cloak – LOTRO Players

Mordor 21.2 Beta 3: Shields and other news

If you thought that we are getting shields for Metalsmiths, then you will be disappointed. There will be shields we can get by playing the new instances. The purple version of the shields we will be able to barter for a Silver Signet of the Armsmaster and the teal version for a Gold Signet of the Armsmaster. But I do have some remarks about the shields. They aren’t really made that different for different builds. And the same goes for light cloaks too. With the cloaks they seem to have gone in the same direction as with the teal item drops from Talath Urui and Agarnaith, having exactly the same stats.

For Warden shield it’s easy to find what is wrong with it. I would like block rating removed from the dps Warden shield and swapped for finesse. Maybe add Light of Earendil on the shields too, since off-hand weapons have it.

For Minstrel shield, it’s not only one change that I would make. For the dps shield, I’d remove block and add finesse. For the healing shield, I’d also remove block completely and swapp it for critical rating. The cloaks we would get from the Alliance barterer are exactly the same and have a stat less because they now have two essence slots instead of one. Might not need to change anything, since critical rating is good for either role and you’d probably get more mastery by slotting it, than what you would get if they made 2 different cloaks, one with critical rating and one with mastery, for example.

I haven’t made screen shots of all the off-hands, but for now the Will ones appear to be missing.

There have been some other changes in the Beta 3 build, but not too significant when it comes to gameplay. Bosses still bug, there is still too much trash between boss one and two in Dungeons of Naerband, and there is still this constant line of sight issue that prevents us from doing certain skills, either healing, removing effects from our fellowship, etc. So, it’s Beta 3 and the biggest difference we could feel in the instances was that the items that are supposed to drop are now in the boxes. But, hey, we have Baggins birthdays, Farmers fare and Summer festival fixed. Well, whoopty-do. [sarkasm]Thank you very much. It was very important to work on those, while the “cluster” is still not done.[/sarkasm] Why in Eru’s name are we testing this IN THE BETA BUILD IN OCTOBER?!! At least make it one of the silent changes, it’s not like you don’t know how to do those, SSG.

A good quality of life addition was the removing of the quest to advance your crafting. Just recently I had put one of my characters to craft and thought I’d be back in time to stop and go do the quest. Well, I forgot about it and all the mats were gone and I was only proficient. This is a long overdue change that should have happened with all the crafting facilities becoming superior ones.

I am still advocating against the relics that are used for advancing allegiance being used as new barter items. For an old barterer that has his own currency, this should not have been changed this fast and Tokens of Service, which are now a reward from some other quests too, should have stayed relevant.

Other than that, there’s not really much to talk about. There have been some changes to the icons. Now the filter icons don’t look like funnels, but like a symbol of a person, solo and a group. And the symbols for the quests, items and sounds are also changed now. A new Rune for your Legendary item has been introduced as a drop from instances. I would much rather have a crafted relic I could swap, so hopefully, they’ll do something in that department. Also, similar to wisps in North Ithilien, fragments are now introduced as an additional option of obtaining the keys, but these will be bound to you. These will be the rewards from the new daily requests.

Mordor: The deed mount

Since you’re probably used to my longer articles by now I didn’t want to post only a picture of the Meta deed mount and be done with it, so I waited a little bit for the first patch to go live. Must have something to complain about.

Before I start the complaining, let’s see this mount I speak of.

I was very surprised by the mount. At first disappointed, but later got used to it and learned to like it. For a moment when I received it I wrote a ticket because I didn’t get the gear to equip on my war steed. But the “gear” was there. All the gear is actually a hide. There is no gear on it, it’s just a mutated Agarnaith horse, hence the name The rescued steed of Agarnaith. I ride it now in both versions, war steed and regular mount and I named mine Groot.

The patch notes you can read here.

Probably one of the best changes is the cooldown on a travel skill to Allegiance halls, which I spoke about in the last article. The issue was that one quest could take you several hours if you didn’t have hurried traveler bought. The skills have now been renamed and their cooldown is on 5 minutes.

Did I find something to complain about? Well, of course I did.

While fixing one of the daily quests it seems like one in Lhingris has been broken – Trapping the trackers. It remains to be seen after I pick it up again will it be working and was there something that required for it to be picked up again. But while I was able to do it the day before (I didn’t finish it), when I went back after the patch I wasn’t able to do anything to advance the quest.

Some things getting broken in the process everyone should be able to understand. It’s an expansion and there will be some fixes in shorter intervals than usual. But what I do mind is that SSG has never stopped rolling out some hidden changes to the game. Some are more important, some less. But I think we should be made aware of them at least and not play explorers, detectives or what not. In the past floors have been changed, the spider queen in Big Battle Glittering caves was moved a little bit back to not aggro with its adds, in Defence of Minas Tirith the first spawn of soldiers that attack was moved by several seconds, in the Wastes a ramp was added in one of the crafting instaces so that we can go back to start if needed, and one of those hidden ones for now is that the crafted item that was giving you Allegiance Points has been changed to not give 2000, but 1000 AP.

