Catching up with Bach

Wow. Turn around and a couple months fly by. Sorry about that. Hopefully everyone that reads this blog has marked the RSS for subscription and comes back to read.

So here's what's been going on with my gaming life . . .

• Super Smash Brothers for the Wii -- Really disappointed no one does random internet games on Super Smash. /shrug.
• Boom Blox for the Wii -- My son is absolutely addicted to this game.
• World of Warcraft -- I, yes, defected and played WoW again for a month. In that month time frame I worked a Rogue up from 1-50 and decided that, no, I don't want to play that game.
• Guild Wars -- Every Sunday night our little band of brothers gets together and works through a mission or a quest or two in Guild Wars.
• Diablo II LOD -- Old schoolin' it with BPaul. Rock on. Rolling me up a necro, bonedaddy.
• LOTRO -- Yes! YES! I came back to LOTRO! Let me tell you that the break was just what I needed to refocus myself. I'm back in the swing of things and loving the new (to me) Forochel area.

Forochel was exactly what the game needed for the upper level soloing game. When I took my break from LOTRO my champion was stalled at level 49. I just didn't have any more solo quests I felt up to doing. Forochel, my friends, Forochel. You just catch a horse ride from esteldin over to tinnudir and then run up north until you get to that freezing cold water.

Stingite dings 50 in Forochel!

Side note . . . that water is cold up there. I mean, in some parts if you get in the water, you're dead in about 10 seconds. You've been warned.

Have fun with what you're doing!

Book 11 and the Minstrel . . . hooo boy.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, eh kids? Well Uncle Bach has been busy with stuff . . . like a kid still in diapers that has diarrhea . . . ok, I know . . . TMI. But that’s what this blog is allllll about . . . information! Yes! Information! . . . um . . . you thought it was going to be all about diarrhea didn’t you?


So what’s new? Holy smokes! The new minstrel skills . . . that’s what’s new. You see Book 11 was released. This patch introduced a bunch of great things, the first being player housing. Now the metaphor of playing Barbies is complete as I now have a Barbie house in the hills.

I need to talk to my real estate agent about these mysterious blue squares on the ground.

I went with the elf style of house. I chose a house with a super cool deck in the back where you could fish off of (not really since that isn’t in the game yet) and water tube down. Inside my house I have all manner of fancy stuff and even painted the walls purple.

They also introduced a new instance called the Rift. This is a 12-man raid and is a complete prayer answer to smaller guilds. I haven’t gone yet, but this hasn’t excluded me from being asked to go . . . over and over . . . don’t worry I’m always polite when I say no.

It's not you, it's the repair costs . . . I have a barbie house to keep up now don't you know!

But enough of this Tom Foolery . . . gimme the skills man . . GIMME THE SKILLS.

The new skills are, in a word, awesome. I posted a couple of months ago how I wished we had the ability to toggle our skills. Guess what. At the cost of -50% healing, I now can toggle on the “War-speech” stance and have a decent Damage over Time spell (Chant of the Oathbreaker), 2 AoEs (Call to the Elder King and Call of the Second Age), and a faster refresh on my damage shout/stun. This is fantastic for farming. I mean, who doesn’t want to crit on a mob for +700 . . . Unfortunately, the creeps still have time to run away when I’m solo.

The skills . . . to pay the bills . . . repair bills that is.

When I’m playing it, I like to get the DoT burning (Oathbreaker is so neat to watch since it’s a couple glowing swords that hack away at your opponent), begin the rotation with ballad of resonance (to amp light damage), hit call of the elder king (to make ‘em more susceptible to light damage and do some damage), Round it off with Call of the Second Age (this sucker hits for a lot – they have to be right up against you though), and if it’s up tap Cry of the Chorus (to open up anthems), and lay down anthem of the valar AOE. By this time your call of the elder king will have repoped. It’s farmtastic AoE fun.

