I’ve been playing both WoW’s recent expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) as well as LotRO’s Mines of Moria expansion. Mines of Moria has me totally hooked. I log into WoW once-in-a-while to play my hunter or death knight, but for the most part, I’ve been working through LotRO’s expansion.
The basic premise of the expansion is that the Fellowship has passed through the mines already and you’re following close behind them. Also following the Fellowship, the dwarves have managed to get into the mines and have established several footholds. Most of the area, however, is still under goblin control and still dangerous.
Some of the features I’m most enjoying:
Legendary Items
Legendary items (weapons and gear) are items your character equips like any other in the game (weapons go in standard weapon slots, etc.) but they also have stats which you can define and as the item gains experience, you can add even more stats. I started off by completing the solo book one quest for volume two. In addition to being a fun introduction to the new content, I received a legendary dagger at the end of one of the quests. My initial dagger wasn’t that impressive. It did about 25+ DPS in the common damage type. ‘Common’ damage isn’t very good as most late-game mobs have high resistances to common damage. At the end of another quest, I got a scroll I could use to change the weapon damage type to ancient dwarf damage (loads better than common damage). As I fought monsters, my new weapon gained experience along side me. One of the first things I did was add more DPS. In relatively short order, I was cranking out 27+ DPS which put it on par with my old dagger. By slotting relics, gems and other items into the weapon, I also altered its stats to give me power bonuses as well as reduced cool-downs on some skills.
Since I started writing this, I have upgraded my dagger to a better one of a higher tier. I’m now doing 31 DPS or so with it. I’ve noticed along the way that the bonus damage to daggers for burglars (see below) is really paying off – I do not anticipate going back to maces anytime soon, it’s that good.
New Skills
One common complaint amongst burglars was the disparity in damage, particularly burst damage, between daggers and other weapon types. Though the DPS was the same for a high-end dagger and a high-end mace, the base damage for a mace could be a lot higher. On critical strikes, the maces would routinely out-perform daggers, making maces the defacto weapon of choice for many burglars. One of the new skills available to burgs (starting at a low-level) is a boost to dagger-based damage. I like the change and it seems to put dagger usage up where it should be as an option for burglars. Since a lot of my interest in LotRO stems from liking The Hobbit, it seems appropriate for my hobbit burg to carry daggers rather than a maces or swords.
I also poked around some of the other skills for burglars all of which look neat. There’s an improved version of Hide in Plain Sight (HiPS – where a burglar will suddenly disappear even when in combat) which also applies a run speed buff. It’s not available until later, but I’m looking forward to getting it.
Turbine also revamped the trait system so that combining a number of class traits from a single school with grant other buffs. I have several traits each from two different schools so I get two special debuffs as a result. Both debuffs are chance-based; no special abilities open up, but I can do quite a lot of damage when everything’s firing off.
The Mines
The mines are, in my opinion, the best part of the expansion. I was leery at first of how they would appear. How could they possibly make a large underground space feel as interesting as some of the other zones? From what I’ve see thus far, they have succeeded admirably.
Everything about the mines is massive in scale. From the staircase players first climb up to get into the mines from the entryway, to the machines in the Waterworks to the area surrounding the Dolven View (sp), the scale of the mines is impressive. Every twist and turn reveals new dwarven wonders to behold. The architecture is similar to Thorin’s hall with ornately-carved pillars and large stonework buttresses. There are also plenty of caverns to explore, goblins to fight and ruins to marvel at.
The mines are dangerous places to be which adds to the excitement. Paths often crest a hill and then quickly change direction to veer around an abyss. The most common cause of death is misadventure. The mobs in the mines are also buffed. Many either have special disabling attacks or are buffed against certain types of damage. The mines are also dark. Very dark. Alt + F10 is a personal torch, although Turbine does seem to have enabled a special lighting system for when characters are in really dark areas. The end result is a thrilling sense of danger and the unknown around every corner. Even as a slow-moving, sneaky burglar, I had to use a lot of caution moving around and had to pick my fights carefully.
For those not wanting to walk everywhere (ponies and horses won’t work in the mines) there are goat paths available just like the horse paths above ground. The goats look pretty odd – my hobbit can’t even see over its head when he’s on one – but they do the trick when lost and trying to get from point A to point B through unfamiliar territory. Turbine also seems to have added some run speed buffs to the game to assist adventurers in getting around.
Fun Things
As someone that pre-ordered, I logged in my first day into the expansion with a number of coins in my packs. Right-clicking each gave me a quest. I turned my quests in to an NPC in Michel Delving and had a number of neat items to choose. I ended up getting a +hope horn and a couple furniture items for my house. One furniture item I picked up was a mouse hole. It takes up a large furniture slot, so I moved a bookcase and put it in. At first I was a little disappointed. It’s a hole in the wall with a little piece of cheese in front of it. I was thinking: if that’s all it is, this sucks. Just then, a little animated mouse jumped out of the hole, nibbled at the cheese, looked at me and jumped back in his hole. It was pretty neat. It’s like having a pet in my home. The other furniture item is a songbird cage. It’s a little bird cage with, wait for it, a songbird inside. I haven’t heard the bird sing or anything, but it does have a little animation and makes the house seem more lived-in. I have a small house now, but with the amount of furniture accumulating in my storage chest, I think it may be time to upgrade to a large house.
I’m having a lot of fun with the expansion, so much so that I’ve put WotLK on the back-burner. WoW gave a lot of more-of-the-same while LotRO managed to implement new items, zones and changes to its game-play.
