Strayed Captain

While here in EU we’re (again) waiting for the patch to arrive, Update 2 is alive and kicking over the Pond. So I logged on Landroval and proceeded to Tinnudir as I was questing there before the update anyway. Spoilers ahead!

What’s New?

The first thing you’ll see if you arrive by Hunter or Warden travel is a Vault, yes they now have a vault in Evendim, although its security is questionable at best – the Tinnudir Keep would surely serve a little better. Another thing new in Tinnudir is a crafting area next to the Keep but as far I could see there weren’t any superior facilities in there.

Quests

There are many new quest and the pace of them is pretty quick. I’ve started a new mission in Tinnudir at a new Ranger whose name is Orchalwë. He sent me to investigate some of the ruins – though he calls them estates – around Parth Aduial or as he called it the Fields of Twilight. What’s especially good about the first quest I received was that Orchalwë gave me his journal to guide me – I have proceeded to the first ruin and after finishing the task I got the rewards immediately. Then I read the journal and another quest was bestowed upon me. On to another ruin, finish another quest and read the journal again. No need to run to Orchalwë after each finished quest. Orchalwë further serves as kind of a Quest-General, he will send you on a series of quest into the ruins, then into Ost Forod and then into Eavespires where I stopped yesterday. Apart from Orchalwë’s quests I’ve also paid visit to the Colossus as I’ve heard that you can actually climb on it. Well, you can, you need to accept a quest from Sardan (something about a ballista) and following the chain after 3 quests you will be able to get on top of the Old King’s Crown. Amazing view from up there, even during the night.

The quests flow pretty quickly mainly because there is now a quest in pretty much every place. On top of that each quest rewards some reputation (it’s about 900-1200 per quest) and killing goblins and Tomb-robbers now gives reputation upon kill. You will also get some barter coins which fortunately are barterable between themselves (that is one silver coin is 5 bronze coins and you can barter silver for bronze and bronze for silver). In two days (5-6 hours of playing by my estimate) I’ve gone from level 36 to 38 which isn’t much but I’ve also gone from Acquaintance to Ally, which is just crazy. I’ve also gotten some parts of a new hunter set. There are new sets for each class (featuring some rehashed designs) which can be acquired – at least partially – through questing and several parts are available for barter at the Ranger Cannuion. Definitely check the rep vendors at Tinnudir keep they got tons of new stuff.

Certain places are now more covered with quests than before: Ost Heryn (where you might or might not have been dealing with an Elite Oathbreaker) now has 3 quests inside. Nan Orngon east of Ost Forod where I’ve never been before has 4 quests. The entire Thief-taker’s bane chain has been redone. It doesn’t start on Tinnudir but rather in Ost Forod. You are sent on Rantost to contact some spies among the Tomb-robbers and after you finish several quests for them you can proceed to the Thief-taker’s Bane instance. It’s now solo and actually a little too easy, I’m quite certain you can finish it without even helping the rangers. In Eavespires there is now about twice as much Gauredain and they’ve spread to Even-rills. The Dol Haerdir encampment is larger and getting to the riddle marker now does not require going through the whole camp though you’ll still do the whole round for other quests. And that’s just the beginning, unfortunately I have already been questing in Evendim before the revamp and so I can’t really take advantage of all the new quests. But I always liked the area and I’ll be definitely bringing any new alts through. I’m hoping we’ll see other areas being revamped as well, it certainly won’t hurt.

So I decided to play LotRo only to find out that today’s the Maintenance Day in Europe. Fortunately now I can avoid those by playing on Landroval. And what do you know November update is live in there, so after a while of patching I got in.

First thing I noticed are the advanced skirmish deeds for killing 50 Lieutenants. They required the Mirkwood expansion before but since that is now free (bar the quests and deeds) and 30 levels away I have access to them. As far as Hunters are concerned there isn’t anything new, and having now checked the release notes there really isn’t apart from a quest that comes around level 50 and a class consumable.

