STUMBLING THROUGH THE MURK IN MIRKWOOD

I've spent the last few weeks exploring Mirkwood, leveling up my main character, replacing old legendary items, collecting new ixp runes, acquiring the +25 radiance armour pieces, running skirmishes and pioneering the new Barad Guldur 12-man raid with my kinship. In other words, it's been busy, and in that time I've sampled pretty much everything that's available in Siege of Mirkwood. So? Personally, I think this has been the best expansion since before Mines of Moria - in fact, the best expansion since the one which brought us the Rift - and I believe it vindicates those of us who insisted that the game would eventually get its act together again.



First of all, the visual design is absolutely brilliant. The various regions of south Mirkwood are all different in interesting ways, both visually and in terms of content, but they all share a common eeriness. I was particularly impressed by the way that the woods are, well, murky... In other words, they're not pitch-black, causing you to keep walking off cliffs, but actually communicate the feeling that something could be lurking in the gloom just a few yards away from you - as, in fact, it probably is. Actually depicting gloom rather than darkness is no mean feat, graphically, so congratulations yet again to the landmass designers at Turbine.



The skirmishes are fun. They are quite fun to run solo, but they can be a real hoot in groups of six or more. The devs, wisely to my mind, effectively decided to make skirmishes largely irrelevant to a character's progress in the game, so that the skirmish marks you accumulate are largely employed in increasing your soldier's abilities. There are two exceptions to this rule. One is that skirmish marks can be exchanged for class quest items, some of them once extremely rare and valuable; I'm not entirely certain I approve of this, as it obviously tends to devalue wonderful old locations like Carn Dum, but I can also see how this could come as a relief to new players who may be having a hard time getting fellowships together for the tougher mid-level instances. The other exception, which some players may not have cottoned onto and which is a very good reason for high-level players to keep running instances, is that 1,950 skirmish points will buy you a Scroll of Empowerment with which you can upgrade any legacy on a l.65 legendary item by one tier. This makes it possible, and even feasible, to boost all your legacies to the maximum.



The three and six-man instances in Barad Guldur are well-designed and intelligently plotted, and have considerable replay value. They are also very different from one another, meaning they don't necessarily all appeal to the same player. The least popular appears to be the Dungeons instance, which involves a considerable amount of trickery and sneaking about, plus a hefty dose of luck, but it makes a good pendant to Sword Hall, a fast, purely combat-oriented instance. Judging by looking for fellowship requests, the six-man Sammath Gul instance is by far the most popular, partly of course because the major boss fight here is the game's only source of the rare Symbol of Celebrimbor, without which no Second-Age l.65 legendary can be crafted.

Ah, those legendaries again... Well, the facts are straightforward: to begin with, your old, much cherished l.60 First-Age weapon is pretty nearly useless, as in DPS terms it can be trumped by any new l.65 Third-Ager. So break it up, and dry your tears. Next, while Third-Age LIs are pretty easy to find or buy, Second-Agers no longer drop from anywhere and are now genuinely rare. They can only be crafted, and crafting requires the aforementioned Symbol of Celbrimbor, whose drop rate seems to be very roughly 1:10 - so even at this point in time, not many players have even one Second-Age l.65 item, let alone two. On the plus side, your chances of getting good legacies from the start have increased dramatically - it's still a gamble, but no longer a virtually hopeless one. More interestingly, you can now effect changes to your LIs yourself; Scrolls of Delving will increase an item by ten levels, to l.70, and as noted above, Scrolls of Empowerment will upgrade one tier. You can also choose to replace a single legacy with a new one which will increase a basic ability.

As for the new 12-man raid, I can confirm that it is difficult - very difficult for the average kinship and, I would say, not even worth trying with a PUG. This is not so much a matter of design trickery, just that even after you have learned the tactics (and there seems, mercifully, to be more than one ideal tactic for each fight), it calls for considerable precision, speed and accuracy - Barad Guldur is very unforgiving. Need I mention that in the first boss fight, every player death gives Dûrchest a 17.5% melee damage buff, and that after he reaches 130k morale, every death heals him for 190k morale?

