I can login ok (my latency to LOTRO has always been somewhat poor), but the website is almost totally unresponsive. Maybe they’re being DDoSed.
Just to reiterate: you guys aren’t going through a VPN, right? Once I disconnected from NordVPN, everything was all good.
I played off and on at various times throughout the holiday weekend with zero connectivity issues. Whatever is going on, it’s not universal. Seems like a routing issue somewhere close to their end?
Back in LOTRO again the last few days as Destiny 2 interest has waned… almost 105 now. Need to get myself a First Age 100 Dagger, since I can apparently use it even at 115.
Been trying to stream daily while playing, but the video quality is so terrible no matter what settings I try, at aleast it looks somewhat decent on Youtube but utter shit on Twitch.
After 3 days I have access again. No response from SSG to my ticket, but I didn’t really expect one, not even a “it’s not us” answer. I assume it was a bad route issue that got resolved by internet routing magic.
And to respond to
No, I wasn’t.
Before this weekend I’d never had connection issues, or even much lag / rubber-banding like I’ve read about.
Tip for those who haven’t reached Minas Tirith yet … when you do, switch to DX9 mode. That solved the constant CTD problems I had there, both with my old and new PCs. It seems that it’s a problem that SSG has no intention of fixing, but that switch worked for me. The graphic quality change is noticeable, but livable. It seems to be limited to the city. That was the only place I’d ever had this type of problem in 10 years of playing the game.
Someone on the stream the other day adressed 64-bit client question. "we have one guy looking into it… "
So maybe in 1-2 years we’ll have a better performing client.
Other than the shitty client whenver I ride around, having good progress in LOTRO the last few days. 2-3 hours usually, and seem to get a level or so per day.
Streaming my progress to 115 on my Burglar now.
They have a sale on housing items… got a bit carried away and now I have hardly any coin left for inventory space, turns out 310 shared vault storage isn’t enough.
Man I hate forced grouping shit in this game. “Here’s a book quest that requires a group, or you to be First Age 115, or not a burglar… Lets see if you can find a group for it 4 years after it was introduced…”
I had a bunch of LPs from my VIP subscription, the housing writs were on sale, so I bought a premium deluxe house. And…I like my old vintage Shire kinship house much better, especially now that one can move the objects around, within limits (I made a solo kin). I even like my personal Shire house more.
The premium houses are a collection of tiny stone areas connected by entryways and stairs . There isn’t any “main room”. The areas are narrow, rectangular and small, never really leading anywhere except other narrow, rectangular and small areas and a tiny garden area… A lot of height, no horizontal expanse. My personal Shire house has more personality than this.
Maybe the premium Kin houses are better, but I’m not paying that much.
3 main reasons I grabbed the Premium house is that it was just next to the Tasks for all, and a vault, and tradetables + vendors, and I had a nice view. MIght not be 3 reasons. + there’s no upkeep to pay.
However, it doesn’t have enough outside or indoor “slots” to put stuff, so I really wanted to grab the Kin house instead, unfortunately I am not sure who retains ownership of the Kin house if I get usurped and I really do not want to kick everyone else, even though they have been offline for 1000+ days.
Got my homework for today :)
-http://lotroplayers.com/2015/07/13/imbued-legendary-items-tips-tricks-and-a-guide-to-the-grind/
So much better after the freep overhaul, though. Most early fellowship quests (particularly book quests) can be soloed. If you don’t plan on running with a kin or fellowship all the time, all I can say is to pick a solo-friendly class, like hunter or minstrel. Last night, I took my 37 hunter on book 4 fellowship quests that stated 39-40. Not even close to dying, because a decently-equipped hunter has no problem taking down one (or even two) orange elites at a time. I expect to be soloing until at least past Moira.
I mean, if you’ve been around long enough, remember begging for LFFs in the Book 1 Bombadil epic quest in the barrows? MEH
The imbued stuff is kind of nice - sort of simplifies things?
I still need to unlock my maximum trait tiers - I’ve only done it for DPS (and only since getting to Mordor where it’s kind of necessary, arguably)… Looks like I only need 168 Scrolls of Empowerment. Wow! That seems like it would take a while.
I haven’t figured that out yet. I’m only on lvl 100 content, so I’ve only obtained lvl 100 legendary items. But I have 10 LI slots so I figured I’d play around with 2 of them to see how it works. I imbued 2 items ( a weapon and class item) after maxing them out to 60. After leveling them up 30 or so levels after imbuement, it seems that at that level sticking with traditional LIs seems best. Those 2 items basically got reset to zero other than the base damage legacy on the weapon and the healing legacy on the class item (I’m a minstrel). Even my 3rd age items at lvl 30 or so can beat them (other than the aforementioned primary legacies). Plus…you can’t deconstruct them for relics. So I’ll wait until lvl 105 or higher before trying it again.
A couple thoughts:
You only want to imbue your primary weapon/class item stuff. The thinking is you will never deconstruct them. The rest remain legendary items and just become XP farms for your imbued items.
