very very RED to you).

With the launch date for Siege of Mirkwood just around the corner, I find myself looking forward to the update more and more. I am still a little hesitant about the Combat changes I wrote about a little while ago, but overall I am optimistic.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood launches on December 1st, 2009. Web Servers (including the Forums, my.lotro.com, and the Lorebook) will be undergoing preparatory maintenance on Monday, November 30th from 9AM to 2PM Eastern Time.

(NOTE: Times are provided for reference purposes only, actual downtime may be less than the times provided – or longer. During this the services mentioned may be unavailable for periods of time).

~Branadoc

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

Full article over at Casual Stroll to Mordor.

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

In the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online expansion – Siege of Mirkwood – Turbine is revisiting the Lone Lands and giving the area some much needed love. Developer Orion talked about the upcoming changes to this zone in his most recent Developer Diary, and I am going to give you all my views today.

The Lone Lands have always been a sort of ‘Red Headed Step Child’ in the game, there exist some serious disconnects between Epic Quest lines here, and the area itself had some amazingly crazy difficulty jumps (Being sent amongst a bunch of elites in a Group Quest area to complete a Single Player quest for example). Some great questing moments have happened here though, I am willing to bet that any LotRO player will be able to tell you memories of their first time Retaking Weathertop, or their first venture over the Last Bridge that crosses between the last of the ‘Settled Lands’ and the ‘Wilds’ of the Trollshaws (If you remember The Hobbit you will certainly remember the bridge).

The Last Bridge

The Siege of Mirkwood update will be changing the difficulty of getting into the Epic Quest parts in the Lone Lands and will introduce a new faction to facilitate this:

With the release of Siege of Mirkwood, all players following the Epic storyline will find that Gandalf now sends them to Saeradan to enlist the aid of the Rangers, to assist with finding another of Gandalf’s order. After making their way to Saeradan, players will find that he will now offer them a free ride to Candaith’s camp in the shadow of Weathertop. Be careful and watch out for any folk in need of assistance on the ride to Candaith! Once at his camp, players follow Candaith’s tale through the battle at the peak of Weathertop and learn of a new faction within the Lone-lands, the Eglain. (This is discussed further in the diary.)

Weathertop will also be receiving a make-over – players will now have the option of playing it as a Solo character, or playing it as a Group [the original method]:

To ensure that we continue forward with the same practices that we attempted to utilize in the Bree-land revamp, there will now be two versions of Weathertop. There is the group version, which remains unchanged, and a new solo version that will enable players to assail the great hill alone against the forces of the White Hand.

This is a pretty good idea in my eyes – it means that more people will be able to experience the great story line in that quest, though part of me is sad that so many quests are going in this direction. While forced grouping isn’t really my thing, some of my best memories come from working through a challenging area with a good Fellowship at my back.

As I mentioned above, and quoted, there is a new faction that will come into play in the Lone Lands – the Eglain. People who have already done quests there know who these people are, they are the broody folks in Ost Guruth who don’t have much trust for outsiders. In Mirkwood, these folks will be added to the Reputation system – anyone who has completed quests in the past for them will retro-actively receive reputation points for those quests, and there will be new quests added for more reputation. At different levels of reputation you will be able to get some nifty gear, including a set of jewlery. Gaining reputation up to Friendly should be as easy as just doing the quests in the area, and more can be obtained by purchasable profession quests.

Garth Agarwen (GA to most) will also be receiving a face lift – which is great because finding folks willing to take the time to run that area could eat up entire play sessions alone. GA has always been a thorn in the Lone Lands experience, the difficulty of dealing with all Elite mobs is just a bit much for many people – especially with how long that particular quest chain is. More on the changes to GA in a following post (as the changes tie in to another update coming with the expansion).

Many more changes to the region will be included in the expansion, most of them I see as being awesome. One of those little nice changes is the reduction of the Goblin Elite mobs to solo-able signature goblins in the central Lone Lands area, the annoying spiders in that area have received the same face lift thankfully (that could be one tough couple of levels dealing with those quests).

