Ready, Set, Grind

An Unhealthy Glow

Now that it’s really all over, it’s probably worth talking about how all around the Internets, this year’s LotRO Fourth Anniversary Event was given the unhappy label "Grindaversary." In the EU, some not-terribly-scientific polling showed it to be resoundingly unpopular. In the US, not only did a 250-posts-per-day thread get closed after just four days of heated debate, but even the folks over at the highly-regarded Casual Stroll to Mordor blog announced early on that they were going to skip the Anniversary Event. The combination of the cost per item (20 Anniversary Tokens for most, 30 Anniversary Tokens plus three Anniversary Race Tokens for the Anniversary Steed), the volume of items, (14, including the mount), and the limited means of getting tokens (three events, two of which could only be run every 24h if you won) had many people up in arms.

Enter to Win the Lottery!

After much to-do, US players were given an alternate third way of acquiring Anniversary Tokens, that being to enter LotRO Lotteries through the Community Portal. Winnings were awarded as five tokens at first, then ten became the standard, and the win rates were relatively high. When I first sat down to start writing this, I had not participated in any of the activities on any characters, but had managed to acquire six out of eight maps available for the duration of the Event just by Lottery winnings alone.

To be honest, I was entering the Lotteries not in hopes of winning, but because it was easier to just click "select all" on the Lottery entry page (all characters entering all valid Lotteries) than to pick-and-choose which to enter, and which to not bother about.When I finally decided to look over what my options were if I was to pursue all eight housing decoration maps, it was plain that I had very little work left ahead of me to get them all. Before long, I’d accidentally gotten enough tokens (again, mostly by Lottery) to get everything the Games-masters had on offer. By the time it was all over, I’d accidentally gotten so many extra tokens that even after getting the Anniversary Steed on five characters, I ended up having two full sets of all eight maps.

Post-Anniversary Shared Storage

However, EU patrons and players in the US prior to (or without using) the Lotteries had a pretty long haul before them if they wanted to get every item from the Event, which really is not a very uncommon goal at all. There’s also the fact that the Anniversary Tokens went directly to the Wallet, and could not be traded or otherwise moved around from character to character, even on the same account. So if you had one character with 15 Anniversary Tokens, that did you no good unless you went and ground out at least five more on that character; 15 plus three Anniversary Race Tokens if you wanted to use those 15 Lottery Anniversary Tokens to give you a leg up on earning the mount.

Slowed by a Sticky Mire

Consider that the horse races each had a 24h CD, and that you must have used three of your race wins to collect Anniversary Race Tokens. After that, you could have earned up to two tokens about every 24h, by running both races. You could have run the Bar-Fight as often as you liked, but it had a 9m CD from the time the quest was offered until it was offered again. Since you needed 290 Anniversary Tokens and the event was scheduled for 14 days, that meant an absolute maximum of 25 from races, as three wins had to be reserved for the Anniversary Race Tokens. That left you needing to get 265 Anniversary Tokens in the Bar-Fight. That’s 39.75 hours of Bar-Fighting, and that assumes you won every possible horse race, and every possible Bar-Fight. If you live in the EU and had some vacation days and a need for self-flagellation, this Anniversary was a godsend. For pretty much everyone else, well. "Grindaversary" indeed.

This Is a Violent Game

The other complaint people levied against the Anniversary Event was that the Bar-Fight, which as you can see by the math above was the only sure way to get everything from the Event, was essentially a PvP activity. It had, as I mentioned the other day, the potential to be a Griefer’s Paradise. I myself had the mild displeasure of being griefed by Fellrotten, a level 65 LRM from the "Hobbitual" Kinship, who has expressed his dislike of the way I chat. (I am very particular about using OOC flags on my chat text whenever I am OOC, without regard to whether any number of people consider said channel to be OOC or IC, as a point of clarity.)

After I asked the channel a few questions in GLFF about the Bar-Fight, he correctly deduced that I was probably playing around with it right that moment, and took it upon himself to enter the arena space and keep me as his one and only target for the duration of each round. Each time, when I managed to successfully get a Glorious Beer and complete the activity, he ran out without trying to get the Glorious Beer for himself, and without ever having hit anyone else. After two rounds like this, he left, so my guesses are that either he got bored of not being able to actually stop me from completing the activity, or that he was reported and cautioned by GMs to knock it off. In any case, it was a perfect demonstration of exactly one of the reasons many players complained about this activity, if not on its own merits, then because it was the only real way to actually earn Anniversary Tokens.

In the end, I wonder if Turbine did not actually go overboard with the Lotteries. Whereas the initial complaint was that it was far too intensive a grind to earn all the goodies, I feel as though the complaint after the fact might be, from some players, that the Lotteries made it too easy to get everything, and so devalued the prizes. Having played all of maybe 30 rounds of the Bar-Fight, and having run the races maybe 20 times or so, even with the additional motivator that most players do not have of gathering screens and video for a blog, I really barely participated in the Anniversary Event at all, yet I ended up with far more than just one of each item on offer.

