Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.I mean, that’s a big turtle, probably 4-5 feet tall at the top of its shell, but why can it send me flying >10 meters? I think it did that with a headbutt. Even for a game where you can resurrect the dead by smoking, that’s a little odd.
It did, however, lead to one of my most awesome little moments in-game. The turtle bashed me into a rock, I richoceted off, and cut him down with my axe before landing. That’ll teach you to toss a dwarf!
: Zubon
The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ takes an unusual path with its epic storyline. You start out as the epic side-quest, running parallel to Bilbo and the gang around the time of the Prancing Pony. Villains appear there, and you chase them down for several books, like one of The Nine or the Witch-King’s servants who lead the attackers in that side-quest. That takes you about one-third of the way through, when the real story picks up. Now you are defending the homelands against the armies of Angmar (hence the name of Volume 1).
Through it all, you are reminded frequently that your PC is not the point of this story. This is not just the prologue for Volume 2, where you are sent to buy supplies for the company, or the frequent other errand and courier quests. More than that, the big end scene for many of the epic books involves stopping the action and having NPCs take over. A few times, you really do get to defeat the big enemy. Good for you! Often, not. Either there is no big end fight, or the NPC gets to finish it. Books I, II, VIII, XIII, and XIV all do this, and there may be more that I do not remember. The enemy gets to 5-10% hp, the fight stops, and the NPCs do their little play.
In one sense, the ending to Book XIV was fantastic. It gives a piece of lore that has been speculated upon, it theoretically changes the dynamic of the game world (despite the game world being utterly static), and it has a really great scene with the mount you all want. In another sense, it even takes camera control away from you. You are not just standing there watching a brief machinima, reading text, or seeing a cut scene. You lose camera control for several minutes as you stand there and watch the NPCs carry out their business.
Without you. Because you’re not important.
: Zubon
Storage is broken in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢. It works, as in I have rarely heard of its losing folks’ stuff, but as a game mechanic it is broken. This is not true for everyone: if you are not a crafter, collector, or social player with several outfits, and you are past level 30, you are fine. Turbine has done some good things to alleviate problems, such as simplifying the crafting items and increasing stack sizes. Once you save a cosmetic outfit, you can get rid of the items. Still, forum discussion directed me to what WoW is planning. Even before that, it would be nice if a game took advantage of the gameplay innovations from previous games. Keyrings, for example, should be required if you have keys. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ lacks keyrings.
Note in the WoW plans “Pet and mount tabs” and “currency user interface.” That is, don’t store mounts in the vault, and track all those barter/reputation items the way you track money.
Each race in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ has a panic button, of varying quality. Humans get the best, with a full heal. Dwarves get massive resistance, elves get “parry everything,” and hobbits get feign death. Minstrels also get a feign death ability, which is helpful when the group is wiping.
In PvE, feign death is sometimes useful. As long as you are not in the enemies’ aggro range, you will be safe when you stand up. It works nicely when you run through a crowd while trying to get somewhere difficult. As a Hunter, it can help when I pull too much aggro and need to let the tank get it back.
In PvMP, feign death is a fabulous distraction. People will stand there and wait for you to get back up. We got this Minstrel down to 200 hit points, now we just need to wait the 30 seconds for him to become available as a target. If we leave, we know that he will stand up and run around a corner. So three or four creeps will target the feigned corpse and wait. (Freeps do the same thing to spiders in Trap Door Sanctuary. He has 60 seconds. If the creep raid leaves, we may skip pursuing just to camp and trap that one spot.) We are getting that kill.
I want to take a Hobbit Minstrel into PvMP sometime just to mess with this. Start going down: Hobbit Silence. Tab through the enemies to make sure they are still on you. Stand up and immediately feign death. Tab tab, wait. Stand up and use one of the feign death scrolls from Forochel. Ha! Yes, I will be out of the fight for more than a minute, but so will four or more enemies, and they can be shot during that time. It’s like a channeled AE mez.
: Zubon
I have previously characterised crafting in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ as a low-value time- and gold-sink. With quest rewards as you level up and drops in the endgame, the place for crafted items is limited. Commenters argued that I was over-stating the point, and this is true. I wish to re-visit the point.
