Maybe I will not write as much as I did for LotroNotes.com but I may write some things from time to time… so to start 2010 here we go with skirmishes in a more “bloggy” style.

So far, I like Skirmishes, a lot. It was easier to level Romiriel (Minstrel alt). Combined with quests and the Epics, the skirmishes allowed me to jump 3 levels in a couple of days (yeah, vacation days are a factor to consider also).

Besides leveling my Minstrel I got the Rune of Winged Dominance which I needed to finish the second minstrel class quest in order to get Fellowship’s Heart.

Side Note: I still want to do Carn Dum for the deeds / traits so to me that’s not an issue. I still see some LFF for that. It’s ok and I will still do those instances. Besides, instances and quests are still a must in order to get traits, deeds, titles and travel routes in most cases.

And… crafting. A must now for the volumes we need for relics.

Those are three key points why i like skirmishes. But wait… there is more… I tend to level my only alt from time to time… and I tend to forget about skills during this process so I needed some time to get used to it again. Skirmishes helped in this matter allowing me to put some thought on what to use and when during these small battles.

About group skirmishes… I would like to try them more. Just a small advice about it: last time I tried a small fellowship skirmish (three characters) we tried a tier 2 skirmish. Was hard and we died a lot… so we finally got it and got the marks but it was not a deal since I got a 600 silver repair bill and a 20% penalty… so if you want to try it the hard way just be careful with the mix of classes and do something that can be run without defeats, otherwise it would be a waste of time… and silver.

What else… encounters: tricky, sometimes. I try to get them all since there are some deeds to complete them. check the deeds panel. Good example of how to use your skills. With hunter / minstrel you can practice some Fear Skills to get the encounter boss first and delay the next wave while you burn things down.

Choosing your Soldier: for my hunter I’m using a Warrior… but I am thinking about a protector (tank) or herbalist (healer). So far Warrior is fine to burn things faster. Didn’t test it so much. In my Minstrel I can recommend 100% the protector, good mix, she tanks, I spank gets better with higher skill levels, helps to avoid interrupts.

Beside the names (herbalist, protector, warrior) think of them as healer, tank, champion, etc and imagine which class would be the best duo for your class, there is no perfect mix but I’m sure you can find two perfect mixes for each class. Each skirmish may have its own combination also but I don’t like to dig that deep.

So that’s it. Hope this entry helps.

Just a Question: what are those two defilers doing in the Bruinen skirmish? or just there to test if we target them by mistake?

I’ve been busy the last year and didn’t have time to maintain lotronotes.com. I think this began since Moria came out so it is pretty outdates. So, starting today, I will continue the “tips” here. All posts from LotroNotes.com were moved to this blog. Enjoy.

Ramiros is my main (Hunter, 60) and Romiriel (Minstrel, 51) is my alt. The problem after playing a hunter is how to get to other places fast. I got used to the Taxi service so, when playing my Minstrel I pay a lot of attention to maps and where to go from and to thinking about connections, horse routes.

The funny thing is that Romiriel is getting pretty used… maybe I must say addicted… to travel to the kinship house to leave some stuff and then save a trip by drinking from the League Keg. Sometimes she goes near the planned destination… sometimes (nearly all the times), not.

So far the most funny / frustrating attempt ended up on a piece of ice in Forochel. I thought she was not going to make it to the shore

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Last time, planning on returning to Forochel using this particulary alternative system, she ended up in the Bree Jail… guess that was coming sooner or later.

This is more like a personal note. After a while, yesterday a played again on my Minstrel, joined a fellowship and completed 1.5.8 (Fire & Ice). One of the good things about playing between a Minstrel and a Hunter is the perspective.

One thing I’ve noticed is that people relies in other classes (not only minstrels) to remove poison, wounds, etc. Yeah, the skill is there but in most cases there is a cooldown so you are by yourself in the matters of auto-healing this types of damage. Bottom line: we all need to carry pots.

I’m not 100% focus on this, I must confess, but fortunately for me there are some great fellowship leaders and team mates in my Kinship that are always reminding about this.

Anyway… pots are a must, even if you can survive you are adding the Minstrel a lot of job by keeping an eye on your always-going-down green bar. Having someone to heal / remove effects doesn’t mean he / she needs to be doing that all the time. Keep yourself alive.