Overall the upcoming changes to the Lone Lands are something I am looking forward to experiencing – LL could be a frustrating place to do quests if you were not high enough to move on to the next area yet. North Downs will be receiving a similar update in a future expansion, so the lower levels will become much more easily manageable as time goes on. Orion puts it very well at the end of the developer diary:

The Lone-lands has undergone a massive overhaul and should prove to be a good option for players looking to level from 22-32. In our next update, we plan to continue the revamp effort focusing on the second of the level 22-32 areas in the North Downs. This revamp will target areas from Trestlebridge to the Fields of Fornost, then east toward Kingsfell stopping short of Esteldín, Orthrikar and Meluinen.

Read the entire Developer Diary discussed in this post here.

Stay tuned for a post on the GA changes, and what changes to the game as a whole are related to those updates!

~Branadoc

Woops. Looks like I missed a couple of episode’s worth of show notes! My apologies.

This week, on our extra special Friday the 13th edition of the show, we discussed:

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

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

Rain’s Guide to Grouping

LOTRO Forums Discussion

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

Just caught a twitter about this and saw the related post on the forums. Apparently the method you get Festival Horses (for various seasonal events) will be changing with the release of Siege of Mirkwood. Doc Holiday posted on it in his blog, so here is what he found out:

• New vendor Will Peartree will be there at the farm for this purpose
• You can only buy the festival horse during that festival
• Each mount costs:
  • 1 Festival run token
  • 12 festival barter tokens
  • 1 “Document of Mount Ownership” purchased from Will Peartree

Read the entire blog entry here.

~Branadoc

I found this post in the Dev Tracker (Using Yahoo Pipes to filter) that talks about how you’ll be able to get the festival horses in the future.  Nice changes, but also mentions the discount which I believe will also drop the cost of all horses purchased, not just festival ones.  Normally they cost around 4 gold, but with that discount they cost 1.6 gold, which is very nice!

The details are as follows:

• New vendor Will Peartree will be there at the farm for this purpose
• You can only buy the festival horse during that festival
• Each mount costs:
  • 1 Festival run token
  • 12 festival barter tokens
  • 1 “Document of Mount Ownership” purchased from Will Peartree

Further down that thread, Ransroth confirms that when you convert a festival mount to a skill it will provide the discount as a Passive Skill.  I certainly will be more likely to pick up reputation and festival horses with this discount.

Full post written by Budgeford, over at LOTRO forums.

I am continuing my 2 part article on the updates coming with the next Lord of the Rings Online update: Siege of Mirkwood. I was originally hoping to have everything covered in 2 articles, but since posting my last one Turbine has come up with even more Dev diaries! There is a ton of information out there, and I will cover as much as I can.

In my part one of this article, I talked about the changes to Character statistics and the Character panel. In this part I will be talking about forthcoming Skill Updates/Additions for the new level range. I will also peek on some legendary item changes, but will leave further debate to those more experienced with the system.

Skill Additions/Upgrades coming in Siege of Mirkwood:

While most large updates have brought some sweeping skill changes to the playing field, Siege of Mirkwood will only feature very few changes. Turbine instead used the development time/man power to make sure the core changes they are working on will be as annoyance free as possible. While most people may find this disappointing (and some have pointed it to it as a sign that Mirkwood isn’t really an expansion, but just a paid for content patch), I think that this may end up being a good thing.

The overall combat system changes should go more than far enough to bring some new feeling to the game without the addition of a whole new set of skills for each class. I prefer it when developers refine things rather than just adding more ‘shinies’ onto the current system. That said, each class will be receiving a skill upgrade or new skill at level 62.

Here are the upgrades/new skills broken down by class:

