So per my usual, I do a lot of forum reading and catch up on my RSS feeds over the weekends and finish things up first thing Monday morning. I use a tool called Evernote to compile my thoughts as I can update/share my notes from both of my machines, twitter, blackberry, and directly from my browser. Also, I am finishing up a couple other posts that I started last week focused on grouping and the new end-game content. If you have any ideas, suggestions, wishes, etc. please send them over.
MMOrpg.com has posted their review of LOTRO’s expansion, Siege of Mirkwood. Nothing earth shattering but always interesting to see what others think about the expansion. They mainly focus on skirmishes and the new combat, which are the main areas of excitement for me as well.
There’s a new post up on the LOTRO live forums that detail all the new traits, deeds, places of interest, etc. within Mirkwood. Certainly some spoilers, but real handy if there’s something you’re struggling to find. I just used this list to find on of the epilogue quest givers 🙂
One of the main changes with Mirkwood has been the changing of some of the percentages to ratings. One of the questions that came up was ““What rating value” should I have to tank higher level mobs commonly found in the various end-game instances. We can easily see what value caps against even level mobs but there’s little visibility to above or below mobs as they cap at a higher/lower number respectively. Referred in that post is another post that explains the detailed calculations that have been determined from the game. Both are helpful links for trying to decide which traits and which items/runes to use once you hit 65. I still haven’t really figured mine out – but both of these have helped me narrow things down.
For those of you who like number crunching, I saw a link posted for another tool out there called Dashing heroes, which allows you to not only track damage and such but combine it with screenshots and videos. I’m still checking it out, but it looked pretty slick and at only $9.99 it isn’t a huge price hit. It has similar features to cstats but also adds quite a bit of additional functionality.
I also stumbled upon a new podcast this weekend called The Multiverse which is a general MMO Podcast but one of the hosts runs the Game by Night blog. He is a fellow LOTRO player who’s on the Landroval server in the Council of the Secret Fire kinship. That’s the kinship that Merric and Goldenstar (from CStM )are in as well as the Az from the Wizzard of Az. The other blog on that podcast that I’m following (haven’t checked out the 3rd host yet) is Epic slant which mainly focuses on running a successful guild, and specifically a raiding guild.
Almazar from LOTRO Reporter shared (via twitter) Longasc’s Picasa web album which has a TON of really cool images from pretty much all the areas within LOTRO. So if you’re curious what certain areas look like or just want to see some cool in-game shots its certainly worth a look.
As you’ve seen from my videos and screenshots, I use various different UI skins. For those of you who haven’t used them Merric from CStM has a 2-part video series on them up on YouTube. Check them out here:
Part 1:
Part 2:
And finally, for those of you like me who wish they had more time in the day – this post should be able to help you get more out of an hour. Kinda scary how many of those I’m guilty of – but certainly helps highlight if you really want to get something done cut out the distractions.