Top 11 things I would change when I rule Middle Earth

“In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!”

Rarely in my blog or in my game will you see me complain. I love that GMs and Turbine employees come to read my articles and I have only nice things to say about life in Middle Earth. I optimize the system as it is given and make the most out of it and have a grand time doing it! However, I jot down things that I would like to see differently and have made a list over the years.

Today, I present the “Top 11 things I would change when I rule Middle Earth”. Oh sure, there could be more things to say like… I would rather not have wide-sweeping class revamps each year, and I would rather quests and details be fixed rather than releasing content at the fast-pace it has felt like it has been coming. However, these 11 things are ones that seem very easy to change.

(1) Runekeepers need an In-combat rez. This one is my greatest peeve in the game; I have written about it before (rune-keeper-dev-diary-riders-of-rohan). The RK is supposed to be able to be traited and built to be either a squishy strong DPS class or squishy strong Healing class, but not at the same time.

Not that I begrudge Captains as they are one of the coolest classes in the game, but even Captains have an in-combat and out of combat rez. A Captain is effective enough to be the tank… has the best buffs… good damage… heals well enough to be main healer in many situations… AND has a rez. But a RK, one of the main two Healer classes, has no combat rez. If I group with a Captain now in a group smaller than a Raid, it is implied that he is in charge of Healing and I am going DPS. 

The only defense for not having a combat rez is that RKs must “see the future” and use “Do not fall this day” skill. It has a 10 minute CD. On a break in combat, it is gone and you wait for another 10 minutes. It has a very narrow use. To be successful with it… either you expect that at some point you will lose the tank or the healer (not you) and you have applied this Pre-Rez, or you have in an instant, foreseen that someone else in group was about to die and chose to let them die versus healing them. As is more often the case, someone got agro for a moment, got one-shotted, and the group is headed for a wipe… unless there happens to be a Captain with you to do what any Healer should be able to do.

So yes, Healing class needs a Combat Rez. Make it a trait, legendary, long CD, whatever. Just make it playable.

(2) More Housing hook flexibility and Evictions: This is a two-part peeve involving Housing. Thankfully, these issues are scheduled to be worked this year. Here’s hoping.

Housing Hook flexibility and storage: The hook system for laying out items is very limited. There are so many housing items in-game but so few places to put them. Between the lildanas and myself, we have a kin house and a deluxe house. We have filled every hook in both houses, filled every housing chest, and DanaOnar’s vault is filled with 120 more housing items. Most every one of these items are items that are either Bound, Unique, or only found at Festivals. I don’t keep around anything that I can go get from a vendor out in the world. That said, I can’t go see any new barter housing items in Great River, Rohan, etc… I have no where to put it or even hold it in the vault. Further, the lotro store has some very cool housing items to Buy, but I have no place to put anything new because of hook limitations.

See some very cool Property Guards I bought (u10-virtues-and-property-guards) and would totally spend more money on more if the hook and housing system was improved.

If I want my yard to look like a festival threw up on it, that should be my prerogative. I play a game called “Webkinz” with the lil hobbits and just as an example of what a simple game like that does with housing, I can literally put anything anywhere (and expand the house to as big as I have coin to afford). If I want to line every space on the floor with trophies I can. If in lotro, I want to pit two Draigoch statues facing one another or have 32 snowmen standing in phalanx formation out in the yard, that should be doable.

Housing Evictions: That is silly to leave a house abandoned for years and have it not be available to other players. I surveyed the lildanas’ neighborhood and found that 80% of the houses were locked due to non-payment. Around where I live (Lorien), you cannot abandon a house and not pay taxes on it. I read that this portion of my pet peeve is scheduled to be addressed in Update 11, which will be sometime “soon”. Preliminary indication is that houses that have been abandoned for more than 6 months will be foreclosed.

(3) Shared Coin: We now have a Barter Wallet that can share barter items that are Bound to Account, yet if you want to share coin between characters, you have to send it through hobbit mail. That is ridiculous and needs to be fixed. Two ways to fix it are to either make coin a shared feature in the Barter Wallet or to make a portion of the “Shared Storage” of items a shared bank.

The best reason I have been given as to a downside to shared coin is that the limit for coinage is 9999 gold, 999 silver, 99 copper. Yeah… I am sure that affects a large population (she says sarcastically). Fine, fix the upper limit cap if it stands in the way of implementing a better shared coin bank.