• Burglar
• Burglar’s Antidote replaces Cure Poison
  This is a long awaited upgrade to the Burglar’s Cure Poison skill. It is upgraded in almost every way, including level of effect dispelled, range, and induction time.
• Captain
• Fighting Withdrawal replaces Withdrawal
  This upgrade removes the damage penalty, increases the amount of threat reduction, and minimizes the threat gained through damage by the Captain while in effect.
• Champion
• Remorseless Strike replaces Relentless Strike
  This skill is identical to Relentless Strike in all aspects except that it has much increased critical and devastating critical damage multipliers.
• Guardian
• Brutal Charge replaces Charge
  This upgrades Charge to have the same effect as the Champion’s Sprint. Brutal Charge overwrites most snares while it is in effect. There is also a short term damage buff when Brutal Charge is first activated.
• Hunter
• Guide to Mirk-eaves – new skill
  This skill is available from Estellien, a reputation reward vendor in Echad Sirion. It requires acquaintance faction with the Malledhrim, the Elven expedition launched across the Anduin against Dol Goldur. This skill functions like other Hunter guide skills to port the Hunter and his Fellowship to Echad Sirion.
• Lore-master
• Ancient Knowledge of Cures replaces Leech-craft
  This skill uses all the restrictions and upgrades for Leech-craft but combines Wound cures and resistance with Disease cures and resistance.
• Minstrel
• Chorus of Restoration replaces Song of Restoration
  This skill now removes Dread from all members of the Minstrel’s Fellowship (including the Minstrel!).
• Rune-keeper
• Shall Not Fall This Day replaces Do Not Fall This Day
  This skill adds a small amount of Melee, Ranged, and Tactical Defense to the target in addition to the self-revive ability. In addition, if the target is defeated while this skill is in effect there will be no item wear due to the defeat.
• Warden
• Muster in Mirk-eaves – new skill
  This skill is available from Estellien, a reputation reward vendor in Echad Sirion. It requires acquaintance faction with the Malledhrim, the elven expedition launched across the Anduin against Dol Guldur. This skill functions like other Warden muster skills to port the Warden to Echad Sirion.

As you can see, only Hunters and Wardens get new skills – and they are carbon copies of each other. While I appreciate the reason of the minimal skill updates (see above), I am disappointed that the Hunters update is yet another port. I have so many ports right now that they take up a full action bar by themselves just about – not to mention carrying around a lot of Traveling Rations as consumables. The upside is that skills can now be used from the newly updated menu system that will be coming with Mirkwood – but still, another port? And Wardens getting the same thing? Color me disappointed a little bit.

Read the whole dev diary entry for Skill Upgrades here.

Legendary Item Changes: Legacy Pools

Another change coming with Siege of Mirkwood is regarding Legendary Item System legacies. As talked about in the Legendary Item Update Developer Diary, legacies will be separated into 2 pools for each class.

• Pool A legacies will be the most common and are to be the most desired/all purpose legacies. These legacies appear during initial Legendary Item Identification and have a small chance of appearing during reforge at LI levels 10, 20, and 30.
• Pool B legacies are labeled as more ‘situational’ and will only appear during reforging at LI levels 10, 20, and 30.

To view a comprehensive list of changes / pool contents, take a look at the Legacy Pool Distribution Developer Diary.

I know I will like the update, even with the things that worry me or disappoint me. Turbine has been doing a great job with this game and I see it lasting for many many more years to come. Just as I see even more dev diaries coming down the line that will tease me and make me want to post on them!

Stay tuned to Sneaky Hobbits blog for more Developer Diary updates and information as the release of Siege of Mirkwood gets closer. I will also put up the Patch Notes as soon as they are available.

Siege of Mirkwood is due to release on December 1st, 2009.

~Branadoc

ZC posts the wrap up on his phenomenal series of diaries on the skirmish system.  Basically it is a good summary of the system and some shout-outs to those who made it possible.  I do especially like these diaries that give us the behind the scenes look as it helps us all better understand the process.  Working through this system during beta I can certainly echo ZC’s comments on the rest of the dev team with a particular nod to JWBarry who was a very vocal developer who did a great job of communicating the new stuff and what they needed us testers to do.

There’s also a little Q&A on the second page with a couple good points brought up.  The first was regarding that some things worked differently in beta and in some cases that was done on purpose such that they could be tested out before scaling to the final values.  Makes sense to me, but then again I might have a bit of a different take on beta’s then some.  Also ZC mentions that most of the “good” drops will be for the entire group while in a skirmish such that there’s no need to roll on drops.  There will be some single item drops but that sounds more like an exception then the rule.

Take a look at the diary over on the LOTRO forums.