My suggestion to Turbine for next year’s Event, and really for any future Event, would be that if they offer the barter token(s) for that Event through the Lottery, that they also code them in such a way that they do not enter the Wallet, and are BtA. That would allow players to plan and play as they saw fit, without having an excess of barter tokens, or some odd and useless number of them, on any given character.

Questions? Comments? Corrections? Leave a Comment!

Have Your Cake

The absurdly generous LotRO Lotteries that Turbine began offering shortly after discontent erupted onto the official forums quickly not only supplied me with enough Anniversary Tokens to get all of the barter items on offer at the Games-masters throughout Middle-earth, but indeed left me with such an excess that I experienced a full-scale shift in my thinking on the Anniversary Steed. While it is still the fluffiest of fluff, and I can only see myself using it for RP events and little else, the fact that it was the last thing I had not yet attained, combined with the gross overstock of Anniversary Tokens, was enough to prompt me to go ahead and just see how many characters could get it with as little effort as possible on my part.

Item: Anniversary Steed :: Tooltip

Basically, I wanted to have most if not all of the Anniversary Tokens come from Lotteries, and have each character for whom I would earn a mount be left with the relatively simple task of winning the Festival Run three times to get three Anniversary Race Tokens, and having a couple hundred silver coins to buy the Document of Mount Ownership from Will Peartree.

Vendor Barter Panel

Conveniently, he is the same NPC with whom a character must barter all the aforementioned in order to obtain the mount skill "Anniversary Steed." In the end, I had one Hobbit-lass, three Women, and one Elf-maid on my main server, and one Woman who had won enough Anniversary Token Lotteries on my old server, had I felt inclined to log over and claim them, as to need only the three Anniversary Race Tokens and the pittance in coin. One Woman in particular, the LRM Imho, was the first of mine to earn her cake.

Although the Community Calendar seems to indicate that players would have until at least midnight EST on May 4 (that being immediately after May 3), apparently when Turbine lists an Event as ending on a day, that means that the last day for it is really the day before. Which means that sadly those of you who have not yet traded in for this mount probably no longer can as of this posting. If it is still up for some reason, gather up all the aforementioned barter items, and head to Hengstacer Farms, North of Bree. When you arrive, interact with Will Peartree and select "Browse the Shop" to buy the one item he offers for sale.

Item: Document of Mount Ownership :: Tooltip

After that, interact with him again and select "Barter Items" instead. Then, just give the man what he asks for, and in return you will see that you’ve gained the skill, Anniversary Horse (or Pony).

Skill Panel: Mounts

Technically what happens is that the item shown at the very beginning of this post, Anniversary Steed, is given to you and consumed immediately and automatically, placing the appropriate skill per your character’s race into your Mounts skills panel. You can find it by pressing "K" (by default), and then clicking on the Mounts tab across the top. It is, like the Silken         of Golden Splendor, truly garish in all its glowing pastel glory. However, as I mentioned on that post, they do seem made for each other. Combined, it looks as though your character and their mount have just been wrapped up in carefully-moulded layers of fondant or marzipan. Once you’ve earned this cake, though you will have it, you simply must do your best to remember that you cannot eat it, too.

My Horse Cake Brings
All the Boys to the Yard

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The Festival Run

If doing the Bar-Fight every nine minutes does not strike your fancy for this year’s LotRO Fourth Anniversary "Festivities," your only other activity choice is the Festival Run, a horse race. These are run at the Bree Festival Grounds and in the Delving Fields near the Shire Homesteads, and either one, should you win, will give you a choice of one Anniversary Token or one Anniversary Race Token.

Quest Failure

Unfortunately, the CD on them is impossibly long. I’d heard it said that it’s 13h, but when I ran them last, I had 19h until next attempt, 11h until next attempt, and so forth. Originally, that led me to guess that they reset at 5a EST, which was about the amount of time to which each of those added up. When I came back to check with one of my characters at 5:50a EST, the quest was available again, so it is definitely reset before 6a EST. However, as soon as my character successfully completed the quest, it was offered again immediately, with less than 5m until it was off CD. This would suggest that it resets both at 5a EST, and 6a EST. It’s also worth pointing out that if you fail the race, you can try again in an hour the first time.

Southfarthing Gate

The Delving Fields Anniversary Run quest is bestowed by Carl Proudfoot in the Delving Fields just slightly Northeast of the Shire Homesteads. One of the easiest ways to reach this if you’re not sure how to get there is buy a ride to the Shire Homesteads from the Michel Delving Stable-master, Andfast Tunnelly. He can be found by following the path West of the Town Crier, Iris Goodbody. Once your ride has started, just click the "dismount" button right as you pass through the Southfarthing Gate, and head West. You will see the track, and Carl should be straight ahead.

The Delving Fields: Track Location

I’ve posted a map of this location above, with all markers removed except for the character location icon, which I’ve faced towards the track.