Long story short for you minstrels: um, don’t use these when you’re the main healer in a group. Sure, you can stance dance if you have a captain helping you cover heals or something, but come on, -50% healing just isn’t something you want to inflict on your group Now, if you have 2 minstrels in a group or (heaven forbid) 3 minstrels, then FIRE IT UP, BABY! Just make sure one of you has enough common sense to declare yourself “main healer.” Hint: bring a bag of tactical crit gear along. Another hint: Remember you’re wearing medium armor and, therefore, are a glass cannon. Don’t go stealing agro just because you can. Yeah yeah . . . maybe the first couple of times would be good just to say that you’re all that, but we know what really makes you all that: self control.

/wink & have fun!

Ding 50

Here's the video:



I finished my level off primarily from grinding on undead at imlad in east angmar.

Let's review . . .

Ok, first of all . . . all you people new to MMOs have no clue what it was like to ding your last level in the game Everquest. I actually have a chart of my two main EQ charcters and it covers about a year and a half worth of time, and I never in that time dinged the top level. I eventually dinged 75 with my Beastlord (they raised the cap 2 times afterward and have raised it to 80 with the newest expansion to be released Nov 2007 I believe). But this took about 5 months of my very conservative play to ding the top level. I'm not the fastest player; in fact, there was a gal in my kinship that dinged 50 three times over (as in three 50th level characters at her disposal) before I dinged 50 once.

My analsis is that the last 5 levels are the hardest followed by the stretch from 25-35. The rest of the game "leveling-wise" is cake. Your mileage may vary of course.

Here's the deal . . . if you have friends in game and you all level and group and progress along the same paths, you'll sail through the levels. If you primarily solo and group when you can, be prepared to grind without quest bonus exp for a while. In fact, that's how I earned a majority of my final level. I killed a lot of undead in Imlad. This resulted in a bounty of bone necklaces for the blah blah blah of the North faction, but it was probably my least fun experience leveling. On the flip side, I use to grind like that all the time in EQ and that was the norm . . . there really was no such thing as quest exp.

Looking back, here is what I learned from my experiences:

• Unless you have +/- two hours of free time, don't plan on doing any of the instances along the way. Some can take all day if you let them . . . I never did see Fornost or Carn Dum while I was leveling. I did see Greater Barrows and Urugrath and the new Annubiaus (just murdered the spelling there) instance, but those were lucky nights.
• It is essential to finish past Book six chapter six in your epic quest lines. Why? You need to get to the eastern part of Angmar, and the only way you can do that is finish that book.
• If possible, pay a visit to your class trainer every single time you ding . . . until they can't teach you anything more. ;p
• Work the AH. find your niche and work it until you make money.
• Get a horse. I originally posted on this blog that it was a luxury item that you didn't need. I didn't own one at the time and was taking the advice of people that I thought were giving me good advice. Listen. Get a horse and learn how to avoid mobs while riding it. Use your mouse with your right hand and your arrow keys with your left hand to move you around . . . learn to strafe. This alone will improve your horse riding skills 100%.
• The only quests you really don't want to dump are the ones that lead to instances (read that as a long chain quest that eventually leads you to Greater Barrows, Fornost, Urugrath, Carn Dum, etc.) and the epic quests. it's a pain in the butt to research where you were and who gave you the quest after you dump it.
• Higher dps weapons = good, no matter what the class.
• Feign Death (FD) as a minstrel is a fantastic way to lose agro in a group, but you have to be smart. If you're in an instance, realize that FD button is your entire group's "oh Sh**" button. You'll need it to rez after wipes.
• Don't ever lead a train through 4 archers into a group of 2 trolls as a minstrel. >.<
• You can die from falling in two places that I know of. 1- treslebridge and 2- from the mountains of trollshaws down into rivendale.
• Go ahead and suspend your disbelief like you were reading a book. I think you'll dig the experience more.
• This is not WoW. You will not find the funny dances. You will not find the wild colors. You will not find the pop culture references. If you like that, don't play LOTRO or you'll be bored.
• Try everything the game has to offer. You'll be surprised by the things you may have had a pre-disposition to from your other MMO experiences. For me it was pvp.
• more to come

LOTRO PVP De-mystified

Ok, I’m not the most experienced PvP’er in the whole world, so bear with me and know that I come from a somewhat limited PvP background. To the random visitor, feel free to leave your comments or correct this post as you see fit. The purpose of this post is to try my best to demystify the LOTRO PVP to my non-LOTRO playing friends.


