There were some pictures of an alleged new reputation steed, which didn’t look at all like a steed of a king. More a steed of a princes. So since I haven’t seen any of these yet I am bringing you some pictures of it.
There are also some random flying items in the new area.
And to quote Cordovan
You will no longer see any mobs above level 105 (until Update 21).
If you’re a person dreading spoilers and want to be surprised and amazed, this is probably the point where you don’t click here and instead go read What to do when U20 hits live. And I am pretty sure that this story and reflection on what has happened by Eladan and Elrohir will amaze you as much as it did me. But I also seen something else in this.
If you remember the Pelennor epic line and all those battles and instances we have done to complete it… If you then continued raiding, you could have recognized pieces of it in the raid. Even though this is a reflection of the past, there is a chance that this will also announce some things that are coming.
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.
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.
This may be a little bit too soon for a 2nd part of the article, but this will just maybe clarify some other things. I have wrote in the first article about the items you can get, the differences and what you need to get those. You can check out that article here.
You can also watch videos on the new areas here.
In the meantime I was able to complete the prerequisites for the fellowship instances and I must say that going back and forth in Lang Rhuven was a complete pain. Not only did I need to enter and exit the fellowship landscape are several times, but the quests and deeds there were also insane. One of the quests, rescuing the horses, has you follow a horse around the camp, which you can’t let die. The horse is aggroing everything around itself and you end up clearing that half of the camp while you get it to safety. The deeds on the normal landscape have normal number for completing them. The deed for Lang Rhuven is 200 for the first tier and 400 for the second.
After you finally complete this line you get to complete to prerequisite fellowship quests in the towers, or should I say basements. In these you need to kill some mobs in the fellowship areas – behind the wooden gate in one and at the far end in the other tower. Only then you can go and finish the fellowship crafting instance you have completed the prerequisite for. For now and for my group, the scholar one seemed to be bugged as we couldn’t turn in some quest and we didn’t complete that one.
In the article from yesterday I have wrote about barter items you need for the new gear and there was one very curious item that seemed to be useless. Well, it’s not. This is for now the only useful item you can get by trading 20 of each flower for it. This set of brittle lock-picks is used to unlock the treasure chest which is found behind the boss. Rewards today weren’t anything special, seem to be the usual armour/provision/weapon. The boss did drop one tarnished sigil of Gondor for me. This seems to be random loot on boss kill, as we didn’t see it drop from any box for now.
There are some downsides to the fellowship version of the crafting instances. They just feel a lot like they added more mobs with more morale in a solo instance and raised the number of players that can join. This because when you’re mining for Dagorlad ore only one player will get the loot from the node. This node should be made into a quest-like item that can be used by everyone in the fellowship, so we don’t fight over those or abandon fighting to loot first. Also, the sidequests you get to pick some stuff up if one player does it, it doesn’t advance for everyone. So you will have 6 players wasting time on picking up some random items to advance the quest. The visibility of the chest behind the boss you would use the lock-pick on is also not the best as it had no name when we were inside, so maybe some glow to it would be nice.
You can watch the solo versions in the following videos:
In other notes… If you haven’t you can also go and check out the new LOTRO Beacon: Issue #2.
So, the long awaited U20 is on BR and… Well, I’d say that some have expected more, but let’s see what is going on. The preliminary release notes you can read here.
The whole landscape questing part is very similar to some other regions. It looks very much like a West Gondor + Brown Lands combination, then a little bit of Rohan and Fangorn/Derdingle and it’s done. The West Gondor part is the 2017 Tarlangs Crown, now called Lang Rhuven. This seems to be the quest chain that has the fellowship crafting instance behind it, so it actually has more purpose than TC, but in my opinion no landscape should be that hard that you need a fellowship to beat it. I get a Brown Lands feeling from the Lang Rhuven part where they have made an entrance to the camp similar to BL. Rohan just because of the vast space and Fangorn for the crafting instances. I do like that we got the muster/return skill to the Camp of the Host, but I do not understand the lack of stables in the region.
(The last one is from Brown Lands)
Speaking of hard landscape… Apart from Tarlangs Crown, Roving Threats have also made their return. So, instead of a bit easier version of that which we had in War-Bands, we have fellowship RT’s.
You will have two areas you don’t want to approach too close for now. One is the black gate, which means instant death and the other one is Dol Acharn, which does 20% morale damage once you get near it. The area is inhabited by Wainrider Horsemen, Bowmen, etc.
