Waiting Jitters

 December 5th - March 5th

Highlights: Expansion History, Yule Festival, Resolina & Fanrel adventures, VIP, Ill-Omens

History: Producer's Letter Feburary 2019 prelude the fact that this expansion would be in Minas Morgul, followed by a dev post stating that the raid would be Shelob. In Gen Con 2019, a video was released August 2019 showing off the stout-axe races, followed by an interview discussing the technical side of things. This means that roughly a year passed between Ered Mithrin "Where Dragons Dwell" in October 2018 and Vales of Anduin June 2019 before the level increased again from 120 to 130. They would follow the same example of Mordor expansion by releasing the game to be purchased ahead of time with roughly 3 months before releasing it for 2495 lotro points. However, instead of only offering an Aria in the core package and the High Elf in the "Collector's Edition", they decided to offer the Stout-Axe race in the "Standard Edition". At one point I conversed with someone who was completely oblivious to the fact of already owning the race when he was trying to buy it for 1000 lotro points.

Trickle Content: Unfortunately very similar to Mordor expansion, not everything was added to the game right away.

• November 5th the quest chains were available and the entirety of the Black Book of Mordor was available only if you bought Mordor expansion or Minas Morgul expansion  (I'll go into more details in another post).
• December 12th brought the Yule Festival and "rewarded" VIP golden hobbit presents with a chance of obtaining an elk and a couple of rare pets that I entirely missed out on. However, the daily festival quests and seasonal instances did manage to get both of my characters up to 123. The new housing stables were also included in this patch. Crafting Carry-alls was also added temporarily to the lotro store and are now permanantly included since February 28th.
• January 22nd brought about the 6-man instances.
• February 12th brought Riders of Rohan on legendary servers.
• February 19th brought Ill Omens Skirmish Event.
• And coincidentally when people were finishing up their wrapper quests for that event, Shelob raid was released March 3rd and Minas Morgul was offered for lotro points March 5th. So what did I end up doing before I could access the expansion? You can catch a couple of things in the House Management post January 16, 2020. For the rest I'll list down below.
  
  

Fanrel Adventure: Fanrel started The Black Book of Mordor and even completed the epilogue January 14th. She ventured through Gondor Treasure Caches seeking gear, any gear, at level 125. They really made it nigh impossible to get gear if you didn't buy the expansion. I went through completing Mordor, doing Mordor dailies, doing Mordor scourges, and finishing Strongholds of the North.

"How did you get way over there Finnok? Why not let Melynda summon you over here." - Fanrel

 

Resolina Adventure: Without Minas Morgul raid, the group decided to run Anvil of Winterstitch a few times with upgraded gear. Things were rocky and even I passed along some bad information to the kinship. We managed to kill the first boss, then pass the second encounter, and eventually got stuck on the icicles on the third boss. January 12th went by and we managed to complete it January 19th, 2020 and again on January 26, 2020. Though as an experiment, I wanted to avoid doing The Black Book of Mordor on my captain. This made leveling a little more trickier. February 11th I received the surprise of 2-months of VIP status. I mean I knew Away Shall Fade was famous for "slotro" Beacon #97 (March 2019) but I didn't know we were known for "PvMP" Beacon #128 (September 2019). I played a reaver for a couple months there before the expansion hit but they really upped the game when tripling monster morale and balancing their mitigations. And now finally I could truck along Frostpaw and Sylverlynx in the Ettenmoors. That got me from level 127 to 130 in a matter of a few weeks. Things were still a bit tricky doing Ill Omens as a level 130 in level 120 Vales tank gear. I will admit that I accepted the challenge with a passion.

"You're awesome." - Bizinga

2020-03-14