Assumptions
1- You know what PvP is. **Note: I use the term PvP here, but in reality this type of PvP is called PvMP (player versus monster player).
2- You understand MMORPGs.
3- You at least know the basic classes of LOTRO.


How to Start
After installing the game, you begin to play a character up to level 10. Once you hit level 10, you will be able to access the “monster play” button from the start up screen.

Once you do this you will see that you have five character types you may play (and 5 creation slots to play with) . . . in fact creation of this monster player is very similar to character creation except for you don’t get to customize your “creep.” Creep is a term used to classify monster players (you know, things that creep along the ground or creep you out at night).

Once you choose your Warg (stealth fighter), Blackarrow (orc archer), Spider (crowd control fighter), Reaver (melee fighter), or Warleader (tankish healer) you give them a name and enter the world of the Ettenmoors. Bam . . . there you are standing in the start camp as a level 50 monster, ready to snack on both NPC good guys and PC good guys alike.

The Land of Ettenmoors
Ettenmoors is a land divided in two. The North western area is where the creeps make their base and the South eastern area is where the Freeps make their base. Freeps? Yeah, we’ll get into that in a second. Just know that the Freeps are the player controlled enemies who will kick your butt one-on-one. You'll need to group up with other Creeps to have a chance or be very sneaky about when you choose to engage a Freep (like when they're questing and don't think anyone is around, so they let themselves get to 50% life with 2 NPCs attacking them . . . we call this "ganking" shhhhhh).

The Ettenmoors is a zone that is inaccessible from the other areas of the LOTRO world. There are quests here like elsewhere in the LOTRO world and there are NPCs here like elsewhere as well. For the most part, the evil looking beings around the north west are amiable to creeps and the good looking beings (even the bears and falcons) to the southeast are amiable to freeps.

In the middle of the Ettenmoors are a number of forts and areas that creep and freep armies can fight to take over and improve. These have acronyms associated with them, some of which are as follows:

• DG (Darg-Gazag)
• EC (Elf Camp)
• GF (Gramsfoot)
• GV (Grams—Creep base)
• HH (Hoarhallow)
• IM (Isendeep Mine)
• LC (Grimwood Lumber Camp)
• Lug (Lugazag)
• Ost (Ost Ringdyr)
• SB (south bridge of TA)
• Stairs (South Coldfells—Freep base)
• TA (Tol Ascarnen)
• TR (Tirith Rhaw)

Questing
There are various quests located throughout Ettenmoors on both the Creep and Freep side. For example, the creeps have a quest to poison the river that runs through Ettenmoors and the freeps have a quest to cleanse the poison in the river. These quests are repeatable every couple of hours or so.

If you complete a quest on the Creep side, you gain money and destiny points. If you complete a quest on the Freep side, you gain money and a token. Destiny points can be spent to improve your Creep. Tokens can be turned in to open up chests with items in them.


Freeps
So what about these Freeps I keep mentioning? Ohhhhh Freeps. Well, you know, once you level your main character to level 40, they can go to any stable master and ask for a ride to the Ettenmoors for a small fee. Once you select this, it quick travel teleports you to the Ettenmoors.

So, the benefit here is that you can earn experience in Ettenmoors for killing stuff (both NPCs and Creeps). The quests aren’t going to net you any experience, but the money and items you earn are “real.” Meaning, this is more than just a mini-game experience tied to LOTRO. It’s an extra component to the game where you can take your loot into the PvE world.

Also know this . . . you can earn titles as a Freep in Ettenmoors, and they will be visible in the rest of the LOTRO world.


Titles
Both Freeps and Creeps gain titles in front of their name as they gain renown/infamy for defeating foes in Ettenmoors. On the Creep side it goes a bit like this:

• Rank 0 (no title) 0-499
• Rank 1 (Tracker) 500-1499
• Rank 2 (Scout) 1500-3499
• Rank 3 (Skirmisher) 3500-7499
• Rank 4 (Fighter) 7500-19499
• Rank 5 (Soldier) 19500-44499
• Rank 6 (Sentry) 45000-94499
• Rank 7 (Chief Guard) 94500-194499
• Rank 8 (Chief Warrior) 195500-344,499
• Rank 9 (Taskmaster) 344,500-544,499
• Rank 10 (Luitenant) 544,500-844,499
• Rank 11 (Commander) 844,500-???
• Rank 12 (Chieften) ???
• Rank 13 (High Chieften) ???
• Rank 14 (Overlord) ???
• Rank 15 (Tyrant) ???

