Pumping Irony

After a two month break, I’m feeling ready to start delving back into LOTRO. I’d poked my head around last week and leveled Arwellyn to 57. I spent a good chunk of yesterday running around with my kinship, starting in Eregion doing one run each of the Library and School of Tham Mirdain, which are three-man instances near Echad Mirobel. I’d been to the instance entrances back when Mines of Moria launched but had never bothered actually getting a group for them.

After enjoying the sun and fresh air in Eregion, we ran back into the dark of Moria for the rest of the day. We completed several quests, though it seemed like for every one I turned in, ten more opened in its place. It was great having some kin-mates to run with because I intensely dislike soloing in the Mines. I’d actually started just duoing with another Lore-master, looking for four White Hand Ambassadors. We found them fine, but after two wipes, we ninja-invited the kinship leader when he logged in his Captain. That would have worked fine but one of the Ambassadors had other orcs and goblins around him, as well as Naga, an Elite Master troll who drops a Mithril Flake. An additional two wipes later, we finally managed to keep the mobs separate and avoid the patrols. With the Ambassadors down for the quest, there was no way we were passing up a Flake-dropper so we engaged Naga before someone else strolled by and saw him.

Next, we decided to hit The Grand Stair, which is one of the instances to start working on Radiance gear if you do Hard Mode. Apparently the "in" thing these days is to just do quick loot runs rather than actually clearing the instance. It was my first time in, but my usual bag of Lore-master tricks worked perfectly well, so I didn’t require any personalized briefings. I actually need to read up on this Hard Mode business, but from what I saw yesterday it’s anything but hard.

We walk in and the first encounter has a well-known… glitch… that players use. I pitched a hissy-fit about using a glitch, but the next two runs (we did three total) I watched them do it. You walk up to the gate and the NPC’s have a dialogue before lowering the gate so you can fight the mini-boss. The glitch is to let the boss walk through the gate to you, where he bugs out and won’t attack anyone so the group can kill him quickly. Even in the first fight where we ran into his room to fight him, it was an easy fight. The only thing the glitch accomplishes is that a healer isn’t required, so the Minstrel can enter Warspeech for extra dps or the Bug-zapper Rune-keeper can attune for full dps during that encounter. I don’t consider it an exploit because you still have to fight this mini-boss; it isn’t allowing you to bypass him, but still… this needs to be addressed in a patch.

If I recall, we only fought one other boss and skipped the others, to go straight to the final boss Igash. Unlike Guild Wars where Hard Mode is a setting you click, or DDO where you select the difficulty when entering the quest, Hard Mode in LOTRO is a state the group has to trigger, if I’m understanding the concept correctly. To get Hard Mode in The Grand Stair, the entire group had to run at once, tightly packed together, past Igash and up against a gateway blocking the exit of the instance. Another mob, The Devoted, will attack the group for a bit. To trigger Hard Mode, The Devoted must not be killed! Once he’s wailing on the group for a few seconds, two archers spawn and the tank grabs aggro on The Devoted and keeps him occupied at the gate while the rest of the group runs out into the main chamber to take down Igash. Most groups obviously won’t have multiple tanks so our tactic (which is probably very commonly used) was to have two hunters (or a hunter and a champion) ping-pong tank him. One hunter would slam Igash with dps to get his aggro then kite him to one end of the room. The other hunter then hits Igash for mega-dps and he runs back across to get that hunter. Rinse, repeat while the rest of the group whittles him down as he runs back and forth. It’s a bit of a long drawn-out fight, and Igash does have a few nasty tricks up his sleeve that might prompt the minstrel to use her "oh crap!" group heal, but overall Igash isn’t bad. Once he goes down, The Devoted and his two archers despawn and five chests spawn, whereas the normal bosses spawn three. The big chest contains the token for the Radiance boots if you’re in Hard Mode. Arwellyn got hers on that first run!

One thing I noticed quickly is that Grand Stair loot runs are extremely profitable! With a two month break, paying upkeep on Arwellyn’s house cost about 440 silver (I logged in from time to time to pay upkeep, plus doing the Yule festival events in December). Yesterday alone, Arwellyn was defeated 4-6 times and those repair bills aren’t cheap. Only a fraction of what the heavy armour-wearers pay, but still… All those repairs plus goat rentals all over the place, and her bags are nearly full so she wasn’t able to collect many drops to vendor. She started yesterday morning at 29 gold and change. Prior to the Grand Stairs runs she was down to the high end of 27 gold. Three quick Hard Mode loot runs later, collecting practically zero sellable items, she’s sitting on a little over 32 gold! I’m already scheming… a few of those will pay for a Deluxe house, a few more will pay for the final vault (bank) chest at level 60, and a few more after that will cover a goat mount once Arw reaches kindred reputation with the Iron Garrison Miners.

Accomplishments for yesterday: roughly 4 gold profit, enough XP that she’s 1.5 bubbles from level 58 (she started at less than a bubble into level 57), the Stone-Readers shoes (Radiance set!), a sword upgrade, Friend status with the Iron Garrison Miners, Acquaintance status with the Iron Garrison Guards, and Ally status with the Scholar’s Guild. Her main Legendary Staff of the Third Age is level 25/30 and her main Book is level 22/30. She’s been carrying around a few other Legendary Items so I decided to go ahead and equip them too. Two extra staves and one book, all 10/30 now and gone through their first re-forging. I’ll probably deconstruct them at level 11 and currently plan on maxing out the higher level items, hoping they’ll deconstruct into some really nice relics to use once I get Legendaries with higher level caps while I hope for an awesome Second Age staff (level cap of 60!) someday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Lord of the Rings Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.