A Casual Stroll to Mordor ends (in Rohan)

"This can't be happening" ~ Nurzum expresses shock at the end of CSTM

Where to begin? What to say?

I have mentioned before that CSTM was a fundamental part of how I learned to play lotro (beautiful-blogger-award). It was one of the few sites I knew that was related to lotro when I started playing and through the site, I found more blogs and informational sites over time. CSTM is still my go-to site for news and links (I may have to learn how to use the "forum" now *shudders*).

Goldenstar writes, "It is with a heavy heart that we have to announce the end of A Casual Stroll to Mordor." Read the rest of the farewell here... CSTM: cstm-to-end-with-episode-200.

The amount of news and articles that Goldenstar and Merric covered every week was very amazing, and they did it in their spare time, for the love of lotro and the lotro community. /bow to all their spectacular work. "Thank you" just doesn't seem to express it well enough sometimes when someone makes an impact like that.

I hold out optimism that someday, they might be back to blog/news reporting, mebbe just doing much less. However, "There is an end to everything, to good things as well." ~Chaucer 1374

Frithwyn weeps at the end of an era

Update 11: Wildemore legendary pocket items

I will spend a few articles reflecting on the changes for Update 11. Quick notes were given at update-11-summarized-notes.

 This article will focus in on the section called “Warbands”, specifically Wildemore pocket items. Much like Rohan had its special rings that could be upgraded, u10-rohan-rings-complete-hytbold-in-15-days, Wildemore has some gear offerings but specializes in legendary quality pocket items.

Ok, Wildemore has two factions for Reputation. Those two are called “People of Wildemore” and “Survivors of Wildemore”. The People faction involves all the quests of Wildemore, versus the Survivors will be a set of dailies that will unlock after all the Wildemore quests are completed. I have not finished all of the People quests yet (festival and life and summer and family and work and such slowed things down a bit). So, here I sit with People at Kindred (after about 70% quests done) and Survivors at zero rep. Let’s see how that plays into the loot.

People of Wildemore Pocket Items: There are some decent barterable things from the People of Wildemore, such as necklaces, but the legendary focus is on the pocket items. First, you will need to get a Teal pocket item. They cost 50 Silver Tokens of Wildemore each. Here are the four of them. The Curio of Resolve is a Runekeeper’s pocket item. These teal ones are very easy to get if you like them.

Survivors of Wildemore Legendary Pocket Items: Similar to the Rohan Ring designs, the legendary pocket items come in four basic flavors, plus two healer ones.

The cost for these pocket items requires four things: Kindred with Survivor’s of Wildemore, 225 Golden Tokens of Wildemore, 30 Warband tokens of Wildemore, and the Curio from the People mentioned above. The Runekeeper ones, Sage’s and Healer’s, both use the Curio of Resolve you picked up from the People of Wildemore.

Ok, the Golden Tokens of Wildemore come from the daily quests which are unlocked after all the Wildemore quests are complete. I’ve seen mention in passing that it will take a minimum 25 days to get Kindred, presumably during that time, you will be gathering up all those 225 Golden tokens.

The 30 Warband tokens are the rare drops from Warband boxes, aka “(colored) Box of Wildemore Spoils”.  The better the box, the better the loot and more likely you will be to get a Warband token.

The Warband boxes are color-coded to match the difficulty: Raid = Silver, Fellowship = Green, Small Fellowship = Red, Solo = Blue. As far as I recall, the warband tokens I have received so far have all come from Silver and Green boxes, but I believe there is a chance for them to drop from any of the boxes.

Where are the Warbands? If you want to know where to find all the Wildemore Warbands, visit the map at StarandShadow’s place at StarandShadow: wildermore-warbands-locations.

Update 11 Summarized Notes

Summarizing Update 11 to what I cared to read…

For the full 11-page Notes, visit CSTM: update-11-release-notes/.

(1) New Region: Wildermore, north of East Rohan – quests, epic story, warbands, and rewards.

(2) Mounted Combat: Yellow trait tree integrated into the base Warsteed. In its place, each class will get their own specific yellow tree. 

/will need to revisit (rohan-warsteed-traiting-part-1).

