Siege of Mirkwood
Win Siege of Mirkwood and the Adventurer's Pack!
Dec 16th
Turbine has offered us two Siege of Mirkwood Combo Packs to hand out to our faithful listeners in the form of a contest! Each Combo Pack includes the Siege of Mirkwood expansion as well as the Adventurer’s Pack.
Here’s how it’s going to work:
1) In the theme of the holiday season, we’re going to try to encourage you to spread the good cheer. Send us an email (lotroreporter@gmail.com) with a description of a “random act of kindness” that you have done in-game. No, we’re not looking for screenshots of you giving someone tons and tons of gold. Instead, we want to hear about how you helped someone in need. Maybe you helped them complete a quest, perhaps you ported someone who was asking how to get somewhere, etc. Write up a description and send it to us.
2) The contest will run from December 16th to December 29th. Emails must be received by 11:59PM PST on December 29th to be considered for the contest.
3) 2 winners will be chosen at random, and will receive the Siege of Mirkwood Combo Pack and have their message read on the LOTRO Reporter Podcast.
Please note that the combo pack is valid for players on U.S. Servers only.
More information about Siege of Mirkwood can be found here: http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/siege-of-mirkwood-features
See you in game!
EDIT: The contest is now closed. Winners will be contacted shortly.
Level 20 Horse
Dec 8th
Part of the new Siege of Mirkwood expansion was a re-vamp to the mount system. Once of the side benefits was that we can now purchase a “starter” mount at level 20, instead of waiting to level 35.
This new mount is not as fast as the level 35 mount, but it is still faster than running! It’s also much cheaper.
So, how do you get this new mount? First, go to the horse fields north of Bree:
Skirmish Marks
Dec 6th
Skirmish Marks come in many different varieties:
- Skirmish Marks
- Campaign Marks (Eruilan, Adlan, Naillan, Cannuilan)
- First, Second, Third and Fourth Marks (and their Veteran versions)
- Rank Marks (Guardsman, Footman, Esquire and their Veteran versions)
Quick Thoughs on the Siege of Mirkwood Launch
Dec 2nd
It’s very late at night, and I should be in bed. The problem, you see, is that Siege of Mirkwood launched last night, and I’ve had the fortune of playing skirmishes all night. Well, most of the night. I did get a chance to create a couple of alts. Suprise! I bet you didn’t think that was going to happen.
Back to the topic of the Siege of Mirkwood launch. I think that Turbine did a fantastic job of launching the expansion. Although there where some issues on Brandywine and Landroval, I didn’t here of anything on any other servers.
As far as skirmishes go, I have to say that they are a blast! We ran through several of them this evening with a smaller group, just three of us, and we enjoyed it tremendously. Although we had a little difficulty in getting everything sorted out as far as Soldier traits go, and Bill kept on having issues with his soldier’s health bar disappearing, we still enjoyed ourselves.
A couple of tips:
1) Realize that there is a quest that you need to do before you have a chance to get into skirmishes. After you finish that quest (which is a pain in the but!), you complete 2 tutorial skirmishes, and then you’re free to create/join any skirmishes available to characters of your level. The quest that you have to finish involves collecting 10 “War Orders” and 1 “Target List” from mobs (Goblins, Orc, Trolls, Warg-Riders, etc) that are approximately your level. These do not drop on every kill. Kind of a pain to have to do this before you enter the skirmishes. Skirmish Tutorials = Good, Quest = Boring and Frustrating.
Siege of Mirkwood Patch Notes
Nov 30th
Highlights
The Skirmish System has Arrived!
The Skirmish System has arrived! Brian “Zombie Columbus” has put together a seven part series of Developer Diaries that explain every possible aspect of this massive new system. Be sure to read the entire collection!
- Part 1: Overview
- Part 2: Story Instances
- Part 3: Randomization and Scaling
- Part 4: Skirmish Soldiers
- Part 5: Rewards
- Part 6: Accessibility
- Part 7: The End
Combat System Revamp
The Lord of the Rings Online™: Siege of Mirkwood™ expansion introduces exciting changes for the player combat system! The pacing of combat has been dramatically improved. All player classes, including monster play classes, have been affected by these changes. We strongly encourage all players to read the Combat Changes and Character Panel & Stats Developer Diaries to better understand what these changes mean for you.
