As part of Amazons push into the world of Tolkien it has taken an unknown stake in the developer of Lord of the rings online SSG. While the series is still a few years away, the development of a game world the size of Middle-earth would take years.
As part of the investment in SSG, they get access to a dedicated team of developers that is familiar with both the world and story telling that comes with such a prominent IP. For the developers it opens up a whole new age. Amazon has rights to the Silmarilion aren’t part of the rights SSG has. Which would allow them to expand into the second age and historical events before the Lord of the rings.
Through a 3rd party Amazon provided the means for them (at that time Turbine) to introduce the race of the High elf. This gave them an insight as to how the studio would integrate the second age into the existing game world. While originally a new race wasnt on the table. The story we can now play with our own characters was meant to be a session play. Unbeknownst to the developers this was just a possible start.
The departure of Dr. Octothorpe took most by suprise in december of 2018. Behind the scenes this was part of the transition of Amazon into a stakeholder. Currently Dr. Octothrope is part of the story boarding team that works on Amazons prime lord of the rings and it’s tie-in with Lotro.
During an interview at Pax east it got spoiled that before the Minas Morgul expansion will launch we’ll receive free episodes as a prequel to events in the Morgul Vale.
Future content
While details are sparse it’s expected to have the first episodes to involve the High-elfs in episodic content to be released around the time the Minas morgul expansion has launched.
Early impressions of Minas Ithil
The city now known as Minas Morgul was part of the Gondor until it got conquered in the Second age by Sauron. Roughly in the time frame where the series is about to take place. More details are expected as the current marketing campaign by Amazon is finished as the maps get more detailed.
Robust client required
The second age prequels are expected to be released as part of the second wave of hype train by Amazon (and SSG). Rumors hav it that part of the investment, a more robust client is required by Amazon before the next milestone is greenlighted. This might explain the rush on the once legendary 64-bit client.
So what could it be (own speculation)?
Will it be a high-elven episodic content like Bingo Boffin? Or will it involve the ancestors of Aragorn? The rumours of Aragorn to be the focus of the series makes me believe that it will focused on the Dunedain and Numenoreans in Minas Morgul. Free to play content in a Gondorian city of Minas Ithil that ties into the the upcoming expansion of Minas Morgul? A new class part of the expansion that focuses on the Dunedain rangers? Doubling down on development and using exiting assets sound like a wise plan. Just in case the deal falls short.
In short
Amazon through a 3rd party funded the development of the High-elf race as a test during the Mordor expansion.
Dr Octothorpe left SSG to join the amazon prime lotr series as part of a deal for a Lotro-tie in with SSG
Part of the 2nd wave of marketing, unknown content will be released by SSG late 2019
Details about this content is expected to be released during the summer (depending on timetables of the client updates and expansion timelines?)
New 2nd age “session plays” and/or anew class for the Minas morgul expansion?
Everyone looks at their calendar and realizes what date it is.
Today, as some players expected even before the announcement, the update 21.2 of the current Mordor expansion was released. And you could have guessed that too, something was broken. But what was it?
Simply put, SSG is broken.
If you were one of the early log-ins to the game when the update went live, then you would have seen the new items you could get from the ash vendor and their cosmetics in the game. The updates we weren’t able to test on alpha server (no way I’m calling Bullroarer beta) and give any sort of feedback on those. As predicted in our brief look through the notes the lootboxes don’t give only 330 item level gear, but also higher. I have not yet seen anything higher than 335, but I guess we can give it time. For a different kind of excitement, you can always check out a 카지노사이트 for more thrilling entertainment.
But what they did (well, announced) next dwarfed the issue with lootbox gear levels.
The items on the ash vendor were priced at 140 ash for teal armour and 110 for teal jewellery. 3300 for new gold rings. For the increase they offered, many would say that was a fair price. The issue SSG had with this is that they didn’t actually intend the prices to be in that range (for the teal items, of course) so they have disabled the ash vendor for a while. In that period they have announced that the items should have been priced four times higher and that the players who have already bought these items will be stripped from their items and given back the ash they spent to get them. But nothing is said about the items that we have destroyed in the process. Ashed the old gear, some even with essences in them because new ones were better, etc. Not to mention the crafting of new essences that we have in these new items. Also going to waste.
