Old, but according to this they do, or did anyway. And yes it’s a very rare drop: https://www.lotro.com/en/forums/showthread.php?511346-Hobbit-Presents-Know-the-odds.
I’ve occasionally gotten some pretty nice blue armor from the Hobbit Presents. Mostly it’s the various bags of scraps or some mostly-useless buff item, but once in a while it pans out.
I’m still just barely finished with Moria, so maybe it’ll soon be obsoleted, but the level 60 Mathom-Hunter gear I got from the hobbit presents was still a huge jump over any of the quest gear I got while doing Moria.
If you are not max level it can occasionally give you a nice reward, but at max level there was only one thing I wanted and it has so far not dropped. :)
So, I have to say, having spent two nights playing since Helm’s Deep dropped, I’m really liking the trait tree changes.
The ability to toggle back and forth between two different spec lines is really nice. My champion can spec red to do high DPS against single opponents, then, when I approach a group of MOBs, I can switch over to my yellow trait-line to do AOE. There are lots of new skills to learn and we’re now less locked in to a single play style. As the level gap grew and grew, our skills were becoming bloated. This new approach limits the number of skills available at any given moment but allows us to become more powerful by investing in skills outside our primary trait-line.
I have the same builder skills I had after the patch that I had before. Some of the gambits I can build have changed - but I wouldn’t say there’s been a big change for how I play. Besides the basic gambit building traits, I’ve got access to the spear+ and shield+ but I believe those are dependent on the class skills you have slotted. I’ve got enough spear skills slotted to give me access to both lines. You may want to check those built up correctly. You don’t go to the bard anymore to do that; it seems that happens in the trait panel now, too. Also, I’m only level 65, so don’t consider me an expert.
Razgon
2666
Well, my lvl 28 only has 3 builders? Not 4 like I used to? Grrr…this is the third time they’ve changed how wardens work completely.
Fugitive
2667
The changes to my lore-master didn’t seem quite as bad as I’d feared. I lost some of the more situational-use skills to other skill trees, but nearly all of the core ones I relied on in most fights remained common to all trees. Haven’t really had time to field-test it yet though.
And I took another look at my warden stuff - and I think part of my brain is still stuck in the past. I actually have more gambit building skills now then I did before, with all of them unlocked rather than having just the spear and shield combos unlocked via a bunch of class skills. Because it doesn’t look like there are class skills anymore.
I don’t have any idea what unlocks those, or if you start with them, or something else entirely. At least since I started playing again over the summer, there’s just been the spear/shield/fist with the additional builder skills that let you apply two at a time (the combos.)
I was worried they were going to dumb down the Warden, but I’m feeling it is just as complex as it was before. The only thing I’ve really noticed is that I lost Shield Mastery and there appear to be reasons to use gambits that I’ve been ignoring.
Razgon
2669
I can’t use the combo skills - That would mean I had to manage 3 bars of skills still. And shouldn’t there be a fourth builder skill, a shout or somesuch? I don’t understand my warden anymore,and I’ll be damned if I start a 3rd just to understand the changes.
Man, I don’t know. I don’t remember there being four builder skills, just the three. Even pulling up a Warden guide from 2009 it only mentions the three of them. For the combos, I originally just added a line of them above the main bar (shift-key), just the spear ones, and got use to using them before adding a row (alt-key) for the shield ones. I’m going to try the fist ones now that I have them with the control-key modifier but I imagine I’m going to get things even more mixed up then I do now.
The Warden is probably the most difficult class I’ve found to jump into after a while without playing. Remembering how to build the good gambits and all that. But this update just doesn’t seem to be a big change for the class.
Just for fun I ran a benchmark with Fraps while riding around Forlaw. Now that the expansion has hit the city is all but deserted.
This Graph shows how horrible war steed riding is, thanks to asset-loading lag or whatever the hell is happening with the game.
Hardware: i7-3930K @ 3.8GHz / 16GB RAM (Not that it matters since the game thinks 640k is enough for everyone with its 32-bit nonsense); Geforce 780; Win8 64; HD Revodrive 3 X2 (1700MB/s seq read/80.000 IOPS)
I would’ve thought the game should run better on that kind of hardware.
FPS is maxed to 61; Very High Engine Speed
Is there a good description somewhere of what you get for free, and what you have to pay for, under the FtP model? I know this is one of the better ones, so I just wanted it as a baseline.
Well, when you play for free, you will still earn turbine points for achievements and whatnot, which will make you able to buy anything that subscribers get “for free”.