On the Freep side it goes a bit like this:

• Rank 0 (None) 0-499
• Rank 1 (Footman) 500-1499
• Rank 2 (Esquire) 1500-3499
• Rank 3 (Guardsman) 3500- 7499
• Rank 4 (Man-At-Arms) 7500-19499
• Rank 5 (Sergeant of the Guard) 19500-44499
• Rank 6 (Sergeant-at-Arms) 44500-94499
• Rank 7 (Master Guardsman) 94500-194499
• Rank 8 (Master-at-Arms) 195500-344,499
• Rank 9 (High Warden) 344,500-544,499
• Rank 10 (Lieutenant) 544,500-844,499
• Rank 11 (Commander) 844,500-???
• Rank 12 (Third Marshal) ???
• Rank 13 (Second Marshal) ???
• Rank 14 (First Marshal) ???
• Rank 15 (Captain-General) ???

Note that you can toggle this title on and off by simply checking a box in your titles section of your character window.

Titles don't end here though; we've only talked about the prefixes (which are unique to the LOTRO world). There are a number of suffix titles you can earn as well. For instance, if you kill 500 black-arrow Creeps, you can earn the title "Blackarrow foe." There are tons more of these suffix titles and I'll leave those for you to discover. An example creep suffix title would be "mistrel's foe." /shudder to think.

Of Trolls and Rangers
Now to make things more fun, the last expansion introduced a little fun benefit for the Creeps and Freeps: Trolls and Rangers. For the cost of 5,000 destiny points, you can assume a Troll form on the Creep side or a Ranger on the Freep side for about an hour (AFAIK).

These guys have about 12 times the hitpoints of the regular player and really pack a wallop. A Creep raid backed by a couple of trolls can easily drive a Freep raid into hiding. It definitely adds a whole new component to face offs between raid forces.

Destiny Points?

You gain Destiny points as you level your character (past 10th level) at a rate of 200 points per level. These points are account/server based as well . . . meaning, Bachelbu will have earned a total of 8,000 destiny points just by leveling to 50; however, I also have leveled Stingite to 20 . . . that's an extra 2,000 Destiny Points. So my total number of Destiny Points I can use on the Windfola server is 10,000.

As the article states, "If you complete a quest on the Creep side, you gain money and destiny points." This is the benefit of playing a Monster. You earn destiny points for your account.

Destiny points are used for either temporary buffs for your real character (like temporary boost to hitpoints, runspeed, or armor class . . . or to extend rested XP by 2 bubs), permanently strengthen your Creep, or to play as a troll or ranger for an hour.

So Destiny Points are like an alternate currency for you to use on your account/server.

Defeat?

It's pretty much a given that either your creep or freep is going to be defeated at some point in time. The less you're defeated, the more renown and infamy you are worth to the other side and the better your ranking is on the server. This is all tracked in a dialog box from your character information screen under the tab labeled "the war."

If you die as a creep, it has no real impact on your regular characters. So don't worry about leveling one character to 10th level, starting a creep, dying, and worrying about whether that had an effect on your "no deaths" title on your regular character.

If you die as a freep, you don't incur the normally painful repair costs and 10 minute time out due to dread. This doesn't mean you won't incur repair costs "at all." Creeps beating on you will still cause damage to your armor. It just won't be as painful as when you are defeated in the PvE world.

When you do die, you pop up in a little safe circle nearby that is surrounded by ally NPCs that will one shot anyone who gets to close. This is a great spot to AFK. It's also a great spot to trick people into running into after you've damaged them a bit. /wink

Hot Spots

Around every keep in the Ettenmoors, you will find large banners rising into the sky like beacons. The color of these banners will indicate whether the entities surrounding the banners are Freeps or Creeps. White indicates that the hot spot is Freep controlled. Red indicates creep control.

