MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.

To Kin or Not To Kin…That Is The Question

Taliesin posted this on January 22nd, 2010. It has 2 Comments »
Categorized as Editorials and Thoughts, News.
Tagged as , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2612

I’ve been with­out a kin for over 6 months now and while it does get bor­ing talk­ing to myself in chat, I have to say I’ve sur­vived pretty well with­out one. I’ve filled my hours work­ing on craft­ing and doing as many solo quests as I can. I do occa­sion­ally group with a friend or two for the 3-mans or to knock out lower level quests. But lately I’ve been miss­ing the raid­ing I used to do in my old kin and have been look­ing for a new one. What am I look­ing for in a kin? One that has fun and knows how to raid.

Herein lies the dilemma. I’m not a hard­core raider, but I do like hav­ing the bits of shiny for my toons. I don’t need to be the first to down the boss or have the instance on farm sta­tus, but a girl likes some swag, you know?

Then what are the options out there for the “casual raider”? Well, you can try to form a sta­tic group with peo­ple from dif­fer­ent kins, but you might run into some issues with fig­ur­ing out the loot rules as every­one will have a dif­fer­ent take on how to divide the loot.  Another option is to do PUGs, but hon­estly, when do PUGs turn out well for you? Almost never.

Seri­ously though, when look­ing for a group to raid with you can join a kin, but that doesn’t guar­an­tee that you’ll be able to raid with them right off the bat. Many kins these days require you sub­mit a raid­ing appli­ca­tion and then have a visual inspec­tion of your gear and stats. The prob­lem with this is that if you’re new to raid­ing (whether it is in gen­eral or on a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter) you might not have all your traits maxed out or have the best gear. With that in mind, it is a good idea to “shadow” a kin if you’re able to. By that I mean see if you can join them on a raid or just go quest­ing with them and get a feel for how they play and how the offi­cers treat their mem­bers. Also find out if there is a wait­ing list for raid­ing and if they have mul­ti­ple sta­tic groups that raid. Larger kins do raids at dif­fer­ent times to accom­mo­date alts, so there might be room for you on their sec­ondary raid group. Check out all your options and be well informed before jump­ing into a new kin. There’s noth­ing worse than being known as the per­son that is a ‘kin-hopper”.  Once you’ve run with the poten­tial new kin a few times you can bet­ter decide if you want to make it your home.

If  this doesn’t work out for you, there is one last option and it is my favourite.  Get two or three friends who will do quad box­ing! Put all your toons on auto attack and auto fol­low and hit those raids!  The only draw­backs to this idea are falling off cliffs when you drag that last toon around the cor­ner or hav­ing your toon run into the insta-death water.  But really, other than that it’s a fine idea. You have 4 times the chance at good loot, you get more coin and more XP. A win-win-win-win sit­u­a­tion for everyone.

MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.

Upcoming Changes to the Dastardly “Hounding Fear”

Tony posted this on January 22nd, 2010. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Patch.
Tagged as , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2607

Hound­ing Fear is one of those mob skills that has always been a cen­ter of debate. In the past I would say it was overused, but Tur­bine has made an effort to change that over var­i­ous updates. Today I came across this post on the forums from LOTROSys­tems with some clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how Hound­ing Fear cur­rently works and what is planned for the future:

Hound­ing Fear.

This has been the sub­ject of many threads, com­plaints, frus­tra­tions, and argu­ments. We’ve responded in the past to some of these threads try­ing to explain things a bit (feel free to hunt them down if you wish). We also made a sig­nif­i­cant adjust­ment to Hound­ing Fear with Moria: reduc­ing the chance of it land­ing on you when fight­ing mobs lower level than you. Cur­rently, you actu­ally have a 0% chance of get­ting hit by Hound­ing Fear when being attacked by mobs that are gray to you.

The rea­son we’re respond­ing to this (newest) thread is because the game has changed a bit: Skir­mishes, specif­i­cally sol­diers. We want sol­diers to be able to pro­tect play­ers the best they can, and we also want play­ers to be able to pro­tect their sol­diers the best they can. Hound­ing Fear ham­pers that a bit. If you’re able to heal your sol­dier and try­ing to run over to him but get slowed by Hound­ing Fear, you might not get in range in time to save him. Therefore…

The effect “Hound­ing Fear” is being removed from Skir­mishes AND from Landscape.