… and you’ll never deconstruct imbued items because legendary items only go up to level 100 - after that the only way to increase their effectiveness is by imbuing them. There aren’t level 105 legendary items, or anything. They’ll definitely be a problem when you hit Mordor if they are’t imbued, since the DPS is going to be limited.
My biggest problem with the imbued items is you really need to have the maximum level for the DPS trait maxed out to match the expected weapon DPS at level cap, but you can’t use Scroll of Empowerment - you need, I think, star-lit crystals or to spend mithril coins. Lame. I think when they push out the level cap, they increase the DPS trait max level cap - some of those levels you get access to when the cap increases and some you have to pay for in crystals or mithril.
Also, if you’ve got enough item xp rune things around, leveling up your imbued weapon should be better than what you can get non-imbued, but it’s been a while since I’ve done it with close enough attention to check my math.
I double checked on the forums for my warden regarding legendary items now that mordor has been out for a while, and there seem to be some thoughts with the big stat bonuses available in mordor that a lot of the legendary/imbued traits end up being rounding errors. Maybe a three or four traits across my weapon and class item are really noteworthy enough to put effort into upgrading.
So, yeah, it sort of simplifies things but maybe only in comparison with traditional legendary items which were kind of a mess, too.
I’m reminded why there are some players that never touch legendary items at all.
Stuff still looks nice in some places though:
On the subject of Imbued weapons, I finished my homework and did the following:
- Leveled the weapon to 30, picked the traits I wanted, or the highest Tiered one, or a major ahead of a minor.
- At 30 I used a scroll to unlock an extra slot and used my 4th rank AGI scroll on that one
- Then used another item to unlock an extra 10 levels (so it goes to 70).
- Leveled it to 70 and then I used almost all my scrolls to rank up everything from TIer 3-4 to Tier 6.
- Then I used Star-lit Crystals to up the weapon to 2 stars (didn’t have 3 crystals, but I could apparently use those after imbue as this was a weapon and not a tool).
- Then I maxed the DPS on the weapon
- Then I imbued
- Then I dumped a few million XP points into the imbued weapon to rank it up max on DPS (around 29-36 area).
- Then I noticed that it still does 100 less DPS than my Teal/Purple Maces
- Now I keep the Imbued weapon in my inventory, and will not use it until I can rank it up 26 or so more times using GRIND-Currency (or the store) for DPS, and then another 26 x 7 times for all the other trait slots.
Seeing as I haven’t gotten a replacement tool between level 100-111, but a lot of weapons, I would think that I should’ve gotten my first imbued as a TOOL and not weapon.
For comparison:
My imbued weapon that I’m not using:
My equipped weapon:
My tool:
Holy crap, that all sounds way too complicated.
I thought I was doing well when I finally figured out all the stuff with early Legendary Items, like leveling your non-primary ones to 30+ to get a legacy off them along with all the xp and items when you deconstruct. My lvl 60 Second Age Champion’s sword and rune are perfectly tailored at this point with all relevant titles and legacies, max DPS and level 4/5 relics. They feel overpowered right now, but I figure they will last me through my 60’s, by which time I will start the process over again with higher level (70+) Second Age or possibly First Age (if I can find them) items.
Sounds like it all gets even more involved after 100.
Yeah, you would need to unlock the DPS tiers to match/exceed your other weapons, since it looks like they might be higher level gear. I had enough store junk to unlock my tiers that way - I’m doing 465 dps with me imbued weapon. Stab, stab.
Thanks for this. The online stuff is pretty much useless for practical questions. For example:
I have a lvl 100 2nd age weapon maxed at 70. I’ve used 2 crystals on it, and intend to use 1 more. I have some scrolls to raise some of the legacy levels a bit and can use them. I’ve maxed out the “tactical damage” legacy (I’m a minstrel) and a couple of others.
When I imbue it, do all of the legacies go back to zero (except the damage legacy)? Is there any point to using scrolls to increase the level of other legacies before imbuement ? For that matter, does using the crystals before imbuement on the item as a whole give an advantage for imbuement ? Will I need to use a lot of blue IXP runes to get it back up to where it was before, in terms of the damage value of the legacies I had before ? That’s not a problem, I have tons … just curious.
As I mentioned above, I imbued two maxed-out lvl 100, at 60 items before as a test, and after imbuement they turned into crap. Those scrolls and crystals don’t come for free, other than a few in-game … I don’t want to waste them on an experiment.
For a weapon, there’s a tiny increase to dps if you use a crystal (but you can also boost this after imbue), but for a Tool you boost the secondary abilities on it, and you can not boost these after imbuing the item.
Afaik: You should also get all ‘tiers’ to 6 before you imbue the item, or you’ll need to use a different type of unlock once it is imbued.
A 2nd age weapon I wouldn’t spend anything to imbue however as it seems that even now (at 113) the loot I get is a lot better than my 1st age weapon, since I do not have the ability to unlock the missing DPS slots on it. I’m thinking it would’ve been better to spend everything on a first age tool instead.
Also, once an item is imbued, afaik, you can not dismantle it for XP/Resources.
Edit: nice picture :-) You using Reshade?