When all banners around a keep are controlled by either the Freeps or Creeps, there is an effect given to the defenders or invaders. The effects of holding all hot spots surrounding a keep could be that any invader nearing the keep will gain a debuff (like an annoying disease damage over time debuff) or that NPCs will help invaders by swarming the keep kamakazi style.

You will hear groups or raids sometimes saying they would like to "flip" or "protect" the hotspot around a keep. Flipping a hotspot means that your fellowship must stand and not move an inch at the base of the banner anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

More to come
Stay tuned . . . I hope to add and refine this post as time goes by, but hopefully this has slightly demystified the basics of PvP play in the LOTRO world.

"It's all about the Challenges!"

. . . sorry about the title, I was having a pokemon diamond and pearl moment. BUT, it is applicable. The past couple of weeks in LOTRO have been all about exploring ettenmores, which is the PVP zone in the game. Now, this is a complete zone that is isolated from the world. It has it's own quests and challenges built into it. Even the random monsters in the world choose sides.

For the most part, I'm one of those that avoids the groups and raids forming to take on the Creeps. I'm more interested in the random encounter with a creep and earning tokens for loot (see post below). I'm already half way to 25 tokens. I've been on a serious drive for these.

First, I'm happy to announce my first kill in pvp! This spider had the audacity to perch himself on a hill in the middle of the hobbit town. Sleeper . . . this bug was worth 89 renown, which I understand is pretty nice. I don't fully understand that system yet. All I know is, I got him and it was fun.

Secondly, I finally figured out this quest. I was looking everywhere for this stump.

The Wolves of Grimwood quest asks you to gather 10 wolf talons (do wolves have talons? I thought that was a bird thing?) and put them on this stump. After waiting a couple minutes (seems like forever), these wolves totally storm the camp. RAWR!

I sat from a distance and watched . . . they will agro on you . . . thank goodness for feign death.

It's pretty fun to watch them clear out the orcs . . . it'd be a great strategy for taking this camp. to help you clear out the trash mobs.

Third, Since kicking up this PvP thing, I've also had the thrill of running for my life and living. YaY. Here's the story as told to one of my good friends in game.

Blogspot just doesn't seem to like the graphics I load up. Anyway . . . post incoming in a bit after I do the 25 token turn in. woot!

The grind . . . here it is

I found on the LOTRO forums some great information on gathering the Legendary Trait books for minstrels. I'm shamelessly stealing it and reposting it here because it's a great list.

Book Name: Melodies of the Valar
Granted Trait: Rally!
Description: In-Combat Rez

Book Name: The Rising Chord
Granted Trait: Song of the Hopeful Heart
Description: 60 second +hope buff

Book Name: Valour's Marches
Granted Trait: Anthem of the Wizards
Description: Light damage AOE + debuff

Book Name: A Lesson from Lindir
Granted Trait: Fellowship's Heart
Description: Instance cure of fear + fear immunity + HOT

Level 50 class quest
-------------
WHere to get the pages

Rising Chord:
1st 4: Orcs in Dun Covad
Last 4: Wights in Imlad Balcoth - all of them, not just archers

Valour's Marches
Worldwide random drop off humanoids (aka non-beast/insect) lvl 39+

Melodies of the Valar
1st 4: Morroval in Western Angmar (both outside and inside the cave)
Last 4: Goblins in the MM

All books drop the same as valour's marches pages, but at a reduced rate. I would guess if you have the book for valar or chord the drop rate is around 5% or less, tradeable pages around 2% and books less than 1%. I firmly believe this drop rate increases slightly based on the level of mobs you kill.

Go ye' forth and grind your hearts out friends. Grind grind grind grind grind.

Ding 40! Oh Noos!

So here I am . . . facing my last ten levels. Btw . . . as a tip, they give you a free 2.5k exp at 40 just for visiting Ettenmoors (the pvp area). Sure it'll cost you 35 silver or so just to pay a visit, but I don't care. I didn't go out to pvp or anything; I just talked to the stable hand, he ported me there, I talked to the stable hand there, he gave me exp loving, and I ported back to the real world. yay. Harmless, shameless exp.