The High-Enchanter barter vendors have the wrong barter prices for the new incomparable items. The items have too low of an Ash of Gorgoroth cost. We are temporarily disabling the High-Enchanter barter vendor while we work on a hotfix.
When the hotfix goes out, the Incomparable items from the High-Enchanter barter vendor will be four times the cost they were today, prior to us disabling the vendor. Characters who have already acquired one of these items will see the item stripped of its benefits when the hotfix goes live, but will be able to turn in the item and receive the amount of Ash they used to make the item.
But this isn’t the first thing they messed up with the items in this update. Namely, the incoming healing essences were reduced to half their value before the update, some even more. Oddly enough (or as expected from SSG) our essences didn’t get unslotted when we logged in, we didn’t get reclamation scrolls or any currency that we would be able to buy them with. It was left to us to barter or buy the essence reclamation scrolls for a mistake SSG has made and it took them a hotfix, a patch and two updates to fix it. Change few numbers. Really? Guess clicking fire grims in the Summer festival in October was more important. Also, the filters we have been looking forward to, don’t really work on certain quests and we’re unable to filter out Hobnanigans. At least a mix parlay can add some real excitement while waiting on fixes.
So, not only does SSG think that not giving any compensation for the things they have broke is not an issue, they also think that because they have made a mistake even though players keep on asking for longer beta testing, more feedback, more bug fixing and polishing, we should now somehow be held responsible for logging into the game too early and bartering the gear in a non-exploitative manner, at the vendor with no tricks. So, what are the players supposed to do? We have release notes, we didn’t have something worthy of a dev diary in ages and nothing to tell us if this was intended or not. Do we need a written permission from Aragorn in some form of a decree that we are now free to barter the new items available to everyone?!
Of course, none of these announcements come with anything even resembling an apology. Does SSG think people will continue playing naked and re-grind stuff back from 0 to 150 to 200 Light of Earendil. It won’t be easy to give that gear back either. I know that I didn’t have all the “regular” gear. Some were good drops from the rare chests or lootboxes levels 327 and higher. People have spent gold, some have bought Lotro Points for keys or solvents, ran quests, ran instances, had some drops maybe… I doubt SSG will be refunding money. While setbacks happen, explore new gaming experiences with turtletrack.org and keep the excitement going.
Of course, with the new mess they made, they also didn’t fix the old mess in the instances we have been reporting and they can still bug. Quality Assurance, testing and feedback? Yeah, not really. We should be getting paid for doing the QA they certainly don’t do and can’t do in the end because very few understand the game at all. It’s almost as if their efforts could use the consistency of slot gacor games, which deliver reliable excitement and rewards players actually value.
It is hard to imagine that someone could even succeed in alienating this many players by trying to do it, let alone by just having a usual business day in SSG. I guess it goes something like: “We messed up and people are not happy? Oh, I guess it’s Tuesday.”
I guess it’s a good time now to recall certain pieces I wrote here about Mordor release and SSG’s business skills and some similar issues – The story behind the disappointment and The sound of silence.
So, you’d like to play a game that punishes you for supporting it? Welcome to LOTRO.
You may be guessing why the excitement. Finally we are getting not a ‘Destroy all’ button we have been asking for a long time, but a filter to use on items, sounds and quests. FINALLY!!! You access the panel by pressing Alt+R. Now, this will be great to filter out those Eorlingas recipes dropping in Mordor, third age legendary items and anything else you do not like.
If you are anything like me, you will also be able to filter the unwanted quests. For me these would be the constant Rowing Threats or constant Festivals. I do not like them, I do not play them, don’t need them popping up every time I alt, level up, log in or exit a session play.
Sound filter will also be nice, but they will need to work on it a little bit. I have no intention on counting the number of files the panel is showing, but it has a maximum number. For the filter to work they will need to either remove the limit or at least increase it. As you will be able to see in the video the last item was shuffling several audio files. And the search option in the sound filter only affects the filtered sounds, not the ones showing up on the left too.
In the picture above you can see in the bottom left corner the two icons for filtering the quests out. The single funnel icon will filter it only for the character you’re on and the double funnel icon will do it for all the characters. This also shows that you need to get that quest first, you can not filter them in advance, they need to pop up at least once. And in the bottom right screen is the new lost lore page.
