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.
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.
Amlug has a blog post that I think many have been wanting for quite a while now. It’s all about Turbine’s planned changes for how Radiance gear is bartered. I highly recommend reading the full post at its source and leaving some comments. The entire post is of interest, though, so I have 95% of it below as well:
Yes, we have listened to your concerns about the Book 8 changes and the previous instances not being changed. We have talked long and hard about what are the best ways to fix this system so it is works for as many people as possible and we also ultimately want it to feel…wait for it…rewarding!
So we have come up with a new plan. Meet Medallions — The new shiny barter token to use for bartering for your radiance pieces and some extra Legendary Item augmentations! Medallions will be replacing most of the tokens that you’ve seen since Moria. There will be unique Medallions for each cluster of instances that we release. Currently there will be two for the live content you guys are playing: the Medallion of Moria and the Medallion of Lothlorien. The Medallions will drop off of every boss monster in level 58+ instances. This means that killing boss one in Forges of Khazad-Dum will drop Medallions for everyone in the party. (Note: Make sure you all loot the chest!) I’m not going to get into how many, etc. here because we are still balancing the system. Players can use Medallions to trade for same things they were trading for — namely the Challenge sets, the other dungeon sets, and relics and Legendary Item XP.
Currently the Medallions of Moria will drop in: Grand Stairs, Forges, Sixteenth Hall, Fil Ghashan, Skumfil, and Dark Delvings. The Medallions of Lothlorien will drop in Waterworks, Halls of Crafting, and Hall of Mirrors. Future instances will drop a new Medallion.
The goal here is to not force you all to grind through instances in only the way we want. Also, players will still gain ground towards gaining their sets even if they aren’t achieving the Challenges. However, doing the Challenges will gain you more Medallions! In addition to this, we are going to be adding in some items to Challenges at a very low percentage drop. This means you’ll have a chance of getting something special. Finally, we are fixing it so there are new Challenge quests that work while you are inside the instances only and are on a daily retry timer. Orion has mentioned this tech and you can read his blog for more information. Oh and if that is not enough, we have some new Legendary Item goodies that you can trade for that we think you will like a lot. (But you’ll have to wait to find out what exactly!)
“But what about my old tokens? What do I do with them?”
No worries. There will be new npcs at the Twenty-first Hall and Caras Galadhon near the class trainers that will exchange those old crusty tokens for new shiny medallions! These Barter Exchange Traders will also hold all the Legendary Item goodies. They are your new favorite buddies.
I’m sure there is much more to talk about and we’ll be discussing the new instances we are working on shortly, but for now, I hope this comes as good news.
–Amlug
p.s. Radiance and Hope have been separated back out again. Radiance will no longer give bonuses to players on landscape, it will only be used to combat Gloom.
Happy? Unhappy? Indifferent? Unsure until it’s in effect? No matter what your opinion, I think we can all agree that it’s great to see Turbine addressing player concerns so directly. I am personally happy that they’ve taken the time to think about this rather than rushing something out to appease some of the more vocal forum members.
I have to say, I prefer this blog approach some of the team members are taking as of late. They can get all of their ideas out before others can interject or misconstrue. There’s also more time to edit and be sure of what they’re saying before they post it. I think this goes over better in the long run, honestly.
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.
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.
I’m sure many people out there have read through the dev chat by now and have made up your own minds about it. I noticed on the forums that there was a good split between those happy with the chat and those who weren’t. I don’t usually expect too much from these things for various reasons .… Largely because they’re short, unstructured, rapid paced and just ill-suited to thorough explanations.
As always, these are a nice preface to upcoming Book patches and I have to say my interest in seeing what will be in the next update has gone up. It’s always worth remembering that there’s far more going on than what these chats detail … the Rune-keeper class comes to mind. The chat didn’t have much information on the class (aside from them getting “buffs”), but there’s been a good amount of discussion on Book 7 changes on the forums from the devs so far.
So we’ll see what happens in the end. I’m not one to complain until I know what I’m actually getting or not getting, particularly when I know that not every member of the development team shows up for these things. If the crafting lead isn’t there then we probably won’t hear much about crafting changes, for example.
That said, there was some good information in the chat and I got the impression that most people involved had a good time. Some things that caught my attention:
Minstels are finally getting Tier 6 instruments.
Pathing improvements for Lore–master pets. I never got very far with my Lore–master, but even early on this can be annoying. Any fixes are good!
As has been discussed before, Lothlorien will be filled out in Book 7. I’m really interested in seeing this area as Turbine seems particularly happy with how it turned out. I’m also interested in seeing how they’ve managed the reputation system, as it sounds like it might be a change of pace from the others in the game. There will be a developer diary on the area soon.
More three man instances are coming. This was one of the cooler features of the last update, I felt.
Yet another confirmation of a 12-person raid in Book 7. This should make people happy, although I’ve yet to complete a major raid in the game. Oops.
garian07 specifically asks about Kinship cloaks. I’m wondering if this question was misunderstood, as it sounds like Floon was referring to a system to upload pictures and turn them into cloak textures. I assumed that the question was referring more to a system where we could choose between cloak styles, colors and emblems to make a Kinship-unique cloak. I believe World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online both have this option and it seems like it’d be significantly easier. Of course, I imagine balancing this so that other cloak designs in the game aren’t ignored entirely is difficult.
I think many people out there are disappointed with the hook system used for housing and I was glad to see it brought up here. I know it’s low on the totem pole and I certainly appreciate that housing was added as an update in the first place, but I do hope they adjust this somewhat soon. I’d really love for my house to be more of a focus for my character. I’d also really love if there was some simple way to invite people over.
The chat didn’t really get into crafting or legendary item concerns, two things which are commonly lamented on the forums as of late. I suppose we’ll see soon enough if either of these are adjusted in Book 7, but it sounds like making signficant changes to either (particularly the latter) would be quite difficult.
In any event, I’m looking forward to hearing more about the next update. Now that the chat is over, I imagine they’ll be ramping up the content for its release soon.
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.
Public Service Announcement: Gold Selling: Every day this site gets a good amount searches related to buying gold in LOTRO. For those of you trying to find that in...
