Eccentric Flower:200907/NOTRO
From Eccentric Flower
NOTRO
This is a set of informational links I have collected for Lord of the Rings Online. It's for myself and Mel. I'm pretty sure everyone else here can safely ignore it.
- The whole set of "What We Wish Other Classes Knew About ___" links from the Lorebook. Some are fairly incomplete (there's very little about rune-keepers) but others are vital.
In general the informational articles written by users in the Lorebook are the only reasons to use it, except for their interactive maps of things like deed locations. Their quest and item descriptions are, by and large, just straight copies of the text from the game database.
- To make up for the lapse mentioned above, here is a very good guide to RK skills.
I've tried it and it's kind of fun, but I haven't invested in it enough to set up proper key mappings for it. Fortunately the key mappings for when you are in music mode are completely different from your main ones, which is good, because you need a lot of keys to be able to effectively play three octaves ....
- Those fellowship maneuvers. Categorizing them as poker hands actually makes a lot of sense, but I'm still not trying for anything but a flush.
This means you should be very careful about helping random strangers, or someone is likely to get pissy because you took some of his experience. The division actually works more to everyone's favor if they are in a group; this is presumably to encourage groups, but the system as a whole also may be set up to discourage powerleveling - i.e. when my 38 adventures with your 24 and one-shots everything, you're not getting tons and tons of easy exp because the 38 is sucking a lot of it away (and the 38 isn't seeing much benefit either because the critters are so low-level with respect to her, so the "gray" cap has kicked in).
- Several times I asked in-game about what some of those weird damage types did. Here is a person who was crazy enough to do some dedicated research and record the results.
In general, "common" damage - which is what most normal weapons and some spells do - is the least effective on everybody. Strangely, some critters you'd think would be vulnerable to certain damage types are not, and others you'd think would have special immunity do not. (For example, counter-intuitively, salamanders are not extra-resistant to fire damage. Nor are they extra-susceptible to it.)
Of particular interest: Trolls don't like Light damage and they also don't care much for Fire; wolves don't like Fire, but wargs don't care one way or another; goblins and orcs don't like Light, but half-orcs don't care (they hate Beleriand damage though). Spiders and insects don't like Beleriand. All dragonkind, even the cold worms, don't like Ancient Dwarf damage. The dead/undead do not like Westernesse damage, and if you don't have that, try Light. All the critters that are "made of wood" (trees, roots, bog-lurkers) don't like Fire - hey, at last an intuitive finding!
You probably haven't gotten a weapon that can do Westernesse, Beleriand, or Ancient Dwarf damage yet (you will!), but Fire and Light are worth noting because your hunter, in particular, can convert all ranged damage to Fire or Light damage just by applying an oil which is available from any hunter trainer.
- And finally, an article which delights me with its sheer outlook and optimism, even though I don't believe it. If I thought this game would last another two years, I'd have gotten a Lifetime membership.
Mel:
I'm gonna use this as a parking place for various LOTRO-related comments while you are gone, since probably nobody else is much interested, anyway.
The main thing I have to report is that Kinslo found a group last night after you left to do Finding Dori (wonder why he didn't go to Moria with Ori and Oin, anyway?) and we ended up with a group of 6, of which I was the high one at 34, but mostly right around that same level, and so of course with so many we had no trouble at all. And I may not have been 34 when you left, actually, but I discovered that I was very close shortly thereafter and went and killed things until I leveled.
Oh, and I also got that scholar quest that was down in the swamps with the books (you'll remember that from the other day) and I did that one, although I haven't turned it in yet. And I took Zaina and did some running around in the Trollshaws in search of lebethron and she stayed alive, which was somewhat reassuring. I was really intending to play the alts more and Ceinnwyn less while you were gone (note that I seem to be considering Ceinnwyn my main now, I guess because she's now the highest level by quite a lot) but I may change my mind and get some of that group stuff over with instead. We'll see.
I did like the optimistic article above. I really would like to think this game will be around long enough that we'll get to see more of its world.
-- 14:36, 6 August 2009 (BST)
Mel:
Thursday in LOTRO: There was Guild Drama. Again. Edgerickan (however you spelled it) decided to leave, for reasons that aren't quite clear to me, and several people evidently decided they loved him more than they loved the guild and went with. Which is a bit odd to me, but what can you do. The clearest explanation I got was that he "felt unappreciated" - and well, I guess having more than one person follow you to another guild ought to make his little heart go pitter-pat, then.
I played everybody BUT Ceinnwyn tonight. Well, and Meleuriel, just because I didn't get around to her! The most notable thing might be that I ran Anerulias to that middle town in the Trollshaws - she hasn't been to Rivendell yet but I'm not crazy enough to try that on my own.
-- 08:50, 7 August 2009 (BST)
Mel:
OMG, Big Guild Drama!!! (Big enough to call for exclamation points.) Let's see, well, first of all, I don't think that Briannas or Slidron either one were there when Edge pulled his big noisy exit Thursday night. And also I failed to mention before that the big noisy exit involved sending the whole guild a message - which was interestingly coy about exactly why he was leaving. The consensus, near as I can tell - among people who are not particularly his friends, at least - is that he got an offer to be an officer in a new guild and he's pretty much actively recruiting people out of Captains to join. So of course that didn't go over too well. Plus, even still on Friday, people just couldn't shut up about it, which I think exacerbated things. So tonight a couple of people mentioned in chat that they were grouping with Edge and Slidron snapped, or something. He threw the people out that had said that and he sent out a mail that basically said you had to choose between Edge and the kin. And then I guess there was backstage drama about that, because a few minutes later Slidron resigns from being an officer and then he leaves the guild.
The good thing is, the short-term effect of it seems to have been good. As in, the air is cleared and Briannas is back in charge and she promoted a bunch of people to be new officers and the people who are still around seem pretty happy to be there. Briannas also was very clear in saying that who you're friends with is your own business. (Although I think people really ought to shut up about Edge in chat for a while, myself.) Oh, and I'm not 100% sure about how many people Slidron threw out, but at least two of them immediately came back.
In other news, I got my first taste of Dol Dinen tonight, and it did not go well, really. Although I got a couple of quests done in the process. There were two Captains groups running around Dol Dinen, and I was in the second one and all the people who really knew what they were doing were in the first one, or so it seemed. Aside from just being uncoordinated, nobody was watching out for MY health and so a couple of orcs or trolls would decide to pound on me and nobody would come to my rescue, and then after I died, of course everybody else died too, because there was nobody to heal them! Anyway, clearly it's a hard zone but I think it was probably a bit harder than it needed to be. Ceinnwyn is 2 bars from 35 but doesn't have enough money for a horse, still, because she keeps having to spend it on training and such!! But I'll worry about that later.
-- 10:41, 9 August 2009 (BST)
(These are fascinating to read, in much the same way as stumbling across letters from, say, the 1920s. The details may change, but human-scale politics is eternal.)
-- 19:50, 10 August 2009 (BST)
Mel:
Cool, thanks!
-- 05:27, 22 July 2009 (BST)