There hasn’t been an explanation to what the gathering of resources deed was, but when I logged in my Warden he has received and finished the deeds right away. There is an Intermediate and Advanced version of the deed and they request you do resource quests 40 and 90 times, respectively, just like the landscape daily quests.
Another ‘FINALLY’ moment is that “The Aria of the Valar now includes a Class Deed Tome that will automatically complete trait point granting class deeds. If you have already used an Aria of the Valar, visit your class trainer and get your Class Deed Tome”. It has been time that a Valar item actually gives you something to skip the content you paid to skip. You would get to 50/95/105 and still need to do certain skills 3000 times. But this is only a step in the right direction. I believe that another one is skipping the skirmish intro, skipping the Moria/Mirkwood intro, unlocking the stables, if not all, then to major hubs, etc.
Another great news is that we can now adjust the in-game voice volume of every player. If you don’t see the slide bar, you will get there by clicking on the green voice icon on someones portrait and then under the buffs a slider will appear. Very convenient.
New items
It hasn’t been a long wait untill we got some of the new gear, but it’s not really what I’ve expected. The gear is only slightly better in case of the jewelry and the armour isn’t better at all. It is, actually, even worse. Because the new helm they are offering right now is the equivalent of a level 326 crafted (non crit) helm and the critted version (level 328) is still superior to it. Let’s just hope that SSG doesn’t fix this by nerfing the 328 item. Hopefully, if they want to fix it, they will buff the barter version to level 330, like the jewelry items.
Superior helm version will cost you 120 relics of the last alliance. The same price you will need to pay for the cloak, which actually is much better, since it has slightly higher stats, 4 more Light of Earendil, more armour and one additional slot. 90 relics for the superior jewelry (the rings). So, in total, if you’re getting it for all builds it would be 840 of the barter items. If you’re upgrading anything, cloak would be my advice.
The issue I’m having with this is that these are the items we use to get our Allegiance up to rank and these only stack to five. FIVE. After getting everything prior to this update I was left with 250 Tokens of Service and the Weekly quest now gives 15 of those. So this may be the currency they wanted to use actually. Tokens of Service are also added to daily expedition quests and they will give you three per quest. If you only do the quests required for the daily expedition you would be getting 99 points weekly (I got 99 points, but the ____ ain’t one – fill in the blank), which would mean that if you actually finished all the allegiances like I did you would still need six weeks to get all the items. We could get the raid sooner than we got our gear, so I guess these prices or the rewards would need to change.
Speaking of daily quests, there is now a new set of daily quests – daily requests. These are not taken from a notice board, these are picked up from the Expedition Organisers. Each Expedition Organiser has a different quest. I have only finished one and didn’t get a new deed or anything. Also, these don’t have the Token of Service, just the alliance relic for 2000 AP.
Speaking of items, I am not certain what is happening and hopefully it will be addressed, but the lootbox items have been disappearing from people’s bags and equipment. Lootbox shoulders, rings and other jewelry has just vanished. It didn’t get unslotted to the bags, it doesn’t exist anymore. If this happens on live, there will be some angry people who have been paying for the keys quite an amount of money.
Instances
Two new instances have been introduced… One small fellowship and one fellowship sized instance. Hardly a cluster. It has been confirmed that the raid will be coming out in the later dot-update. There is no sense in expecting that more smaller instances will be released alongside the raid, so this is most likely what we are getting – two instances to distract us long enough to get the raid out. For a very long time we have had more of the 3 and 6 man instances and a raid, now one each… It’s a little bit disappointing.
The small fellowship instance is The court of Seregost. You get a quest for this one to go and find two Rangers from the Agarnaith camp. They are on one of the terraces where there used to be two orcs guarding a rare chest, sometimes a lost lore page too. The coordinates to this location are 49.0 S 33.0E. The tier one wasn’t easy to solo, but it wasn’t hard either. You can basically go with a red captain and just be more careful on pulls and you would be fine.
Here you will meet some familiar faces. After you have faced 3 mini bosses – 2 merevail and 1 other boss – you will be climbing to disrupt Lhaereth’s plans. While climbing there are three waves of bats flying past you and dropping some plague/poison Lara has concocted. I imagine this should have been more potent, but on t1 you could just run through it, but I couldn’t lose the feeling of playing some Donkey Kong type of game.