I spent some time the other day just running around mining up copper and gems and killing low level wights. Why? Well I just figured something out in the totally non-intuitive crafting dialog box. You see, once you've completed a tier of crafting, you then have a second notch in that tier of crafting open up so you can "master" that tier of crafting (provided you "mastered" the lower level tier of crafting . . . clear as mud?). What I didn't really get was that there was a tab at the bottom of the dialog box (TOTALLY UNINTUITIVE . . . SERIOUSLY) that you can click on and . . . wow . . . this is what I thought to myself, "you mean if I go farm wights I can get a drop from them that gives me an almost 50% chance to crit when crafting an item? no way!" It's true! (someone is laughing at me for taking so long to figure that out on my own /shrug.) So a lady in our guild wanted some jewelry crafted for her alt and I volunteered. This wasted a bunch of time as I farmed up crit items and enough to give it two shots. LOL. I didn't crit either time. Oh well. It was a nice distraction.

On the killing things front, It's all about Misty Mountains for me now. Jelalron and myself went and killed a bunch of really grumpy Mammoths the other night and also discovered the joys of training through a number of seriously nasty elite mobs to get to some precariously placed non-elite bears I needed to kill. Good times. We then proceeded up a trail through goblin territory and completely destroyed a named at the top. Our little hunter/mistrel combo is something to be feared. Add Rogart for some tankage and we are even more deadly with random world stuff.

Onward to 50! /snap



btw . . . bad me for looking at upper level loot, but I saw this today and actually drooled a bit.

Daddy wants.

First! (and some observances)

Hi. I'm hoping this blog will be a place to not only journal a bit but also to talk a bit about my new chosen class in Lord of the Rings Online. I'm also hoping for a bit of response from anyone that's reading to give more insights or just spur discussion.

I'm playing a minstrel, which is kind of a mixture of bard from EQ and your standard healer class. It's kind of cool, when you play a song, it not only damages your target but also sends out a buff. The third tier of songs you play (have to play a tier 1 and 2 song first) will buff your group as well. And instead of being a hybrid . . . the minstrel is the main healing class. wild.

I've been reading a bit from the class forum boards, and that's a great resource. . . some tidbits I've picked up so far:

• +evasion items might be a good strategy to countering high agro
• Stay close to the tank in most instances so they can use their agro grabbing tools
• people are claiming the agro from healing is outrageous and especially if you don't have a good guardian (i.e., tank)
• +will items are better than +power items
• if you die a lot while soloing you need to learn2playnoob.
  

Things I've noticed so far as a level 14 minstrel:

• The fear you get at this level is good on humanoid targets . . . even elites.
• Clear an area to pull a fear kite target into rather than engage them where they stand.
• You can survive 3 at once if you have a heal potion ready after you kill the first one. Don't even try to song heal yourself if you have 3 beating on you.
• Stat food is good, regen food is better.
• It's dang hard re-finding quest givers sometimes. You may want a good cheat map just to cut down on hunt and find time.
• High level friends powerleveling you through quests that are a little high for you = good. They might even give you some hints about the specific mobs in the areas you're fighting in.
• Always talk to the stable hand to lock in a town.
• Paying 1 silver for a fast zone from stable hand to stable hand to the other side of town may or may not be worth it . . . it has to reload the zone. Probably still faster but . . . every silver counts here at lower levels.
• Lag in Bree is astounding at times.
• Lag in the crafting shop inside Bree can be even more astounding.
• YOU CAN ACTUALLY PLAY AN INSTRUMENT WITH THE /MUSIC COMMAND!!!! You get 3 full octaves and can just sit there and jam. It'll even play chords. Of course, you only get one octave at a time to your disposal.
• Oh man, a lot of people playing instruments at once can be a huge lag factor.
• Repair your gear often.
• Quests are bank for both money and exp. Do 'em.
• Killing a lot of stuff can unlock some cool traits and a title. It's good if you're just in a solo grind mood.
• Day 4 of the same minstrel battle sounds I was ready to destroy the game. Day 6 I had completely blocked the sound out mentally. /shrug.
• Be polite when you see someone fighting a monster right near a mine please . . . they probably are fighting that monster because they want the mine . . . if you jump it, you're a jerk.
  

And that's all I got in me so far. I'm liking my new guild and I'm having fun with the game. Hope to get some good comments and have people drop by as I write my way through the game.