Saeradan's Cabin

The Bree-fields Anniversary Run quest is bestowed by Sally Threshing at the Bree Festival Grounds, just South of Hengstacer Farms and North of Bree. If you’re not sure how to get there, head North after leaving Bree via the West Gate. Just past Thornley’s Work Site, look to the East. Gandalf won’t be there, but Saeradan’s Cabin comes into view from the path before long. Head towards it, and continue up the hill behind his Cabin, due Northeast. This will bring you to the Festival Grounds, and before long, to Sally.

The Festival Grounds: Track Location

As with the Delving Fields track location, I’ve posted a map of this above, with all markers removed except for the character location icon, which I’ve faced towards the track. This one is a bit harder to spot, because there is no enclosed oval bit of road surrounding a body of water, as there is with the track in the Delving Fields. In either case, accept the quest, and then select a Race Horse if you are of the Races of Men or Elves, or a Race Pony if you are a Dwarf or Hobbit.

Object: Race Horse :: Tooltip

You can right-click it to start the mounting induction, or once it’s selected, press "U" (by default) to "use" it. As soon as the induction is complete, the race begins, and you are effectively channeling being on the horse for a relatively brief span of time.

Object: Race Pony :: Tooltip

As the channel nears its end, your time on the mount draws to a close. If you manage to cross the finish line before it’s over, you win the race and complete the quest. If you fail, you will be dismounted where you were when the channel finished.

The Horse-Races themselves are not terribly difficult, and both tracks are similar enough that such differences as they have do not really matter. The only part that could be said to be difficult in any case is the two segments of each course where the path branches low, through a mucky swamp, and high, on a path of planks that do not fully bridge the gap, requiring careful steering, and a well-timed jump.

Debuff: Muddy-footed :: Tooltip

Passing through the low gate (or falling off while trying to pass through the high gate) will bring a message up on your screen reading, "your steed is slowed by a sticky mire…." You will also receive the Muddy-footed effect, which gives you a -25% Mount Speed debuff for 10s. Pass successfully through the high gate, and you will instead receive the Fleet-footed buff, which gives +15% Mount Speed for 15s. You will also see a message across your screen reading, "you gain a burst of speed for your agile navigation." Be advised that if you do not see either message, though you will receive the corresponding effect(s), you have missed a gate, and will almost certainly fail the quest. The amount of time it would take you to figure out which gate, get back to it, and proceed through it and to the end of the course from there would be prohibitive, to say the least.

Buff: Fleet-footed :: Tooltip

My trick to pulling the jump off more or less reliably (when I’m not gutting my framerate by turning Fraps on and off in the middle of the race) is to steer with mouselook, and aim the camera nearly straight down when I get to a plank bridge. To mouselook, right-click and hold the button down. When you drag your mouse while doing so, you will pan the camera and also change which direction your character is facing, hence the name. It provides much faster turning responce, as opposed to the slow, wide turning that maneouvreing with the keyboard allows. As for the rest of the track, while you must pass through each gate, you can gain a bit of an advantage on time by hugging the inside of the track to the greatest extent possible whenever you can.

I’ve also found it useful to jump again as soon as you land from your successful jump over the gap, which carries you forward far enough that even if you were about to slide off the side of the plank for having been too near the edge, you can fly through the air and avoid hitting the muck at all. Muddy-footed can displace Fleet-footed, but due to the nature of the courses and the distance between each of these obstacles on both, the reverse is not true. However, even if you get one application of each state, Muddy-footed and Fleet-footed, it is possible to win either race so long as you are somewhat careful and precise the rest of the time. That is, not getting hung up trying to jump over a stone wall, not running into waggons, etc. You may also find it helpful to run the track a few times in the proper direction to get a feel for the planks. You won’t get the speeding up or slowing down effect, but you can still get some useful experience practising your jumping.

Practise Makes Perfect

Once you’ve won the race, you can choose between the two token types for your reward. The Anniversary Steed requires three Anniversary Race Tokens, 30 Anniversary Tokens, and a Document of Mount Ownership, which is sold by the same vendor with whom you barter for the horse. Complete both races as often as you can by checking with the quest-giver as soon as you’ve completed (or failed) the quest, and making note of the CD. Because other than winning LotRO Lotteries or Bar-Fighting until your eyes bleed, this is it, people.

For so long as I have been playing, though the names and rewards for these quests have changed, as have the barter requirements to earn the mount(s) for that Event, these races have been exactly the same insofar as the details of their operation. That is, you always go to the same two places, and you always run the same two courses.

Questions? Comments? Corrections? Leave a Comment!

Games-master Goodies

A few days ago, I directed you to Town Criers in Bree, Michel Delving, Thorin’s Hall, and sometimes Rivendell during the operation of the Anniversary festivities. Partially, as I’ve said before, because they are the in-game way for you to learn about what’s broadly going on for any given event, but mostly because they have a map icon, and today’s NPCs, like the Keepers of Gifts, do not. As I mentioned, the Games-masters are only in Bree, Michel Delving, and Thorin’s Hall. There is a fourth Games-master, Gísli Strongclub, who does not have a barter inventory, but instead conducts the Bar-Fight (which awards an Anniversary Token) by way of the quest, The Mightiest Blow.