Crafting instances aren’t actually giving you the classic crafting material, they have introduced Dagorlad materials. These are nodes that will give you items for crafting or journals that will raise your critical chance of getting the critical version of the output. The number of these nodes is nowhere near the classic crafting instances, so don’t cheer just yet. For now I have just done one for scholar and one for prospector – not sure if these change on a daily basis or are they adding more nodes into these two, so that they can cover all.
The items you get from crafting instances, or rather, the items you farm the crafting instances for, are good, but it will be a farm. And even more so, since these we will be able to upgrade these using items from the raid. So, using 80 metal scraps and 20 armour pieces (new barter item, not actual armour, for some classes it’s weapon, for some provisions) you would be able to get a Master armourers crest of Gondor swiftness that will give you 355 agility and 623 morale. These are items you get from landscape, possibly quests and crafting instances. You can then further upgrade this item by using the item you have and an Ornate Inlay and get a jewelry piece that has 391 main stat and 690 morale. The barter items are very much like Central Gondor ones that were used both for barter and reputation gain or like Far Anorien. For a set of gold jewelry – necklace, earring and pocket, you will need all 3 items – salt and provisions for earrings, which are not unique, so you can have two, broken blade and weapons for necklace, metal scrap and armour for pocket.
I remain hopeful that the Inlay doesn’t have a drop chance of a Pelennor essence or the Officer’s bracelet, since the increase it gives is not much, but it is a great way of catering to both, more casual player base and raiders. Makes me wonder why something like this wasn’t introduced in the first place when flora jewelry came out.
The golden version of the offhand will cost you 80 metal scrap, 20 armour pieces (or any other combination of these) and 3 tarnished sigils of gondor. The sigils most likely drop in the fellowship version of the crafting instance. And the armour upgrade will cost you a supreme armour piece, 60 metal scraps, 15 armour. This will give you an armour piece with 104 main stat and 517 morale, which would be an increase in 10 main stat and 50 morale on one piece. If you remember, we have wrote that we would expect these to become gold here.
Jewelry has the same stats on all the pieces – earring, necklace and pocket – the remaining ones that aren’t gold (not counting the hilt). So there is a pocket, it just seems that for now the graphic for it isn’t ready so it looks like a bracelet or something, with the stats I mentioned it would be better for a dps role, but tank classes may still want to use hilt of Earnil, since it will give you 745 morale.
Ofcourse, there is new flora. I’m still unclear about what it should do, but in this build it doesn’t look like much. The new area has eight flowers, 6 of which are new. Mournweed, Eye-of-Night and Evengleam will give you Gold extracts; and Bonemallow, Dusknettle and Wraithscowl will give you Violet extracts. There are two old flowers around – Horsetail and Larkspur, giving their usual output.
As far as questing goes, you will come across some classic quests, one you will need to be accompanied by a dog who will uncover traps and hidden orcs for you. One disappointing chain was going back to the towers right after you have already been there and turned quests in. It felt a bit like the old types of questing – finish a quest, turn in, go back to the same spot, finish a quest, turn in, go back to the same spot… But it wasn’t too bad as it was the only one of this kind. And as far as deeds go… It has some similarities with North Ithilien. I haven’t come across any treasure caches, but there are some artifacts etc. that need to be found. The virtues still seem to be capped at 19, which is very annoying. We’re constantly getting more and more ways to increase these, but no way to use what we have. I hope something similar to Big Battle points will also happen to virtues and that SSG will remove their cap in time.
Since Epic book isn’t out in this build and I have come across some rangers in the marshes and some Marsh-Lights that aggro if you pass too close, I imagine that one part of it could be rescuing those from drowning or something.
If somebody knows what this item is or what it does, I would really like to know in the comments.
The items are great, it just remains to see how much grind it will take to get those. Legacy increase is also great. It may make certain things easier, but the new landscape isn’t your usual walk-through, so it will actually come in handy. And the additional tabs for chat window is also going to be great. Upgrading jewelry, offhands and armour for those of us with more than one character just might take us untill Mordor.
And in the closing… In the notes you could read that the Reputation accelerators are going up in price. If you’re like me and have a lot of marks, you have nothing to worry about, they are still not too pricy. But you should know that the new area actually unlocks more reputation tiers for Host of the West faction, which are even useful, in a sense that they have something behind that reputation level, compared to Minas Tirith, which didn’t. So, stock up in time, the Waste-land is coming.
