From yesterday through March 22, featured items in the LOTRO Market are on sale for 50% off. The featured item is the Helm’s Deep expansion, but the sale includes the Expansion Quad Pack, each individual expansion (Mines of Moria, Siege of Mirkwood, Rise of Isengard and Riders of Rohan), and Samwise Gamgee’s Starter Pack.
Frelorn posted on the forums of some upcoming downtime:
“The LOTRO Game Servers will be brought down on Wednesday, March 4th from 5:00AM – 12:00PM Eastern (-5 GMT) for maintenance. Thanks for your patience, and we’ll see you back in the game soon!”
No mention of any patches or changes, so hopefully all will go as planned and we can be back in the game on schedule!
Some LOTRO players may remember the live-streamed events that Rick “Sapience” Heaton started a little over a year ago: Taking the Hobbit to Isengard (T.T.H.T.I.). This was followed up by the Strategic Hobbit Incursion to Evacuate Lost Dwarves (better known as S.H.I.E.L.D.). The current community manager, Andy “Frelorn” Cataldo, has continued the trend with his weekly Thursday Fun with Frelorn. Frelorn and Turbine have also implemented the LOTRO StreamTeam (more on this later), and one of the people on the team, our very own Arathaert, is starting a new Wednesday evening LOTROstream series: Leading an UNimportant Chicken to the Hornburg, a.k.a. L.UN.C.H.
The plan is to go through each server with a timer on to see which can successfully get his chicken to the Hornburg the fastest… all the way up to Théoden. The runs will begin at Sandson’s Farm in the Shire [32.1S, 74.4W] on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. EST/EDT, with a maximum of two and a half hours (the time limit on the session play) and one death.
The first event will be this Wednesday, March 4, 2015 starting at 7 p.m. EST with the Landroval server. Arathaert intends to visit two servers a week, and this week’s second server will be Gladden, at around 9 p.m. EST (or possibly later, depending on how long the Landroval run takes). Everyone is welcome either in-game or in the Twitch chat (or both) at twitch.tv/LOTROstream.
While the schedule is currently tentative, here’s what the lineup looks like (Updated March 10):
Mar. 4th – Landroval & Gladden
Mar. 11th – Gilrain & Bullroarer
Mar. 18th – Evernight & Elendilmir
Mar. 25th – Withywindle & Crickhollow
Apr. 1st – Laurelin & Brandywine
Apr. 8th – Snowbourn & Arkenstone
Apr. 15th – Anduin & Vilya
Apr. 22nd – Vanyar & Meneldor
May 6th – Gwaihir & Silverlode
May 13th – Sirannon & Imladris
May 20th – Maiar & Firefoot
May 27th – Estel & Riddermark
Jun. 3rd- Eldar & Dwarrowdelf
Jun. 10th – Morthond & Windfola
Jun. 17th – Belegaer & Nimrodel
Pretty much everyone knows how ‘Follow’ works, in theory: you select another player, right-click their portrait in the screen, then click on ‘Follow’ from the drop-down. If you spend a lot of time following someone, or occasionally have trouble clicking on things (or, like me, are too lazy for clicking), you can keybind it to something that requires the tap of a single button instead of complicated mouse-work. In any event, once you’ve selected someone to follow, they can go places and you’ll just follow along after them, right? Well, in theory.
In reality, follow mechanics are a little bit more complicated. Captains and Lore-masters generally have the most experience with this, as they have companions who follow them to various places, but it turns out that these NPC companions actually behave differently than PCs on follow do. If a player goes off the edge of a cliff, the NPC pet will attempt to find an alternate route, while a PC on follow will go right over the edge along with their leader. This has presented plenty of challenges in the series of Take the Hobbit to Isengard events livestreamed on Twitch, and will present even more with the upcoming challenge of Taking a Dwarf through Moria.
That’s right, Moria. Dark, depressing, full of dwarves wanting you to do things they could probably do themselves if they didn’t have a bunch of people tromping by to do it for them on a regular basis. Plus goblins, orcs, some trolls and all kinds of other critters ready to chomp on the unwary. In addition to all of that, we have the landscape, which is an enormous creature in its own right, full of places where a single mis-step can result in certain doom for, well, everyone on follow, basically.
