LOTRO Reporter Episode 157 – Where Is My War-steed?

Chris, Cari and Layanor try to figure out where Chris’ War-steed might be. We think it might be in New Jersey.

Listen now:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:19 — 77.4MB) | Embed

What We Did in Game

Layanor-

Hit level 85 on Wednesday.
Layanorville is looking awesome.
Joined a scraid and crashed at the end of it.
Crashing constantly.

Cari-

Did some of the Rohan Epic story,
Did the epic-est of epic scraid,
Crafted and cleaned out vault and shared storage. Rohan has lots of stuff that needs to be stored.

Chris-

Ding 76
Going through the Eastern Wall section, following the epic story.
Where’s my War Steed? I want it NOW!

News

Layanor – Release Notes Update 8.0.2

Turbine tries to fix the crash problems (Le Lay Rant)

A client crash that would occur on some machines with low video memory has been fixed.
A client crash that would occur on some machines with a 32-bit OS has been fixed.
A game server crash that would happen in rare circumstances has been fixed.

Forum Post RE Undocumented Changes in ROR
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?483086-Undocumented-Changes/page2
Some of the fun stuff that’s been reported:

moon has phases now
sky / weather / lightning different
LI only glowing while fighting
Vault in the Moors
Some of the cloaks changed levels.
The different stances are disabled when you are on a horse. It takes a second or so for the correct stance to kick in.

Turbine hires some new directors
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/19/turbine-hires-rolston-game-industry-veterans-for-high-level-pos/

Ken Rolston – Director of Design role at Turbine
His works include -

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – (executive designer)
Morrowind – (lead designer)
Oblivion – (lead designer)

Alan Villani – Vice President of Technology and responsible for driving “online engagement and monetization.”
His works include -

Mortal Kombat

Jai Singh – Director of technical operations

Former manager of Zynga who has done -

Turbine plans to remove the extra 20 cosmetic slots in update 8.1

“VIPs were incorrectly awarded an additional 20 shared wardrobe slots with Update 8. Due to this error several store offers for shared storage are not working correctly for VIPs and have been disabled. This issue will be resolved in Update 8.1. The additional slots will be removed from VIPs and the correct store offers returned to the LOTRO Store. We strongly encourage all VIPS to not use the additional slots as items stored in those slots may become unavailable when 8.1 goes live.”

The theory is, if you have 106 of 110 slots currently as a VIP. It will change to 106 of 90 when update 8.1 goes live. The only functional difference for you is that can not add anything to the wardrobe unless you buy 20 more slots. You can use the 106 items any way you like.

You remove an item. You will go to 105 of 90. You can’t put a replacement item under to reach 89 of 90.

This is not confirmed tho and only a theory. Some have said those 20 slots will lock. Others say those 20 will just be deleted. Even if something is in the slot.

Palantir private preview program is taking applications
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?485028-The-Palantir-Private-Preview-Program&p=6485950#post6485950

Palantir program has changed. If you get in, you will be a member for 6 months. When that time is up, you can not reapply for 6 months.

Price of cosmetics for War-steeds

595 for four colors
Per character.

Did You Know

Resource instances *Or crafting instances*
Everyone is playing Rohan right now and are wondering where the heck are the three new crafting instances. What you need to do is get to level 84. This will let you start questing at Hytbold in the Sutcrofts. This will lead you on a quest chain to rebuild the entire town. Once you do some of these quests, you can pick what to rebuild. You want to pick one of these three.

Rebuild Library
Rebuild Lumber mill
Rebuild Metalsmith

Once you have done that, you must then build a superior workbench for the one you picked.
A barter NPC with a new quest will show up in the crafters section of Hybolt and he will have the new resource instance.
The Scholar quest has new legendary titles to pick.
The Prospector quest has tier 5 sealed relics as well as the new Compendium 4 crafting item.
And the Woodworkers quest lets you select more tier 5 sealed relics.

Each resource instance feels very close to the old ones in Moria. In fact I believe they took three of the Moria maps, scraped the old look of the place and added a somewhat new look to them. Even the music feels like the old songs.

And that was did you know

Community

Casual Stroll to Mordor Interview with Chance Thomas

A 35 minutes interview with the composer of “The Riders of Rohan”

His influences
Getting involved into Middle Earth games
Process for writing a score
Transferring Tolkien’s world to music
The challenge of writing music that connects with players
How important video game music has become

Journey Through Middle Earth Contest
http://journey.lotro.com

Screenshot contest for different regions throughout the game, take a screenshot, upload it to the site, and create a postcard out of it.
Chance to win 1500 TP points.
You must have a Facebook account and allow the app to have access to your account to enter.
You must upload your postcard to Facebook or Twitter.