Now, you might be say­ing: “Pro­tect­ing your Sol­dier? That is your rea­son for remov­ing it when there’s so many bet­ter ones that have existed this whole time!?” What it comes to is that this was the final straw. We’ve debated back and forth for a long time now about the mer­its and flaws of Hound­ing Fear: what we were try­ing to achieve with it, how we were suc­cess­ful and unsuc­cess­ful with our goals, what the con­se­quences will be if we remove it.

We hope this change will be for the bet­ter in the short term and the long term. We feel this is the right choice to make (though, to be fair, we always make the choices we make think­ing they’re the right ones). Should it have been made sooner? Maybe. Will it back­fire hor­ri­bly because of some unfore­seen con­se­quence? Hope­fully not.

Thank you for all of your feed­back. We do pay atten­tion to your con­cerns and try and act upon them when we are able to (assum­ing we agree with you, of course ;) ).

So things appear to be chang­ing for the bet­ter for all you Skir­mishes out there.

MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.

Welcome Back Weekend: This Time with Free Stable Travel!

Tony posted this on January 21st, 2010. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News.
Tagged as , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2600

It’s another Wel­come Back Week­end in LOTRO, but this time there’s some­thing dif­fer­ent going on. The bonus XP for mob kills has been reduced to 5%, but to make up for this all sta­ble travel is free. FREE!

I hon­estly like this a heck of a lot bet­ter, as it’ll ben­e­fit every­one across the game. It also encour­ages return­ing and new play­ers to see more of the world and the things that have been changed.

The event starts today and runs through Jan­u­ary 25th.

MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.

Return to Moria: Day 2

Tony posted this on January 21st, 2010. It has 1 Comment »
Categorized as Editorials and Thoughts, Eluveril in Moria.
Tagged as , , , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2591

Elu­veril made her way through the Great Delv­ing and on to the Dolven-view today. The trip there was a lit­tle con­fus­ing, but there were help­ful dwarves along the way will­ing to give direc­tions. On sub­se­quent trips, the paths almost became sec­ond nature … par­tic­u­larly if you notice that you can largely fol­low an old, crum­bling stone road most of the way.

The entrance to Dolven-View.

The entrance to the Dolven-view.

The Dolven-view was a wel­come sight after all of the dark­ness and creepy noises Elu­veril had to pass. A sur­pris­ing num­ber of dwarves resided here, includ­ing envoys for two major fac­tions in the area: the Guards and the Min­ers. Both had good causes, but the Guards won her over and have received most of her sup­port, receiv­ing sev­eral strange relics she had col­lected on her way over. The hope is that some­day soon she’ll be able to trade for a Rune-keeper book the Guards are holding.

Read the rest of this entry »

MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.

Map to the Flowers of the Old Forest

Tony posted this on January 20th, 2010. It has 2 Comments »
Categorized as Guides.
Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2583

This site gets a lot of searches related to the Old For­est flower deed. Nowa­days you kids have it easy. Back when I had to first worry about this, I had to run around with 2 wolves, 3  bats, a bear, sev­eral spi­ders and some evil trees on my tail.  We didn’t even have a detailed map! But I digress …

I thought it would be help­ful to put together a map of the flower loca­tions (Nedor­las, Braiglad, Lenhwest, Sil­loth, Mer­il­lif, Dorollin, Cord­o­foneth, Rhosthon). I didn’t bother with coor­di­nates, as I think this is easy enough. I’ve labeled by name, which should be help­ful for those of you with a few flow­ers leftover.


Map to the flowers of the Old Forest. Click for a larger version.

Map the the flow­ers of the Old For­est. Click for a larger version.


This deed hon­estly drove me nuts, as a lot of the flow­ers are in areas you have no real need to enter. Stick it to the Old For­est by com­plet­ing this, which is a reward in and of itself.