In exchange for 20 Anniversary Tokens, players can collect their choice of one of the 13 prizes on offer. Normally (and for EU players), this would mean about three hours of Bar-Fighting. Here in the US, as I believe I’ve mentioned a few times now, Turbine tried to address player distress over the grinding required to earn all of the commemorative items before the Event was over by adding high-frequency, high-volume, high-win-rate Lotteries as a third means of acquiring Anniversary Tokens, and thus bartering for these fluffies.

Item: Windmill

The first two items available are indoor and outdoor variations of a windmill. Naturally, the outdoor one is pretty substantial. Unfortunately, it’s also missing its blades, which of course opened the door for players to snark even more at this year’s "festivities" When I set out to write this, I didn’t have either windmill available, so I put out a call in GLFF for anyone who had either or both on display, so I could snap some screenshots for the blog. Evergrin and Finnson both graciously supplied me with their addresses, and gave me permission to access their homes and see these items so I could show them to you. Should you ever run into either of them in-game, be sure to thank them for being especially kind community members.

Ironically, when I went to snap screens of Evergrin’s Windmill, though it was, as I mentioned earlier, without blades, the windmill that is part of the housing instance map had blades, and they were spinning just fine. And in full view of Evergrin’s bladeless Windmill. Turbine has stated that the missing blades are a known issue, which has been fixed on Bullroarer (the test server).

Next up is the Toy Windmill, which is in theory very much like the regular Windmill, only smaller. Instead of taking up a fair portion of your yard, it takes up a small corner of your home, atop the included table. This one, however, includes working, spinning blades on the live servers right now.

Item: Toy Windmill

The next three choices are cosmetic slot items that players may use to build outfits. First up is the Silken Dress of Golden Splendor, which is actually a pretty restrained label for this item. It’s whiter than white, appearing almost to glow, but not in a good way. Rather, it looks quite garish and gaudy, though I should say that it at least matches the Anniversary Steed. Below, you can see the front and back of the piece as tried on in the Dressing Room widget.

Dressing Room: Silken Dress of Golden Splendor

Not to leave the men out of the festivities, Turbine also built the Silken Man-Dress Robe of Golden Splendor. It is equally garish, and every bit as feminine as the Dress, only it has a lower-hanging belt, not a sash as on the previous piece. Either one is sure to do significant Light damage to anyone who sees your character wearing it, including you.

Dressing Room: Silken Man-Dress Robe of Golden Splendor

The last cosmetic piece on offer for the Anniversary Event is the Cloak of the Shining Star, and it is ironically the least "shining" of the three, by far. It’s a relatively plain faded pinkish colour, reminiscent of used Silly Putty, with yellow trim and what is presumably embroidery. I can’t quite make out the pattern, but then, I couldn’t bring myself to look at it for too long at one go, not even in the interests of in-depth reporting. It is shown below coupled with the Silken Dress of Golden Splendor and the Silken Man-Dress Robe of Golden Splendor, respectively.

Dressing Room: Cloak of the Shining Star

I will say that for all my clowning on the cosmetics, they don’t look quite so awful outside the dressing room. It would be nice if Turbine could give us an option for Dressing Room Opacity, like they do for Chat Window Opacity, so we could have the items equipped on our characters, and set against whatever background we liked. It would give a much more accurate picture of things.

After these three cosmetic pieces, a series of eight framed maps, indoor housing items like the Toy Windmill, are listed. They are, in the order shown, Map of Bree-land, Map of The Shire, Map of Ered Luin, Map of the Lone-lands, Map of the North Downs, Map of the Trollshaws, Map of the Misty Mountains, and Map of Angmar. Upon receiving any of these maps into their inventory, players are awarded partial completion of a new deed, "Cartographile — Eriador." Once all 21 maps have passed through the player’s inventory, they are given the unsurprising title of "Eriador Cartographile," as well as a sort of meta-map, the Map of Eriador. Oh, and 10 TP.

Eriador Cartographile

But wait, you say, there are only eight maps! How can the deed progress to 21? Luckily, Casual Stroll to Mordor beat me to this, and looked up all thirteen unaccounted-for maps in the LotRO Lorebook. So I don’t have to. If you don’t want to take their word for it (or mine), you can try the same test out yourself. Find a known map in the Lorebook, such as the Map of Angmar. You can see the item comes up normally, and states that it is "A map of the Angmar earned during the Anniversary Event." Change the tail-end of the URL from "Angmar" to "Archet" — one of the other maps listed on the deed, but one that is apparently not available during this event — and you get to the Map of Archet, which says, "A map of Archet earned during the Spring Festival."