Going back to my issue of returning to this game after five months… I must say I’m not a person that pays attention to detailed, technical stuff, I just enjoy the game and try to play it the best I can, I’m always listening, I know I’m not the best hunter / minstrel around. But I do spent (and still do) time doing some research and trying to combine things the best way for my own game play pleasure.

However I’ve noticed (since this is my first MMORPG) that it is easy to remember and learn all the skills, combinations, etc, etc when you play continuously… yeah, that’s obvious you may say. Some people says it is like riding a bike… I disagree. The last time work, family and other stuff took me away (poor me hehe) from the game was only a month… now after five months I feel like I forgot a lot of important stuff so this situation requires me to re-learn and re-read a lot of information.

Just a quick note about how sucked in we are about games like this… casual or not we all want to improve, be useful and even get some credit for it. Just pointing out that this is a game but it requires a lot of attention (and time of course) some people seems to manage this easily, some others (like me) don’t.

Anyway, it is not a big issue, I will check in the following days (or weeks) how to develop my abilities again

I am (slowly) returning to the game since February. I like this game a lot and enjoy the late night runs with my kin. One of my concerns is that I can’t remember a lot of tricks about playing a hunter. My last hiatus longed just one month, maybe a little less. This time I need to polish my skills after a 5 month absence.

So… one of the things I did was checking the Hunters sections of the forums and I was surprised to see (again) a lot of “Why hunters are so hated” threads. Funny, I missed a book, five months, lots of changes in the last patches and still the same mood about hunters… maybe more.

So here is why I think this is still happening:

• Hunters are, and maybe it was designed that way, the most straightforward class in the game. Don’t get me wrong this doesn’t mean it is a “plain to play” class. It is just the fact that you can start to play a hunter and learn right away how to kill stuff and evolve your character, step by step. Even if this is your first MMO (like in my case).
  This translated into a large amount of new players using the class so let’s say it is like Windows, majority of people uses the system so it has the larger amount of attacks from hackers… second thought: yeah, I’ve picked a bad example (I love Linux)… anyway… this means numbers, lots of people, both good and bad players.
• DPS draws a lot of agro so this class became like the official nightmare of Guardians and Minstrels … yeah, all other classes two but lets see:
  Guardians: they are supposed to keep aggro so, you see the point… and let’s not forget that this generates an ego issue too, lol. No offense. Hunters feel this too when a LM pet’s crits higher than us :D.
  Minstrels: the story about “I’m tired of saving the hunter’s ass. He/she is pulling everything “. I understand.
  Lore-Masters: yeah, let’s not forget about this: the CC master is pissed when the hunter releases one (or all) of the mobs. 100% understandable.
• A lot of people complain that hunters are useless and totally replaceable by other classes.

Well, that’s basically the bad part… the good part now… and some explanations:

• I’m one of those hunters that prefer to be balanced, I normally do not slot stuff for DPS, I prfer a good balance of evade / parry and DPS. Even in this case I can draw some attention from mobs and I understand that guardians must get the attentions first. I have assumed the “stand a and help the group to burn down these mobs” attitude.
  However, since Moria I’ve seen a lot of “We need hunters for the Watcher” announcements and a lot of guides recommended (and still do) to have at least two hunters with full DPS capabilities. Also, when groups are unbalanced or based on other abilities (healing, CC, etc) hunters are required to burn down mobs… so the point about being useless is… useless. All classes are replaceable the game was designed that way. I saw a lot of threads (especially about killing the Balrog last year) showing how fellowships and raids did great jobs without hunters… and other classes as well.
• I supposed that after all these changes our bad reputation would end but even when it seems that less people is rolling hunters (less reasons to roll one since there are two new classes since Moria) still we are getting the bad reputation, maybe it is a matter of time.
• About Aggro… I don’t know, I have a lot of respect about other classes since I play them also and I know a lot of great players that have a great understanding of technical stuff that… specifically taking about guardians here… a good guardian can get aggro even if the hunter(s) are really bad. And I have seen it, one of my kinmates can deliver insane DPS and even in a bad situation a little talk and organization is enough to get things straight up. Maybe a lot of this hunter’s hatred is related to bad PUG’s also.
• About communication: same issue, blame the hunter, but a lot of people can remember bad experiences with Minstrels (damn, I can even remember a Minstrel in Nimrodel that only needed a “This fellowship is about to die” badge).