Next thing which is only cosmetic (as is most of the update) – the vendor interaction panels look different, there are now icons assocciated with the actions instead of simple bullet points.

Unfortunately this update also means more Store buttons in places they have not invaded before like the character panel, or the new crafting panel. Or the quest log, which brings us to another part of this update – Tasks.

Tasks basically equal turning vendor trash in for XP and reputation (and I don’t think there is a piece of vendor trash that doesn’t have a Task associated with it which means I am now afraid to throw away anything). Faradwen is currently in North Downs so I only scouted around there, unfortunately she is also level 33 and thus ineligible for most of the Tasks except for Othrikar and Esteldín (although there is a task bulletin at every other quest hub – Trestlebridge, Meluinen and even Amon Raith). Yes, unfortunately Tasks have max level restrictions, and another thing is that you can only complete 5 tasks a day (unless you sell your soul and buy a reset or cap increase). Now there are also some rewards, the first one is a special gift box with unknown content and a title (Up-and-Comer) for completing 100 tasks (and I suspect also a +1 cap increase). That’s twenty days at least, oh well. Next deeds should be at 200, 300 and so on. I did 2 for Othrikar (there only are 2 in there, requiring the beaks and feathers of the hawks that are quite abundant in the area) and 3 for Esteldín (skins, ears and leather from various beasts) that got me 300 reputation with the Rangers each.

There is now also a barter wallet – currently only storing the various skirmish marks though it has it’s own search bar (like you couldn’t find a mark among only 10 different pieces) and newly yet again upgraded vault, but I’m going to appreciate those two much more when the update arrives in Europe (which won’t be sooner than next week).

Buttons! Buttons everywhere!

I mentioned the crafting panel – the good thing is that you no longer need to go through various tabs to see everything, on the other hand it covers almost my whole screen but of course the option to hide it when crafting is still there.

Last thing: while I haven’t seen the Ered Luin revamp, the new Dourhands have been given adjustments all over Middle-earth, so I got to see those new models in North Downs. They do look good though I am not sure where in the North Downs did they get so dirty.

All in all not a bad update, looking forward to have it on Laurelin.

So Faradwen has dinged 20, my.lotro still won’t acknowledge her existence but I can live without that. (And without an avatar and enabled BBCODE in my signature, and EU access to Lorebook, …)

Since she’s an Elf and I deliberately took a different route than my beta captain (Old Forest and Adso’s Camp) I am only Acquaintance with Bree. But with Andrath, Northern Bree-fields and Barrow-Downs quests still intact I expect it to change dramatically.

The Hunter quest on level 15 was quite interesting, though I don’t like the helm – don’t get me wrong I like wearing animal remains on my head (deer helmet in UO was just epic) but this one doesn’t look as horrifying as a bear should so I am sporting the Circlet of Men instead. Still the Warden quest is better but such is the way of the Warden. On a side note I was really looking forward to laughing evilly at the brigands who desperately want to run away from me but I kill them way too quickly, they turn around and fall dead, no running involved, no satisfaction.

So far the only F2P limitation I really feel is having only 3 bags, they fill quite fast especially with the stuff that comes out of the Gifts and of course I am reluctant to get rid of anything that may prove useful later.  I am now sitting at about 160 TP having completed almost every deed in Ered Luin. Half of the Bree-land and Shire still lay ahead of me; then I plan to buy North Downs but that’s a distant future. So far deed grinding isn’t as hard as I thought it would be (I’m only dreading Sickle-fly and Neeker-breeker slayer) however hunter class deeds require quite a high number of shots to perform (Penetrating Shot 1000 times anyone?). I know it can all be done in 10 days but I only concentrate on finishing class deeds when they are about 75% done.