At the end of the tier one instance you need to destroy four cauldrons of some sort. And even a tier one instance has a limit on how many bats can escape, so you need to be fast. There are no audio files here for now, like there is in NorthCotton Farms for example, but you will see the message in your chat log if you’re paying attention. I failed this the first time and couldn’t open any doors. The second time around there were no bats and I finished the instance, but couldn’t talk to any of the rangers to finish the quest. I left the instance and tried to speak to them at the point of discovery – nothing. I use the mithril coins to travel to the NPC and it ports me at the edge of Talath Urui and Agarnaith and not in the Agarnaith camp where the NPC is actually located.
This instance also had a new lost lore type of quest, but the audio is still not there. 10 pages in The court of Seregost.
The fellowship sized instance is a whole another story… This one is called The Dungeons of Naerband, but you do not need to go all the way up to the Dungeons to discover this one. This one is located close to the road at roughly 61.0 S 20.0 E, you will see a culvert. Now, I don’t know about the groups gear, but I imagine that gear on Bullroarer can’t be bad when it’s available to anyone. We were laughing resistance off, but it seems like it will be of some use here. The floors do all kinds of fire damage, so be ready to overcap your tactical mitigations if you’re planing on running this on tier two. Some areas do 100-300 damage and others do 3000+ damage. For the short time I have tested this there seems to be some sort of attack that can one-shot people in the group. Is the key to avoiding it stacking or not being in melee range, that I still need to figure out. But one thing is certain, I have also healed this and it wasn’t the easiest thing to do, so fixing the LI scaling for tactical classes would be important to avoiding this. Can’t even tell you at this point what is at the end of the instance. This is how my gear looked like after trying to heal it… Even things not equipped were yellow or broken.
Other news
When running the Pelennor Instances: Blood of the Black Serpent, The Quays of the Harlond, and The Silent Street, at level 115, you can now receive equipment that scales up to Item Level 315. Let’s just hope that there is no level 315 hilt or something, that would make the people go mad trying to get the hilt again.
Shackles have been excavated from the rubble and can now be reached for the quest “Breaking the Chains”. This is also a great addition, since it was one of the more annoying quests with shackles hiding behind structures, etc.
The hiding spot should now be more obvious in the quest instance “Borangos the Horror”. Another good addition. I failed this the first time, I don’t even know for what reason, probably wanted to observe the conversation closer. The second time I didn’t do anything wrong. I ran past the first column and wanted to go further behind the stairs and I failed it again. Only one I had no issues with this quest. (Been through Mordor three times by now).
Crafting – Doomfold Healing, Milkthistle, Conhuith, and Lhinestad Draughts now remove negative effects up to a maximum strength of level 120.
Crafting – Captain Crest and Warden Carving recipes may be executed with Universal Ingredient Packs.
Crafting – Food produced from Doomfold Cooking now has a stack size up to 100.
Crafting – Woodworkers are now able to craft Strong Boards of Doomfold Wood, Weaponsmiths are now able to craft Quality Doomfold Ingots, and Tailors are now able to craft Well-treated Doomfold Leather.
I would have prefered to not see any updates to crafting instead of seeing only this. No scholar/cook essence recipes, no crafted shields, no buffed/corrected crafted class items, etc.
Finally we are getting the new Etenmoors gear. Players have been asking for a long time to just change the level on the existing armour, so they don’t need to use the long obsolete level 100 essences. Now they got the level 115 armour, but… This one has no set bonuses. This armour is listed as essence armour 115 – T1. I don’t know about Etenmoors T2, but it may suggest there could be more at a later date.
Lua – We recently changed the way LOTRO ListBoxes work to fix a category of UI bugs. This may have side-effects for Lua scripts dependent on the broken behavior. If you encounter issues with your existing Lua plugins, you may want to change the ListBox orientation from Horizontal to Vertical and remove the SetMaxItemsPerLine limitation setter.
The Lua interface is being updated to provide four new functions for the ListBox control. They should be used in the place of SetMaxItemsPerLine( value ) and GetMaxItemsPerLine() which are being deprecated:
number GetMaxColumns();
void SetMaxColumns( number );
number GetMaxRows();
void SetMaxRows( number );
If someone could explain to me what this is and how to change it, I would very much appreciate it. For running group content I use BuffBars and some other plugins and all the options got condensed into one single line. I have no idea what I’m expected to do here.
