Skip to main content

Thoughts on Grouping in Lotro

I am writing instead of playing because my server crashed and I am frozen out. It was quite bizarre in that I was in a fellowship when each of us became frozen in place. We could chat and look at menus we just couldn't move. Once character was perpetually running on the spot. I had gotten stuck earlier today in Bree and logging out and in again solved it that time so I tried that but now I can't log back in.

A blog post from Lost in The Grind got me thinking Grouping in Lotro. Sean from LITG comments that he spends more time in fellowships than doing solo quests in Lotro. While my balance is probably more 50:50 I am definitely spending more time in groups in Lotro than I did while levelling up in World of Warcraft. There are few reasons for this:

First off the Epic quest line that everybody aspires to complete has many fellowship quests including mini-instances that are a real pleasure to do. This gets everyone used to fellowing.

Secondly even though there are still plenty of solo quests at my level (I haven't hit the dreaded level 35 black hole yet) most quest sequences end in a fellowship quest and in order to get good loot you need to do the fellowship quest.

Thirdly when a quest in Lotro is marked "fellowship" they really mean it. In WOW it was often possible to solo group quests if you levelled up a couple of times. In Lotro fellowship quests usually involve multiple elites and remember that Throg has difficulty killing an elite five levels below him. The only fellowship quests he can hope to solo are grey quests that are so far below his level they aren't worth it.

Finally it is generally easy to find a half decent pick up group in lotro to do whatever quest you need. This is not because of any Looking for Fellowship function (nobody uses the official one) but simply because the community is used to fellowing and it has become the norm. In fact the lotro community is generally very mature and helpful. I have yet to have an unpleasant pug experience.

All in all I like the mix of solo and fellowship so far. I think Turbine have got the balance just about perfect for me. Group quests are usually more fun but often the demands of real life mean you need to solo. I know there is currently a lack of solo quests from the mid 30's on but I expect that to be addressed any day now with the Shores of Evendim expansion.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My First Gaming Mouse: Logitech G300

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button.  4. Extr

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