Skirmishes – as I wrote before at this level they are really easy, so just for fun I got an Archer. Although he sometimes doesn’t feel like shooting – and like every graduate of the Skirmish University he cannot find his trail – in combination with Hunter we simply obliterate the enemies. I have even deliberately pulled the Tuckborough courtyard and we barely got scratched. Siege of Gondamon was equally easy, the only trouble I came across was the Daywalker Berserker who pummeled one of the guards before his shield went down and I couldn’t do anything with it. And for the first time I got no trouble with Blood-rooks. If the drake at the end wasn’t scripted to became hostile after landing I’m sure we wouldn’t allowed him to land at all. I spent almost all of my marks on weapons, armour and jewelry. In the end a difference of 20 Agility isn’t really that much but I feel better. /flex

Last but not least I’ve heard the Mariners have wrecked their ship again, I might check that out, after all you never know when an eye-patch may come handy.

So I rolled an Elven Huntress – Faradwen (which basically means ‘huntress’, simplicity FTW). She’s level 10, I am once again enjoying quests in Ered Luin and I’ve earned my first 5 Turbine points, yay!

But the whole hunter thingy will probably take some getting used to. When I play a melee class (say champion) the usual fight looks like this: *thrust*, *slash*, *swing*, *hack*, *slash*,  … you get the picture. And the situation with hunter? No matter the skills it’s *pew*, *pew*, *pew*, *pew* and occasional *slash*. Granted it’s more like *aaaaaaim* *pew*, *aaaim* *pew*, *aaaim* *pew*,*PEW* (cookie if you can name the skills). I understand that when it comes to animation there really is little to no possible variety with firing arrows and I play with sound turned off and thus have no idea what sound (if any) do Hunters make. Not to mention that I am currently in the possession of about 6 ranged skills so maybe it gets better later.

Back in UO I actually played an Archer and it was fine, UO doesn’t have skills so I was happy auto-pew-pewing from a distance, running a bit away once the slow-moving Ettin, Troll or Earth Elemental reached me, picking arrows from the ground along the way and then start shooting again, slowly taking him down, it was fun. Not that Hunter in LotRO is hard to play it’s just the combat feels rather monotonous. Granted I haven’t really tried moving around more-so when I’m being encouraged to stay in place to remain focused. When in melee the skills have quite a cooldown and, well, I keep forgetting to use my bow in melee range (it’s just unnatural!). I guess I’d need to group a bit, I actually had quite a fun in Skrogrím’s Tomb, peeling Dwarves and goblins off Dwalin. I am also really looking forward to fight brigands in Bree – no more chasing after them if they decide to run away because I’m not worth the trouble.

In the meantime – US forums, lorebook and everything has been compressed into one huge and (currently) really buggy yet somewhat visually appealing site and the European release of Enedwaith and F2P has been postponed – we can only hope for soon™.

As you probably are aware, the US servers are up for the head-start and people are awaiting the arrival of F2P players, read ravaging hordes thereof

Yesterday, after the dev chat (radiance will be leaving!) the patch servers went up and I experienced one of the quickest patches, it barely took an hour. Unfortunately the servers did get up much later – at about 2 a.m. when I was already in bed. But they’re up now and I need to roll a Free character on Landroval anyway. I’m thinking about an Elven Hunter, the other choices are Guardian (and I’m not sure I want to roll one) and Burglar (which I really don’t want to roll). I usually spend hours inventing a name for my characters but fortunately I got one spare – Fandiriel – and I hope it’s not taken. By the time I’m writing this Landroval is probably mostly sleeping so I am going to listen to the Hunter roundtable and see if I’d like a hunter

Meanwhile: EU servers continue to go on as if nothing was happening and Codies haven’t really told us anything. I can only hope I will be patched on Friday. I expect Enedwaith to be pretty crowded the first week so I’m probably not heading there right from the start, though from what I have seen the area is just beautiful. What I am gonna do is enjoy my new wardrobe, my vault contains about 50 pieces of clothing a good quarter of which are cloaks and with all the chests bought I don’t have much space in there.  After that some tedious respending of LI points and Skirmish Marks and then I’d like to visit some renewed instanced.

So see you in Middle-earth, from now on at both sides of the Pond (Laurelin and Landroval).