Unless you want to run some old t2c instances on level 115 these builds aren’t something you would need right now when we only have new landscape and crafting instances that don’t have t2 penetration, but like I said in the article about best available gear, I do not like having landscape builds and always build for t2c, so I can have less swaps. The less I have the happier I am. I said I would soon have the captain done and let’s say I do. So let’s see the three classes I got ready for t2c: Minstrel, Warden and Captain. I have another 3, but since two of those are tactical and one is a Guardian, I’ll just wait untill I see if tactical classes get fixed and the Legendary Items get scaled dps.
Keep in mind that I do understand that these may not be the best builds for the future instances (or at all), but we have to start from somewhere and this is what I will be tweaking if needed. Also, this article will be showing you the numbers that you can achieve, not the individual items and traits how to achieve those.
Stat caps
The stat caps I’ll provide here are only for t2 builds.
Light armour mitigations: 62,160
Medium armour mitigations: 70,618
Heavy amour mitigations: 77,840
The following have only t1 caps.
Critical rating: 71,000
Incoming healing: 68,000
Outgoing healing: 282,940
For more of the stat caps you can visit Dadi’s website.
The plug-in used to show the stats is Titan Bars. Please keep in mind that the plug-in is outdated and is not showing correct percentages and caps.
Minstrel
This was my old build, from the last article.
And this is the new one with some tweaks.
I only build the healing line on Minstrel seriously, don’t really care too much about dps so I will not be providing my stats for a dps build. I only have a few half decent swaps for questing and that’s it. Some swaps for getting finesse higher for distracts.
I have opened many lootboxes on my minstrel and still didn’t get shoulders higher than 309. I have a 310 Mordor landscape drop shield, would be very happy if I could get the 315, but those offhand items are very rare and they don’t drop only for your class. So I really hope that metalsmith gets some shield recipes very soon. Another downside on the Mordor mini build is that we can’t have finesse which was very helpful before when removing corruptions and interrupting, but healing comes first. We’ll see what we will be able to do after instances come.
Warden
DPS Warden
Warden dps is in a pretty bad place right now. From my 105 raid build I went up around 20,000 mastery, went down in critical rating and have less % in finesse. Further reasons are the bad legacies. A warden is using a lot of stat legacies and these don’t do much right now. We also lost the armour sets which gave more DoTs and stronger bleeds. Bad crafted relics applies to all the classes, not only Wardens. These are too low right now that you don’t even worry if you are going to slot them or not.
You could consider using two pieces of 105 gear from Osgiliath to get additional two DoT pulses, but… You lose a lot. I lost around 30,000 mastery, around 6,000 armour, which reflects on both mitigations, 6,000 morale and gained 1,600 critical rating for a 0,4% increase. My Warden is also using the Essence of Physicality on the class item, which if you don’t use you can slot critical rating.
Tank warden
A disclaimer for the tanking warden build though… This build is missing five essences. Remains to be seen if I will be using vitality essences or incoming healing essences. This will depend on what morale will be needed for tanking the new instances. The good thing about Wardens is that the maximum morale isn’t always what you can see in your morale pool, but morale pool + Never Surrender. This is good if there aren’t many hits that could bring you too low.
Captain
DPS/Support Captain
Tank Captain
A disclaimer for Captain too… Captain is using some landscape drops level 309 and some Rare chest drops level 314 and 323. These are the mitigations jewelry pieces that you can not really barter anywhere and they are pretty good, but you lose some vitality and might. I also still need to get some teal shield, right now I have only a purple one to use untill I get something better. Mordor landscape has a great Captain shield with Outgoing healing for a stat if you play a blue Captain or even for tanking if bpe is not a thing for that fight.
You may want to build your Captain for more dps. This is possible, but there isn’t much wiggle room. If you drop some mitigation essences you can get more critical rating or physical mastery in. As a dps you should probably be fine if you are not overcapped, but I like to play the captain as a support class, not dps. Captain can actually do some decent dps, especially with the LI buff to physical classes, so it’s just a matter of preference.
What gear was used in these examples
The gear used in these examples, with only a few exceptions, is the gear that I have described in my previous article. So please check that one out. The essences used are the Shadowed essences, except for incoming healing on Captain, since those give the same number all across the board. Using stat essences was “the old way” and now if you are going for the dps build you will be going with mastery essences, since those give almost double the mastery of stat essences. I would love if this stayed like it was before, that the stat essences give more mastery. The reason I liked that and the reason I like that vitality is good now is because stats always influence more stats than the raw increase to morale for example.
