Lord of the rings – Page 3

Mordor 21.1: Best available gear

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.

Mordor beta 6: A trick to leveling Allegiance faster

As far as the Allegiance is concerned one thing that has changed is the location of King Eomer. Now it is a little bit easier to start the allegiance quests and even easier to stumble upon if you don’t really go that much back and forth to the Black Gate. Also, in this build we now have Allegiance repeatable quests that put to use the regional task boards, or as you may remember them from some other regions of the game, bounty boards. You’ll be happy to hear that there is a daily quest which rewards you with one new key for the new kind of lootboxes. Apart from the daily, there is also a weekly quest that will reward you with 10.000 allegiance points. But let’s leave the Allegiance for a while and see what hasn’t changed.

What hasn’t changed is:

The quest The silent one is still bugged and Legolas is not there to turn the quest in, even if it will port you to the location using Mithril Coins.
Speaking of Mithril Coins, when using Mithril you also don’t get ported to the statue that grants you quests in Nargroth.
Crafting instances are broken in a way that there is some content that locks it after you completed it. I have leveled to 115 by questing and if it isn’t bugged or out in the latest build I have finished it, so it can’t be locked behind that.
After Tybur has removed some of the prereqs on the crafting instances we could see that what we assume is prospecting one can still not be entered. And the other 4 are still split into 2 woodworker and 2 historian resource instances.
Instance with Sam could not be finished.
I believe I have seen people still complain about the Elf Allegiance intro instance.
The cosmetic cloaks still do not have their appearances at the barterer.
There are 3 new gold rings that cost 2750 Ash and it seems that their level is shown wrong as it is only 300 and the stats aren’t as great. But some say that the same thing may happen with these rings that happens with Pelargir rings and they would scale to your level when you barter for them. I don’t believe you’ll have 2750 Ash to spare at 106, but just in case barter for these only on level cap.
It’s a small thing, but there are also no potions for fear, wound, disease and poison for level 120.
Metalsmith still doesn’t have any recipes for the shields, even though they have recipes for RK Chisel and Riffler.
Cosmetic appearance of the “exclusive” armour is still too similar to the armour in game.
Buffs from food and self-buff skills, like Forced March, will cover the bar that shows the level of LoE/Shadow.

So, what else has changed? Well, you can see the full beta 6 notes here, but the final ones you will be able to read on Monday. I will just mention three more things. Since there will probably be a lot of people on Monday asking where to start a book, you can see it on the picture bellow. I may be imagining things, but Aragorn may have moved a little due to the Free people doing a little construction work and making bridges so the slow horses could ride to the camp in the Slag Hills.

Another thing that has changed is the Virtues and the Racial traits. Both have been scaled up accordingly to have more impact on the stats due to the bloat in those in the newest update. So, instead of 20 will for Man of the fourth age you will now get 109 at level 115. Which isn’t a lot compared to some stats, but it’s a much greater improvement than 20 and we welcome this change.

What should you be doing from the start?

Well, if you want you can always stock up on some experience by finishing some of the quests before hand and turning them in when you update your client on Monday. Why would you do this? I’m not suggesting you rush to 115 or anything, but as you quest you will be coming across some resource boxes and they can be very common. You can open these on level 106. I believe the treasure cache’s also have the level requirement. So, instead walking around with full bags and not being able to get the treasure cache, I suggest you get to at least 106 a little bit faster.

There still aren’t any potions for fear, disease, wound and poison at the healer, but this is another little thing you shouldn’t be forgetting. Sometimes the mobs like to disarm you, silence, fear you, etc. This may very well be the difference of you staying alive or not. And while you’re at the healer sell your bounties, repair your armour and be 100% ready for adventure.