Item: Map of the Misty Mountains

It seems safe to surmise that in future festival events, various maps will be released. Players who want to complete this deed will need to figure out a way to get their hands on all 21 maps, but not to worry; you don’t have to own them, since they are not BoA. All that is required to advance the deed is to move all 21 maps into your inventory at one time or another. They don’t all have to be there at once, and you can do them one by one as you find people from whom to borrow them. I for one think this is pretty clever on Turbine’s part. For myself, I usually skim over the goodies from any given Event, and decide which, if any, I want to bother pursuing. With these maps coming out in blocks over the next four seasonal festival events (Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring), I, and anyone who comes at these the same way, will automatically want to take part, just to complete the deed. Or more accurately, as far as I’m concerned, just to have all the maps.

Questions? Comments? Corrections? Leave a Comment!

The Mightiest Blow (I’m Not Making This Up)

The Fight Will Begin Soon

The quest "The Mightiest Blow," is bestowed by Gísli Strongclub in Thorin’s Ale-hall during the Fourth Anniversary Event. Half of the quest is to collect a mug of Glorious Beer, which is an interactive object that requires an induction to grab it. The other half is to use a Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power three times on your fellow Bar-Fighters. The Ale-hall is down in the depths of Thorin’s Hall, accessed from the Thorin’s Hall Inn near the Barber, behind a door labelled "The Festival Arena."

Whenever you see the message "A Beer-fight is about to begin in Thorin’s Ale-hall!" (which you will not miss if you are in the area, since it appears in your chat log area in gigantic orange letters), you will need get down to the Ale-hall within a few minutes if you mean to get the quest. From the centre of the grand hall, past the imposing statue near the entry with the Town Crier, turn in either direction, and follow the first stairs down that you can find. An easy way to see if you’re on the right track or not is to do this on a mount; if you get to the right tunnel, you will be automatically dismounted, and your chat log will say "You have been dismounted."

You have been dismounted.

From there, keep running down. If you turned right from the central hall above, you will ultimately turn left to get to the Thorin’s Hall Inn. If you turned left from the central hall, you will bear right. There is nowhere else to turn, in any case. Both paths loop back under the central hall, and curl in to the Thorin’s Hall Inn. Head back and to the left, and you will find the door to The Festival Arena. Once you go through, you will see Gísli Strongclub standing just to your right, with a quest ring over his head. If you are between rounds and have done the quest already, the quest will be on CD, and you will instead see a golden ring over his head with an hourglass resting within its bounds.

Games-master Gísli Strongclub

When he offers you the quest, upon acceptance, you will receive a Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power in your inventory. This is a clicky that can be applied to other players, and if successful, does significant knockback, but no damage. It is, like forced emotes, classified by the Combat Log as a "benefit," a term that is obviously used pretty loosely. Move into the Arena, and as the game helpfully suggests, slot the club into a convenient quickslot location for ease-of-use. If you put it on top of an existing skill assignment, that skill will be removed from the quickslots completely, so if you want to avoid digging around in your Skills Panel to put it back later, just drag whatever skill you intend to temporarily unseat with the Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power to an empty slot somewhere else first, and drag it back over the Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power when you are done with the Bar Fight (or when the Bar Fight is done with you).

Before long, the Bar Fight Announcer will say that the fight starts in one minute. True to his word, one minute later, he asks if everyone is ready (he doesn’t care what your answer is, this is rhetorical), says "get set…" and finally, "Fight!" At which point you and your fellow Bar-Fighters run around like terrorised chickens, bashing each other with your clicky sticks, and trying to collect a Glorious Beer.

The order in which you complete objectives does not matter — you can even club two people, grab a beer, and then club a third — but once you have completed both of them, your club will be disabled. You can still be struck, but being knocked out of the arena no longer matters, because your objective changes to talking to Gísli Strongclub before three minutes have elapsed. As you can see from my boneheaded wrong-turn video demonstration, that is plenty of time to get back to him and turn in the quest.

Once you have obtained a Glorious Beer and connected with three clubbings, you can no longer club anyone, which is required to advance the Clubber title deed. Only one Glorious Beer can exist at one time, sort of like Highlander. However, when the space becomes heavily populated, even with the respawn rate effectively maxed out, too few Glorious Beers spawn to let everyone get one before the event timer runs out. Perhaps the one saving grace of this whole mess is that if one layer is too populated, you can form a smaller group and enter another layer by exiting the Festival Arena, and re-entering it.

This will put you all in the same space, away from everyone else, but it requires that the other layer be so populated that one person entering the space not only is there by themselves, but is aware that others are in the same space, but on a different layer. Since at least one other player is required to be present for the activity to run (otherwise you’d have nobody to club), if you can manage to get into a separate layer, or do this late at night on a weeknight, you may have fair odds of finding friendly players who are there to just get the drudgery done with, and not bother about griefing.

Oh, So That's What I Was Doing.

When you complete the quest and turn it in, you will also curiously advance the Ranger’s Offensive deed, which, to the best of my knowledge, has nothing to do with Bars (although I assume it has a lot to do with Fights). The first tier has only six portions, and you can only advance three of them before the daily trait/deed reset at midnight EST. You will also, as mentioned above, unlock the "Clubber" title deed, which requires you to use the Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power quite a lot in order to be known as a "Clubber." You also unlock a deed for participating in the Bar-Fight, which gives you the title "Battered, Bruised, and Contused."