LATEST LOTRO DEVCHAT FROM WARCRY

WarCry Network had a chance to chat with Turbine's developers on 11 November. The full transcript is available on their site. Nothing earthshaking was revealed, and in fact most of the responses were either disappointing or else offered nothing new.

Dev Orion clarified the new development he calls 'Inspired by Greatness', a mode which will enable players to solo Epic Quests by temporarily increasing stats: "In the current implementation, the buff increases your statistics to allow you to readily handle the foes present within instance spaces. What that means, in the short term, is that a player deciding to take the solo version of an epic quest that contains an instance will be bumped up to the approximate level of an Elite creature. This also includes some bonuses to regen that make it possible for players to survive against multiple opponents".

One of the most eagerly awaited elements of Siege of Mirkwood is the new multi-boss raid in Dol Guldur. In answer to a question about how many bosses this would include, dev jwbarry replied "The raid at the end of the cluster features multiple boss fights, it's a full raid not a lair raid. There will also be at least 8 skirmish raids launching. These are designed for 12 players and have been balanced as such, including custom built bosses for each" - so nothing really new, there.

Little of interest was said about legendary items, other than Graal reiterating "The addition of scrolls that allow legacy tier upgrades and various other improvements to Legendary items allows players to continue to upgrade their Legendary Items far beyond what is currently available. Initial ranks of legacies will be somewhat lower in Mirkwood to make room for these upgrades".

More fuel was added to the debate about whether Wardens make good main tanks by Belechannas' question: "A Warden who is defeated and then revived (with their threat reset to zero) lacks any aggro catch-up skill similar to Engage/Rising Ire. Is it intended that Wardens are the only class unable to function in their primary role after being revived in a long fight?". To which Graal responded, rather discouragingly for Wardens, "The lack of an instant threat catch up skill is one of the differences in tanking between Wardens and Guardians, just like Wardens dont have a easily used forced taunt. It is unlikely, but not impossible that this will change. Bottom line...Dont die".

To questions about the availability of new skills in SoM, Jalessa disappointingly responded "With Siege of Mirkwood, each class will get one skill upgrade at level 62", and "There are no class quests added in Siege of Mirkwood". So with five new experience levels, we get just one new skill - confirmation that current policy is for improvements to come largely through the acquisition of new gear. Unfortunately for those who aren't into raiding, or hate the radiance gating system, Jalessa also pointed out that "we're not looking to add radiance to crafted gear at this time".

jwbarry reassured a questioner that Skirmish rewards would be available to all, even those who were unable to take part in 3, 6 or 12-man skirmishes: "All items will be available for purchase for all players. Small Tokens come from and 3 man skirmishes. Large Tokens come from 6 and 12 man skirmishes. Some rewards require Small Tokens and some require Large Tokens, in addition to an amount of Skirmish Marks. Large Tokens can be downgraded into Small Tokens with no additional cost. Small Tokens can be upgraded into Large Tokens with an additional amount of Skirmish Marks. The goal is that with enough time, everyone, regardless of playstyle or preferred group size will be able to get all the rewards they are striving for".

Champions have been particularly worried about the loss of their Fervor stance legacies with the new SoM legendary weapons. According to Graal, "The Champion legacies were worked over the most of any of the classes due primarily to the reduction and consolidation of Stance based legacies. Champions gain several legacies that give damage bonus to individual skills, a critical magnitude legacy and several more utility type legacies. In addition all of the Ardour/Glory legacies have been combined to affect both stances".

Finally, to my mind the most interesting new feature revealed here (I may have missed an earlier announcement, however) was the "Immediate" skill execution type. Graal described this as "a new skill execution type that will absolutely interrupt whatever you are doing and execute the skill. We use this for interrupt type skills like Clobber".

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