Ok, so nothing terribly ground breaking here (seems a little old, but I hadn’t seen it until today) – but there is some good general information and some very slick eye-candy!

First off, with the overhaul of the UI my current one is completely hosed.  Luckily, I just happen to follow the LOTRO Interface RSS feed and noticed the Multibar Clean Toolbar UI.  This only works with the Mirkwood client, but for me I really like it as it is nice and clean.  Notice the buttons on the bottom are customizable just like the normal UI – I’m not sure I’ll stick with those, but I’ll usually either have my whole inventory up or just the first bag.

I also decided to check out one of the survival skirmishes – sadly the only one I had access to was the small fellowship one, but figured I’d give it a go.  Sadly real-life was not cooperative and I didn’t get very far, but it is a very cool idea that I can’t wait to check out more once live hits.

I’ll also include some stat comparisons, which aren’t 100% accurate as my legendaries from live and bullroarer aren’t quite exact nor are my traits.  However, I did notice that on live I’m at 19% incoming melee so I’ll have to figure out what I’ll dump to get back down to the cap.  Most likely it will be runes/settings but I haven’t decided yet.

Live stats:

Bullroarer (mainly the thing to look at here is the UI and morale jump)

So I’m quoting this link from Casual Stroll to Mordor, but I wanted to comment on a couple  questions in particular as I agree with them there wasn’t anything real exciting:

WarCry {Ez0}Honvik: 5. Why is the new Raid Armour Purple and not Teal? (someone in my Kin asked me to ask that)
ZombieColumbus: In the past, we have gotten burned by giving out the best possible gear our game could generate with the initial release. This immedietly makes itemizing further instances impossible. The advantage of holding back like this, is that the jump between our subsequent raid sets will be more noticable.

WarCry Validor-SoG: Hi, Could you please confirm if we are to see Teal Armour sets and 1st Age Weapons in the next book update?
Jalessa: You may see incomparable rewards through completion of hard-modes for the Dol Guldur instances. However, level 65 first age legendaries will not be available immediately with launch of Siege of Mirkwood. We plan on introducing them in a future update.

So the take-away here is that there is better raid gear coming, although honestly it really couldn’t get much worse   It is encouraging that there are incomparable (orange) drops in Hard-modes!  Will be curious to see when we get access to the new gear and 1st ages…

Full transcript is over here.

It looks as though my Captain won’t hit level 60 in time for the Siege of Mirkwood expansion.  I blame the re-release of “The Secret of Monkey Island.”  It’s amazing how a well-written game can hold up even after 20 years, but I digress.  LotRO.  Captain.  Only level 47.

I certainly haven’t abandoned LotRO - I played a good number of hours this weekend.  As my Captain creeps towards level 60, his strengths and weaknesses become more apparent.  The Captain can make any group – even a group of two – much better.  Their buffs and extra heals can raise any fellowship to the next level of excellence.  However, they are not the most effective solo characters.  That can make levelling go slowly.  I find that I’m most comfortable fighting one or two blue-con mobs with a Captain – large groups can pull him down very quickly.  While a Captain can’t take many enemies at once, they do just keep plodding along at a steady pace. 

Anyway, I’ve set my sight on at least getting to level 48 before I try any quests in Eregion.  I see no reason to charge headlong into higher level signature and elite mobs for no good reason.  There are plenty of quests still available in the Misty Mountains, Forochel, and Angmar.

Last night, a little against my expectations we took down The Blind One (for the second time, and on our first attempt, yay) and then went on to kill The Mistress of Pestilence on our third try. Against expectations because I wasn’t sure how many attempts we’d do in an evening, not because I don’t think we’re capable (of course, kinmates read this blog, y’know!).

So, with that, aside from what seems to be a bugged quest in Dar Narbugud, I have now finished all the content in Moria, a week before we get Mirkwood. This I like. It’s not that it hasn’t involved a lot of grinding and time-killing to fill the time between raids (for me), but it feels satisfying nonetheless.

I wish, sometimes, I was a bit slower with content. But I love the game, I love to hang with my friends there, and I only work one day a week. This is a combination that means I rush into things headfirst when they’re new, even if I read every bit of quest text I’ll still finish before the majority, purely on the time I can chuck at it.