The resource chests will not give you your specific crafting materials, but all of them at random. So you will need a lot of bag space. If you are having issues with bag space, like I often do, then you can buy the account wide slots for bags, shared storage or vault. Speaking about the store… I am not sure if the travel skills for the various allegiances will change their cooldown, but it was pretty long. So if you don’t want to get stuck doing a quest for 2-3 hours maybe you’d want to have your traveling skill cooldown on 5 minutes.

Like in U20, in U21 we have again a lot of reputation factions, so you could supply yourself with some of the reputations tomes again and have them handy in case you deplete your rep acc boost.

Park yourself at the location shown above and be ready to start the Epic Book right away. You can read Voltron’s interview about it here. I am very curious what the rewards in the Epic Book will be like. Not so much because of the rewards, but because of the point in Book and time. I would imagine it could be something like the end of Vol. I, I believe, when we were getting a mount and a lot more of other stuff. Don’t want to get my hopes too high up, but it really would be a shame if there wasn’t something to remember this part of the story by – mount, housing, cosmetic, strong item, etc.

The first item you should get? That is likely the Flame of Ancalmir. This is a great item to keep your bags clean. It is like a portable relic master for LoE items. It will be properly introduced with a quest, so I won’t write too much about it here. I will say that in the meantime it now did get some sort of an animation and now your cursor has the crystal next to it when active.

A trick to leveling Allegiance faster

And now the reason you came to read this. How will you be finishing Allegiance faster? It’s not so much of a trick, as it is a discovery. Well, the obvious part would be doing all the quests that have a relic that will award you with 2.000 allegiance points. There are only a few of those quests. Also, some deeds will award these same relics. Some will even give 5.000 allegiance points. You will be doing the Allegiance repeatables not only for allegiance, but I suppose to also clear out the deeds if you’re that kind of a completionist. So, that is covered also.

What I have found is that even though there are some nice rewards in the final chapters, you should not be rushing there. You can see the cloak from Allegiance of the Kingdom of Gondor chapter 6 and 7. Why should you not be rushing there? Because as of right now, if you get to level 30 with an Allegiance you lock yourself out of the daily 2.000 Allegiance Points for them by doing the crafting instances. For instance, I have finished the Kingdom of Gondor last week and in the crafting instances, apart from the secondary quests, you also have a quest for the Allegiances also. And as I finished Gondor, this week now I had only three of those to finish. Speaking of which, one of the relics in Barad Dur is still in a wall.

I actually believe that this quest is gated by mistake and should be available later when a hotfix comes out, but for the time being, I’d say stay at 29 with the Allegiances and then finish them all at once.

Mordor beta 5: Release date pushed or not?

Don’t know if you noticed, but I have skipped ‘Mordor beta 4’. The first reason was that there wasn’t really that many changes or remarks I hadn’t already made and the second reason is that I was bringing you: Release date and pre-order: The story behind the disappointment, Crafting Developer Diary – What it should have been, Allegiance: Pimp my dev interview and The Sound of Silence. I would highly recommend reading every one of those. Also, if you would like to know who is Voltron from the ‘Pimp my dev interview’, if you don’t already know, you can listen to it here.

So, what did I possibly found to complain about now? Not much really. Mainly, I bring some spoilers. Well, maybe just a little gap in information on when the expansion is going live. According to +Loft in Bullroarer there should be one more beta round this following weekend, but according to Cordovan on the forums they are for now on schedule for the 31st of July. So is there a beta 6 then? Why if the feedback won’t be of any use? I don’t know, it’s just a little strange.

I am happy to tell you that this issue has now been fixed and we are no longer pulling the whole camp by attacking only one orc. Don’t have the test video from the new build, but I can tell you that I was testing it with one eye shut waiting to get some painful punishing. Among other fixed issues, the Lost Lore pages do not wait for you to get to level 110 anymore, etc. There must have been some complaints about the spies near the Udun starting area, so they are now moved. Now we will need to really look for them and I was just about to use the 3 locations to get that quest done.

