Crannog's Challenges and Book 12

So, they recently updated the game again and made some stellar changes in Angmar. I liked this zone to begin with, but now it's 10X more awesome. The quest lines are more logical, the outposts are better, and the level progression across the map just simply makes better sense.

So, I ran both my champ and my minstrel through a series of quests back in good ol' aughaire. The chieftan there (mr. Crannog to you) has a very nice surprise for you at the end of his quest line. I'll let the video below do the rest of the talking.

also introduced with book 12 was THE NEW ULTRA-BARBIE CLOTHING OPTION. So in all their wisdom, the developers added two little clothing slots in your gear, so you can have three outfits to choose for your barbie all while retaining the stats of your "real" gear set. Thank you developers. Now bach can slay the dragon in his party dress. Bless you.

Stunning, just stunning

Post 50 life?

It's the question I asked, and it's the question being asked of me . . . what do you do after you ding 50?

1- Dress your Barbie. It's a term I've had for many years. You see, metaphorically all these MMOs are in essence is like playing a grandios game of "Barbies advanced." Yeah, take a look at those girls. They collect their barbies that usually come with an outfit on them. Then you buy new barbie clothes and you put your barbies in kind of imaginary settings. Then you call up your friend and ask her to bring her barbie over to your house because you got a new dungeon . . um, i mean, malibu play set. So your friend comes over, and you two play on the play set and invent scenarios. Heck, you might as go as far as inviting your whole neighborhood over and you end up having an army of small girls armed with their various Barbies. And then you notice Sarah from the end of the cul-de-sac has THEE COOLEST BARBIE OMIGOSH! I WANT THAT OUTFIT!!! When you ask her where she got that outfit, you find out she raided an outlet store called Helegrod's R US until she found it.

*insert the sound of a phone ringing*
*wife answers on the other end*

"Hey, do you work Saturday night? Yeah, the guild is raiding helegrod, can I gooooo oplease please please?!?!?"

The ideal would be to build one super dooper unreal set of gear. Reality, you carry around multiple sets of gear for various situations and forget to slip in and out of them until it's too late. I will probably try to build 3 sets of gear: resistance gear, mana pool, and soloing/pvp set.

2- Factioning. The latest patch in the game introduced a number of grinds into the game. If you faction enough you can open up the potential to buy certain items like rare shields, gear, new horses (not any faster than the regular horse mind you), etc.

3- pvp. See previous posts for information on this. there really is nothing more fun than fighting a thinking person versus a programmed AI.

4- raiding. (I already talked a bit about this)

5- trait and title grinding. this is basically going back through all the content you did leveling up and filling in the gaps on all the titles and traits that you missed.

6- farming gold. Clear out your backpacks and go kill a bajillion cave claws for money . . . so you can buy outfits for your barbie or horses for your other barbies!!! not to mention crafting stuff. some days I'd rather farm gold and buy crafting materials than farm it up myself. /shrug

7- help your lower level friends. GASP! WHY? Doh . . . you want to go through those high level instances with cool people that you know . . . not some random pug. yikes. It's good karma too.

8- crafting. It takes a lot to grandmaster certain crafts. You'll see if you don't know already.

9- Legendary traits. Finish them all off. yup. Even if they seem useless. yup. Actually out of all the things listed here, this is the activity I'm most anxious to complete lately.

10- level up another character. Why have one barbie when you can have two?

I'm sure I'll have more insights to share after a month or so of post-50 activities. Happy grinding to you all!

A light blue kind of excitement . . .

So, I'm level 38 (ding 38 btw), and I'm closing in on my 40's (and the last 10 levels before the cap). From what I hear 40-50 is a longer haul, so it'll probably take a while.

*puts on his Mr. Explainer cap*

You see, there are really 5 levels of gear in this game

White . . . you're only going to see levels 1-10 wearing any of this stuff.

Yellow . . . your standard world drop and easy quest reward (equate to greens in WoW).

Purple . . . the nice quest rewards and world drops (equate to blues in WoW).

Teal (incomparable) . . . Raid gear and high level epic quest rewards (equate to purples in WoW).

Dark Blue (legendary) . . . /shrug . . . not many get 'em? (Equate to orange in WoW)

?

People in guild have been linking a lot of their teal “incomparable” weapons in guild chat lately, and those weapons are pretty nice. There's also some talk of raiding. Some of the 50's in our guild are already doing pickup raids or forming alliances with raiders, and I can already feel the pull inside me to get to 50 and see the raid stuff.

