This week we cover Update 15.1 news and discuss LOTRO’s villains.
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Game News
Update 15.1 Bullroarer Release Notes
Store Sales
Free Sample Of The Week Slayer Deed Accelerator (60 min) x1
Use Coupon Code SLDE7 1/Account
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- Legendary Level Cap Increase
- Legendary Item Stat Upgrades
- Relics and Relic Packs
Lootbox Weekend Nov 21st – 23rd
LOTRO Players News
5,000 Turbine Point Code Giveaway
Poll: Should Minas Tirith in LOTRO be Like the Books or the Movies?
LOTRO Video Highlights: Elbenritter Trailer
The Family Line Part 19 – A Brother’s Lot
LOTRO Players Adventures Episode 38: Thanks Elrond
Brax’s pick(s) of the week:
LOTRO: Early Beorning Musings by Adrian at The Malaysian LOTRO Gamer
Why I Continue to Do the MMORPG Thing by Beau Hindman at MMORPG.com
News Beyond LOTRO
Question of the Week
- Thoughts on Turbine’s created antagonists;
- Skorgrim(Dourhands), Mordirith, Mordrambor, Amarthiel, Gaunt-Lords, Oakheart, Mazog, Gorothul, Gwilion, Lheu Brenin(Falcon Clan), Gun Ain, Nurzum, Heirs of Castamir
- visual appearance
- personality
- goals
- downfall
- How they hold up compared to Tolkien’s creations
- New ground Turbine could cover
Donations
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Emails
Sullo writes:
“Dear LOTRO Players News,
Yesterday I completed a solo run of the Helm’s Dike Epic Battle, and I must say I did rather well for myself: a Gold and two Platinum merit ratings on the side quests, and a Gold merit rating overall. Not too shabby. I also got some of those new Reward Boxes introduced with Update 15. Having opened a few of these, I was expecting some Stars of Merit, and maybe a piece of jewelry. What I found completely shocked me. Not only did I receive Stars of Merit, but one of the boxes also contained a – get this – Blemished Symbol of the Elder King. A level 100 First Age symbol, from a solo Epic Battle! I couldn’t believe it. (screenshot attached)
Understand that I’m not trying to brag here. My experience up to this point has been that FA symbols were somewhat difficult to obtain. I had heard of FA symbols dropping from the Deeping Wall raid, but never from a solo Epic Battle. Prior to U14.2, I had run over a dozen T1 Ost Dunhoth raids to get a single FA symbol for myself, and that was with a full raid. While I won’t claim to be an expert on Epic Battles, I am a Rank 6 Engineer, so I’ve spent a decent amount of time to become “good” at these things. Do I feel I earned the Platinum ratings? Yes. Should players receive FA symbols for running solo content? I’m not sure how I feel about that.
You have touched on topics such as risk vs. reward and “easy mode” in the past. I decided to share this with you in the hope that it leads to some interesting discussion. What do you think?
Regards,
Sullo of Landroval
P.S. Don’t hate me! The RNG did it! :)”
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Final Thoughts
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Hey LPN, I clicked on the audio file and I believe it played episode 72 instead of 73.
Naughty Andang!
Great show, everyone!
*waves to Master Sullo* 🙂
Regarding First Age Symbols and rewards and such, I think the short answer is that Turbine is either unwilling, or unable, to properly incentivize group actions and content, and that has been the case for some time now. It is actually far [i]easier[/i] to earn a First Age symbol doing solo content than through group content, currently. In fact, with the exception of cloaks and off-hand weapons, the best rewards right now are more easily obtained (both in terms of time and difficulty) through solo play.
And it is not only within the realm of items that this is the case. For example:
[b]Fellowship Maneuvers[/b]
The idea behind Fellowship Maneuvers is that each person contributes to a group-wide action, which should have a greater overall benefit than the sum of what each person within the fellowship could do individually. There really is no point otherwise, as the maneuvers can be challenging to pull off, particularly the crazy ones. 🙂
But, as it is now, fellowship maneuvers are almost entirely ignored amongst those engaging in group play. The reason for that is they have not been scaled properly since before Moria. Most classes can do more damage with a single skill than that done by the damage-based maneuvers, and the same is true for healing-based maneuvers.