You will be able to experience something similar to Glittering caves. Don’t worry, Big Battles are not coming back, it’s just a landscape cave with 2 Lost Lore pages in it. And since some of the quests were a little bit buggy and wouldn’t advance I can’t say if there are other quests here or not. I think it has a camp site outside of it. Not sure if this is just for convenience or will something else be tied to this location as similar camp sites are put next to regions for an instance.

I am not entirely sure do I want to suggest that Allegiance advances a little bit slower, but I guess I’ll say it. I have a feeling I finished it a little bit too fast. No, I do not want another SSG grind for whatever, but with the deeds I had finished, Lost Lore quests, crafting and crafting instances I was able to finish Kingdom of Gondor and get to level 6 for Dvarwes. I can’t tell too much about Allegiance though, since it doesn’t feel like it was finished and crafting instances disappeared for me in the build 5, so I am not sure how it could move forwards. One thing I will say is that I think the travel skill we get has a too long cooldown. All the allegiance hubs have internal locations you can not exit or enter using a door. Which means there is a lot of traveling involved. If traveling is the only way of moving back and forth we will need hours just to finish one chapter of the allegiance quests. In the spoilers, the last two chapters of the Kingdom of Gondor. It involves a certain flora. Excuse the clicking, had a new mic setup.

To be honest, apart from crafting instances disappearing, Legolas not being present to turn in a quest, Sam instance and Orcs jumping into the fire pit so you can’t kill them, I am not too bothered with the landscape. It feels like a lot of kinks they need to work on are the cosmetic ones for armour, avatar changes and High Elf. Another one was an Elf intro instance for the allegiance being the king of AFK. There is certainly work to be done. And while there is some polishing to be done I would certainly not mind if the expansion did hit the live (beta) servers on the 31st as the game seems to get a little bit empty these last few days, even though the quieter period started even earlier. And hopefully we will not have another Lang Rhuven.

The Sound of Silence

I have had great feedback on the article I written about the story behind the disappointment. You all have been a great support. Even disagreeing with some of you in a constructive manner was one of the better things to share with you and not just you reading or even not reading what has been written. Thank you for that.

But it has been pointed out to me that SSG and the older version of it – Turbine – and the developers that work there have given us many good things in the game, many great features and many great moments. And I do not disagree with you here. Not only were we given some great things, we have also been given some things that were previously said to be impossible. Cosmetic weapons and off-hands, new premium housing area, feature that lets us move the housing items outside of their usual hooks, various cosmetic items, some great stories and quests, some good Epic Book quests, good instances and raids… I am a person who was converted to actually liking housing when the premium ones came out, because suddenly I didn’t have to live in a shed. Some couples have even met thanks to the game and married. But the fact that SSG has had some good decisions, ideas and products in the past does not mean they didn’t also have bad ones and that because of the good ones it would now be fine to retroactively charge for all that. Especially because all that was paid with VIPs and LPs. Having done some good things in the past does not make anyone immune to the critique in the present or the future. The players won’t start paying for a dating service now too, will they? Those who prefer virtual relationships may visit websites offering AI Girlfriend services.

This article isn’t even the “aggressive” one, I am just very saddened that SSG has actually chosen to ignore the entire player base that has voiced their concerns in various channels. We have participated in threads on the official forums, there are comments on shares in the social media, some have participated in chats in-game, various written articles in unison that this expansion stands out, and most recently – the +Cord of the Rings stream.

The threads on the forum actually stopped for a while to see if there will be some official reaction to what has been happening for the past few days since this has been announced. Nothing. Not even a mention of the situation, an acknowledgment of some sort. While some of the participants have been asking questions about it and about some other in-game „stuff“ the team comprised of Cordovan and QuartermasterU was more interested in some casual talk about the lucky duck title, food, trash metal and „what shoulders are those“. Only thing Mordor related, as far as I remember, was the talk about the Aria of Valar, and QU, when asked about the new bridle LIs, I even feel bad pointing this out, suggested there will be new ones, confused or not knowing that there hasn’t been new LIs in a while and that we are now using a different system.