Multiple bug fixes and tweaks for Mounted combat.

Lowered the chance for Disengaging Strikes to 25% to better align with other capstone traits.

Making several changes to base mount stats to help differentiate Light, Medium, Heavy (no nerfs). … /no nerfs, so they say… :)

(3) Warbands: Warband Reward boxes provide a chance to obtain new warsteed cosmetics and Warband Barter Tokens, which will be used to purchase the legendary pocket upgrades. Whereas the cosmetics will be a very rare drop from each reward box, the barter tokens will drop at a rate relative to the difficulty of the warband.

(4) Lalia’s Market: New shoppe in Bree to highlight and visually see store items. /nice. will discuss soon, go check it out.

(5) Hobbit Gifts: Once a day, all players can receive a Silver Hobbit Present. Once a week, VIP players can receive a special Gold Hobbit Present. Gold Hobbit Presents offer a greater chance of getting the top level gifts. After free rolls are used, all players can use Mithril Coins to roll for either more Silver Hobbit Presents or Gold Hobbit Presents.

(6) Housing changes: Housing Upkeep allows for paying further in advance and adds the option to pay with Mithril Coins. Houses without upkeep paid for the past six months will go into Foreclosure and all items inside will be put into Escrow.

(7) Rune-keeper armor: Greater Erebor Cleanser (fire) armour set bonus applies the Writ of Fire DOT of the same size as the player would.

(8) The Ettenmoors: Quests and Deeds that require the defeat of Players or Monster Players will now advance for all contributors, not just the player who dealt the final blow.

Rune-keepers should now properly receive Battlefield promotions in the Ettenmoors.

/interesting. The Moors Slayer-Deeds were effectively impossible. After six years, no one anywhere has beaten all of these deeds; they are actually harder than achieving Rank 15. There are 5 tiers of slayer deeds. At Rank 9, I have completely about half of tier 1 on each creep type.

(9) Rohan Healing Rings: Created two new healing-focused ring upgrades at Eswe.

Mooncandle Mender's Ring of Rohan's healing proc effect now properly triggers from the Runekeeper's "Rune-sign of X" skills.

Eswe now offers the ability to exchange some Rohan rings at the final and third step for others.

(10) Spring Festival: (starts ~May 22nd?)

New Stuff bartered with Spring leaves – Cloak (hooded and hoodless), Dress, Robe, 2013 Spring horse, War-steed Cosmetic Leggings, War-steed Cosmetic Caparison.

New Stuff bartered with Flowers (from Gathering Flowers) - War-steed Cosmetic Halter, War-steed Cosmetic Saddle, Steed of the Jester (which is last year's random drop horse)

New gift-box rare drop – Full Spring War-steed Cosmetic Set. You can purchase the full set with leaves and flowers or get lucky with a gift-box.

/yay for being able to barter for horses. Random luck is not a good mechanism as the only option for obtaining things.

Other Stuff:

• Cowbell + Mounted combat = bad. You were warned.
• New Launcher for patching and updating.
• New one-spot Alert for seeing accomplishments, reputation, mail, etc. Hobbit Gifts, dynamic layer status, pending loot and connection status icons.
• New additional Mithril coin Services = Reputation acceleration, Deed acceleration, Armour and Weapon repair services, task resets, and task limit increases.
• In Update10, some LIs got a DPS increase but it wasn’t retroactive to existing LIs; this has been fixed.  
• Enhanced Experience: Rest XP is getting an overhaul.
• New Bug reporting tool.
• Additional “Opt out” emotes.
• Fate will now contribute to OCPR in place of Will
• Various bug fixes.
• Warden further transitioning to Agility based.
• Universal Toolkits and Scrolls of Universal Lore obtained from Bound Lootboxes should now be bound to account, rather than to character.
• Riddermark-bound lootboxes now contain Tarnished Symbols of Celebrimbor and the Elder King.

/I just want the red skeleton horse from a lootbox, but that is certainly interesting that 1st Age symbols will now drop from the Riddermark lootboxes.

I'll be back later in the week to dissect some of the changes. Enjoy the ride!