Goldenstar posted this on May 7th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, calculator, Dar Narbugud, Dungeon Guides, Guide, Guides, how-to, raids, Vile Maw, Watcher.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/oN6qBJrhMVU/
Our raiding readiness calculator will help you determine if you have acquired enough radiance items to join in raid dungeons that have gloom auras. The ready to raid determination is based off guidelines we found in various dungeon guides. In all instances, you will still need to bring with you hope tokens and may require additional hope from destiny points to prevent yourself from cowering too much.
See our Radiance Guide for more information on these calculations. We also have information on Hope and when you start to cower.
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arbitrary posted this on February 22nd, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dar Narbugud, healers, healing, loot, lotro, MMOs, raid healers, raid healing, raiding, raids, social aspects of MMO, why raid.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/why-raid/
Was having an interesting Twitter chat with a kinmate this morning (@sauronsbeagle to give him his due) when we touched on amusing reasons to raid. He’s a Minstrel, I’m a Captain – we both heal in raids. And there’s your context:
I felt my #3 key wasn’t being pressed often enough. The 1st boss and gauntlet make up for that!
Yes, I like to use Gauntlet to bask in the smugness of my 8.3s on-defeat heal. Will go when I break DN* set up.
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arbitrary posted this on November 23rd, 2009.
Categorized as blind one, Dar Narbugud, expansions, lord of the rings online, lotro, mistress of pestilence, moria, raids, ready for mirkwood.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/phew-moria-defeated/
Last night, a little against my expectations we took down The Blind One (for the second time, and on our first attempt, yay) and then went on to kill The Mistress of Pestilence on our third try. Against expectations because I wasn’t sure how many attempts we’d do in an evening, not because I don’t think we’re capable (of course, kinmates read this blog, y’know!).
So, with that, aside from what seems to be a bugged quest in Dar Narbugud, I have now finished all the content in Moria, a week before we get Mirkwood. This I like. It’s not that it hasn’t involved a lot of grinding and time-killing to fill the time between raids (for me), but it feels satisfying nonetheless.
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arbitrary posted this on November 10th, 2009.
Categorized as boss names, Bosses, Dar Narbugud, games, humour, lotro, mistress, MMOs, raids, Rift, the mistress of pestilence.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/inappropriate-boss-names/
[Inspired by the sign-up thread on my kin forums]
Please game companies, do not give bosses silly names. When we sign up to kill them we want them to sound fierce. Also assume your players will abbreviate to the first name or a description of the boss.
Examples from LotRO:
- Nornuan – too much like Norman, we all just say ‘The Turtle’.
- The Mistress of Pestilance – sounds ominous until you get sign-up threads asking ‘who wants to come to the Mistress on friday night’ (seriously, one day I AM going to write Carry on Raiding)
- Zurm – an old Rift favourite, also known as Zurm the Worm, even though he isn’t ;p
- Narnûlubat – can’t pronounce it, so he just gets called Narn-thingy
- Thaurlach – a decent name, but will always just be called The Balrog. Until we have to fight another!
In general I’m very bad at learning names in LotRO, but that’s actually because Turbine have made the names Tolkeinesque so I approve. The Mistress just makes me laugh, and I hope we soon start to call her Miss Pestilence, MoP or something else. But let’s face it, the ‘giant slug’ will always be known as The Mistress.
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arbitrary posted this on November 9th, 2009.
Categorized as Dar Narbugud, lotro, moria, no spoilers here, quick update time, raiding, raids, the blind one, the mistress of pestilence.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/quick-raiding-update/
Last night we downed The Blind One, for the first time, and got The Mistress of Pestilence down about halfway. Found the last mushroom for the deed, by a stylish case of falling. I won’t spoil how or why, but it was kind of funny.
The first time we get a boss down there’s a definite sigh of relief and a cheer. Followed by a strange pang of fear that we now have to show we can repeat the feat. I’ve said it before, but the second kill is my favourite in any raid. The one that proves it wasn’t just good luck that got us through the fight. Of course, I love the first kill – that goes without saying, but nothing quite beats the sensation of feeling we’ve conquered the fight, and I tend to get that on kill no. 2.
So – looks like we may have a good chance of finishing Dar Narbugud before Siege of Mirkwood launches. Although I’ll miss the Mistress/Blind One fights next week as I’m taking a trip down south for a family lunch, and then to go stay with Spinks and sneak a peek at Dragon Age: Origins, so everything makes sense to me ;p
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arbitrary posted this on November 2nd, 2009.
Categorized as boss, boss fight, casual, Dar Narbugud, lotro, moria, raiding, raids, random thoughts, rotations, the blind one.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/the-blind-one/
He’s a big, bad, monster deep within Dar Narbugud. It’s a tricky, Thrang-style fight. We’ve been at it a few weeks (I think would have been a bit faster with a fixed group, but our kin practices ‘rotations’ so we often have people new to the fight with us). We can now easily get through 1st and 2nd stage and yesterday got him to 38k on one attempt and then 28k on the next (from 500k). We’re making progress. And soon, it’ll be second nature to handle the transitions.
But for now, he’s my biggest frustration in LotRO. Captains, in our kin, are a rare breed at max level and radiance-d out. We get to go to most raids, which is quite a bit deal as every other class has to rotate between 3-4 players (we have more guardians but one is sitting out the rotation). I’m not a huge fan of rotation on such a wide-scale, but it’s meant to be fair to those who want to raid. Strictly, we’re very close to being able to run two raid groups, just not every week, and we’d be missing the Captains. So it’s a Catch 22 situation.