When SSG announced that they have parted ways with Turbine people were hopeful that something would change and in their hopes they forgot that the team working on the games has stayed the same. SSG, now an indie studio, a smaller company should have been using advantages that every smaller company has over a large one and a big advantage is – communication. The very thing we are lacking now.

At its size we should be able to have a conversation SSG to consumer, but we don’t. For the second time, at least, we are getting ignored and we are left to vent and hopefully calm down on our own. The silence is deafening. I attribute this to not knowing really much about running a business. No content you put out, especially a rushed one with bugs and a more expensive one than previous expansions even though it was said in countless streams it would be in line with those, can replace the value a company places in its customers. And a customer will always show his appreciation for this by paying more. Customers do pay more for a product based on how they are being treated. If you had exactly the same steak in a great, expensive restaurant and in a cheap restaurant, you would be fine paying more for it in the expensive one because of the treatment you got.

When speaking about the communication with the players, I have to mention the complete lack of developer diaries/letters. Even these could have been used as a great form of marketing and in a longer pre-purchase period they would be introducing the expansion to the players, building interest and intrigue. Recently we have gotten two short ones. These 2 interviews have left the players after reading them more confused than informed. So much so that a thread on the forum with my own „developer letter“ linked has been started under the name „Actual Crafting Dev Diary“.

Maybe the SSG is satisfied by the sales they had so far, I have no way of knowing. What I do know is that quite a decent number of players are spending the money not because of the quality, but because it is LOTR and because it is Mordor, because they want to experience what we have been building up to for over 10 years, in support of the game, etc. There are also those who will just play the epic and be done with everything. But I am convinced that had this been approached differently they would be making a lot more money with a lot less unhappy people.

After canceling my subscription after what happened with the Wastes – not the lag, the lack of communication then too – I was really hoping to buy if not the highest, then maybe the 2nd highest package and go VIP again, none of which is happening, again, not because there will be bugs in the early release, but because as a part of the group that has voiced the concerns and got no answers I do not feel I have been heard, appreciated and valued as a customer.

I do hope that this piece gets to someone in SSG somehow. Not so I could „give them a piece of my mind“, but just to say that there is no shame in saying you have made a mistake or that you were wrong or that you do not know something. You can not do everything perfectly, nor can you know everything. But what you can do is nurture a relationship with the people who have stayed with the game through thick and thin, communicate what is going on with the game a little bit better and a little bit more often, because a lot of what has happened and what has been said was not because of the price (or any other reason, for that matter), but because the company has made a choice to not inform the player base that they are turning 180° and that all the consistency up untill now has no meaning. Actually, at times we have been told the opposite would happen and it didn’t. And all that information has been thrown at us only a couple of weeks from the release date. There certainly were some players who expected something that was unrealistic, but they were not in the majority.

So, do I think that the players should let go of this because nobody has reacted to what is happening? No, I really hope the forum posts continue. I have no way of knowing if there are some legal issues that you can not discuss, but this situation could have certainly been mitigated if we weren’t surprised by it and then ignored. Just someone to come out and say „You know what, you have been heard“ would alleviate a lot, I believe.

I just hope that it is evident that everything that is being done and said is not out of spite or hate towards SSG and certainly not LOTRO, or any part of the team in particular or anything like that. Even if it sometimes comes with harsh words, it is so because we do love this game and want it to be good and even better, it comes with good intentions. Not everything that is good comes in a nice wax sealed letter with gold font, like you just got invited to Hogwarts.

Allegiance: Pimp my dev interview

This article is satirical in nature and does not represent the official developer interview allowed by the SSG… The original interview has been used and built upon to provide you with more information.
The facts about Allegiance are accurate.

Hello, everyone. This time we are bringing you an interview with our developers UnfriendlyCat (UC), DrHashtag (DrH) and Voltron concerning the new Allegiance system.

