LOTRO ECONOMY UPDATE

The appearance of new content usually provokes rumbles in the LOTRO economy, and Book 14 has been no exception. One major new factor has been the ring lore quests - 70,000 of them per server before the gates to Eregion are opened. Each of the 70,000 quests is rewarded with a chest containing a item of some kind; these range from second-tier rep items all the way up to (or so rumour, or a single post on the Codemasters forum would suggest) a Helchgam's slime - one example of which was sold on the AH about a month ago for 20G. Don't hold your breath, though.

The vast majority of rewards are third-tier rep items, and this has definitely impacted on their price in the AH. Luistins (Lossoth rep items) which were selling for up to 475s in early July are now averaging 150s, and War Dispatches are down to around 300s from 450s. In general, the best-selling rep items are still those for the tougher or more useful factions, namely Lossoth, Council of the North and Elves of Rivendell, and while the price of these has all dropped, the demand is still there.

Interestingly, though Beryl Shards are now dropping (though not very often) from more mobs than before, the price of this perennial market indicator has remained surprisingly firm throughout July, and still averages about 750s. Exceptional Hides, most easily farmed in Forochel, are also maintaining their price, averaging about 400s for fifty.

Slightly more recipes seem to be dropping from mobs. Though down by about 25% on a couple of months ago, top prices can still be achieved by recipes for polished weapons and engraved beryl jewelery; recent examples were 1G, 500s for a Polished Ancient Steel Dagger recipe, and 2G, 100s for an Engraved Beryl Earring recipe. The new woodworking recipes and scholar's dye recipes are also in demand at the moment, but the market for the commoner recipes, including many that are single-use, has sagged badly.

LEGENDARY ITEMS

Legendary items have made their first appearance with Book 14. So far, we have seen items in four categories: “Common” (usually grey icons), “Uncommon” (green icons), “Rare” (purple icons) and “Incomparable” (teal icons). The colour coding has not been entirely uniform, since a number of items such as trophies and components don’t always follow the rules, but it is usually valid for armour, weapons and jewellery. It is worth noting that there has been some confusion in the past over the precise character of “Legendary” items; for example, the LOTRO online database MMODB includes a long list of Legendary items which are in fact only Incomparable (teal).

It is now confirmed that the icons for true Legendary items will have a gold (or deep yellow) background to their icons. So far, four Legendary items have surfaced, but disappointingly, they turn out to be nothing more than re-classified Balrog drops: a necklace, an earring, a pocket item and the Wig-feld cloak. The three items of jewellery are good but not stunning, and depending on your class, they may or may not be an improvement on the best teals; Wig-feld is probably the finest general-purpose cloak available to date. All four of these drops are rare to extremely rare.

LATEST DEV CHAT DIGEST

Shorn of verbiage, bad jokes and waffle, here is the gist of the information released during the latest Dev Chat session. Probably more hard information percolated through on this occasion that is usual in these sessions.

NEW REGIONS IN BOOK 14
Book 14 has little in terms of new playable landscape for players to explore. We are introducing a small portion of Eregion to support our epic story but mostly the efforts of the World Team for Book 14 settled firmly in the realm of bug fixing.

NEW INSTANCES IN BOOK 14
Q: Where will the new 6 man instances take place and what size will they be?
A: They will take place in... familiar locations. As for scope, I designed them to be pretty quick, a 1/2 hour to an hour, but unpredictable and a bit random. Let's just say, you haven't seen any instances like this in LOTRO before.

NEW SCHOLAR RECIPES IN BOOK 14
There are a number of new scholar recipes coming online in book 14 - some for potions, others for new dyes and wall colours for your home, improved battle lore scrolls, and one-use recipes that allow you to make items that will be very handy for other professions.

THE RAIDING BUG
Q: Will the infamous raid vitals bug that is afflicting European LotRO players be fixed in time for Mines of Moria?
A: I have been told that the Raid vital bug has been fixed for Book 14. Or so they tell me!

ANUMINAS & OTHER ARMOUR SETS
There are new armour sets in book 14 and the Annuminas armour set has seen a very good upgrade. Additionally, helegrod has been changed over to use bartering.

UNSPECIFIED BOOK 14 CHANGES
I'm pretty excited about Book 14. I got to create something for this update that I have never done before, and we have never seen in LOTRO before. I am going to be REALLY vague about exactly what is coming, but let's just say I'm trying to make the story much more important to everyone in the game, not just those of high level.

SKILL COOLDOWN & WEAPON SPEED
Q: I have a game mechanics-related question. This has been discussed both recently and in the past, and even the lorebook gives contradictory information on this. Basically, are skill cooldowns affected by weapon speed or are those solely dependent on skills? If so, is there any other use for weapon speed besides seeing what your auto-attack cycle speed is?
A: Individual skill cooldowns are not affected by weapon speed, only the time before you can next execute subsequent skills. Attack with a fast weapon and you have to wait less time after that skill is done before your next skill will start. Some skills are designed to ignore the weapon speed related timer, but those are usually quite special and built [to?] allow a faster response.

MORIA: NEW MOUNTS
Any new mount variations made available between now and Moria will mostly be saddle and color variations. However, we have a region coming up (you may have heard of of it) that ponies (and assumedly horses as well) dare not tread. This means that something new is coming.

MORIA: WARDEN & RUNE-KEEPER CLASSES
The Warden is a more "tank-y" class and is a master of marital combat, and must strike his blows in such a way to best finish off his enemies. The Rune-keeper is a master of words, and uses those to either damage his enemies or inspire his allies.