If there are any questions, I’d love to answer them or to see some other builds and hear some thoughts and suggestions, so feel free to write in with any of those.
Gearing up in Mordor is a little bit difficult when you’re doing it for the first time, because the gear comes from several different sources and you can’t even access them all right away to eventually plan it. So in the hopes that this clears some things up for you, I’ll just introduce (if we can call it an introduction at this point in the game) a few pieces of gear and their sources.
Questing
Questing will usually give you some gear to get by while questing and leveling, but the rewards aren’t really worth much, other than the Light of Earendil that prevents the shadow debuff.
Where questing does give you the best items is near the end of the regions Talath Urui and Agarnaith. These will give you 2 pieces each – chest and legs. For some reason, and this is likely not a bug, light armour classes get the same armour twice, while medium and heavy have dps and tanking versions.
Ash
While questing you may come across some rewards you do not like or need – you can turn those to Ash. You will be getting drops from enemies and these may not be for your class even – you can turn those to Ash. This is a decent system which allows you to clean your bags on the go by using the Flame of Ancalmir, but it has some downsides. These would be that the Ash is not that easy to get unless you’re in the Ash farms and buying a lot of keys to open lootboxes. The green, purple and teal items will give you 5, 10 or 20 ash respectively, but the same items from lootboxes will give double the ash, so 10, 20 or 40 Ash.
From Ash you can get earrings, bracelets and boots.
You will need 2525 for a “regular” build without the Ash gold rings, which makes it 5050 for two builds. With the two gold rings the number goes up to 8025 or 16050 if you want to go for four of those rings, but you can also make them work in both builds by slotting some essence that will be universal to both or, as I suggested, keep the Allegiance build for tanking and healing.
Allegiance
Best items from the Allegiance system will depend on the fact what class you have and how you play it. But let’s say that you are not getting ready for dps, then the Allegiance will provide you with best rings on chapter 4 (rank 15 Allegiance) and best cloak on chapter 7 (rank 30 Allegiance).
Which would mean that if you are gearing for one role, let’s say tanking or healing, then you would need to get one Allegiance to rank 30 and another to rank 15. If you are making 2 builds for your character, then you will be bringing two Allegiances to ranks 30 and another two (3 and 4) to rank 15, so you would have two cloaks and four rings. And I do suggest to go with Allegiance rings and hope the gold ones drop from a box one day, rather than spending almost 3000 Ash for something that is clearly inferior from the lootbox rings. There is no content right now that says that you NEED those now anyway.
The best gloves are also from Allegiance. Unlike the rings and cloak, these are not a quest reward, these are a barter item from an NPC for the tokens you claim while leveling up an Allegiance. This would be your Allegiance Quartermaster. The gloves will cost you 75 Tokens of Service or 150 for both versions.
Crafting
Crafting is now back and for now is a source of several best in slot items. You will be able to craft the best helmet, pocket, necklace and essences. Sadly, by design, bug or just forgetting about it, we have no new crafted relics and the current ones in comparison look so miniscule that you could even unequip them and not feel any difference. Hopefully we’ll get some of those soon too.
The recipes for these are bartered by the tokens that you get from questing, but the recipes are not bound to character and you can send them to any of your crafters.
Some of the items, like captain standards and Lore-Master brooches, are level 323 on regular crafting and as a critical success also, so I’m guessing this is a bug and should be fixed some time in the future, so the Doomfold captain standard should then be the go to item at least for tanking. But this is pale in comparison with scholar and cook not being able to make any essences.
The necklace will cost you 90 silver signets of the Thandrim. Pocket will cost you 30. Helmet will cost you another 90 signets. So, this brings us to 210 signets for gear. The essences are one shot recipes with no chance for better ones and depending on your build you will need different number of essences. Without the gold rings it’s 14 essences. One essence recipe will cost you 15 signets, which is another 210 and we get to 420. You still need to get the new relics. For some classes the relics that reduce speed will still be the best most likely, but let’s say you’re changing all – one relic costs 50 signets – 150 signets per LI makes it 300 in total for a single build. Total signets needed for one build 720. This number is very easily obtainable just by finishing all the quests and continuing doing the dailies, etc. And I’d say it’s a great start to barter for the return to Udun foothold at the start and with that skill we get to 730 signets. 1450 in total with a full second build.