What is the Allegiance system?

UC: The Allegiance System is a way for players to earn endgame rewards, new cosmetics, and experience four distinct storylines in a post-Sauron Middle-earth. After joining an Allegiance, players earn “Allegiance Points” to advance within their faction. Players will not be limited to only one faction. You can, in fact, finish the introduction to all of them, but making one of the allegiances active you opt for working on that one allegiance. The first allegiance you opt for will be faster to finish and the later ones will be slower. The speed is determined by the amount of points you will need to advance through the levels of the later allegiances.

As they level up within the system, they unlock barter currency to buy endgame rewards, special items, and story moments. You are gaining a special kind of tokens through the Allegiance system for barter and another kind of tokens are „Chapter tokens“ (let’s call them that) that will unlock the next chapter in your respective Allegiance.

DrH: You will be able to embark on the Allegiance System once you make way into the Mordor Expansion, but it will really pick up after a first tour through Gorgoroth, where it ties into the endgame.

+Arred: When you reach level 110 two things will open for you. You will be able to go just behind the Black Gate and speak to Eomer to start your Allegiance quests. At the same time a new series of quests will appear, The Lost Lore of NameOfTheRegion. These quests will have an acorn for a reward, that will help you advance your allegiance. The Allegiance isn’t your classic reputation system. Even though you do need to advance your standing to gain Allegiance tokens and experience various Chapters from each one, this is more imersed in the story rather than only earning standing and being done with it.

Voltron: One of the things I’ve been dissatisfied with about Reputations in the past is how story-agnostic they could feel. Yes, you’re helping various factions with their problems and becoming more and more respected in their society, but there was no real progression in a story sense. They respected you more and more, and offered you more rewards, but there was no real sense of a continuing storyline for most of them. Allegiances do have you filling up a bar, and there are repeatable quests and rewards, but for me the significant addition is that each of them tells a continuing story. I think of my Allegiances like Bingo Boffin style quest arcs, but instead of funny hobbit shenanigans you get dwarf- or Gondor-themed problems and stories, and instead of them advancing weekly they advance as you gain AP.

How many factions are there?

UC: There are 4 Allegiances:
– “The Kingdom of Gondor”
– “Hobbits of the Company”
– “Durin’s Folk”
– “The Court of Lothlórien”

Voltron: It’s about choosing the Allegiance to which you want to lend your skills, not necessarily the race you play.

You mention chapters. How many are there?

Voltron: Seven chapters per Allegiance, and whether we expand it will depend on whether the players like it.

Where did the ideas come from?

DrH: We modelled the Allegiance System after the oaths of service Pippin and Merry made to Gondor and Rohan, respectively. We wanted a system that would feel like it was part of your character’s story, a way to tell and remember the adventures that took place during their time in Mordor. We were also very clear about the fact that we didn’t want to create a ‘gimmick’ way outside of the core game loop. The goal here was to provide good, satisfying reasons for adventuring further in Mordor, and worthy rewards to take home with you.

Do I get to experience something unique with each?

UC: DrH can speak more to this but each Allegiance has its own unique storyline.

DrH: The storylines are the big difference between each allegiance, but that’s pretty major. There is a unique story about Gondor, the four hobbits, Gimli & Durin’s Folk, and the Elves—that you will only get from playing that faction line.

UC: Your choice order of Allegiances will not affect the availability of endgame gear. Your choice really just affects the order in which you experience story and gain certain cosmetic appearances.

How will the players advance and get the Allegiance Points?

+Arred: The players will have a few options to advance through their respective Allegiance. We have made it so that they can earn acorns, something like a reputation item, that will allow them to advance their chosen Allegiance. These acorns can be acquired via certain quests, deeds and daily quests in the new crafting instances, which is why we have advised you in our crafting diary to get introduced to all four Allegiances right away.