Turbine recently released Book 8, a free content expansion, and I actually found some time to log in and check some things out.
The radiance armor instances in Moria are a bit of a sticking point for me; they’re not that interesting to see the first time through let alone the six-to-ten times each needed to get a radiance piece from them. Furthermore, the radiance pieces are pretty much the only reason anyone goes into those instances – once someone has their piece, it’s not like they’ll be anxious to go back again. The radiance six-mans got me to thinking maybe all the fun my friends and I had with Carn Dum, Urugath and the Rift was a fluke. Maybe Turbine forgot, or never really knew, how to make a dungeon crawl fun.
I’m happy to report that Turbine seems to have gotten its groove back with the new instances with Book 8. I have only been in one of the six-mans (there may be more than the one I was in) and one of the three-mans of which there are two.
The six-man instance was fairly straightforward. There are many trash mob pulls followed by boss fights which usually involve some sort of puzzle or trick. In one fight, for example, the boss was standing in a room of colored squares. Each square gives him an advantage for a certain type of fighting and gives him weaknesses for others. Based on the group composition, players need to decide which square to keep him in. It was a fun romp through a new dungeon.
The Waterworks three-man is a blast. It’s an instance filled with levers and wheels which trigger gears and extend bridges. Players need to figure out where they want to go inside the instance and the right series of levers they need to pull to get there. For example, in one section there is a bridge which would lead us to one of the boss fight rooms. The problem is: the bridge is retracted so we couldn’t cross over. To get across, we would have to make our way through a gate which would drop before we could get through it because the lever was too far away. Our solution: one of the team opened the gate and I jumped through before it closed. Then I sneaked to the lever for the bridge, evading elite mob patrols on the way, and threw the lever on the other side so my team could get through. Then we killed off the patrols and got to the boss. The instance is filled with little things like that. One has to be careful though: some levers which activate one thing may simultaneously deactivate something else. At one point, we had three of us toggling levers in different locations to open one of the rooms. We got the room open but in the process retracted a bridge on my route to where they were. Not being the most observant person, I promptly barreled right off the edge and into a chasm and had to rez at the entrance. The atmosphere in the place is great as well. Massive gears churn, waterwheels creak and moan, and the place looks like it is an aging ruin subjected to decades of humidity and decay.
Both the three-man and the six-man run have a hard mode. Since I’ve only done the hard-mode fights, I’m not sure what the difference is between them. Another nice thing about the runs is that -everyone- participating gets a gem at the end. Collect a certain number of gems for the instance and you can trade them in for a radiance armor piece. While Turbine persists in its gear-gated style of raiding, it’s good that they’re making some of the armor a bit easier to get.
In addition to the Book 8 instances, I’ve also been doing some of the Summer Festival events. Many of the old stand-bys are there: fishing, horse races, etc. There are two new events this time around though. There’s a hobbit race in the Shire and a dwarf race outside Thorin’s Hall. Players can get two betting tokens from an NPC (by the party tree for the Shire race and inside Thorin’s Hall for the dwarf race). Players will then go to the race grounds at the top of the hill (over Bag End) or on the steps in front of Thorin’s. When the four racer NPCs appear, players can bet on which one they think will win. Once the race is underway, the NPCs will run to a table and eat or drink. After they eat/drink they may: race right off to the next table, linger a bit, or walk slowly to the next table. Between all the stations, the walk / run / linger transitions can make for a pretty exciting race. I’ve had my chosen racer start off slow but end up rocketing past all the others and had some with an early lead fritter it away. The races are pretty clever mini-games and it’s fun running along with other players to see what happens.