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Kairos posted this on August 11th, 2009.
Categorized as Achievers, Bartle test, Dar Narbugud, design, Explorers, gating, Killers, radiance, raiding, Socialisers.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://lotro-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/08/modest-proposal.html
Richard Bartle, a British writer and game designer, was the co-author of MUD, the first multi-user dungeon and according to Wikipedia,
“one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry”. He is also the designer of the
Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, which uses a series of about 30 questions to determine the preferences of games players. Depending on their answers, player preferences are divided between the roles of Achiever, Explorer, Socialiser and Killer, with the score ranking indicating the principal thrust of a player’s interest. As an example, a pure non-consensual PvP game such as the recent Darkfall is clearly designed to appeal primarily (indeed, probably exclusively) to the Killer type of player.
A fascinating recent post in
Pearls of Unwisdom argues that the current radiance gating debate in LOTRO reflects a long-standing conflict of interest between Achievers and Explorers:
“Achievers and Explorers have been knocking heads together for a while now, especially with regards to gating of content […] Achiever types traditionally thrive in content gating situations […] Explorers [are] forced either to join the numbing grind, or to hang up their hiking boots and call it a day.” The post concludes by asking “given that Achievers and Explorers both seem to enjoy raiding, can they both coexist peacefully? Or is there a fundamental conflict between what they both want from the experience?”.
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Kairos posted this on July 22nd, 2009.
Categorized as Dar Narbugud, design, Filikul, gating, Glistening Elf-stone, gurvand, Mirror Halls of Lumul-Nar, Nalad-Dum, Nornúan, radiant armour, raiding, Vile Maw, Watcher.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://lotro-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/07/achieving-minimum-radiance-in-book-8.html
As everybody knows, the two end-game 12-man instances at the moment are gated – that is, you need a certain minimum level of radiance in order to even enter them. Personally, I think this is a poor design approach, and it’s no secret that most players feel the same way. However, we’re stuck with this situation for the foreseeable future.
Fortunately, Book 8 introduced some new paths to achieving the minimum requirements, which are currently +50 radiance for the Vile Maw (the Watcher), and +70 radiance for Dar Narbugud. What follows are some suggestions as to how this can be achieved as expeditiously as possible. Keep in mind that raiding is a cooperative affair, and that in order to get anywhere you’ll need to join a Kinship, or at least find a reasonably steady group of players - solo play doesn't enter into the debate at all.
To quickest way of achieving the +50 radiance necessary for the Vile Maw is to complete the first two (and easiest) of the 6-man instances which drop a single BoA coin when completed in Hard Mode. These are the Grand Stairs (dropping a Platinum Coin of Courage, exchangeable for Boots) and Forges (Platinum Coin of Strength, for Chest). Each of these armour items gives +10 radiance, for a total of +20.
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Kairos posted this on July 10th, 2009.
Categorized as Book 8, Dar Narbugud, instances, radiant armour.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://lotro-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/07/radiance-from-3-man-instances.html
Agreed, the 3-man instances in Book 8 are well-designed, fun and repeatable, as well as offering another path to achieving the +50 radiance necessary for squaring up to the Watcher or the +70 essential for the new 12-man raid in Dar Nargubud.
However, one thing puzzles me: these instances drop Elf-stones exchangeable for three tier 1.5 purple armour items with +15 radiance each, a +5 radiance increase on equivalent items from the earlier set. So far, so good; acquire all three and you have a total of +45 radiance. Problem is... radiance rounds downwards, not up, so that +5 is essentially wasted, and +45 in practice becomes +40. In which case, it doesn't take long to work out that it's a waste of effort acquiring all three items, and that if you're only going for two, the ones to choose are the leggings and gloves (at a cost of 4 stones each), rather than the chest-piece (at a cost of 7 stones).
In practice, this means that the best way to exploit the 3-man instances as far as building up your radiance is concerned is to replace the original leggings and gloves (+10 rad each) with the new ones (+15 rad each), giving you an overall increase of +10, and leave it at that. Which makes me wonder whether the developers got their sums wrong in the first place. Why go to all the trouble of creating a three-part tier 1.5 set of radiance armour when only two thirds of it will ever be useful? Indeed, why bother rounding radiance up (or down) at all in the first place? Mysteries, mysteries...
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Kairos posted this on June 4th, 2009.
Categorized as Book 8, Dar Narbugud, Dev Chat, legacies, legendary items, weapon titles, weapons.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://lotro-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/06/legendary-items-latest.html
In the course of the 3 June developer chat, developers were by and large as wary as ever of making definite statements. However, sorting through the whole transcript, I found that a number of answers addressed the vexed question of Legendary Items, a frequent source of complaints and grumbles. Pulling these together, it seems as though we can expect some positive developments in the near future.
Perhaps most importantly, the devs acknowledged that there are indeed problems with the LI system as it stands today:
“Are there any plans for redesigning the Legendary Item system? Completely redesigning it, no. It took a lot of work to get the various systems in place to create the LI system. However, we’re definitely monitoring the complaints and seeing where we fell short with our goals. So in that regard, we’re going to be making some solid changes. The details haven’t been completely solidified yet, but our main goal is to make it feel less grindy, to better maintain the feeling of advancement and progression”.
Other specific promises include a method of resetting the legacy points on a maxed out Legendary Item, to come
“very soon”, and the ability to exchange legacies on LIs; the latter is probably more of a mid-term project, since they apparently haven’t decided exactly how to implement it.
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