LotRO 6/27/08 Forum Discussion Summary : Hobbit Talk

By Darkgolem

This weeks Hobbit Talk is full of constructive and well thought out concerns about grinding, crafting drops, loot and game mechanics.  While not as loud or as vigorous as a lot of the forum comments found these days, these actually do a pretty good job of getting points across.  The talk about grinding and recipe drops are particularly fair, considering the difficulty sometimes found in getting recipes.  An interesting story about someone auctioning their accounts on Ebay are also found here, showing that money and wisdom don't go hand in hand.

1.  Loot Rules...

I'm a long time WoW player, and I've run my fair share of pick-up group instance runs and group quests, and very seldom have I had issues with the actual loot distribution because people have typically rolled greed on trash (green named uncommon drops) and reserved the Need roll for upgrades and profession items.

Since I've been playing LOTRO regularly again, I've come to wonder: does ANYONE ever use the need/greed/pass loot rule? If so, has it typically worked out well?

main reason I ask is last night, as I was helping a Kinsman catch up to me on book 4, we had it set to roll/pass, and as we were clearing Trolls in the caves for chapter 5, a VERY rare metalsmith recipe dropped: Ancient Steel...

2. Implications of Level Cap On Experience

I am 25k from level 50, and was curious what happens when one hits the mythical level 50. I understand that the Mines of Moria will let us grow our guys to level 60, but what happens with experience after hitting 50?

I have only completed up to book 5, so if I were to finish out the books - would I get no experience for them? In essence, "wasting" the...

3. Grinding vs Experiencing the game.

Time to post this topic! After some discussions on /OOC chat in game, I became aware that there are, indeed, those who actually prefer grinding over questing, crafting, exploring, role-playing, and experiencing the lore. Quoted from the player who preferred the grind - "EQ diehard"... /sigh.

Before continuing, let me just say I have never played EverQuest! Over the duration of 9 years, four games are now tucked under my belt - Asheron's Call (Beta - 2005), World of Warcrack (2005-2008), Archlord (lasted all of 3 months), and Rohan: Blood Feud (a whole two weeks!). Within those games I had chosen to go with the grind rather than the quests, therefore I choose the quest system of LOTRO as my preference while playing this particular game.

What is your preference for playing LOTRO? Personally, grinding...

4. What's Worse Than A Tapper?

We all have a special place in our hearts for those people grinding out Deeds or whatever that steal every mob out from under you and constantly tap the one out of 100 mobs you are finally able to hit before they do. The nice term for folks like that are Tappers.

I finally discovered what is worse than a Tapper...

Someone 20 levels above you grinding out Deeds who is stealing every mob out from under you and when you finally hit a mob before they do, a mob that happens to be 6 levels above you and doing 1000 points of Morale damage to each of your 100 points of damage to them, they for the first time *DON'T* tap the mob. They don't help...

5. Power-Levelers=Bad but E-Bay Auctions=Good???

I don't think there is a single one of us out there in Middle Earth who has any kind of sympathy or kindness towards the Power-Levellers or those who buy Power-Levelled characters. Matter of fact, most of us have really scathing choice words we tend to call them, whether we reserve those words to ourselves or actually say it directly to them.

What boggles my mind is that yesterday a guy on our server logged on and /OOC was instantly overrun with a throng of many people (including some of my own Kinmates) asking him where he has been for so long. The way everyone acted he was some kind of long-lost Middle Earth celebrity on our server.

He proudly states "Oh, I've been busy selling my accounts on E-Bay. Just got $1000 for my 5th account."

Shockingly, no one seemed phased by it. On the contrary they congratulated him and gave him kudos for it!!!

Hello!?!? McFly!

He then continued, "Yeah, I'm going...

6.  Time to discuss loot tables and the drop rates (again)

So Turbine told all of us that with book 13 they had "adjusted" the loot tables and the drop rates in regards to crafting recipes. There was a collective "Hear Hear!" with much excitement and happiness throughout the land. Then Book 13 went live. And the loot tables continued to suck, just in new ways. And the people wept.

First, I'd like to point out that the Major Warden Herald Armaments Recipe doesn't belong in the loot tables at all. They are one of the rep rewards from the Dwarves of Thorin's Hall and that learning the recipe/crafting the item/using the item are all reputation gated. I have found no other occurrence of any reputation reward recipe dropping..

And don't miss this weeks articles at the Lord of The Rings Online community here at Ten Ton Hammer

• Tier 2 Auction House Price Guide Update: Cooked Products
• Oatbarton Quest Guide Update
• Ost Forod Quest Guide

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