I mean, the worst thing we can do is to release mobs that are under the skills of the CC classes… besides that taking aggro is an easy to fix situation (even if the hunter must die). To me it is worst when the minstrel heals the wrong class or if the guardian can’t keep aggro (excepting hunters, of course) or if the entire team fails in communication. Burglars trying to do stealthy stuff and drawing three mobs, people pulling (all classes can do this, right?) so I don’t understand why failure is seen in hunters more than in other classes… maybe it is the amount of hunters out there… I don’t know…

(Why did I choose this topic to start blogging here… that’s a good question)

I’ve been away for a while. Yesterday I could log in and check some stuff. One of the main things I noticed (and expected): my house was locked out for not paying. Ok, so it took me a while to visit vendors and vault keepers to realize that was not the place to go. The house icon was gone and the House is Locked icon does nothing so this is the solution:

Go to your Character Panel and click on the Housing tab. There is an Unlock House button. Click on it and accept the 300s to unlock it so you can start to pay unkeep again.

BTW, 300s to reopen the hous is not bad

You need to identify and equip first the weapon that has the characteristics that you want. These are completly random so it takes a while to find the one or maybe you get lucky. Equip some of them even if you use just one or two since all the equipped weapons gain experience even if they are in your inventory. But you need to equip them first.

Weapon XP gained through fighting distributes among all the weapons you have equipped. You can have up to seven (or eight, cant remember) equipped legendary weapons.

Deconstruct the ones you don’t need including other classes weapons (identify them first) to get relics.

Relics have tiers from 1 to 8. Each relic has individual stats. Once you have 5 of them of the same tier you can combine them to get more relics and relics of the next tier. You need to try to compbine a lot of them to get better tier relics. By combining you will also get gems and runes that you can use in you legendaries.

Here is a list for starters to get the most of the chat channels.

You can “talk” inchat channels by typing / (slash) plus the letter identifying the chat channel. Common chat channels included in the game by default are:

• /say (default): the general say channel for people around you
• /f (fellowship): this can be use to talk privately with your fellowship while questing
• /advice : this can be used to ask for directions, explanations about anything in-game
• /lff (looking for fellowship): use this channel to find fellowships for quests you want (check the notes below for more LFF options)
• /tell (private messages): use /tell playername to send messages directly to a player. Example: /tell otherplayername Hello! will send Hello! to the player named otherplayername.

LFF Channel

When looking for groups use something like this:

/lff LFF Quest Name Here

If yo ualready have some people in your fellowship use the following:

/lff LFM for quest name here

LFM means Looking for More and it gives the idea that you already have people with you. Some people doesn’t join fellowships (specially for tough quests) until they see you are serious about, after you have someone else to do it.

You can also use:

/lff LF2M for QuestName (looking for two more) or

/lff LF2M (1 must be a champion) if you are looking for specific classes

You can also type ‘O’ and add a LFF note in the Fellowing tab by selecting level ranges / classes / quests needed to publish globaly in your server a LFF request that will appear in every other character in that server.

GLFF

Since /LFF channels are regional, for example if you type /LFF (something here) in Angmar it will display to all characters in Angmar only.

If you want to find a fellowship server-wide and you don’t want to use the Fellowing opyion you can join the General Looking for Fellowship Channel by typing this:

/joinchannel glff

If this is your first custom channel you are joining you can access it / type in by doing this:

/1 LFM Quest Name Here

/1 is the channel number one that will be available if you used /joinchannel glff as your first custom channel. If you already used another custom channel (they will stay there every time you log in) use /2 or the number in the order you joined them

In order to get more relics you can identify weapons even if they are not compatible with your class. For example a Hunter can identify a Rune-Keeper’s Rune. Once the legendary weapons is identified you can go to a Relic Master and deconstruct the weapon for relics.

If you are leveling and you already have a legendary weapon of your choice you can slot more weapons for your class (until you hit the max legendary weapons alloed). Equip them so they bind to you and they will appear in the legendary menu. These weapons will level with you.

Why? because deconstructing level 1 weapons doesn’t give as much relics as deconstructing a higher level weapon. So you can deconstruct recently identified weapons for non-class weapons but you can get more relics by identifying, equiping and leveling your own class weapons and then deconstruct them after some levels. The more levels the weapon has the more relics / relic quality you will get.