More on Skirmishes
Nov 21st
With the announcement that Bullroarer was going to be left on after a patch on Friday morning, I eagerly loaded up the test client, loaded up Almazar, and tried to complete the tutorial that had been bugged on Tuesday night.
Success! I was able to complete the tutorial and skirmishes where now open to me. I equipped my soldier’s trait and opened the Skirmish Join panel. Ooooo, three choices. Where did I want to go? The Shire? Bree? No, it was Weathertop for me!
The skirmish loaded, and what a blast it was. I fought of wave after wave of evil creature, and with my herbalist’s and an NPC’s help, we drove them back.
The skirmish was fun, quick and exactly was I hoped for. I quickly checked to see if I had enough skirmish marks for a gear upgrade (nope) and opened the Skirmish Join panel again.
And then it happened.
All of the skirmishes where greyed out. I couldn’t create a new one. When I selected one and clicked on the “Create” button, I would get the following message; “Exceeded number of skirmishes per week”. Grrrr. Not again.
So I tried it with another character that I had transferred. Accidentally create a Tier III skirmish, died very quickly, exited the skirmish, and tried to create a new one.
Same problem. Grrrr.
After some chatting with some people in the global LFF channel, I still couldn’t figure out the problem, or a work around. Very frustrating.
So far, all I can tell you is that from what I can tell, I’ll be playing a lot of Skirmishes. I’m also very happy that these problem are occurring now, instead of on launch day! Keep up the good work Zombie Columbus and Jwbarry!
I’ll see you in game.
EDIT: I found an explanation about this in the forums. Working as intented. Oh well, I understand that Turbine is giving us the opportunity to try it out now, not to play the whole game early. It was fun. Can’t wait for launch. http://forums.lotro.com/showpost.php?p=4195921&postcount=28
Skirmish Weekend!
Nov 20th
With the bug that players faced during Tuesday night’s Skirmish preview, where most players where not able to try skirmishes, Turbine has decided to open up Bullroarer for the entire weekend (Nov 20-22) for players to log on and try them out!
This was confirmed during LOTRO Reporter’s interview with Sapience, a.k.a. Rick Heaton, Turbine’s Online Community Specialist. Bullroarer will be taken down Friday, Nov 20th, for maintenance, and when it comes back up, your should be good to go for skirmishes.
So there you have it. Transfer your characters, patch up Bullroarer install, and get ready to have some fun!
See you in game!
Skirmish Preview
Nov 15th
With the Skirmish stress test coming up on the 17th, I thought that I’d take the time to write an overview of the skirmish system so far as we know. I’m going to run through it in an informal way, and I’ll try to include links when I can to site my sources.
Before the Skirmish
When you first decide to join a Skirmish, you’ll look at the new Main Menu and select Skirmish.
You’ll be able to bind the Skirmish menu to one of the buttons now (Link) or, of course, use the shortcut (Looks like CTRL+K now, but that may change before release).
Once you open the Skirmish Join panel, many options will be available to your. First off, you’ll be able to see which Skirmishes have daily quests available (the Ring next to the skirmish name).
You’ll also be able to see the level range of the Skirmishes, and pick a specific level difficulty that you want this instance of the Skirmish to be. for example, the Defense of the Prancing Pony Skirmish has a level range of 50-65. That means that you can pick any level between 50 and 65 for the Skirmish. This will affect the difficulty, as well as the rewards that you receive at the end, but more on rewards later.
Next you’ll be able to select a difficulty for that particular level, from Tier I to Tier III, with Tier I being the easiest, and Tier III the hardest. This will affect the difficulty of the instance, as well as the rewards. So, if you’ve got a group of level 53 players, and they are experienced and capable at instances, you might want to pick Tier III to give themselves more of a challenge.
And Finally, you’ll see the size of the instance. The size available will be Solo, Small Fellowship (3 members), Full Fellowship (6 Members) and Raid (12 members). This will also affect the rewards.