Pumpkin carving Contest

http://www.lotro.com/news/latestnews/2538-turbine-pumpkin-carving-contest-2012

Turbine will accept digital photographs of entries from October 19th through November 2nd, 2012.

Prizes

For the Best Lord of the Rings Online Pumpkin, win the following for your LOTRO game account:
3000 Turbine Points for the LOTRO Store
Custom Forum Title: “Master Carver (2012)”

One runner-up in this category will receive a custom forum title: “Master Carver (2012)”
Eligible winning entries may even be featured on the official websites!

A look at Legendary Bridles Part 1 by Pineleaf

http://warsteeds.com/2012/a-look-at-legendary-bridles-part-1-overview/

How to get a bridle
The bridle types
Major and minor legacies list
Touches on the relics but will cover that more later

Rohan content being covered by LOTRO Strategy

LOTROStrategery.wordpress.com/

This blog is covering a lot of Rohan things such as:

Hytbold quests
Rohan guides
He uses plenty of screenshots, maps, and even animated gifts when they are needed.

Very nice comment on episode 156

Jackson
Been seeing lots of good info in the show-notes lately. Is that something I can attribute to y’all or to just plain more info coming out due to the xpac? Anyway, good stuff!
I always want to listen in on the show, but then I realized I’d rather play the game myself, heh. I do catch up when I’m on the road.
You been hitting up any skraids, Layanor?

We got an Email:

Hello oh wise and learned staff of lotro reporter. I was hoping you could answer two questions for me, possibly as part of a Did You Know, or just something to fill the airspace on your always entertaining/informative podcast.

1) Is there any way to get rid of pesky names that pop up as autocomplete options when you send mail? I once accidentally mistyped a kinmenber’s name, and that erroneous name now always comes up as an option along with the correct name. I of course keep clicking the wrong one.

2) Could you explain the making of relics and gems and settings for insertion into a legendary bridle? This one has got me stumped. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get any to appear in the list for bridles. I’m guessing you have to decon bridles specifically in order for anything to be slottable? Some light shed by Layanor on this subject would be most welcome.

Feralir, Windfola

Contact Info

Email: lotro.reporter@gmail.com

Twitter: @lotroreporter

Facebook: LOTRO Reporter

Voicemail: 616-666-6778

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/mmoreporternetwork

www.lotroreporter.com

Cari Twitter: @thecarimac
Layanor Twitter: @Layanor

WARSTEEDS – Sig

Re: the warsteed store price stuff…

I fully expected to pay for warsteed appearance upgrades. I had set some money aside to convert to TP to buy these things, as all indication from beta is it was going to be completely store dependent.

Having been a lifetime subscriber from the get go, I have no problem with the Turbine store and putting money into it to buy some of the fluff I want.

At this time, the problem I am really running into is the fact it costs me almost 7 dollars in points to get a pack of four colors when I only want ONE color. The other colors in the pack are completely useless to me. Sure, lower prices would be nice. Making them account wide would be great. Breaking them up into single colors for 150TPwould be sufficient.

At this time I have taken the money I set aside and put it towards other hobbies of mine. I have bought a Shaggy Roan hide for 595 with VIP Turbine points I get every month. I consider this price a tad spendy but not-so-much as to be grumpy about it. I was just waiting a bit to make sure the Shaggy Roan was the one I wanted. I also plan on buying ONE of the gear slot accessory pieces you get from the store for 395. Still a bit high, but do-able.

As for now I am still boycotting the colors themselves, as well as putting real money into the Turbine store. Things may change my mind later but I can not in good conscience spend 595 TP on what is essentially a single color (the 3 other similar colors are useless to me). As it is right now I have to buy two color packs just to get my steed to look the way I want it (hide and hair) and a third color pack to make my Steed of the Hunter Caparison actually match the travel mount,.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Wullo-Sweetwater/100001172203368 Wullo Sweetwater

But the raid instances are not free.. you’ve paid for them when you bought the expansion.. the expansion was not free. (in response to Layanor saying maybe Turbine is trying to compensate for them being free with the absurd mount cosmetic prices and the increased price of some other store items)

I’m a bit sad that LOTRO is going down this route.. I feel like more and more the game is about the store. If you have a good game and talented artists, people will pay for new skins/horses/dresses whatever. League of Legends is a good example with the skins. Guild Wars (the first one) is a good example with the costumes (of which I’ve bought almost all of them). Or WoW – which is kind of a “freak” here, coz of the subscription, but still, ppl buy the pets and mounts because they look cool. I wish Turbine did the same.. charging for things they put effort in, not COLORS.
I could go on a rampage here, but only beacuse I used to love LOTRO, and I care, but I’m finding myself disheartened by these things lately and playing less and less..

But on a lighter note.. nice show, I LOVE the new hosts :)