Skip to main content

Carn Dum: Throg Joins the Assault on the Witch King's Fortress

On Saturday Throg spent three and a half hours in the 6 man instance of Carn Dum with a kinship group. It was a pretty successful run - Several of us knocked off a few quests and one of our hunters got the rare "slime" he needs for his class quests. We had an experienced tank and healer who directed events (plus had all the keys needed to access the fortress) so it went smoothly. Highlight of the run for me was a set piece fight against the giant octopus who drops the aforementioned slime.


Carn Dum is not a raid instance but it is a major fellowship instance with many bosses. It is woven into the epic storyline and it is the only place to get some vital class drops (but not funnily enough for champions). As keys must be collected to open access to the stages and as each boss only drops one critical item kinships can be expected to visit CD many time in order to allow their members get all the stuff they need to progress.

I am sure it gets boring after the 10th time but I really enjoy this type of focussed group play. However - setting aside three to four hours to play an instance uninterrupted is quite difficult for me and makes me wonder how much further I can progress in the game. If I expect fellow kin members to spend three or four hours getting my high level items then I need to return the favour - that means running long instances like CD many times and at the moment that creates a difficulty for me.

I mentioned before that I would like to have a go at raiding but as that probably needs even large uninterrupted blocks of time so I will need to be realistic about what I can and cannot do.

Lotro is unusual in that you don't actually have to go raiding to get epic gear. You can buy very high level stuff on the AH given enough gold. However I have spent a good deal of time solo grinding over the last week or so (traits, pages and cash) and I nearly went bananas. I offered my services to the first group I found just to get back into doing group quests.

This is a slightly rambling post but I guess once of the points I am trying to make is that "long" instances can be insurmountable barriers to casual players like me. I love grouping and I love challenging instances but setting aside uninterrupted blocks of time is a challenge.

Comments

Zoso said…
Yeah, the big chunks of contiguous time are what I have a problem with. I was just poking around the Elitist Jerks forums, and found
a thread along similar lines.

(Though being raiders, three sessions of three hours a time are the baseline extreme-casual level.)

I think that's another reason I've been playing more single player games recently, pause keys are an infinitely better way of managing wife aggro, "not now, dear, we're nearly up to the penultimate boss" doesn't cut the mustard for some reason...
mbp said…
Thanks for that link Zoso - it makes interesting reading even though I have to admit that when I read about people playing four hours at a sitting five nights a week I think they must be living on a different planet than me.

Its about wife aggro certainly but it is also about life choice and whether or not I want to opt out of the real world entirely. Four hours sitting a a game with no break means I am totally cutoff. Four hours of gaming spread over an evening with breaks in between to check kids homework, talk to wife, put kids to bed etc allows me to feel part of the family.

The thing is - I really like grouping and I like taking on epic challenges in a group. Sadly there is a certain time overhead associated with grouping and the bigger the group the larger the minimum chunk of time has to be.

Popular posts from this blog

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get