First, crafting is of very limited value as you are leveling up your first character. I stand by this. Unless you are very aggressively pursuing trade skills and spending a large amount on raw materials, it is unlikely that you will make many pieces of use to you. There will be some, but few.
Second, crafting is nice for your second character. Continue reading On the Value of Crafting
His songs will improve your morale!
: Zubon
Tech-wise, Book 14 has been a bit of a debacle. It is quite common for a patch to break things, but it just keeps happening.
I posted about server issues a week ago. They seem to have mostly cleared up. The third or fourth patch did it. I am still crashing on zoning daily, which had never happened under Book 13, but maybe that’s just me. I also mentioned the new zone in that patch. It is still not available. Two weeks into Book 14, we are looking at another two weeks to having the zone after which the book is named. It is not bugged; we just need to open AQ. As a populous server, we are in 3rd place, more than half-way there. Other servers may be waiting an extra week or two.
Has it ever bothered you that you plant crops and harvest them seconds later? This is rather fertile soil. The new summer festival has a great quest for farmers: you plant crops. That’s it. Come back during the harvest festival to see what you grew.
That is unspeakably awesome.
: Zubon
These are the cutest boots you have ever seen. My hobbit looks like she is running around with huge red galoshes. I’m going to go jump in some puddles!
: Zubon
Man card. Now.
I am on Book XIII in the epic quest chain, and since I have not complained about travel times in a little while, I thought this would be a good example.
Forochel was the new zone for Book XIII. It is a nicely crafted zone of snow and ice with some interesting gameplay features. Geographically, it is dominated by the bay in the center. Stay out of the bay. While you can swim anywhere else in the game, the water there will kill you in a few ticks. The capital is in the north, Suri-Kyla. There are towns in the center and southeast, a dwarf town in the southwest, and a little camp in the northwest. (Unless something was added in Book XIV, none of these towns have a Provisioner who sells the Traveling Rations one needs for the game’s teleportation abilities.)
The horses indicate horse routes (not surprising). A horse route usually goes to the nearest towns, sometimes with a fast travel (teleport) to a further town. So the center town connects to the other places on the road. The northwest outpost connects only to the northern city, via fast travel, and only if you unlock it. I forget whether that unlock is reputation-based, requires completing a quest that involves running around the bay a few times, or both (to get both directions). Suri-Kyla, being closely tied to the reputation system, demands reputation for its horse routes. Unlock the routes to other major cities by reaching Ally (next-to-best) standing with that city. Oh, and you must have visited both ends of the route to unlock it.
Do you see the red numbers I added to the map? That is the chain of locations for Book XIII, Chapters V and VI. This is not that bad, assuming you have unlocked the horse route around the bay. It is 25 silver each way, which is about a quest reward in this game. With animation and zoning, it is only about a minute between those two spots, plus another couple minutes to get to where the contact is, either at the furthest point in the city or in a cave northwest of the northwest outpost. So the route is: contact in capital city (1), run to horse, ride to outpost, run to cave (2), run to boat, fight to contact (3), run to dwarf cave, fight to quest objective (4), run to boat, fight to contact (5), run to outpost, ride to city, run to contact (6), run to horse, ride to outpost, run to cave (7), run to outpost, ride to city, run to contact (8). If the blue team has the boat, you can skip most of the fighting there. So the gameplay of these quests is fighting through one cave of dwarves, surrounded by about forty minutes of travel, probably closer to an hour since I always under-estimate how long things will take (ask my wife on that one: how much longer will it take me to get back to town and log off?), at a cost of 75 silver. You can cut a little time by locking your “map home” to one of the sites, and your time will be much longer if you have not done enough quests in the zone.
Getting there is half the fun. Getting back there twenty times is not ten times the fun.
: Zubon
I have hallucinated part of 13.7 into that. 13.8 involves two laps between the city and the cave, so they are starting to blend. And while we’re on 13.8, can we talk about bugs in the ice giants’ knockback code?