In addition to foisting PvP on players of an admittedly mostly-PvE game, some have also called into question the ethical standing of awarding players titles for beating each other up, and further, for making light of doing so while chasing after alcohol. Personally it’s a shoulder-shrugger for me. I found their Winterhome event and the stereotyping of poor people to be insensitive at best, especially given the current state of the world economy, and this is not really any better. Really, they probably could have put their heads together and come up with something a bit less offensive to anyone with fundamentally the same mechanics. They would’ve still been faced with the why-are-you-making-us-PvP argument, but at least the what’s-wrong-with-you-anyway bit would’ve been left out.

The game is not zero-sum, but everyone has the same goal; knock three "Greedy Competitors" around with your Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power, and collect a Glorious Beer and bring it to Gísli Strongclub. Even though the combat log says you are applying a "benefit" to your fellow players, really what you’re doing is knocking them very high into the air, and possibly very far in any given direction. Since you lose the event if you get knocked out of the arena space, this makes the Bar Fight a Griefer’s Paradise (with apologies to Coolio).

If you are wondering why these videos have no audio, I was right there with you for awhile. My best guess is that I was making these videos while my USB headphones were on, and Fraps either doesn’t have a way to yank audio when it’s being directed to that device, or there is a setting I haven’t explored yet, because my originals on my local drive are also silent. The problem will be solved in time for any future video posts.

Questions? Comments? Corrections? Leave a comment!

Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power

This is the clicky that is bestowed upon players who participate in the Bar Fight, a PvP-lite activity that is dragged out for various Events in LotRO. Right now, players can participate in the Bar Fight as part of the Anniversary Event in pursuit of Anniversary Tokens. Technically speaking, you’re not really competing against other players so much as you’re competing at the same time as other players. Grabbing the Glorious Beer is half of the event, and successfully applying this clicky effect to other players (or the same player over and over) three times is the other half.

Item : Dwarf-club of Unimaginable Power :: Tooltip

As you can see from the description on the Tooltip, the item and the game are clearly meant in lighthearted good humour. Unfortunately for Turbine and Codemasters (who run LotRO in the EU until this summer), it was not accepted as such. I’ll get into that in a Special Comment before long, I’m sure. To address the disconnect between the developers and the players, here in the States, we got LotRO Lotteries in the Community Portal. For EU players, the best they could do was give Codemasters a stern finger-wagging and express their all-around discontent.

To make up for the inexplicable publishing failure of the last post (which really was probably user error, I was quite sleepy when I walked away from the Dashboard), I am going to just toss this up right now. It’ll help me pack in all the relevant info before the Anniversary is over, anyway.

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Anniversary (Race) Token

Without getting into too much detail about just why these have come to represent all that is heartless and cruel in the MMO gamers’ world, this is one of two other kinds of tokens that players can get in LotRO for the duration of this year’s Anniversary Event. However, unlike the tiered metal-themed Tokens that drop from various mobs depending upon their level, there are many other ways to get this kind. Defeating mobs is not one of them.

Item: Anniversary Token :: Tooltip

One way is to just win a Lottery that offers a pile of 10 of them as the reward. After the rather significant kerfuffle, with over 1000 posts discussing the issues people have with it over the course of just four days before the thread was inevitably closed, Turbine, operators of the US LotRO servers, started running several Lotteries. These were (and still are) often multiples in each day, awarding first five, and, before long, ten Anniversary Tokens.

Another way is to successfully run in the Horse Races at the Festival Grounds in Bree, or Michel Delving. However, these races have a 13h CD, win or lose daily reset at 6a EST, and can only be won once every 24h as a result. If a player loses, they can try again in an hour. If a player manages to win, they can choose one Anniversary Token as their reward. Players must also complete these races successfully three times and select an Anniversary Race Token instead in order to get their Anniversary Mount Steed, which requires a turn-in of three Anniversary Race Tokens, 30 Anniversary Tokens, and a Document of Mount Ownership. The Document is sold at the stables by the same vendor who also accepts all three piles of barter items in exchange for dumping the Anniversary Steed skill into the Mounts tab of your Skill Panel.

Item: Anniversary Race Token :: Tooltip

The third and final way to get these Tokens is to compete in the Bar Fight, and complete all objectives. Like the Horse Races, the Bar Fight awards a single Anniversary Token. Unlike the Horse Races, the CD is only 9m, but also unlike the Horse Races, the Bar Fight has a PvP element to it. I’ll get into the Bar Fight in another post.

I’ll also cover the festival rewards for which players may barter with their Anniversary Tokens in later entries. At this point, without making truly massive monstrous posts, I don’t see this happening before the Event ends, which is tentatively scheduled for May 3 according to the Community Calendar. That said, I will try to cover the really important stuff, like how the Bar Fight even works, before then.

I’m not sure why this didn’t publish as scheduled, but here it is belatedly anyway.

