- It's not the most popular opinion (Shire or Eregion probably has that) but Southern Mirkwood is my favorite area in the game. There's something about the way the light hits the trees that makes me 'homesick' for camping (haven't been in years). It's gorgeous in a very realistic way.
- The Yule Festival is the true Monster Play experience
- LOTRO Texture of the Day - This wood troll is too anatomically correct :(
- Just made it to Rohan for the first time
- The Shadow of Isengard
- Thinking of playing
- What is your favorite location in this game?
- Erebor houses look so cool!
- The problem with Gundabad instance gear/loot drops and overall gear progression...
- [Webcomic] Chickening Around Ch.34: Naughty or Nice
- Anyone Know Where to Find This Bow?
- LOTRO: The King Beneath the Mountains
- Coming back and not sure what to roll
| Posted: 28 Dec 2021 04:54 PM PST
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| The Yule Festival is the true Monster Play experience Posted: 28 Dec 2021 09:41 PM PST In it, you merrily:
Seriously, I don't think Creep play comes close to the level of villainy here. Kudos to Turbine/SSG for having such a subversive critique of modern holiday excess. [link] [comments] | ||
| LOTRO Texture of the Day - This wood troll is too anatomically correct :( Posted: 28 Dec 2021 08:30 PM PST
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| Just made it to Rohan for the first time Posted: 29 Dec 2021 01:04 AM PST Nobody warned me about how good the soundtrack is here, damn [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 28 Dec 2021 11:39 AM PST
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| Posted: 28 Dec 2021 09:52 PM PST I'm not a member here yet, but I wanted to test the waters. I played this game waaaayyy back at launch and it's been on my mind for a minute. Is it worth getting back into? Is there a community so I can actually make friends to play with? More specifically, is there a community of "mature" players I can run with? I'm in the U.S. and an old fart who usually only has free time very late on a few week nights. [link] [comments] | ||
| What is your favorite location in this game? Posted: 28 Dec 2021 01:35 PM PST I'm new to the game, so I've not seen much at all, though I truly think all of it is beautiful. So. what spot is your favorite? [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 28 Dec 2021 02:23 PM PST The new housing neighborhoods in Erebor are in Smaug's Treasure Hoard. They are so cool! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-QOnol7Alo [link] [comments] | ||
| The problem with Gundabad instance gear/loot drops and overall gear progression... Posted: 28 Dec 2021 02:47 PM PST Let me first say that I'm not a hardcore raider (anymore). And I don't care about getting "the best gear". I don't mind a challenge, but I'm also not running T3+ instances because I have don't have the time, energy, or patience to run them - and to be frank, I don't think I have the "skills" to do them either (I don't know the best DPS rotations anymore, etc). But the difficulty of the instances is not what I have a problem with - honestly I think the difficulty of the new Gundabad instances is pretty good; T1 is relatively easy for a good group, T2 is challenging but simple enough for a good group, and T3 is difficult for a good group. The issue I have is that gear progression in Gundabad and gear/loot drops in the Gundabad instances is absolutely terrible, which makes running the Gundabad instances completely pointless. I didn't play much during the War of the Three Peaks expansion, so my level 130 gear was pretty terrible, so when I got to level 140 I crafted myself a new set of armour - this is all purple item level 460 gear. This cost around ~35 sunstone shards. This gear isn't that bad (all things considered). I also used embers to get a pocket item (teal item level 455), since there isn't a crafted pocket item. This got me to a good starting point. Then the 3-man instances were released and I started running them - T1 to start. And the gear drops? Item level ~458 yellow gear. A downgrade. So I switched to T2 3-mans… Gear drops were item level ~460 yellow gear. No purple gear at all. Everything was, at best, side-grades. I tried running some T3's but as a LM I don't seem to fit into groups very well (I can't heal well enough to be a healer, and my DPS isn't that great to be the DPS), so I wasn't able to complete the 3-mans on T3 -I did complete the first boss in Den of Pughlak and I think I got a yellow item level ~465 gear piece, which again… was at best just a side-grade and not really an upgrade to what I had. Then they released the 6-man (House of Rest / HOR), and I felt like this instance would finally have some better gear drops. But I was wrong - T1 drops yellow item level ~460 gear, and T2 drops yellow item level 465 gear, and then a purple item level 465 piece at the end. The last piece is at least somewhat of an upgrade from the crafted gear. But considering how much work T2 HOR is, getting one piece of gear at the very end that is only marginally better isn't exactly what I'd call exciting. And I seem to get the same piece every single time… I'm not 100% sure what gear can actually drop from that chest, it's possible that there's only 2 or 3 pieces per class (my minstrel keeps getting the healing necklace). So it might not even be possible to get a full gear set if it only drops a necklace, and whatever other armour piece it might drop. And of course the yellow gear drops don't disenchant into embers, so you can't progress your gear by running T1/T2 and getting gear and turning them into embers and using that to get teal gear (which is actually an upgrade from the crafted purple gear). The end result is that basically no one runs the new instances. I'm on Landroval and I'm in a relatively big kinship (which to be fair isn't a hardcore raiding kin, but still), and it's super hard to find people to run the new instances. Every now and then I see a few people farming Den of Pug T4/5 (sometimes only the first boss). Mostly I just see people farming Storv T2 because (surprise!) the loot is actually worth it. And I'm not saying that teal gear should be dropping in T1 instances. The problem is that there's no progression so there's no reason to do them. When quest gear is on par with the gear that is dropping in T1 instances, and is only slightly worse than T2 instances, what's the point in running them? It really surprises me that after 10+ years they don't have a relatively straightforward way to create gear progression when a new level cap comes out, one that "mostly works" so that they can just reuse it each time. I don't know exactly how they create gear - I assume they have some sort of gear generator, I'd hate to think that someone has to assign stats to every single gear piece - but I would think they could do it in such a way that they could template the results and just use that for the next round. For example, for Gundabad I would have done something like this (order in the list shows gear progression):
