Gundabad Preparations

Preparations

The Fate of Gundabad was something a lot of people were looking forward to. There were some people coming back to the game back in October 20, 2020 when The War of Three Peaks came out thinking it was "the expansion" that raises the level cap. Boy were they wrong. If you read up on either of my 6-month Update posts Newsletter or Random Events, you would have learned of how EG7 bought Lord of the Rings Online back in December 2020 and Raninia became the new producer in May 2021. Things really started coming down the pipeline starting August 18th through September 8th when they teased about the expansion. That day they opened up Bullroarer for people to check out the new LI system and Brawler class. And let me tell you that a ton of people were not happy with the changes. Some didn't like the idea of not being able to max out your legendary items while leveling up. Others cried out that their investments in legendary recipes, slots, items, and equipment were all going to be in vain. Then there are ones that despised the idea of needing items from instances. All of this was quite an overeaction if you read all the good things that came about in my Legendary Progress and Legendary Benefits blog posts. If the step-by-step guide on the wiki page wasn't enough, you can also check out any of the guides at the bottom or visit the official page for more information. Although these changes were merely a skeleton system on release for Update 30.3, it was indeed a working one by October 13, 2021. The forum posters continued to rage on as Raninia remained headstrong by telling them that they are indeed busy working on things for the game, informing us that developing a game isn't as easy as the public thinks it is, and that getting the best of everything through farming Ancient Script is not how the game is meant to be played.

Legendary Backlog

So if the new legendary system is working, something that they had in the works since February 2020, what else needs to be done? Well, the Reward Track mentioned back in September 10th for starters. We expected to hear more about it, but it didn't come out with Update 31. On November 4th 2021 (6 days before the expansion was due to be released), we realized that both the interface and the dungeons were going to be postponed. According to their statement, the system took longer than expected to develop. To make it so that people don't lose out on all that legendary experience from the expansion, they temporarily decided to switch it so that the quests give heritage runes instead of pure experience. I do like this idea except for one fact - there are about 24 different heritage runes that will be using up space in my vault for the next few weeks. Also, any old heritage runes people might have saved up now can't be used until they are at least level 130. There are also reports of people legitimately earning heritage runes from quests that they can't use because their value registers for a higher level. Weapons are still Beleriand by default since the heritage traceries still don't have any weapon title attachments. The UI is still utilizing the essence slot system. Words of Craft traceries currently doesn't have any craftable traceries. Many locations and quests are still dropping old items. Many old barterers aren't providing the new items, which is causing heartache on the legendary servers. They have still yet to come out with a complete conversion list for old items. Skirmishes have not been changed from their old format (which isn't quite surprising since nothing has been updated since the release of the Mordor expansion). It is clear the developers have quite a lot of work to do ahead of them!

Epic Problem

It has been widely-known that the Epic has been an essential part for exploring content in this game. The Skirmish Event, also known as Ill-Omens, requires you to complete Moria and Mirkwood to unlock the skirmishes. The beginning of Riders of Rohan is required for you to obtain your war-steed. You have to visit Wildermore and visit the king at Edoras before you can get quests in Helm's Deep. You must complete the final chapter of the Epic in order to access the Allegiance system in Mordor. These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Things go a lot easier when you follow the chapters. Sadly, some people got swept up in an issue where they still have an old legendary item from the introductory chapters of Moria when the developers transitioned the quest chain to provide a new one. However, there was another issue people complained about just as much: You need to complete the first four chapters of The Legacy of Durin before entering into Gundabad through the front gate. Technically, you could still follow the main road around the back way through level 135 mobs at the WitchGate. But even the housing decoration from the Ultimate Edition required the completion of Chapter 5.2 before it teleported a person inside Gundabad. Things got so bad that MadeOfLions had to intervene by telling the public that he will develop an on-ramp (warning: toxic behavior detected). This is sad because those four chapters are essential to the story. Ones who do choose to skip doing the Epic will be missing out on the rewards in the final chapter - teal shattered tracery token, 600 Ancient Scripts, and a cosmetic cloak - and the epilogue - gold shattered tracery token, 600 Ancient Scripts, and a housing decoration.

The War of Three Peaks

With our upgraded legendary weapons and a week before the expansion was released on November 10th, our kinship decided to run Bloody Threshold T1. This is pretty fitting since the event technically happens after Chapter 4.8. The funny thing is that the goblin bat-riders didn't stop coming down. They continued to amass even after the raid completed. The kinship attempted Bloody Threshold T2 and finally succeeded! Although the raids of Bloody Threshold, Fall of Khazad'dum, and Remmorchant are now part of the non-scaling instances at level 130, Shakalush The Stair Battle continues to be a scaling instance. Many still continue to run the instance for gear, but any items collected from the instance (even if they are higher in level) will only disenchant into motes. 

2021-11-16