I reached level 13 with my champion last night and finished the Ered Luin part of the elf epic quest series. The last step of which is to form a fellowship and go into an instance which, like every fellowship instance I’ve seen so far, is escorting some NPC through a mission on rails — entirely linear.
At least for the 1-15 game, boss fights are very unspecial.
But anyway. This was my first balanced fellowship; it had a guardian so I could go to Fervor mode (dps boost, defense nerf), and a minstrel so I wouldn’t die doing so. A lore master and a hunter rounded out the dps crew.
We mowed them down. My move which grants me three fervor points right off, plus one of my other fast-recharge fervor moves meant I could do my punishing 70-80 point per mob AE move* to immediately knock an oncoming encounter to a fraction of its health.
* (I have largely moved to two handed weapons, though they require an extra fervor point to start some special moves).
The hardest thing was finding targets. I really wanted a way of attacking the main tank’s target a la EQ2.
I finally started crafting. Like WoW, crafting is just a matter of getting the materials together and hitting a button (and in fact the crafting interface is a near direct copy of WoW’s). Like EQ2 once was and to a certain extent WoW still is, it’s necessary to get some components from other crafters to make certain things.
Eraindiel, my champion, took up the Armsmen profession. This gave her Prospecting, Woodworking and Weaponsmithing as subprofessions. Prospecting is exactly the same as WoW’s Mining — you can mine and smelt ore. Weaponsmithing takes that ore and makes weapons out of it. Woodworking lets you make wooden weapons — however, the ability to harvest wood and refine it is the domain of the Forestry subprofession… so Woodworking for an Armsman is useless without knowing a Forester.
The idea being to make crafters dependent on one another. EQ1 let anyone craft nearly anything (aside from Tinkering, available only to gnomes; Poisoning, available only to rogues; and Alchemy, available only to shamans).
There’s a lot I don’t like about EQ1’s crafting system, but the ability to make (nearly) anything you wanted given the effort to level up all the crafts is one of its good points.
EQ2 started as LotRO (and to some extent WoW) does; requiring crafters to seek out other crafters to make their items. This was a miserable failure; serious crafters just made alts to make the subcomponents they needed, while most people gave up on crafting entirely. On EQ2 currently, though, if you are a jeweler, you can make everything in your recipe book. Unfortunately, you still cannot be both a jeweler and, say, an armorer, requiring alts still.
Both WoW and LotRO have a generous selection of things to make that don’t require help from others. Still, interdependency just bugs crafters for no reason. Crafting, after all, is a solitary pursuit. If you wanted to hang with other people, you’d be out adventuring.
Thus was born my first alt, Lysistra, a human captain (more about her journey anon). She is (iirc) a Yeoman, with subprofessions of Tailoring, Forestry and Prospecting. Light hides flow from Eraindiel to Lysistra, shaped pieces of wood flow from Lysistra to Eraindiel.
I now need a second alt to handle the scholar, cook and farming professions… but as a crafter from DAoC (tailor), through FFXI Online (carpenter), and EQ2 (jeweler, tailor, alchemist, armorer and sage), I’m used to having to make alts in order to make my stuff.
I just don’t see why I have to do so.
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1 thought on “LotrO: Of Champions and Crafting.”
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Great blog Tipa – I particularly love the screenshots. I disagree with you about the interdependence crafting skills however. I think it is a good thing because it could help stimulate trade. I love trade in role playing games and the auction house was probably my favourite spot in all of World of Warcraft. It was the one place in the whole game where a level 1 with a nose for business could amass capital and compete on equal terms with a level 70. For me that made it special.
You have a wider experience of mmorpgs than I and you may be right that players will just using alts to create the materials they need. I really hope this is not the case though. I would love to see crafting and/or trading become viable alternative ways to play the game rather than just “another thing” for adventurers to do.