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Sunday 21 November, 2010
After just a few days not playing, I dove straight back in after Far Cry 2 turned out to be a bad idea for me. I had a couple things I wanted to do on my Lore-Master. One was try a dungeon, which I didn't do yet because I'm kind of hesitant, not quite sure what it will be like, and I really want to enjoy it. I'll get on it soon. The second thing was level up my professions, one of which was a quest into the North Downs. I haven't bought that quest pack (595 or something Turbine points), but I did buy the Lone Lands one, on sale for 50 points, which I had on my character. Turns out you can travel freely through the zone even if you don't pay for it, and you can see the quests and interact with NPCs, but you just can't take their quests. Main story and profession quests are exempt, so I got my Master Journeyman Tailor quest, which I'll bother doing later. I just wanted to see if I could go get it. The monsters get significantly stronger halfway across the zone, jumping from the low-20s to the upper-20s.
I figured I'd go on and make another character since I want to try more classes and play through the other racial starting zones. I went on and did a Hobbit Minstrel, and I really like it, better than the lore-master at the moment because he can do more. The LM just does lots of debuffs, which I'm sure is totally useful for group play, but the M uses songs, ballads, and anthems as skills. Skills are on tiers, so you have to play like a tier 1 song before you can play a tier 2 song, then a tier 2 song before a tier 3 song, etc. It's pretty neat. So minstrels concentrate on buffing and healing instead of debuffing and damage. All the buffs though do damage, but there are no cast times, so you're constantly using an ability, whereas the lore-master had some slow casts that enemies easily prevented from being efficient. I feel like the minstrel definitely has better survivability. Even though the LM can stun and daze enemies to control many at a time, the minstrel has a fear to occupy one, can pretty much insta-kill another, and then since almost all abilities are instant ranged attacked, the minstrel is quite the kiter, especially with this 5% run speed pocket item I have. I was wary at first of making two ranged classes, but they play very differently. I narrowed down my third and final character to either an elven ranger or an elven or dwarven champion. I will probably go with the champion, who is your typical destroy-everything warrior because I always like playing dual-wielding melee classes, and I've already got 2 ranged ones. Plus, there's this elusive set of titles you get for reaching level 5/10/15/20 without dying and I think the heavy-armor pure damage champion would be good for that. I think my LM died at level 7 and the minstrel made it to 9. The LM was my fault for attempting a really difficult signature enemy and the minstrel was just dumb. I got killed by a regular bear like one level higher than me, which I could have prevented by healing myself but I just wasn't thinking. And that's the ONLY time the minstrel has died so far up to 15 on accident. The other couple deaths have been on purpose. Here's to 20 without dying!
So the minstrel hobbit, and presumably now all the races, have the same beginning story. They get tossed in a brigand's jail cell because they get captured in various ways, and they all escape with the help of Strider to rescue a Baggins who the enemy thought was Frodo with the Ring. Then you do the same set of tutorial quests to level 6 or 7 to try to save Archet, and then defend its destruction. After Archet, instead of staying in the burned out Archet like Men, you go back to the Shire, so I figure elves and dwarves go back to their respective places too and then have unique content through the introduction from 6 or 7 through about 15. Everyone winds up going through Bree between 10-15, and then from there can finish up Bree-land quests, Southern Downs, and then has to choose North Downs or Lone Lands to go from low-20s to past 30.
The Shire is a ton of fetch and errand quests, which like I said before, is forgivable because it makes sense. Hobbits aren't going to go around killing monsters in the Shire. It's the Shire. There are two huge quest chains, one where you become a mail runner and run packages literally all over the zone from town to town, and another where you deliver this woman's pies, then discover the berries in them are all bad, and then go and retrieve pies from every town and bring them back to her. It's a LOT of running. There are at least 10 little hobbit towns and I ran back and forth and back and forth between them all doing quests. It feels very much like what I imagine the Shire would be like. The hobbit NPCs are funny too. Some bicker, they're nosey and hungry, they like fireworks and food. One quest I did a few things to appease this ghost in a woman's library, and after nothing worked, she finally asked me to brave up and go inside, wherein you discover a squirrel behind the bookshelf. It was cute. I'm almost done with the zone, but before I play next, which will be an epic level 15-20+ session, I'm going to use my 24-hour horse gift because timing it on those last 5 levels before I can legitimately quest for a horse is a good point.