(4) Longer friend list, notes section: The friend list in lotro allows only 50 names. It should be much longer; I would propose that 2000 is a more reasonable number. The 50 limitation cuts the list so short it is almost not usable at all. Finding people with alts is an even more difficult problem. Further, the friend list needs a good notes section.

Forgive me if we spoke more than a week ago and I forgot who you are. A better friend list would help bring people together… which is kind of the point of an MMO.

(5) More Dances: There need to be more dancing emotes in the game. There are currently 10 dances (plus the basic four); 8 are from festival, 1 is an Inn League Jig, and 1 is from Enedwaith. I think that 30 is a good target for the game. Oh, before you choke on your breakfast coffee, let me suggest to roll them out periodically. Festival is a great time and place to introduce more dances. Target releasing 1 per festival or 4 per year. That isn’t too much to ask.

(6) Permanently Unlocked Battle instances: The 3 Angmar Battle instances and the Battle of Lorien need to be unlocked and accessible via the Instance Finder. Bonus points to Turbine if the battles are actually scalable with suitable Mark rewards; however, I would accept just unlocking the instances so that people could see them. Right now, these are four instances that most people never see which make them a wasted resource.

(Update 05/12/13: Rats, each instance must be unlocked 20 times before the next opens, not the 10 that I wrote in this paragraph on first edition.) The 3 Angmar instances are The Battle of Aughaire, The Battle before Rammas Deluon, and The Battle of Rhunendin. They are accessible only in Gath Forthnir in northern Angmar and are staged that Aughaire must be beaten 20 times “per server” before Rammas is opened, then Rammas must be beaten 20 times before Rhunendin is unlocked. However, the counter resets frequently and sporadically. I would bet a gold that 99.99% of players have never seen the final battle Rhunendin. I have been looking for 3 years and have never seen it unlocked on Arkenstone. (In case you wondered why I don’t just go slam through this level 50 fellowship instance repeatedly until I personally unlocked Rhunendin, additionally, it has a 3 day Cooldown before it can be accessed again… the counter will reset before I could get through that many Cooldowns.)

The Battle of Lorien is accessible from the city of Caras Galadhon in LothLorien. It is also a locked instance requiring the “Preparations” quests to be done a certain number of times per server, and the counter resets periodically. Fortunately on Arkenstone, Lorien rep and passage is often desirable and this Battle stays open about half the time, although it is hard to access as one must travel to Caras Galadhon and accept the quest to be able to enter the instance. It also has a 24 hour CD.

(7) Shorter and uncoupled Festival Consumable timer: The festivals allow for some new emotes to be bartered. You consume a certain number of “emote consumables” and learn to do this emote as a skill. When the consumables were first released, they had a reasonable Cooldown timer, around 1 - 2 minutes. That made it feasible to actually get through 300 consumables in a reasonable amount of time.

During Yule fest 2011, the consumable CD timers were tied together and the timer was lengthened to 5 minutes (youll-yule-festival).  Therefore, 300 uses for deed completion now takes 1500 minutes (25 hours), or to do six deeds, you are looking at 150 hours, not counting any lost seconds between the 5 minute CD resets. With exception to very few difficult deeds, almost no deed in the game takes 25 - 150 hours to complete. The long timer that is tied to other consumable uses is completely unreasonable.

(8) No Moors multi-boxing: Here is the problem as I see it. When a multi-boxer appears in the moors, the entire focus and game changes. (how-to-cheat-in-moors) Instead of thinking about raids and outposts, all activity becomes focused on one person, “where is the Multi-boxer?” As a lone entity, no one is going to stand up to a foe that is doling out 6 times the damage with the push of a button. It will take a group to coral the one multi-boxer. (Update: BTW, I have no qualms with people multi-boxing, just don't do it in the Moors where it is negatively impacting other players.)

It is true that some occasions of this abuse of fair play might pass any policing, but sometimes it is too obvious to be ignored. When I was asked how this might be policed, the easiest answer is to write it into the code of conduct and have it as a reportable offence. It is easy enough to report Gold Spammers and Vulgar Harrassers. In my opinion, since it is directly interfering with others game play, it is a worse offense than those and should be easy enough to at least report and have some followup. Fortunately, like gold spammers, this issue doesn't arise often.

(9) Fix Broken festivals: 2012 went through the dark time of seemingly not being able to release a festival without problems. The one that comes to mind at the moment has to be “Farmer’s Faire” where half of the quests were broken (faire-hobbits-dont-get-drunk). 