Most achievements grant between 5-20 turbine points. I could for example buy an account unlock to give me 68% riding speed on all mounts (including riding ability) for 1995 points. Which I grant, wasn’t the best example to use. :) (Have a lifetime sub, so I cant really see a lot of the stuff F2P players can buy…)
Believe most quest packs are in the 400-700 tp area… Up to level 30 or so I believe eyerything is included for F2P players.
I believe most people found that the best way to spend as little as possible was to pay 1 month as a VIP, because you would keep a lot of the unlocks even after you exited VIP mode.
There is usually a sale going on on various bits and pieces in the ingame store, so its always wise to wait for a discount before buying anything. Like, one week there will be a 20% discount on travel skills meaning they might cost 400 instead of 500 turbine points.
Check casualstrolltomordor.com for the most up-to-date stuff regarding the store and everything else, or just click the ‘sale’ button in the turbine store in game.
Some of the stuff you can buy in the store can also be purchased on the AH for money, or looted.
Squee
2674
IIRC last time I looked at LotRO, DDO handled it better. LotRO gimps aspects of each character you make (Capped money, no mounts, limited talent points, etc) when I looked at it, whereas in DDO you weren’t particularly limited except by quest packs. Dunno if this has changed.
Actual best for a free to play model I’ve seen is Star Trek Online. You get reduced bag space which isn’t that big of a deal and can’t respec your character unless you cough up money, but apart from that you can play all the content. I’m also curious to hear from people playing if LotRO’s free to play has opened up at all though.
Not really an edit: Just looked this up. VIPs are people paying a subscription/have a lifetime sub, premium is anyone who has spent real money for anything, and free to play are entirely free players. http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Account_Types#Account_type_comparison_table
Looks like free to play characters are still gimped, but if you pay for a single month of time all your existing characters get their money cap removed, gain access to fast travel, have all bag slots available, and aren’t limited on talent points.
Sounds like best cheap course of action is to play a couple of characters up to the end of the free content, then buy a month sub and make a third character (Because of the expanded character slots) to get all of 'em the uncapped bonuses at once.
Next week’s LOTRO deal will be all the previous expansions (Mines of Moria, Siege of Mirkwood, Something of Isengard, Riders of Rohan) combined for $20. That’s hundreds of hours of interesting single player content and they might even pay for themselves (in Turbine Points) after playing through them on a single character.
If someone plays multiple characters and are OCD about deeds (tasks granting turbine points & character upgrades for killing 120 wolves for example) they can earn pretty much everything worth having in LOTRO after a one month subscription.
DDO is a lot more expensive/grindy if you want most of the content and account options. That game makes it a little less painful with a reincarnation feature though, allowing you to replay the game with a new class (keeping your old equipment) and earning $5 to spend in their store while doing so. Most of their quest packs are super short. In LOTRO I think they’ve all lasted me several hours, even when I’ve skipped a majority of the area’s content.
Squee
2676
Well hell, that sounds like I should take another look at LotRO then. If I get interested I wouldn’t wanna miss that deal. Got the Steely Dan pack from the Humble Bundle too, so if I get in to it I (Possibly?) might be able to coast on that plus a one month subscription to get myself into expansion range.
Worth a look at least.
Might even grab that pack for one of my Dualboxing accounts. Is funny, I think I have owned Isengard since Pre-launch, but when playing the game I do not think I ever did any quests in the Isengard zones.
mok
2678
Let me translate your post for you:
- Through fire and water. From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak, I fought him, the Balrog of Morgoth. Until at last, I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside. Darkness took me. And I strayed out of thought and time. Stars wheeled overhead and every day was as long as a life-age of the earth. But it was not the end. I felt life in me again.
I’ve got enough store points built up to buy this latest expansion without using real world $$$. Is the new content outside of the not-so-epic-sounding battles worth it?
instant0
2680
Yes. The countryside is as always fantastic looking (in areas). The stuttering is incredibly annoying (to me) but you’ll get by.
They changed the quest formula somewhat in that you’ll now get a “main quest” to follow for a while until you ‘unlock’ that area; Then you can do side-quests or continue the main quest to a new area.
The first two Epic Battles weren’t anything to speak of, neither features nor graphics, but the 3rd one (When the wall has blown up – this is the siege of Moria you remember) looks really well - Even if it has the same mechanics, it feels more like a proper battle as you do not see all the enemies and the somewhat broken mechanic.
Sure - firing siege engines towards 10921092 orcs seem like a good idea – but you’ll only do damage to them when they are ‘activated’ - and the engines move incredibly slow when soloing.
@Mok: Awesome :-)