Landscape
Landscape has a chance to drop off-hand weapons and shoulders. It can drop some other things, but those are covered. Usually, the level of the shoulders and off-hands is 309, it can drop a level 310, which is a little bit more rare and a very rare 315. Some of these off-hands are good, but for some you may want to run some of the scaled instances and get what you need. You can get some other shoulder pieces in Mordor, but these are purple versions with one slot less for the essence.
Also take good note what drops stay in your pending loot. Landscape has a rare chance of dropping the best essence – Shadowed essence.
Gorgoroth Steel-Bound Lootbox
I didn’t mention the gold rings before with Ash, because this is where they are best in slot. The same actually goes for shoulders. The lootbox has a chance to drop items which are much higher in level than the ones we have available. The gold rings obtainable with Ash are level 326. For some time I have tought that the highest level from the lootbox was 329, then I have been told that there was also a 330 and recently on the forum someone posted an item level 331. Given how SSG handles informing the players about the content they put out, we can only assume that it can go even higher. But the lootbox also has a chance to drop other items of a higher level than what is available to you.
The SSG executive producer has also said on the forum that lootboxes aren’t intended to have the items with best stats exclusively.
There will never be a design that has loot from lootboxes that is statistically better than what you can gain someplace or somehow in game. Finding that loot in game might be hard, but it will be possible. Our overall design philosophy is that loot boxes are not required to reach the best gearing. If players do find some piece of gear that is best in slot and can only be gained through loot boxes then 1.) it is a bug or 2.) it is an oversight and will be fixed or 3.) there was some release timing issue and the loot will be available someplace in game soon.
In this case the intent is that those rings can be purchased from the Ash vendor for an appropriately large amount of Ash.
Sev~
The discrepancy in item levels has been noticed right away and reported and there have been hotfixes, patches and updates, but this still happens.
This makes this system, especially after buying the Mordor expansion for no small amount of money, the biggest pay to win in this game. Gorgoroth boxes are dropping like crazy, yet the keys are very limited. And we only recently find out from Cordovan that the “bugged” dailies that didn’t have the key are working as intended and that we should only have 3 keys per week, with no chance for a landscape drop.
This is working as intended. Not every daily offers a Black Steel Key. They are also limited to three Keys per week.
So, if we want to prepare for instances and min-max the gear, we are not only pushed to buy the keys, but also inventory (which is on sale right now) and the vault space and maybe shared storage to keep the huge amount of boxes that are dropping.
Untill recently I was using the PvMP plug-in only to not miss a lootbox in the pending loot, now I just don’t care if it gets deleted and timed out.
Personally, I do not think that we wanted to pay for the expansion so we would have the privilege to be milked for keys with a massive RNG – some get it on the first box or don’t get it on 100th. Do we have to do it? Of course not, but the fact that it is “optional” does not diminish the recent business decisions, lack of information about the game or misinformation. 3 keys intended per week with this amount of boxes? Who are we kidding? Is one key per day going to make or break someones bank?
Tactical classes
We still do not have any information if the tactical classes are working as intended. The dps has dropped significantly and the heals have too. The only buff we have had is from leveled legacies. We have spent star-lits only to then notice that nothing has moved at all in terms of dps or healing rating. Which brings me to the conclusion that it can’t be intended. How does someone spend something to upgrade only to stay in place? I don’t mind a slight nerf to RK dps or mini heals, but with the damage mobs are putting out or group taking and not being able to cap certain needed stats, this should have been done better than just letting us use star-lits, but not advancing. There could have been some cap to reach and not pass, but not moving at all is too much and broken. This is not only bad for grouping, but has also made questing in Mordor considerably harder than on physical classes.
Conclusion to the gearing
Obviously, you do not need to build your characters for t2 right away, but I did. I do not like to have too many swaps or change the gear all the time for t1, for landscape, for this or that. So, all I’m running with at all times is t2 gear. Below are my builds for warden and minstrel. Soon I’ll be able to add captain too. Please disregard the yellow letters and percentage, as the plug-in is outdated and doesn’t show the correct caps. But as a reference I’m providing you with my numbers on the builds. These can and will be further tweaked, but for now this would be it.