The Faire eventually got the hobbit quest to work, but ended with the “Golden Egg” and “Fishy, Very Fishy” still basically broken. It was estimated that 1 in 10,000 eggs were Golden Eggs; I think there were 6 golden egg winners in Arkenstone for the entire festival, which is stupidly bad odds. “Fishy, very fishy” was indeed very fishy also. No one in Arkenstone claimed to have beaten that quest, which was to pull out 50 good fish before pulling a bad fish, with the quest available once per day. As far as I understand, no one on any server actually did win this quest, which trumps the Golden Egg on stupidly bad odds and poor festival design.

(10) Include older festival horses and random luck horses in the lotro store: During most festivals, the current horse and last year’s horse are available for barter; you can visit them at Hengstacer Farm before you buy and undoubtedly I have included them here on danania.net in All the Steeds. Occasionally, you can also buy the previous horse (the one from 2 years prior from the lotro store). One horse that has never been in the lotro store is the “2008 Yule Horse”, since he pre-dated the store startup. He is one of my lost sheep that I would buy if it were available. I recommend putting all applicable festival horses in the store each festival (those older than the previous year).

Also, horses that are based on luck should periodically go to the store. A few that I see in the stable (All the Steeds) that people might want include 

(a) “Skeleton Painted Horse” random drop in the fall festival, 

(b) “Hobby Horse” random drop at the Yule festival, 

(c) “Red Painted Skeleton Horse” random drop from lootboxes, 

(d) “Treasure laden goat” random drop at treasure hunt, 

(e) “Treasure Laden Horse” random drop at treasure hunt, 

(f) “Cave-claw Masked Horse” random drop at treasure hunt, 

(g) “Steed of the Duskwatch” random drop at 5th anniversary, 

(h) “Lossoth Steed” random drop at the 5th anniversary, 

(i) “Steed of the Jester” random drop spring festival 2012.

These steeds are beloved by those who have them. However, none of these are extremely special steeds like any of the Meta deed steeds that really mean something. People who have them just got lucky at whatever slot machine was offering them. I am thankful to have 7 of these I listed but would totally buy the Hobby Horse and Red Painted Skeleton Horse (at typical store prices).

(11) Weapon slot and Class item slot cosmetics: A common complaint I see is that if one gets a stupid looking weapon, they just have to suck it up because you cannot change the way it looks. I don’t need technical explanations as to how clothes can look different but weapons cannot look different, just fix it.

More direct to me though, my cosmetic pet peeve is that I do not want to see my RK bag, ever. Just make it invisible. I do not have that option and I should. Either give me an “invisible” bag I can equip cosmetically or a check box that I can hide its visibility (similar to the other cosmetic slots that have a show/hide check box).

(Update 05/10/13: If you made it this far, follow onward to Silent-podcaster-1st-age-li-changes which gives a list of links where this article was reviewed by famous Podcasters!)

Update 10: T9 and Eastemnet Relics

Looking at some of the Update 10 changes... yeah, there were a lot of changes for Update 10 so I’m taking it apart one piece at a time. Scroll back over the articles from the past few weeks to see 1st Age LI bartering, Rohan Rings, New loot and Gear and instances, Mithril Coins and Hytbold, RK armor set comparisons, Virtues, and summarized U10 release notes.

Today, I will turn my focus on LI Relics. I wrote about them at Update 6 (update-6-relics-and-virtues) and then again when discussing shards (rohan-shard-queen-master-of-relics) and building a LI in Rohan (rohan-85-rk-building-li-weapon). Rohan was released since that Update 6 review and with Rohan came Tier 9 Relics and special Eastemnet (True) Relics. In the link, I showed that the relics were built on a pattern where each tier had similar relics and it wasn’t really a random collection of stuff.

Relic naming got smarter and now for Update 10, every standard relic was renamed to make it more obvious what the relics were and how the relic progression was laid out by naming similar relics of different tiers similarly with more obvious names. Granted, the designers are still more flowery than I am. For example, they still use a name like “Red Agate Gem of Fortune” (the T9 gem for Fate and Critical) and I probably would have called it something clever like “T9 Gem – Fate and Critical”. However, it is less wordy than its previous name, “Red Agate Gem of Untold Wonders”.