Once you have made all of these choices, you will see that there is a Skirmish Marks percentage listed. This will take all of the variables stated above and the more difficult the instance will be, the more Skirmish Marks you will receive. Link
Once you click Create, you will launch the Skirmish, and the other members of your Fellowship (if it’s not a Solo Skirmish), will see this window, which will give them all of the information they need to decide if they are going to join you in the Skirmish.
If they choose Travel Now, they will, well, travel now. If they choose Travel Later, a small icon will be place in the UI that the player can click on (until it expires) to be transported to the Skirmish.
During the Skirmish
First of all, most of the skirmishes will be based around Control Points. You will either have to defend, or capture these points. There has not been much elaboration on what the other types of Skirmishes will be, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Perhaps we’ll be able to give you more details following the Skirmish stress test on Tuesday, November 17th.
As far as the enemies that you will be facing, there will be a theme throughout each Skirmish. For example, in the Tuckborough Troubles, brigands, wolves and Orcs will be the monsters that you face. Each time you enter the Skirmish, however, there will be an element of randomization. This will take place in the form of how many monsters there are and exactly where they spawn. There will also be 2 Encounters, optional objectives for the Skirmish, that will be picked from a list of an unknown amount. These may be shown at the beginning of the Skirmish, or they may be triggered at some point during your time in the Skirmish. Turbine is being somewhat vague when it comes to specific Encounters, as they see discovering what these encounters are as part of the fun.
During the Skirmish, you will also fight Lieutenants. Lieutenants are mini-bosses that make regular fights more interesting. Each Lieutenant is unique, and many of them will have specific strategies that you need to employ to defeat them, and they have a chance of spawning with any of the groups of monsters in the Skirmish. They will again gain new abilities and/or “twists” to them with larger group sizes.
One of the coolest features that you will notice during the instance is your soldiers. Soldiers will be semi-pet/semi-npc addition to your group, but only during Skirmishes. These are the people that are left behind after all of the heroes and trained soldier go off to war, and therefore, they don’t have much training. This explain some of their limitations. These are several different aspects to soldiers:
1) Customization
You will be able, with Skirmish points, to purchase new traits for your soldiers and “level” them. You will then use these traits to give your Soldier a specific role. You will also be able to have some cosmetic changes that will make your soldier unique. Link
2) Direct Control
You won’t have direct control over your soldier, but you will have a skill, on a fairly long cooldown, that will allow you to direct them in a limited way. There isn’t much information about this yet, but here is a screenshot with the new skill. Link
What really exciting for me is that when there are Skirmishes with 12 players in them, there will also be 12 soldiers, AND any pets that Captains or Lore-Masters. Very epic!
When you fight the regular monsters during the skirmish, there will be no loot. This will keep this moving swiftly, without players having to stop and loot every single corpse. A nice addition. The only monsters that will have loot will be the Lieutenants, Bosses and optional encounter monsters. Bosses will drop a significant amount of coins, to make up for the rest of the monsters not dropping any. The loot will exclusively be Skirmish Marks, with some drop of Tokens. More on these later. Link
After the Skirmish
Skirmishes will introduce a new form of currency to the game: Skirmish Marks and Token. Skirmish marks are the general currency, and Tokens will be required for some special purchases and the Skirmish Vendors. Skirmish marks and Tokens will be awarded in a few different ways:
1) Lieutenants, Bosses and optional Encounter monsters will all drop Skirmish marks, and there will be chance that they also drop Tokens.
2) You will get Tokens from optional encounters that have been grouped together in a campaign. For example, there may be 3 Skirmishes that are grouped together as campaign X. During the optional Encounters in all of the Skirmishes in campaign X, you will have a chance to receive some Campaign X tokens. These can be redeemed at the Skirmish Vendor for loot.
3) Completing Skirmishes will reward you with Skirmish Marks.
Starting to get worried about all of these taking up inventory space? They will go into your inventory, however they stack into the millions, so no worries about taking up much space.
Once you’ve completed the Skirmish, and received your Marks and Tokens, you will be able to go to Skirmish Camps, where there will be many Skirmish Vendors, who will gladly sell you everything from weapons and armour and other equipment, to cosmetic items for you and your house, to traits for you Soldiers. There will be LOTS of stuff for you to spend your Skirmish Marks on.