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Tokens and Gift Boxes

You may have noticed the other day (April 19, to be exact) that you started looting Tokens from various mobs after defeating them. Tokens that were not in the loot tables the day before. In the old days, these would go into your inventory, and be hard to miss. In the new days, they go into your Wallet instead, so it may be harder to notice that you’ve gotten any, or to remember that they’re there once you get somewhere you can do something about it.

Character Panel to Wallet

The default key for opening your Wallet is "B" (in LotRO, I have no insight into your actual wallet). I’ll do a more in-depth posting on the Wallet and the Character Panel some other time, but for now, all I’m talking about is the Anniversary Tokens category in the Wallet. The one that is actually called "Anniversary Token" is for the Games-master, which I’ll get into tomorrow. The rest are all named after metals of various quality, and exchanged with the Keeper of Gifts in Bree, Michel Delving, Rivendell, or Thorin’s Hall.

Tin Token :: Mob Levels 1-10

Iron Token :: Mob Levels 11-21

Silver Token :: Mob Levels 22-32

Gold Token :: Mob Levels 33-42

Platinum Token :: Mob Levels 43-52

Ancient Silver Token :: Mob Levels 53-59

Ancient Gold Token :: Mob Levels 60-65

Token Types per Mob Level Range

The token drops are random, though they are, as I said, tiered by mob level. The mob type (beast, drake, orc) has no bearing on a chance to drop a token, nor does the mob category (swarm, normal, signature, elite). All that matters is its level. Collect any multiple of five of any one type of token, and you can turn it in to a Keeper of Gifts for a gift box in the corresponding tier. They are always exchanged in lots of five, so if you have three in one tier, and have started getting drops for the next because you are fighting higher-level mobs than you were before, you can either go back and kill mobs of that lower range until you have five, or you can just ignore them, since there is no way to remove something from your Wallet other than spending it.

Seven Gift Boxes in Seven Tiers

When the Event ends, the Keepers of Gifts (and presumably Games-masters) vanish, and your ability to trade anything with any of them is nullified. However, the metal-themed tokens from the previous year were storable when they used to live in inventory, and any that anyone kept were moved to the Wallet when it launched. I don’t know about the actual Anniversary Tokens, the ones that go to the Games-masters, but the metal-themed ones on this page should be tradable next year if you have any left over after the Keepers of Gifts disappear.

As far as what’s actually in the gift boxes, it’s mostly fluff. There are some consumables, like food or pots, that are always crit versions. All of them are craftable, so far as I have seen, but a free critted consumable is generally welcome in anyone’s inventory. The rest are cosmetic items, SM barter marks, and the like. All in all, nothing super awesome or worth getting terribly excited about, but a nice touch for the game’s fourth anniversary. Just some pleasant extras that you get by doing what you were already doing; killing things, and taking their stuff.

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Keepers of Gifts

Yesterday, I directed you to Town Criers in Bree, Michel Delving, Thorin’s Hall, and sometimes Rivendell during the operation of the Anniversary festivities. Partially because they are the in-game way for you to learn about what’s broadly going on for any given event, but mostly because they have a map icon, and today’s NPCs do not. But today’s NPCs are all right next to a Town Crier in each of these cities, except for Rivendell, which has only one of the two. They also have flags over their heads, but instead of the purple pennant favoured by an upstanding Town Crier, they have this turquoise banner.

Thorin's Hall Anniversary Traders

In Thorin’s Hall, walk up to these two thick-bearded fellows, immediately West of the Milestone. The Dwarf on the left is Arnúlfur, Keeper of Gifts. To his (or her) left stands Rökkvi, Games-master. There are similar pairings in Bree and Michel Delving, though Rivendell has only a Keeper of Gifts. The reason for this, near as I can tell, is that the Keeper of Gifts is always the race of whatever people live in a given town. The Games-master, on the other hand, is always a Dwarf, and Dwarves must apparently be special indeed to be welcome so close to the Last Homely House.

Michel Delving Anniversary Traders

In Michel Delving, we have the Hobbit Drogo Whitfoot, Keeper of Gifts, holding an animated, if completely silent, conversation with the Dwarven Games-master, Ingwaldur. Don’t worry about interrupting them, unlike most NPCs, they won’t even bother turning towards you when you interact with them, let alone stop their play at conversing. As I mentioned, they’re right next to the Town Crier, Iris Goodbody, so they’re very easy to find. Just open up your map, and if you don’t spot the Crier’s pennant straightaway, you can filter the map notes so that it’s the only thing showing. If you still don’t see it, try toggling it on and off a few times, which will make it flash on your map. If you don’t see it at that point, try turning your monitor on, I can’t really think of any other way to help you.

Bree Anniversary Traders

By the Boar Fountain in the Market Square of Bree-town stands Angeline Greenpasture, Keeper of Gifts. She doesn’t seem keen on chatting or interacting with the Games-master, the Dwarf Frithbert, who has incredible stamina, I might add. His left arm never falters, and it shields his eyes from the sun without pause. I suppose he’s looking for a fellow Dwarf to chat up, since none of the men and women around can be bothered to talk to him. On the other hand, he has a bucket.