The naming convention now looks like this:

Setting of Will	Will + Mastery
Setting of Might	Might + Mastery
Setting of Morale	Morale + Mastery
Setting of Power	Power + Mastery
Gem of Endurance	Vitality + Critical
Gem of Dexterity	Agility + Critical
Gem of Fortune	Fate + Critical
Rune of Defence	Incoming Heal Rating + Block
Rune of Deflection	ICMR + Parry
Rune of Avoidance	ICPR + Evade

Tier 9 relics are reasonably easy to acquire. Three T8s combine to make a T9. Just keep plugging along acquiring relics and combining them and soon you will be rolling in relics. Until then, you will see that the T1 through T8 relics are all named similarly so you can get used to having certain relics with you.

If you don’t get the T9 relic you really wanted and you have a different T9, you can meld the one you want for 512 shards + 1 T9 relic. As in every tier, there are 4 Setting choices, 3 Gem choices, and 3 Rune choices. Note: I would never recommend any of these three rune choices for a RK (rune is the relic I vote most likely to upgrade to a special relic). Here are the T9 relics.

The fun continues when looking at the Eastemnet/True Relics. These are special relics available for level 80+ and usable only on LIs that are level 80+. The Eastemnet Relics are obtained by melding 3 specific T9 relics + 4992 shards. The True Relics are obtained by melding 4 non-specific T9 relics + 9984 shards. It might seem like a lot, but shards are really easy to get (refer to link, rohan-shard-queen-master-of-relics).

Similar to regular relics, these special relics have a sense of progression also in that you will find special relics at level 75, 70, and 65 (Westfold, Great River, Extraordinary). However, do realize that once you make a special relic, there really is no going back. They are not used in any other melding. Eventually, when it becomes obsolete, your only option is to Refine your special relic to shards. These are the Eastemnet and True Relics.

Relics are a high impact way to shift your abilities. Let’s look at a few examples.

Max Morale: The first example is the Relic set I chose at Update 9, which is a maximum Morale focus. One of the best ways for a RK to increase morale is to choose morale relics. Otherwise, with the gear that is available, a choice of taking a certain armor piece for its morale could have a huge impact on not getting other important aspects like Mastery or Critical. So, I chose True Setting of the North, Eastemnet Gem of Hope, and True Rune of the Dark Wood. So, what was its benefit of these three?

990 morale, 0 extra DPS Mastery, +1.7% Critical, 0 tact mit (+1.6% phys mit).

Max Mastery: Here is another example. What if I wanted to maximize Mastery? I might chose True setting of the Three Hunters, True Gem of the Rising Moon, and Eastemnet Rune of Power. The benefit?

0 Morale, +6% DPS Mastery, +0.5% Critical, +0.7% tact mit (+1.5% phys mit). And, +7.5% devastate magnitude.

A Mix: Since you have two LIs, you can push the limits even further. From above, on one hand, +2000 morale, or on the other, +12% DPS Mastery, or you could split the difference… and take max morale on one LI and max dps on the other LI.

A good blend of one set of three might be the True setting of the north, True Gem of the Rising Moon, and Eastemnet Rune of Power.

435 Morale, +4% DPS Mastery, +2.1% Critical, +0.7% tactical mitigation (+1.7% phys mit).

Cheaper alternative: Or, if you wanted to go cheaper, you could mostly avoid the Eastemnet True relics and stick with the T9 relics. Here is a set of three relics, two T9s and an Eastemnet (as mentioned, the standard rune choices are absolutely horrid for RKs and I cannot recommend getting any of those ever). With T9 Setting of Morale, T9 Gem of Endurance, and Eastemnet Rune of Power…

371 Morale, +3.8% DPS Mastery, +1.8% Critical, +0.6% tactical mitigation (+1.6% phys mit).

As you can see, there are multiple ways to bend the relic sets to do great things. What you don’t want to do is just randomly throw relics at your LIs. My best advice is to set a goal and work toward it! Happy Riding!

Update 10: New loot, gear, and jewelry and Update 10.1

Battle for Erebor - Laugshat

In continuing from the last few articles on Update 10 new information…

Update 10 new items!

Update 10 brought in 1 new 6-person instance called “Bells of Dale” and 3 new Raids: Battle for Erebor, Flight to the lonely Mountain, and Fires of Smaug. While these are fun, what I liked most about Update 10 was that great loot is spread across nearly every instance in the game!  For a group that knows the instances, many of the instances (even challenges) are able to be finished in very short time (I was in a group that was finishing Sambrog entrance-to-looting in under 6 minutes). That really picks up where some of the skirmishing left off with quick runs (fastest-skirmishes-marks-per-minute).

