Mr Nasty or Mr Nice?

Nothing particularly strange or startling came with update 5.2 that hit LoTRO yesterday (13th February). The only item of note as far as I’m concerned, is the switch to auto-granting of the following recipes for Dunland-tier crafters:

• Tome of Wisdom recipe
• High Quality Calenard recipe
• Finished Leather recipe
• Reinforced Birch Board recipe

All of these, prior to yesterday’s update, were only available as reputation items from Galtrev, meaning your crafters had to be level 67-ish before they could hope to get them…this was a significant pain for those of us that maintain low-level max-rank crafters. Now, thanks to Turbine playing ‘Mr Nice’ instead of ‘Mr Nasty’, we aren’t being forced to contemplate levelling those low level crafters for no better reason than Turbine’s spite. So thanks to Turbine for that.

Oh yes, also worthy of mention….the introduction of a map for the ‘Pit of Iron’, albeit rather late for the vast majority of folks who have long since passed though that particular ‘doozy’ of an area.

Moving on, last week I was perusing CSTM when I cam across this excellent article which made me aware of a very under-reported change that came in with update 5.1. Namely, quoting from the 5.1 patch notes:

Soldier rank traits have had their prices significantly reduced.

And boy, that should be significantly with a capital S, underlined and in BOLD. I’m not going to repeat what the CSTM article says – read it if you’re unaware of the impact of this change! However, I do what to shown how it affected my main toon – my level 75 guardian.

At the cost of 295 turbine points for the skirmish soldier reset scroll, I applied the said scroll to my level 75 sage. This is how she was built before:

Skirmish Soldier - Before

I received 31,271 marks, from the reset.

I then spent only 11,000 on the re-build to bring her up to level 76, including ALL traits (note the increase in level for all traits as opposed to the prior setup) – meaning a NET gain of over 20,000 marks, as well as an increase in trait levels!

Skirmish Soldier - After

My only issue now, is that I need to do the same with no less than four other toons….which means 4 x 295 TP for the necessary scrolls….an amount I simply don’t have :(. Any chance of a skirmish soldier reset, Turbine? Or are you really ‘Mr Nasty’ in disguise?!

A Symbol, Some Boots and A Legendary Trait…

The last week or so has been good fun!

On Sunday last (eight days ago) I ran the Annuminas instances on my LM, with my kin, and I won my first ever Symbol of Celebrimbor roll. I promptly converted it into a shiny new second age level 65 staff, which I’ve been levelling up ever since.

On Monday & Thursday my kin was back in Barad Guldur, with me yet again on my loremaster; the Monday run saw us repeat our [previous week’s] kills of Durchest and the Twins of Fire & Shadow – and I won the roll on the Dark Emblem of Courage and so am now a proud owner of the BG 30 radiance boots. It’s just a shame that radiance is in its final days as a LoTRO game mechanic. Unless Turbine decide to improve the stats on the BG armour set when radiance is removed, the set will become no more than a cosmetic set. I digress – anyhow, as a coup de grace on my night’s work, at the Twins, a very nice sword (at least for an LM) – ‘Saelwagol’ – dropped and found its way into my bags too, so completing a very good night for me!

Saelwagol

Last Thursday, after the weekly reset, we went back to BG and did for Durchy and the Twins for the third time in a row. Tonight, we’re going to attempt the run from the Twins to The Lieutenant. I don’t for one minute believe we’ll succeed in killing the Lieutenant – it’s our first try, after all – but heck, we’ll give it a go…!

I also spent a good bit of time on my warden last week. She was level 46 at the start of the week, and by Saturday night was up to 48. As well as leveling, I completed the first chapter of Volume 2, and so picked up my first legendary item, a javelin, as a result. I also picked up my first legendary trait by completing my level 45 class quests. I had to use skirmish marks to get hold of the Crimson Gorthorog Horn that I needed, but I was lucky enough to have the other three items (Bloodstained Tally Stick, Rune of Evil Presence and Teeth of Gorthorog) that I needed from my old kin’s bank (which I raided just before my old kin was dissolved).

Talking of skirmishing in the mid-40 level range – the XP that you pick up, even running a tier-1 solo skirmish, is far in excess of what you’d pick up running equivalent quests on level. You almost go through the levels too quickly when skirmishing, I think – but if you want to keep your skirmish soldier at the same level as you, and fully skilled up, regular skirmishes have to be run.

I’m using a banner guard for my warden. It’s not a choice that I’d make again as (1) banner guards seem to be a bit too squishy for my liking, and (2) they insist on being out front where they can spoil my ambushes half the time – not to mention grabbing aggro when I’m not watching closely! That said, I suppose grabbing aggro back, is good practise for end-game grouping…

Anyhow, the next steps for my Warden will be to complete questing in the Misty Mountains and then move on to Eregion – and hopefully in the process pick up the remaining pages that I need for my three legendary-trait books.

Relic Farming – an update

I’d like to give an update on how my relic farming is progressing. A couple of posts ago I mentioned that I was going to start running skirmishes with the sole intention of buying tier one runics with my hard-won  skirmish marks, and from there trying to attain some tier-eight and even tier-nine relics, for my legendary items.

I have to say that progress has not been as fruitful as I’d hoped. I’m finding that the average tier-one solo skirmish is netting me around 320 skirmish marks, which when bartered give me 13 or 14 tier-one (‘Fused Bronze’) runics.

Fused Bronze Relics

 When deconstructed, I find that these runics net me around 120 tier-one relics, which then convert into approximately 2 tier-five relics – on average.

So, I’m finding that I need to run two tier-one solo skirmishes, in order to net one or two tier-six relics, which in turn means around six skirmishes for each tier 7 relic.

I’m having no luck with relic crits at all – at this stage I’ve deconstructed literally hundreds of relics and never had a crit yield better than a couple for tier 4 relics.

Taking the above into account, I’m guesstimating that I’ll need to run 40ish tier-one solo skirmishes in order to obtain the six tier-nine relics that I’m after on each toon….that’s a lot of skirmishes in my book. Anyhow, I’ll stick at it and maybe I’ll get lucky with some crits to speed up the process….again, watch this space.