I want to remind you once again that you can finish the introduction to all the Allegiances, it doesn’t have to be just one. If you do this, once you open the crafting instances the optional quests for each allegiance become available. With these you will be able to earn 2000 AP untill you finish the chapter 7 of the Allegiance. Once you finish chapter 7 the quest for that Allegiance becomes unavailable. So, if you hold back of getting that cloak, you can earn more AP and finish the other 3 Allegiances faster or you can earn 2000 fewer points with each chapter 7 you finish. I still didn’t hear back from MoL if this is intended or just a glitch in the matrix.

There is a small complaint I have about the access to Allegiances and crafting dailies. To do this you need to do all of the content, which is no small feat when we’re talking about an expansion with 5 regions. You need to finish the Epic Book, which is a small feat, so I guess those two cancel each other out. And then you need to finish the Black Book of Mordor. This looks very similar to Minas Tirith deeds for trait points and very unfriendly for people with alts who would like to do the instances eventually.

The lava AoE reach in Anglach has been reduced, but the same effect while questing in Dor Amarth remains. We will be taking damage on at least 3 obsidian nodes. They may have tought that in Udun we still do not have enough morale, but by the time we get here we should be able to live through it? I don’t mind it, just not sure if it’s intended.

One of the signs we are supposed to find isn’t really in the marked quest area, so you may want to be aware of that too.

And this item has also been fixed.

Another bad news for Beornings. The might cloak is heavy armour.

Update 20 beta 2: recent changes, cosmetics and pets

A second beta version is out on Bullroarer now and we have received some changes based on player feedback on the forums. Some positive, some a little bit less, depending on the player.

The changes since U20 Beta 1

Tybur:

Notable Changes Since U20 Beta 1:

Minor adjustment to Chat UI so that text doesn’t get cut-off at the bottom.
In response to feedback, the Mark/Medallion cost increase of the Small Reputation Acceleration Tome has been reduced somewhat.
In response to feedback, Imbued legacy tiers will no longer increase with U20. Please note that if you unlocked all imbued legacy tiers in U20 Beta #1, you might note some oddities on your Bullroarer character. Please equip a new legendary item if you encounter difficulty.
Guardian Follow Through now increases Shield-Smash targets to 8 when fully traited. Follow Through increases Shield-Smash targets by +2 at rank 1, +2 more at rank 2, and +3 more at rank 3.

On two of these people still have different opinions. One is that the cost of reputation accelerators should be decreased even more, since it is still only making it harder for those lower level players who do not have that big influx of marks and medalions – and that is only IF they are playing group content. The other one is removing the legacy level increase. Obviously, the LIs are meant to grow with us and we did not grow… in level. But I would still say that we did grow in experience since the last time we increased the tiers… Pelennor, North Ithilien, Throne of the Dread Terror and now the Wastes. In a way we did grow and I wouldn’t mind 5 additional level per legacy added. I guess one of the reasons they are there is so we actually have a feeling that we are growing and leveling in some way since the leveling of our characters is locked behind much more coding than just using a scroll and being done with it, otherwise we would level more often too.

Also changed is the will cloak. Hopefully due to it not just being a placeholder in the previous build, but also listening to the player feedback, like they did with reputation tomes and legacies. Now the cloak gives critical rating and has the stats tilted more towards a dps role. It also has the cloak graphic too now.

The cloak cosmetic is a hooded version with a worn out, torn look.

More cosmetics

This update has also introduced more cosmetic items. Some are from the flower barterers and some are from the new reputation vendors. We have four shields and two greatswords and two new floral items with a North Ithilien theme. I do not have the swords here as they do not fit in view and didn’t want to only show hilts, but cosmetic is actually really nice.

Other than those, there are three new pets in the area – three new dogs. One is from the beginning of the new quest line and two others are bartered for.

The pocket item has also received its own graphic instead of the placeholder from the previous build.

Dagorlad nodes

The new Dagorlad nodes are not the “real” crafting tier or something similar, this is an upgrade to the Anorien tier and they do not contain materials such as Anorien ore, but other crafting, barter and critical items needed for the new area. So, adding to the previous article about what to do, you should also pick up these items for later.

When asking Cordovan on his stream about making Dagorlad nodes a quest item, instead of a landscape node I received an answer that they do not plan to change this. I am not entirely sure that he understood I meant the crafting instance nodes, especially fellowship ones. Like I wrote here before, your fellowship member could run out of a fight or just be faster than you and pick up the node and you would get nothing. Which certainly isn’t appealing to anyone.

In case the barter items do not change, and give that the level isn’t changing I doubt the barter items will either, you may want to keep some of these for getting the reputation with The Host of the West done faster. Even if you don’t collect any before, two runs of Warg Pens will give you enough for 10 tasks worth.

New cloak and what to do when U20 hits live

What to do when U20 hits live?