What else have I learned about this game? In looking back over the previous couple LOTRO entries, the game is still beautiful. I've taken about 40 screen shots, mostly of landscapes, and then of famous characters. At the beginning of the hobbit story, you actually encounter Frodo, Sam, and Perrin leaving the Shire! Then Frodo gets a bad feeling and they run off. Seconds later a Black Rider comes demanding to know where Baggins is, but he lied to you about his name, so you don't actually know it was him, and the Rider goes away. Then you get jumped on by bandits. Bad day, huh? The Black Riders look awesome and scary and like death incarnate, and the game does this cool being-watched-by-The-Eye perspective when you're afraid and full of dread and gloom in the presence of evil. It's intense to experience.
The sound is still good, but some of the Shire music is grating. There are some high flute notes that I don't like. I'll actually be glad to get away from that flute. I learned that you can MAKE music in the game, which is part of why I chose a minstrel. You can purchase instruments and get proficient with them, and actually write music in the game, and if you Google LOTRO music, it's basically got tab for you to play a lot of songs in-game. Seems pretty cool, and I'd like to try it out once I get some more bag space, which unfortunately by the way, is becoming an issue. LOTRO has lots of things I want to hold onto that take up space, especially crafting materials. This second character is a Tinker, which encompasses Jeweler, Prospector, and Cook. My other character is a...I don't remember, but...Oh yeah, Explorer, which is Tailor, Woodsman, and Prospector. I didn't really mean to have two prospectors, but it makes being a Jeweler easier since I can just mail over minerals and gems from the lore-master. I realize that professions really complement one another in this game. I guess it's like WoW's gathering/crafting dichotomy. In WoW, you'd be silly to have Jewelcrafting without Mining. Same thing here with Jeweler and Prospector. So between my two characters, I've also got Woodsman, which goes with Tailoring because Woodsman lets you make Tailor materials from leather. With Woodsman, you can also chop wood, but that's for like Woodworking or something, which I don't have anyway, so I'm not chopping anymore wood. That's one less type of node to stop and gather at when I'd rather be doing something else. Then Cooking I don't have a single point in yet. I'm pretty sure I need a Farmer to utilize cooking. I can use some fish from the fishing hobby, but I need other food too. So that third character I make, I need something with Farming, something else that works with metal, like a Weaponsmith, which would be cool for a Champion, and something else. I think there was a Farmer/Weaponsmith/Scholar path. Scholars are beneficial for everyone, and as far as I can tell, you just loot Scholar materials off humanoid bodies and find them in ruins. So that should make for 3 useful profession types on the 3 characters.
I did join a guild (Kinship) yesterday, so I finally get to see how that works. It seems pretty normal like a basic setup in any other MMO, except the guild has a HOUSE with vendors that give guild discounts! I haven't gone there yet, but I bought the reagents to fast travel there. I'm curious to see it. The guild seems really big, but I can't tell a number. At any time there seems to be around 20 people online, and lots of high level characters doing dungeons. I'll stick in it and get a feel for how the game allows guilds to be social and get things done together. Guilds have ranks (1-10), and this one is 10, which just means it's been around a long time and it has all guild benefits, like a house. I've pretty much figured out the looking for fellowship interface, but no one has talked to me through it and I'm too scared to start my own group for the low-20s dungeon since I don't know what I'm doing there. Oh, I also found out about trophies. You can kill rare monsters or fish rare fish, or do various other fancy things and go to a taxidermist to have them mount it on a plaque to put in your house. There are also home supply vendors and clothing vendors, where you can customize your house or wardrobe, all very cool. LOTRO lets you have 3 outfits: one is your fighting gear, and two cosmetic ones. The cosmetic ones don't even have to be in your bags to show off. It's very cool. There's also reputation with various factions, and I bought my first rep item today, a mail satchel, from some hobbit faction in Michel Delving. I can carry the satchel around. I just bought it because I could, but seems purely cosmetic.
That's LOTRO so far. Plan is to play the minstrel using the temporary horse until it goes away, and then set it aside until I have a good month to play it a lot, which will probably be at least a few months from now since Cataclysm is right around the corner and I'll be home for a month not playing anything.
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