I’m also fairly resilient to grinding. More than many. As an example, I have accumulated 350 silver branches and 100 gold leaves (mostly through crafting instances), and spent a good many more back in the day! I’ve done most of the hardmode instances a lot more than 6 times, and I’m happy that way. I switch on a podcast and spend my time in Middle Earth, doing whatever I need to do to stay there. Have taken a few weeks to be on there less in preparation for Mirkwood, but once it launches I know the skirmishes will keep me pretty busy, as well as quests, instances and raids.

But, it does feel kind of nice to be able to finish DN. Now we have to go back to help people get the 4-pieces for the resistances, and for them to have the same feeling of satisfaction in completing one raid before we look to the next!

I didn’t get too much of a chance to test this out during beta (although I did notice NPCs and my soldier being a little squishy) but there have been some pretty significant changes behind the scenes on how tanking will work.  Now I don’t so much mean the agro part of it but the mobs you’re trying to tank have been changed.  They hit harder and crit for higher percentages making it more important to keep them on the appropriate person.  To help combat this, Guards, Champs, Captains, and Wardens all get bonuses to their crit defense as a passive skill however they are not all equal as the bonus is tied to the class, the stance (for champs), and the size of your shield: (Dev Diary Here)

• Guard with Heavy Shield = 10%
• Warden with Warden Shield = 9%
• Captain alone/with shield = 3%/5%
• Champs Glory Stance = 3%
• Champs Ardor Stance = 1%
• Champs with shield (Heavy/Normal) = 5%/2%

So, looking at this your best statistical tanks will be Guards, then wardens, then heavy shield wielding Glory stance champs.  And from the comments on the beta boards, fervor tanking champs get hit REALLY hard and are not viable options.

I really like this change as again, it makes the game more complex – you can’t just toss more DPS on the fight to win it.  This was one of my biggest issues with most of the Moria content, you could out dps any content and not have to really think too much about it, not to mention some fights were just pure DPS races.  You’ll need to have a tank and work together to make sure that tank keeps agro – minnies, RKs, and hunters will most likely get hit very hard.  I think it also helps champs define their roles a bit better – if they want to tank, they need to trait and equip for it.

With the announcement that Bullroarer was going to be left on after a patch on Friday morning, I eagerly loaded up the test client, loaded up Almazar, and tried to complete the tutorial that had been bugged on Tuesday night.

Success! I was able to complete the tutorial and skirmishes where now open to me. I equipped my soldier’s trait and opened the Skirmish Join panel. Ooooo, three choices. Where did I want to go? The Shire? Bree? No, it was Weathertop for me!

The skirmish loaded, and what a blast it was. I fought of wave after wave of evil creature, and with my herbalist’s and an NPC’s help, we drove them back.

The skirmish was fun, quick and exactly was I hoped for. I quickly checked to see if I had enough skirmish marks for a gear upgrade (nope) and opened the Skirmish Join panel again.

And then it happened.

All of the skirmishes where greyed out. I couldn’t create a new one. When I selected one and clicked on the “Create” button, I would get the following message; “Exceeded number of skirmishes per week”. Grrrr. Not again.

So I tried it with another character that I had transferred. Accidentally create a Tier III skirmish, died very quickly, exited the skirmish, and tried to create a new one.

Same problem. Grrrr.

After some chatting with some people in the global LFF channel, I still couldn’t figure out the problem, or a work around. Very frustrating.

So far, all I can tell you is that from what I can tell, I’ll be playing a lot of Skirmishes. I’m also very happy that these problem are occurring now, instead of on launch day! Keep up the good work Zombie Columbus and Jwbarry!

I’ll see you in game.

EDIT: I found an explanation about this in the forums. Working as intented. Oh well, I understand that Turbine is giving us the opportunity to try it out now, not to play the whole game early. It was fun. Can’t wait for launch. http://forums.lotro.com/showpost.php?p=4195921&postcount=28

In zwei Wochen erscheint die zweite Erweiterung zu Der Herr der Ringe Online.