The idea being - the landscape gear is the worst but still "good enough for landscape and for low tier instances". Crafted gear would be a "help complete a set to get ready for instances in case you are missing some landscape gear" (which I am missing a lot because I usually don't level using quests for some of my alts). 3-mans (being slightly easier than 6-mans generally) drop slightly worse gear at the same tier, but still allow you to "get better gear" by increasing the tier, and you can use it to get better gear to go into 6-mans or skip a tier (get all the gear from 3-man T1 and then go into doing 6 man T2 for example). Once the raid is released, the T1 raid would fall somewhere around 6 or 7 - T1 raid would probably drop purple item level ~460 gear. A second set of crafted gear could be included as well (one that requires sunstone shards or maybe something that drops from the instances), and would sit around 5 or 6, but honestly I'm not a huge fan of crafted high-end gear, I feel crafted gear should be the "easy gear to get but also basically the worst". Make it super easy to get (cheap on resources, unlike now) but also make it just better than random gear you get while questing (unlike now, where it's one of the better gear sets in the game). This also gives players a relatively straightforward understanding of where "better gear" drops from. I can't tell how many times in the past I have been super confused on where better gear was obtainable. During the Anvil raid for example we'd run T2 and it would drop gear that was worse than just running the 3 mans. There was no incentive to run harder content because the loot from it wasn't worth it. There's no incentive to run any content currently (besides the semi-solo Gundabad Battle instances) because you don't get anything from it. People will farm School/Library to get ancient scripts because it's way faster and super easy, because doing T2 House of Rest takes a lot longer and you still only get 2 or 3 traceries. I remember back when Moria first released you could always find groups for GS, FG, Forges, and even 16th Hall. Skumfil and DD were a bit harder to find groups for, but it was still possible. And that's because the gear was worth running those instances for. Then they changed the drops to be coin based - every chest in every instance dropped 5 or so coins, and then I think challenge mode gave another 5. And guess what happened - everyone immediately started farming only GS because it was the fastest - you could get 15 coins in 10 mins or so. Compared to 16th Hall which took an hour and gave you… 25 coins. There was no balance between difficulty, time commitment, and rewards. As a game developer/designer, it drives me crazy because while I don't think it's easy to design and balance a game of this magnitude, it seems like they continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over. They make an instance super difficult, and then give no rewards for doing it, and then wonder why everyone only ever farms the first boss or doesn't bother running it. Then ironically instead of making that instance more rewarding, they usually nerf the other instances. I'm guessing that SariSurma is going to get farmed a lot once people need something to do, since T2 can give you gold traceries (at least that is my understanding), and it's a lot easier than doing HOR T2 (which gives a teal tracery). But to "fix it" they aren't going to make HOR drop better gear, they'll just make SS not drop gold traceries anymore. I also play this game because I enjoy playing with other people. If I wanted to play a solo game I would just go play a solo game (that doesn't require so much time commitment…). So when I get on and try to find groups for new instances (I've been grinding Storv/School/Library for 10 years, I want to do something new) and no one is doing them… it just sucks all motivation I have to play the game. And I'm not even saying solo players shouldn't have a way to get that gear (without running instances), but don't make it easier to do the solo method or take longer to run the instances. Imagine if the instances dropped 5 or 6 enhancement runes per chest, or 2 or 3 yellow and purple enhancement rune (instead of just 1 of either). All of the sudden all those people that are farming battle instances all day (like I do on 9 different characters…) would have a reason to run instances, because they can get the loot they need (which is enhancement runes). And guess what - if you have 10 hours to play each day and can do battle instances and run the actual instances for loot - great! I only have 3 or 4 hours a day so I have to budget my time, and right now, running the instances is not worth it because I get basically nothing for my effort, but I can run the battle instances on a few characters and get a ton of loot from it. I can collect sunstone shards on my characters by looting rare chests in the higher level Gundabad regions and then craft them a nice gear set a ton faster than I can by running instances, and the gear ends up being better… it makes no sense. TLDR: There's a fine balance between an instance's difficulty, time requirement, and rewards, and SSG has completely failed at that balance. More difficult instances should mean better rewards, and instances that take longer to complete should give better (or at least more) rewards (to compensate for it taking longer). [link] [comments] | ||
| [Webcomic] Chickening Around Ch.34: Naughty or Nice Posted: 28 Dec 2021 10:58 PM PST
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| Anyone Know Where to Find This Bow? Posted: 28 Dec 2021 05:27 PM PST | ||
| LOTRO: The King Beneath the Mountains Posted: 28 Dec 2021 08:42 AM PST
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| Coming back and not sure what to roll Posted: 28 Dec 2021 12:47 PM PST Hey folks So I'm coming back and doing a fresh start; normally I tank so I've been looking at Captain and love the concept. But I had originally played as a Warden and loved the gambit system but feel like I might just be too slow doing it now. My debate is whether I come back, roll a Captain and tank or roll a Warden, cone back and maybe just dps with the option of tanking (Not sure where Warden fits tank wise anymore) Looking for some insight and I out if anyone has any. Thanks [link] [comments] |
![[Webcomic] Chickening Around Ch.34: Naughty or Nice](https://external-preview.redd.it/MarLh6eOhuL2kwf6W1i6ar_fCdQ5sVIuNLGl_iyVwAQ.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=ffd4ede108b801cfd0df934ec0d0dcae3a4ab94a "[Webcomic] Chickening Around Ch.34: Naughty or Nice")
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