Concerning new items, Eggolass of lotro-wiki assembled a great checklist of new items available as of Update 10. See the link here (lotro-wiki: Update_10_Item_Checklist).

Great Barrows - Sambrog

The Epic (gold) items are fairly rare. I had the good fortune to acquire Cardolan Rune-keeper’s Leggings from Sambrog in the Great Barrows. I spied on other Runekeepers to show you two other pieces: the Ring of the Honourable Rune-keeper (was dropped in School at Tham Mirdain) and this Hat of the Lonely Mountain (not Epic quality but really great for a healing RK, from Fires of Smaug).

Leggings from GB, Ring from School, Hat from Smaug

I was surprised how many of these teal items in Eggolass's list I have seen just in running typical 3-person and 6-person instances, though I have not seen all 6 Epic gold RK pieces. I am sure there might be an uber RK out there somewhere that has all six Epic RK pieces: hat, gloves, legs, robe, earring, and ring.

Sword Halls

Similar to what was shown in the previous article on RK armor sets (update-10-runekeeper-armor-sets), there are many possibilities for building a good set of gear as lots of the teal pieces are relatively balanced with one another but emphasize different stats. So, it is possible to not run the same instance very often but find a great selection of items.

Fornost - Wraith of Fire

As of April 3rd, Update 10.1 is now in effect.

CSTM is on the case with PDFs and links to the Release Notes. (CSTM: update-10-1-release-notes)

Some details to note…

• Flight to the Lonely Mountain instance works now. It had been disabled since the day after Update 10 released (March 6).

• The previously fiddled with Fate/Power balance has been retinkered, undoubtedly to make power consumption a factor again. I can't tell the difference; power is a non-factor still, and I'm totally ok with that.

• RK: “Scribe New Ending” skill that was changed for Update 10 has been rechanged for 10.1. It has been “strengthened” to bring it on par with other dispel effects.

• Eswe (u10-rohan-rings-complete-hytbold-in-15) has NEW ”healing-focused” rings.

• There were multiple various bug fixes and “improvements”.

Annuminas - Ost Elendil, because I think the purple is pretty

Update 10: Runekeeper Armor Sets

In continuing to look at changes for Update 10, I will dissect what the new RK armor sets are and how existing armor sets changed. For this article, I will consider the Runemakers’ set, the three level 85 Moors armor sets, the three Hytbold sets, the three Erebor sets, and the three Greater Erebor sets.

Some general observations:

(1) The armor sets have been standardized to not offer stat increases for set bonuses. The armor sets have also been standardized to offer bonuses on 2-piece and 4-piece only.

(2) With the removal of stats as armor bonuses, some non-Erebor armor pieces changed. I originally examined many of the Update 9 armor sets and level 75 armors in the post, rohan-85-rk-hytbold-and-moors-armor. For example, Hytbold Peace-caller set decreased 214 morale and 1148 mastery, and gained some crit (due to the change in Critical calculation) since the previous version. I have re-reviewed all armors’ stats to reflect the changes for U10 (as of March 20).

(3) There are non-set armor pieces that are even better than any of these pieces. As they are rare and random versus being bartered and earned, I will not review those, but acknowledge that they exist and are awesome (and “gold” quality).

(4) The Erebor armors can only be bartered once you have completed all seven of the Rohan instances on T1. The Greater Erebor armors can only be bartered with wins in Rohan instances T2.

(5) There isn’t a big gap at all between the level 75 armor sets from TOO or Moors level 75, so don’t feel badly if you already have those. The U10 changes made the previous post at  rohan-85-rk-hytbold-and-moors-armor incorrect, but it gives indication that many of the level 75 armors are (or at least were) reasonable options.

(6) In the Moors, the Moors armors are a must due to their “Audacity” bonuses (I’ll explain Audacity another post, but for perspective, here is how Audacity looked prior to U10, ettenmoors-75-rk-armor-audacity.

Set Bonuses:

So, let’s look at armor set comparisons. I will start by looking at the “set bonuses” for each armor set at 2-piece and 4-piece. As you see in Table 1, there are a lot of repeat bonuses. Most are situational and tied to certain skills. Since now for U10 there are no more stats included as bonuses, you will have to decide whether you really use these skills and utilize the bonuses.

