LM Re-trait and Relic Farming

With ‘Free to Play’ only a few days away here on the EU servers (it’s happening tomorrow on the US servers), I’ve been busy trying to get my LM through the last chapters of volume two, and the first chapter of volume three. So far it’s going smoothly, and in the process I’ve been working through the Mirkwood quest hubs; she’s now working on the quests out of Gathburz, plus approaching kindred rep with the Malledhrim, to boot.

I have to say that I’ve been really impressed with the DPS that I can now dish out with an LM, since equipping my long-overdue ‘Sword and Shield’ legendary trait (see my last post). Also, after listening to CSTM’s Lore master round-table, I decided that my class traits needed serous re-visitation too, so I’m now running with the following when grouping (and it seems to be pretty effective for soloing too – when I can’t be bothered to re-trait):

Dúnadan-learning

Beast-Lore

Proof against all ills

Power & Wisdom

Explosive Force

Fast Loader

Staff Strike

So, having moved away somewhat from the ‘Keeper of Animals’ trait line, I’m now using my Eagle pet almost exclusively, due to the additional flanks it seems to produce over and above my much loved Bog-Lurker (but I do miss those ranged attacks still!). My LM survivability has definitely increased too with this set-up – helped, of course, by the heals from the additional flanks that I seem to be getting.

Elsewhere, last weekend, I came across an interesting article on Doc Holiday’s blog detailing what he thinks is the best method of farming relics. Now, I have to say I’ve never been too bothered about relics – I’ve just slotted whatever I had handy, on each of my toons.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always adopted what I thought was a pretty reasonable method of relic acquisition – levelling legendary items (LIs) to level 11, and then deconstructing them, and always having at least two or three LIs on the go at any one time. That said, I’ve never managed to acquire more than three level 7 relics on any single one of my toons, so I thought it was about time to try acquiring some level 8 and 9 relics….

The Doc Holiday method basically revolves around combing large numbers of level 1 relics, acquired via the deconstruction of tier 1 runics (‘Fused Bronze Relics’ acquired from skirmish reward vendors). So, if we say that a typical solo skirmish will net around 300 skirmish marks, and each tier 1 runic costs 23 skirmish marks to buy, and each tier 1 runic will typically net around eight level 1 relics, then a typical 30-minute skirmish will net approximately 100 tier 1 relics! When you combine these 100, you are guaranteed at least some crits, so from one skirmish you will typically gain a good batch of level 4 & level 5 relics, sometimes one or two level 6s, and occasionally a level 7 – all from a single solo skirmish….I like that! I’ll report on how I’m progressing towards my goal of level 8 and 9 relics, in my next post.