This is tough for me. I've quit two other MMOs before over raiding, mainly because I know how tough raiding can be on me and my family. Let's face it, raiding in WoW and EQ can be unforgiving for the essential classes, but developers don't stop at essential classes anymore. Take WoW's Karazhan instance; it's brutal (from what I hear). It was stated to me that I could expect to not move from my chair for 3 hours if I raid Karazhan. Ridiculous! If you think the kids and wife will put up with that nonsense, you're living in a completely different universe than me. Even in EQ the newer raids were starting to glue me to my seat, and I was playing a beastlord. Yeah, next to the bezerker, a beastlord has the most uninspired role ever in a raid force. Point. Click. Kill. Yeah yeah, I know, buffs, fero, and pet control, but still there's not much to it.

I've chosen to play a minstrel in LOTRO. There is some heavy, heavy, and intense wack a mole going on with minstrels. Wac-a-mole you say? Yeah, if you've played a healer in any MMO, you know that what you really do is not look at the pretty undulating graphics in front of you; you instead look at the little health bars and wac at them before they reach empty. It's just an advanced version of wac-a-mole.

Events that make it so you have to position, run, jump, tap your neighbor on the shoulder, and bonk your head twice on the mystic healing tentacle while playing this advanced game of wac-a-mole are brutal. fun. but brutal.

And why???? WHY? (you can tell I've completely lost it here in the rant) For that shiny teal “incomparable” gear . . . oh it's so nice. *reveals a bit of geeky leg to the reader*

So . . . again . . . I'm level 38, and there are basically 12 raids in this game at the moment from what I hear. I have no idea what it's going to entail, but knowing me, how intense or not intense of an activity will be what makes or breaks the game. I love putting ultimatums on a game so I feel like I have a sense of control.

. . . or I could just level up another alt or play monster play . . .

BUT WAIT (the rant takes a surprise and almost shocking turn!!) . . . THIS JUST IN! Wait a gosh darn minute, you can get incomparable items another way?

As stolen from https://beta.turbine.com/showthread.php?t=67074

all single use recipes when crit at grand master produce incomparable items.
some regular recipes when crit at grand master produce incomparable items.
class epic quests yield incomparable items.
incomparable weapons drop randomly from bosses in urugarth and carn dum.
an incomparable pocket item is the reward for completing book 8 chapter 5 (in addition to the selectable reward).

there are many level 50 players running around with 5 or more incomparable items.

some of the more lucky crafters are wearing multiple single use crit armor/rings.

with the best tools in game (20% imcomp) and a scroll, the best any crafter can get is 35% chance to crit and make a light blue tool/weapon/ring/piece of armor. every single use recipe requires a trophy from one of the various semi rare elite mobs in the regular combine (eg: colnor, skybreaker, acathling, sagruz, et al). thus there is no crit item for the combine (hence the 35% max chance to crit).

needless to say, it will be quite a while before we see anyone with a full set of light blue armor/rings.

What's "crit" crafting gear? It's just that.

When you make crafting gear, you get a critical chance for it to be extra nice. It's a good perk for crafters.

*takes a breath*

nice.

/end of rant

Ding 28/29, Crafting, and gear sets

So crafting in this game is a bit interesting. They've really tried to interrelate tasks and also make you a bit self sufficient at the same time. For instance, I'm a "tinker." Meaning I make jewelry, mine for minerals, and also like to cook. However I don't just mine gold and silver and copper . . . I'm also mining tin and iron, but I don't need tin and iron. Take a look however at armor crafting people and you'll see that they don't need the gold and silver and instead need the tin and iron, so there's a lot of trading that goes on between players to get what they need. I really like this aspect of the game. (Why not just make an alt armor crafter and be self sufficient . . . what kind of a poor sport are you anyway? Self sufficient, pfffft. Greedy, double pffffft. it's all about the love, yo.)

The past couple of levels have gone quickly, but I am starting to notice the power decline with my damage. I may have to start to build a soloing set that has more Might, Agility, and Vitality on it. The +will items are just so nummy though.

Building an alternate gear set would have its downside though . . . my backpacks are already bursting at the seams with junk. It may be time to downsize once again and CLEAR 'EM OUT. Lack of packrat space remains my number one complaint with MMOs.