Viele Leute bringen da noch ihre Zweitcharaktere auf das Maximallevel oder sammeln ein bisschen Gold an. Ich hab’ mich um ‘was anderes gekümmert: Buffed.de hat jetzt eine neue (und hübschere) Gesamtübersicht für HdRO.

Das hat zwei Zwecke: Einerseits war die alte Übersicht ein dreivierteljahr alt und daher kaum noch Vertrauenswürdig – und andererseits ist es sehr befriedigend, wann immer jemand mit einer saublöden Frage ankommt, sagen zu können: “Schau mal hier, wir haben das bereits für dich beantwortet.”

Oh, ausserdem führt jetzt ein neuer Banner hierher, er ist ebenso wie die Vorgänger von Extvia und sieht so aus:

Als purer Bonus-Content hier noch einmal die Links zu Kard Spricht und Vetaro Spricht Kard, meinem persönlichen Beitrag zum Listen To Yourself-Virus. Übrigens kam der XKCD-Comic nach Kard Spricht.

So the official pool breakdowns are posted for all the classes.  Overall, I think the changes are a good step – the system isn’t totally fixed but you have a better chance of knowing early whether your LI will be worth keeping around.  The legacies from Pool A will be chosen from at the initial identify with a small chance of them happening on the 10-30 reforges, with all other reforge legacies coming from Pool B.  And the 40-60 reforges are upgrades on the legacy tier.  One thing that was answered in beta (assuming it hasn’t changed) is that those 40-60 reforges will not grant new legacies even if you have all tier 6’s on your item.  The thought process being that with the tier upgrade scrolls, it is a little too easy to grind those out to get everything maxed out and “abuse” the system.

The diary starts here walking through all the classes – link. Warden specific are here – link. But I figured I’d post them and add my thoughts on them as well.

Javelin Pool A

• Determination In Combat Morale Regeneration (changed)
• Conservation In Combat Power Regeneration (changed)
• Dark Before Dawn Power Restored
• Celebration of Skill Healing
• Restoration Morale Healed
• Dance of War Evade Rating
• Safeguard Healing
• Heal bonus for Conviction
• Power Safeguard Gambit Line (New)

Javelin Pool B

• Shield Piercer Duration
• Careful Step Duration
• Forced March Max Power Penalty
• Shield Mastery Block Rating
• Resolution Resist Rating
• Ambush and Careful Step Induction
• Reduced To-Hit Movement penalty for Javelin Skills
• Duration Adroit Maneuver (new)
• Duration Warden’s Triumph (new)

Melee Weapon Pool A

• Exultation of Battle Threat
• Mighty Blow Damage
• Wages of Fear Positional Damage
• Recklessness Attack Duration
• Wall of Steel Parry Rating
• Piercing Strike Threat
• Spear of Virtue Threat
• War Cry Threat
• Power Fierce Resolve Gambit Line (new)

Melee Weapon Pool B

• Javelin Toss Range (buffed)
• Ambush Critical Multiplier
• Critical Strike Critical Multiplier
• Spear of Virtue Damage
• Surety of Death Damage Over Time
• Hampering Javelin Duration
• Boar’s Rush Critical Rating
• Onslaught Damage
• Power, Power Attack Gambit Line (New)

So, first the new/changed ones.  Our 2 regen buffs now have a lower starting value but a MUCH higher end value.  On my javelin the values ranged from 48.4 – 94.8 (60 2nd Age) on ICPR and 77.6 – 175.6 (55 3rd).  The javelin toss range now applies to all jav skills, not just our default toss.  And for the ones that say some line, the power reduction applies to that whole chain of gambits – so the tier 3 through tier 5.  The range for these reductions are from 1% to 10% power reduction on the gambit itself.

The power reductions are nice, but really our main power drain is on the builders so it is a nice bone, but really won’t make that big of a difference for us.

Overall I do like the changes, I guess how much I like them will depend on how rare those Pool A legacies are on the reforges as there are 9 legacies in Pool A.  Basically I’ll go for a threat club for the attack speed debuff and a damage spear or axe.  I’ll probably just have 1 javelin though  with ICPR and conviction as musts with the other heals, the power reduction, and ICMR as nice to haves.