Honestly, it looks like there isn’t much to talk about when we say “What to do when U20 hits live”, do just what you usually do – pick up a quest and go finish it. But then again, some updates do bring some other changes with them, so let’s see what would be the way to deal with this.

Obviously, if you don’t have the LOTRO Points you will want to get those so you can buy this QP. And I would say that this is one QP you really want to buy if you’re serious about gearing yourself. And let’s face it, you do not want to walk into Mordor with a Roving Threats pocket item or worse. This is all-in-one both a min-maxers paradise and hell. You will have, like I said before in this article, gold jewelry (pocket, necklace and earrings) which can be upgraded further with a raid drop item, gold offhand item, upgradable supreme armour from Throne T2C. To name just the best ones. Apart from these, there are also some great looking cosmetic shields, greatswords, pets and some more of the Ithilien themed cosmetic items.

Next in the line would be supplying yourself with reputation accelerator from skirmish camps. I didn’t do the math, but read on the forums that the price is going up eight times. These are actually quite cheap now. Now, some people on some servers have enough marks to supply the whole server with those accelerators, but some enjoy soloing more and even if you ran some solo/duo or whatever instances they do give you less rewards. So this does look like because of the marks/meds rewards in some larger group instances SSG thinks it is just fair to make them more expensive. Obviously, there are some people on the forums that do not agree with this and SSG has time to give up on this change. And I wouldn’t have so much an issue with the price increase if the new area didn’t bring 4 new reputation factions. Actually, 3 new factions and added 3 more tiers to the existing one – Host of the West. So, 15 tiers of reputation per character. Not really the best move. This is one area and it should probably be one old increased and one new reputation, not something like Central Gondor where you had separate reputation items for separate cities.

Since we mentioned the gear you can upgrade and supplying yourself… I would combine those two in the next one and say that you should supply yourself with the old type of flowers. Now, they are not of much use to you in the next update, but the armour you can upgrade is only supreme armour, not the regular T2C armour. And if by some chance you have swap piece jewelry, there is a very high chance you will want to have those swaps in armour.

Speaking of flowers… Pick up new flowers while questing and finishing deeds. There are no new major barterers for flowers, but once you start doing those crafting instances you will need 80 of each daily for all four. You will need to barter for the item I wrote about here.

You will want to have enough bag space free, since once you begin questing you have a chance of receiving reputation/barter items and there are six of those. Apart from those, there will be single use recipes for each craft, which I imagine will sell nicely. So anything you don’t really use on landscape or is just taking space, get rid of it so you don’t need to think about when you will get to camp to sell some stuff or to vault, etc.

You will want to park yourself in the Camp of the Host, so you can start your questing without some boring riding around.

Part of the reputation/barter items drop, some you get from quests and deeds, some crafting instances, but some you actually can craft. So, you will also want to have enough of Anorien resources. The Wastes wasn’t really abundant in those and I’m not certain if that was intended or just wasn’t added yet.

And in the end, get geared and repaired. This is landscape mostly, but some parts of it have some densely placed mobs, some of which have a bit higher morale than usual. This is still very close to Mordor and you can expect some danger. And there is an open landscape fellowship area, similar to Tarlangs Crown, so another thing to be ready for.

After you do the quests, do the epics, unlock all the crafting instances and get all the reputation done… What should be the first item you should get? Well, I would guess that most people will go for that pocket item, since there is still a large amount of people rocking that Roving Threat pocket. If by some very small chance you had luck on hilt, keep it. It is still a great item and probably wins for tanking too. So in that case you can go for that new offhand, if you’re lucky with the sigils from the fellowship crafting instance.

The new cloak

Now, for a long time I have been asking for a REAL dps cloak, since we didn’t really have one since the golden cloak from the Minas Tirith epic line. After that one we got the raid cloak with the huge amount of critical defence. After that we got the epic line teal cloak which had some balanced stats on itself – 225/225 I believe and some critical rating. And I wouldn’t really say they listened to my feedback, but they did improve some. Finally we have a more similar cloak to the MT one, with the current one having stats tilted to favour dps. But still they continue the bad trend with the cloak for will classes and they raised the will/vitality from 315/315 to 331/331, which I can’t even call a decent improvement. So, it’s a gold item, not teal and it’s 24 levels above the last one… 16 will/vitality must be enough. It’s a gold cloak “Gifted to you by King Elessar’s quartermaster for all you’ve done to prepare the host of the West” for Christ sake. Let’s hope it’s just a placeholder.

Some would argue that agility doesn’t need critical rating and would be better off with finesse and I don’t know if I agree. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if they would add 4000 finesse on it, so I can unslot one essence, but other than raid cloak having 4230 critical defence I never saw any item having 4000 of anything. So, since I’m fearing this wouldn’t be the best change to make I’m still a proponent of critical rating.

I picked up this screenshot from the forums, so I hope nobody will be bothered that I’m using it.