And when you consider everyone in the fellowship is standing around doing nothing else for those 5 seconds or so…
[b]Warbands and Roving Threats[/b]
The new warbands and roving threats in Central Gondor are meant to be the new group content for this update. The problem with them is that you will gain far greater rewards (reputation, gold, and so on) over the time it takes to ride them down by just slaying foes at any of the enemy encampments over the same amount of time.
The warbands have minions that need to be slain before the main foe can be damaged, and they have tens of thousands of morale, if not hundreds of thousands. It is simply not worth the time to gather allies to hunt them down, as the reward for doing solo grinding is far greater.
On to…
[b}Epic Battles[/b]
The way Epic Battles worked [i]before[/i] Update 15 was this…
You were given rewards once you achieved 20 medals of any given type. The counter was then reset to zero, requiring 20 more medals of that type before another reward was given.
The rewards for each medal type once 20 medals were earned were:
Iron: An uncommon piece of jewelry (Yellow)
Silver: A rare piece of jewelry (Purple)
Gold: An incomparable piece of jewelry (Teal)
Platinum: An incomparable piece of jewelry (Teal) with a set bonus that gives additional bonuses once the set is complete. There was also a very small chance of earning an Epic (Orange) piece of jewelry with set bonus properties. And, there was also a very small chance to be given a First Age Symbol.
So, even before Update 15, there was a chance to get the Symbols through solo play. Where group play came into play was the fact that the amount of medals one earned in the battles were multiplied by the size of the battle. Small Fellowship battles rewarded twice as many medals per objective and battle as the solo/duo battles. Fellowship battles awarded 3 times as many and Raid battles 4 times. So, taking part in the group battles could get you to the 20 medal goal more quickly (provided you were earning platinum medals in them) than doing solo battles.
With Update 15, this has changed. The way rewards are earned in the battles now is:
Each objective in a battle, as well as the battle itself, rewards a giftbox based on the medal that was earned. The rewards in the giftboxes have the same possible rewards no matter the size of the battle.
Each box will give some Stars of Merit (the better the box, the more Stars you get). Each of these boxes also has a chance to give one or more Greater Or Supreme essences and also a chance at a First or Second Age symbol as well.
Once 20 platinum medals are earned, you will get a giftbox that gives 50 Stars of Merit, only.
So, currently, the larger battles only influence how quickly the box of 50 Stars of Merit is earned. Given that you are likely to earn around 50-60 Stars amongst all the boxes for a single battle if you sweep platinum, those extra 50 Stars from earning 20 overall Platinum medals is a minor contribution at best.
And, when you consider the extra time it takes to gather folk for group battles, the extra challenge to the group battles, themselves, and so on, it is pretty clear that flying solo will earn greater rewards over a given period of time.
The Stars of Merit earned in the battles can be used to barter for the Epic (Orange) jewelry that used to come solely from earning the 20 Platinum medals to fill you bar. The essences earned from the battles can be applied to all armor pieces save for cloaks, and are far and away better than any gear you will find elsewhere, even T2C raids.
So the question becomes, which type of content should be incentivized to lure people toward? It makes more sense to me to incentivize content that rewards people coming together rather than splitting apart. Maybe that is just me.
As someone that really likes the Big battles and someone that never groups higher than 2 ever, I actually still agree with you.
I really love that the Big battles offer solo and duo players the chance to get symbols and good jewellry but it’s quite silly that it is now faster to do so solo than it is in a group.
Don’t really understand why they would not give the rhoving threats in gondor better loot either, say you could tag on a box with a random teal/gold essence on to the quest for the threats and make it a daily.
Also that the essence gear is basically gated behind enforced solo play is bleh too.
The only thing I don’t want again is a huge gear gap since I especially started Lotro to get away from that(back when I started before ROI the gap was kept in check by the max stat limit) and for the chance to play most things in a duo.
So yeah while I do enjoy the setting how it is myself, I think the balance shifted too much to one side.
I concur with the above comment. The episode said 73 but it was last week’s audio.
Concur with above. My podcast player was labeled with the new episode name, but played last week’s episode.
Sorry everyone for it having the wrong episode. It seems the server lost the episode and decided to play the closest number to that episode. Really weird. Anyway, should be updated now…