Stop giggling.  That’s right, I’m talking to you.  This is serious stuff.

Discussion on War in the North
http://www.warinthenorth.com/
Release in 2011

What have we done in game this week

Bill

  • Levelling in Moria (quests) – level 57 now, epic story catch-up
  • Winter-home exploring.  I noticed the weird story line in Winter-home.  Rich vs. Impoverished, with no obvious resolution that I’ve seen (yet)

Chris

Design a horse contest. Pax East Edition
http://www.lotro.com/news/latestnews/965-lotro-design-a-horse-contest-pax-east-edition

LOTRO Players Guides
http://www.lotro.com/news/951-thumbnail-hub

CSTM Takes #1 MMO Blog award
http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/12/27/massivelys-top-10-mmo-blogs-of-2010

Increase in hacked accounts
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=5158584#post5158584

Tanking and Crowd Control
http://docholidaymmo.com/2010/12/29/tanking-and-crowd-control/

Reminder – Yule Festival ends January 11th

Point of Screwage:  What sort of trouble will younger hobbits get into this year?

Emails/Comments

From Gylraen

a few days ago I considered crafting some summer green pipe-weed to help LotroWeekly checking some new smoke animations. Before Turbine changed the crafting, I stored all my pipe-weed as inferior stuff which I could convert into true pipe-weed seed using the appropriate receipts. Although it might sound strange to store the inferior stuff, but it was just the optimal solution: a stack of 50 inferior weeds yields – if I remember right – 150 pipe-weed seeds which would occupy 3 slots otherwise.

But when trying to make some summer green weed I recognized that these inferior to seed receipts were all gone … and I didn’t find a single exchange NPC who would take my inferior stuff and give me some weed again :-( So now I have a full stack of every single pipe-weed species but cannot craft a single weed good for smoking :-(

I have the feeling the Turbine was not aware of people storing the weed as inferior stuff?

Could you -with your much better connections to Turbine – help me sheding some light into this mysterious issue? Thank you very much …

Besides that I love the game, I do enjoy Winterhome and I love to listen to your podcasts – although there is too much to do in real life to keep pace at the moment … but christmas holidays are looking around the corner.

Cheers and I hope you don’t feel sick anymore?
Gylraen

Comment on Blog regarding the Grand Stair walkthrough discussion

By anonymous:

Ok, I have to provide some input on you GS walk through. You did really well. Just a little helpful hints and clarification, once the bridge goes down you have 10 minutes to get to the first/second boss. I am not sure I count the first fight since you get no loot… but I guess technically he is a boss. One hint for that fight is to have fear pots, he does a self heal after fearing you. “feed me your fear” if you have his fear dot on at that time it is too late. Next you fight your way through some mobs, and usually just after you get to the bottom of the stairs, near the kennels (I think that is what it is called) a heavy needs to get ready to run up and tag the next boss. No levers to pull, just run up to him and trigger his animation, then most just jump to their doom (to avoid the higher repair bill). No need to drop group.
That is the first step for hard mode.
The next step for hard mode is to go kill Igash without killing the devoted. So from the boss fight you just completed you need to run back the way you came, cross a bridge that is now down, and work through some mobs to the top of the stairs. This is where you find Igash. The best group makeups have two tanks, one for the boss and one for the archers. But if you have knowledgeable players just one will do.
Once you trigger the boss, he goes through some animations and the devoted and the archers arrive, sometimes you get lucky and he does not call forth the archers immediately. The devoted runs around hitting small damage on everyone, he cannot be tanked. He is also fragile so aoe attacks need to be very cautious to not hit him. Just avoid him.
I once had luck with my lm locking down the archers, but a true agro pulling tank is best, and should wait for the archers near the top of the stairs. Then just tank and spank the boss, and avoid the “poop” (thanks for the excellent term Goldenstar) also observed as the fire spot that the boss lays down.
That is basically the hard mode run, I probably left something out. Hope it helps.
I ran GS HM for the first time on my 58 RK last night and my RK healed it. We were sucessfull, except I lost our captain and myself when Igash still had about 10k. Luckily we had a really good guard and a 65 RK and Hunter to finish him off.
Now, I have to go sit on my naughty spot.
Cheers.

Prizes given away:
Prize – T-Shirt: Sidarin
Prize- Turbine Points: Elahndria
Prize – T-shirt: TowerDragon
Prize – T-shirt: Sparthir
Prize – Turbine Points: Syrdeth

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