Table 1: Set bonuses for RK Armor sets (click on image to enlarge)

I have a lot of data… so I decided to present the full sets and then present snapshots by piece. I am going to benchmark everything to the Rune-makers’ armor since those pieces can be found at the skirmish vendor and otherwise require no effort at all, except the cost of marks and medallions.

For simplicity, I am going to continue presenting only my “4 pillars of the Runekeeper”: Morale, Tactical Mastery, Critical, and Tactical Mitigation.

Full Sets:

You just turned level 85 and have the option of going to the skirmish vendor to get a set of armor, going to the Moors and hunting Creeps for Commendations, going to rebuild Hytbold and earning tokens, or going through Rohan and Erebor raids.

Ok, Table 2 is a wall of data related to full RK sets. I will translate some observations. Do keep in mind, aside from the numerical data, there is Table 1 to consider, so be mindful of the potential set bonuses, if they are important.

Observation 1: The Moors sets have much less Mastery than the basic Runemakers. However, Moors Audacity of the pieces is essential for the Moors. With 5-7% less Mastery than basic Runemakers, the Moors armor is not worthy anywhere else except the Moors.

Observation 2: The Hytbold armor sets are slightly better than the Runemakers. The set bonuses in Table 1 are better also. Did you do enough quests in Rohan to earn reputation and barter for Hytbold armor? Which makes more sense to earn, 9k marks and 3k medallions, or Rohan rep and Hytbold tokens?

Observation 3: Erebor armors cost a more Marks, Medallions, and Seals but there is almost no benefit versus the basic Runemakers armor. Even if the price was the same, is it worth it?

Observation 4: Greater Erebor armors are the most expensive and hardest to obtain. One would think they are the best, right?

Example: Runemaker vs Greater Erebor Healer (Peace-caller): GE Peace has less morale (-263), better Mastery (+2%), better Critical (+2%), and better tact mit (+2%). GE Peace has slightly better set bonuses (not a fan, but they are better). GE Peace cost “a lot” more. Is it worth it?

Table 2: Cost and stat data for level 85 RK Armor sets, (stats vs Runemakers)

When looking at a single category, it becomes clear that many of the pieces are built similarly. If all things cost the same, which would you choose? Is there an obvious difference between these pieces? I will show a snapshot of the stat differences between the set pieces for each category.

Head:

Shoulders:

Chest Armor:

Gloves:

Leggings:

Boots:

What Would Dana Do?

Because I have as a goal to do all quests and deeds, I have some options available to me as by-product of Completionism, i.e. Hytbold, marks, unlocks.

I’m also told that the number of Marks and Medallions for Runemakers set is a lot. I lose perspective sometimes on what “a lot” means. Is 9k marks and 3k medallions a lot for a 6-piece set of armor? If so, then Hytbold is probably where you want to go, and Runemakers and Erebor are not for you.

I got the Hytbold Thunder-caller set just by doing the quests and following the path. I love to use “Epic Conclusion to reset Shocking Words” and habitually hit Shocking Words, Epic Conclusion, Shocking Words in quick succession with enjoyable effect… I’ve seen the set of three skills critically hit an opponent for over 22k damage during that explosive second.

Hytbold armor is very easy to obtain. For example, to get this Thunder-caller armor you would need Kindred rep with the 4 factions of Rohan (actually, only Ally with Norcroft), and some Hytbold tokens. By the time you got the Reputation, because it would have involved doing Hytbold daily quests, you would have enough tokens to build the correct pieces of town and barter for the armor. Reference here (to-be-a-thane).

Hytbold is one of the cheapest and best options, and as is evident from this article, all the non-Moors armors are fairly close to one another statistically.

If you are going to the Moors, get some Moors armors. I got 2 of each set of Moors armors because there wasn’t apparent value to me to go after the 4-piece bonuses. It isn't as useful for everyday use since it has noticeably less Mastery but is a must in the moors.

Though I have access to it, I won’t barter for the Erebor armor as it has little benefit. 

For comparison from Table 1, for Hytbold Thunder vs Erebor Thunder: Hytbold has +614 morale and +3% Mastery and my preferred set bonuses VS Erebor has +1.5% Critical. The Greater Erebor Thunder is slightly better than the Erebor though not enough that I would choose it even if the price was equal to the Hytbold (and certainly not at the increased cost).