Rivendell Keeper of Gifts

In Rivendell, as I mentioned above, there is no Games-master. There is only Norien, Keeper of Gifts. She stands down the path a bit from the Town Crier, before a statue of an Elf-maid, dancing as Elf-maids are wont to do, I suppose. If you continue on to the right, you will find yourself at the steps of the Last Homely House, which is pretty popular destination for many quests and story arcs, so chances are, you’ll pass her by if you’re in the neighbourhood. Keepers of Gifts have been part of every Anniversary for which I’ve been around, and they basically provide bonus goods in seven mob-level-based tiers by means of a barter exchange. I’ll get into details on that tomorrow.

Games-masters, on the other hand, are the barter traders for the new Anniversary Tokens. These tokens and the amount of grinding required to earn every item have stirred up quite a kerfuffle, with even the popular Casual Stroll to Mordor blog weighing in with a post about why they’re skipping the anniversary events. Turbine has responded to the uproar, at least in the US, by directing players to comparatively generous lotteries through their community portal.

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Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Aegúrel’s Crying

Whenever an Event starts in LotRO, there is always at least a little confusion. Mostly about when it starts and when it ends, but also sometimes about what is even on offer for the duration. It actually seems like there is an Event going on more often than there isn’t, but if you want to be extra sure, you will need to bookmark Turbine’s Calendar. If you look at the following month, you can see that the Anniversary Event is set to run through May 3rd. Events always, so far as I have seen, say "tentative" for each day of operation, probably to guard against disaster, like some unforeseen network issue preventing half their player base from accessing the game for a couple days. In which case the end of the Event could potentially be pushed out a commensurate number of days.

Town Criers Across Middle-earth

As far as what to do within the game, the easiest way to find out what’s what is to go to see the Town Crier. No, really. Go see the Town Crier. These are in many places, but the ones that we really care about come Anniversary time are in Bree, Michel Delving, and Thorin’s Hall, and to a lesser extent, Rivendell. They are the NPCs spouting endless "news" from within the game world, like a call to arms for the defence of Aughaire, that Mordirith has returned to rule in Angmar once more, or that those crazy Dwarves have led an expedition into Moria, and maybe that’s not the best idea. Oh, they also have a giant purple flag over their heads, like the one at the start of this post.

In Middle-earth, We Didn't Have TV

In Bree, the Town Crier is Jim Skinner. He is standing by the Boar Fountain in the centre of town, and like all good Town Criers, he is marked by a purple flag on your map. Seeing a theme, here? He stands beneath a weird sort of beggar’s awning, made of two poles with a bit of banner strung between them. In Michel Delving, the Town Crier is Iris Goodbody, a Hobbit of the finest quality. She stands near the training and auction halls. She, too, can be found by looking for the purple flag on your map, and also has the apparently traditional beggar’s awning thing going on. In Thorin’s Hall, Durin’s Folk look to Thorlák, a stout Dwarf (naturally). He is marked like the others, with a purple flag, and is perhaps the hardest to miss of them all; enter the hall, go straight, and before very long, you’ll see him, just a tad to the right. He stands before a pair of poles festooned with ribbons and flowers, for which his fellow Dwarves mock him relentlessly.

The Finest of Criers

In Rivendell, the Elf-maid Aegúrel brings news from afar, Middle-earth’s very own intrepid Rachel Maddow. Though she can be found on your map with the tell-tale purple flag, she is, as an Elf, far too good for a simple awning, and instead stands partially ringed by four stone columns, complete with ivy overgrowth. This is how you know that she has been doing this for a long time, and really, if you want good town crying, you should be heading to Rivendell, because that’s where Aegúrel’s been doing it for longer than all the other crier’s lifetimes combined. Probably. Unless there’s another Elf one.

There are two reasons I’m telling you to go see a Town Crier. The second one is for tomorrow, and has to do with why I pointed you to the Criers of Bree, Michel Delving, Thorin’s Hall, and Rivendell above the rest. The first one is right here; Town Criers will give you key information about a current Event, except for its duration. Unfortunately, you have to go to the web site for that. As far as what actual information they give, it’s not all super amazing detail, but on the other hand, they have to make some effort to stay within the bounds of the game world, so to whatever extent they can avoid talking about game-mechanic-related things in so many words, they’ll do so. That means instead of plain english like, "go to the such-and-such, see so-and-so, and give them your tokens to get consumables that hold cosmetics and consumables," they’ll say something with more flavour, like, "even the simple heroics of defeating monsters throughout Middle-earth will reap more than the usual bounty. Collect Tokens and reap rewards as you join in the festivities!"

Town Crier Fourth Anniversary Dialogue

So the next time someone in GLFF asks where they can find out about activities for an Event, when everyone else tells them to tab out and Google it, you can look smarter than the average bear and tell them to seek out yon Town Crier. Or something.

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