Overall, I’m very excited about Skirmishes, and I can’t wait to see them in game!
Reworking Garth Agarwen
Oct 5th
Part of the upcoming revamp of Lone Lands will be a reworking of Garth Agarwen. The information provide is from several blog posts made by Orion on his mylotro blog. It was very interesting to read the thought process that he had as he worked through the changes and the work required to remake this instance.
The first, and I think most major, change that will occur with this instance is that it will be split into 4 separate instance: Garth Agarwen – Outer Sanctum, Garth Agarwen – Arboretum, Garth Agarwen – Barrows, Garth Agarwen – Fortress. Outer Sanctum, Arboretum and Barrows will be 3 man instances, while Fortress will remain a full 6 man fellowship instance.
As far as splitting them up, I think it’s a great idea. We’re just working through Garth Argarwen now with my regular group, and it’s a big instance. It’s already taken us 3 nights, and we still haven’t taken down Ivar yet. It took 2 nights to get the Barrows key, and we had a few tries at Ivar on another night. Splitting the instance up would definitely make it more manageable for our group. From what I’ve heard in comments on the main forums and reading a few sites is that people would tend to agree with me. I know that there are sure to be people who have run through it in one night without issues, but my guess is that those people are in the minority.
I do have an issue with making them 3 man instances however. We will have gone through the area with our group (hopefully!!!!!) by the time these changes make it into the game, however, if we hadn’t, it would make it a little more time consuming to run through the content. Why? Because we would have to run through it at least twice as we have a group of 5. Mind you, there will be a bit of a grind in the area, with the new faction tied to The Eglain, so perhaps it won’t be that bad. So far, however, we’ve been able to do almost all of the content as one group. To loose that ability may make it less desireable for our group to play together, and I would really hate for that to happen.
You see, one of the reasons that Salennia and I play LOTRO is as a social experience. We’ve been friends with Bill and Isanni since high school, and they now live in a different town, with kids of their own, so chances for us to get together as a group are much less frequent than any of us would like. LOTRO is a way for us to get together, talk about our week, enjoy each other’s company, and kill things. Adding my mother-in-law to the mix makes it a group of five. So having content that does not allow for full fellowships takes away a large aspect of the game for us. I know that we will get to this point anyways, with a few instances in Moria being limited to 3 people, but we’re far off from that.
Moving on, each wing will not have it’s own entrance. You will not need to fight through any wing to get to the others. I haven’t been able to find any information (either that or I missed it, please feel free to correct me in the comments!) about whether or not there will be a specific order in which you will need to complete them, but I would assume that at the very least, you will need to finish all of the 3 man instances before you can move onto The Fortress, the 6 man instance.
Orion goes into great detail about how each wing will be rebuilt, including how some of the bosses, such as Grimbark, will have new challenge modes, which will give new/better drops if completed. I like that the developers are adding these challenge modes, as it gives you a reason to repeat the content, and I love instances, so give a another reason to run them and I will!
There are also going to be a few new pieces of tech that will be added, and that where discussed in a little more detail on Orion’s posts than I will go into here: Challenges and Optional Objectives.
“A challenge is something difficult that once completed nets rewards. Those rewards will typically come in the form of some token in addition to whatever the other rewards in the space may be (faction, coin, etc…). They will communicate, clearly, the reasons behind the challenge and the manner in which the challenge is achieved. It is no wonder then that this will replace the clunky and, personally, hated terminology for hard-modes.” (Quoted from Orion’s blog)
“This is where I see the greatest enhancement with this tech. We can put a little incentive into the instances to complete optional objectives and increase the reasons to play them. We can tie new deeds into the game for completing all the objectives and target classes, races, heck even vocations inside of these spaces with a variety of quests!” (Quoted from Orion’s Blog).
Overall, as I mentioned in the podcast, I’m very excited to see so much work going into the older content. While many of you will ask why the developers should take any time away from creating high level content, I believe that although there are many people who are at max level, and have already completed all of the content, there are just as many, if not more, that are not, and still working through much of the content. Turbine working on this older content show that they are committed to this game for the whole community, high end raiders and slow casual levelers alike.
Thanks Turbine, and thank Orion for giving us a glimpse into the world of a designer!
See you in game.