What does follow have to do with this, you might ask? Think of following as something like a yo-yo string between the leader and the follower. When players are close together, this isn’t much of a concern, but as soon as there’s any sort of space between the leader and the follower, there’s a chance for something to go wrong. See, the follow mechanic basically just draws the follower back to the leader, in a straight line, ignoring whatever obstacles (or pitfalls) might be in the way.
Consider how many times poor Hadacar was smashed into a rock or tree or wall or what-have-you. Sharp turns are particularly difficult because the follow mechanic doesn’t map the leader’s path, only his or her position in relation to the follower. So if the lead player has already changed direction before the following player reaches the corner, the follower ends up stuck on the object rather than safely turned aside. Or, in the case of the notorious Hobbit Bridge of Occasional Peril, instead of safely stepping onto the bridge, the follow-pathing yo-yo will try pulling the hobbit across an empty expanse of space, to unfortunate consequences.
Since follow can be useful for things other than leading people off of and into things, here are some things to keep in mind when using it:
Follow is useful for plenty of things, not just the Taking the Hobbits to Isengard event. Maybe you’re taking a kinmate around to show them the sights of the Shire. Maybe you’re gotten a group together to knock out some explorer Deeds. Or maybe you just need to go get another soda and want to break for a minute while your group is running to go find the next troll. There’s no shame in being a follower… and some fun to be had in leading people into unexpected places when they’re not paying attention.
Which I’ve totally never done.
As always, keep in mind that the number one rule is: Have fun!
Inspired by this screenshot I caught by happenstance:
At the time of this writing, Sapience’s “Take the Hobbits to Isengard!” challenge has been completed on nine servers, with twenty more left to go (twenty-one if Bullroarer makes it on the schedule). Having gone over the archived recordings of almost all of the runs, I thought it might be helpful to have a list of things to keep in mind for upcoming runs.
This is stressed every time, and every time it seems to be ignored by a good chunk of people participating. Cloaks and mounts put additional strain on the server resources, as it has to animate all of that extra stuff, and contributes to lag. If someone really insists on keeping mount and/or cloak for whatever reason, they should be among the first to keep in mind the next tip, which is:
Whenever you have a big group of people in a small space, there’s going to be lag. The larger the group (especially if they’ve ignored tip #1), the greater the lag. Obviously, it’s bound to happen in Bree as people gather outside of the Prancing Pony, but once the hobbit is on the move, spreading out is a must. Large groups gathered around the hobbit will slow things down, particularly at border areas when the game is trying to load new regions.
Practice runs can probably help with this, but the best times have been turned in by servers where the leader not only knew where to go, but anticipates obstacles that might interfere with his follower. Which brings me to the next point:
One of the things that made the Crickhollow run so successful was that the leader would actually turn around and run backwards in places to make sure that his package didn’t get caught up on (or fall off of) anything. Having someone run alongside who can update the leader is also an idea, since running backwards tends to slow your speed. This not only saves time, it also saves the poor hobbit’s face.
Keep in mind that most speed buffs are only good for out-of-combat movement, and plan accordingly. Separate groups can help with this: if you have a group designated to scout/clear the path ahead, your hobbit-escort group can proceed full speed ahead. If using a Hunter for the speed boost, make sure that person stays in range of both the hobbit and the leader (I recommend against the Hunter being the leader unless they are paying very close attention to the above point).
Several classes have “bubbles” of protection that can be cast, but be mindful of cooldown on such skills. Be aware of where the problem areas are (borders between regions, everywhere in Dunland, etc.) and plan ahead to make the most of these bonuses. If you have multiple people who can use a type of buff, coordinate beforehand to stagger them so that one is ready to go when the existing one ends.
Sure, it’s fun to have other hobbits along, but at the end of the timer only one hobbit’s run time actually counts. Consider having additional hobbits as part of other groups running along (take one ahead to scout the territory, maybe, or on the sides to draw mobs, perhaps).
No one really wants to see the hobbit meet his untimely end along the way, but in the event that it happens, be sure to have a group waiting in the wings back in Bree so that the run can be picked up smoothly. Evernight did this, which is why it’s currently the leader of servers that have had to do a restart.
I’m sure there are some other tips that I’ve missed, but these are the points that I’ve noticed consistently after watching seven of the nine completed runs. Of course, the #1 rule is: have fun!