Thread: TP Flow - Earn all the content by playing

Instead of a cash flow report used in business, I put together a very simple TP flow, using the cost of a content pack as an expense and what you can earn with that pack as income. It appears that you need to max deed 4 characters and you can unlock all of the content currently available (including MoM and SoM), with 5700+ TP left over to purchase your additional bag slots, currency cap removal, trait slots, riding skill, etc..

The ending balance was positive with just 3 characters, but it was never high enough to purchase Moria, so I had to bump it up to 4, which is why there are so many TP left over. The starting balance of 1440 is from playing through the 3 opening zones on 3 characters:

Code:

Zone	Expense	Income	Balance	
--				1440
Lone-lands	350	180	1630	
Evendim		595	225	1710
Angmar		795	420	2175
Eregion		695	305	2395
Moria		2495	1535	4505
Trollshaws	595	145	4345	
Misty Mountains	695	170	4160	
Forochel	595	140	3985	
Mirkwood	1995	395	3175	
Enedwaith	695	210	3110	
North Downs	595	145	2950

Posting a table in these forums isn't fun; this is the flow for 3 characters. I meant to post the one with 4, but realized only after formatting all of the padding/cells. You can see that you don't have enough when it comes time to purchase Moria

If you purchase the Moria Complete edition at retail, you only have to max deed 2 characters and have 800 TP left over when its all said and done (plus you will enjoy all of the VIP to premium benefits for those 2 characters).

After updating it looks like it can be done with just 3 if you mix up the order.

Very nice analysis. And people say you can't REALLY play LOTRO for free. Now can you estimate the amount of time it would take to max deed 3 characters? I'm guessing two years.

Originally Posted by RedlineJunkie

Now can you estimate the amount of time it would take to max deed 3 characters? I'm guessing two years.

That would depend on how... knowledgeable the F2P player is. For one, the OP included All SoA Areas. Even an VIP player won't need some of those areas for quests to get to L50.

Example:
Evendim can probably be skipped if you have Lonelands (up to L33-35) and then Trollshaw, MM, and Angmar. Same with Forochel (Angmar can pretty much carry you to high 40s if not to 50 flat) if you have Eregion and Then Moria/Lothlorien and L60. And you can save Mirkwood for Much later as well if you don't mind stopping at L60 for a while. (Edit: And you can always "supplement" your leveling Xp with Skimishes even if only limited to 2 repeatables).

With that in mind, an F2P player can forego some of the harder deeds in each area until later in 'life' for each char.


Good post OP. One thing i would suggest is the optional calculation if you were to buy more char slots (F2P are limited to 2 chars per server) so that you can have all your chars in one server if you so choose (hence optional calc).

I have a feeling Turbine will aim to correct this at some point.

I just cannot fathom allowing players to farm deeds to buy all the content for nothing. I imagine either deed increases, point decreases or outright "Once per account" pay outs will ultimately happen for Free/Premium players...

The extra points to purchase Moria may be possible from the rep points. I dont believe you have factored those into your calculation. A lot of that rep could come from deed grinding because I noticed you now get rep from killing certain humanoid characters in areas such as Lone Lands and that would still continue in Angmar. Rep points can account for a fair amount as I noticed on my main when i logged the first time and I was never into getting rep. Most of my rep never made it past neutral. It would definitely cover the cost of purchasing two extra character slots to have them all on same server.

Originally Posted by DathiusKahRek

I have a feeling Turbine will aim to correct this at some point.

I just cannot fathom allowing players to farm deeds to buy all the content for nothing. I imagine either deed increases, point decreases or outright "Once per account" pay outs will ultimately happen for Free/Premium players...

Don't know how it compares to DDO, but I know they also give out "free" points to F2P players and it seems to be working for them so far. Besides - and I realize this may sound contrary to the Tone of my previous post, doing all those deeds will Not be walk in the park for a True F2P.

Originally Posted by JeanCarlo

Don't know how it compares to DDO, but I know they also give out "free" points to F2P players and it seems to be working for them so far. Besides - and I realize this may sound contrary to the Tone of my previous post, doing all those deeds will Not be walk in the park for a True F2P.

Very true and that may be exactly what Turbine is counting on. Ered Luin deeds are "easy" with the help of the free gifts (2x slayer deed advancement). But even then I played a new toon for about 10 hours and got to level 16 doing all the deeds there (+ 1 race deed).

Got 145 TP (+ the 10 from Every Little Bit Helps quest).

So yeah its probably a hell of a lot of work after leaving the starting towns; something most players will probably not want to spend the time doing.

Originally Posted by DathiusKahRek

So yeah its probably a hell of a lot of work after leaving the starting towns; something most players will probably not want to spend the time doing.

I suspect that you're talking about hundreds of hours of extremely tedious grinding, to earn enough points to buy content which would cost a little over $50 to just buy through the store. Given that your "easy" deeds earned you about $2 worth of points in 10 hours of play.

I further suspect that Turbine's opinion is that if someone is willing to do so much work to avoid spending so little money, they're probably not the sort of customer that you'd ever be likely to get much revenue out of anyway.

Originally Posted by StormieLOTRO

I suspect that you're talking about hundreds of hours of extremely tedious grinding, to earn enough points to buy content which would cost a little over $50 to just buy through the store. Given that your "easy" deeds earned you about $2 worth of points in 10 hours of play.

I further suspect that Turbine's opinion is that if someone is willing to do so much work to avoid spending so little money, they're probably not the sort of customer that you'd ever be likely to get much revenue out of anyway.

Actually, companies love to use such customers as an example of the system working as intended. I would further point out that in MMO games there are plenty of players that enjoy doing every quest, setting limitations (sometimes for role play) and their own sandbox rules of the game.

Points are the cash back rewards of the game.

This is such an excellent post. Everyone who wants to play completely for free should read this.

Originally Posted by DathiusKahRek

I have a feeling Turbine will aim to correct this at some point.

I just cannot fathom allowing players to farm deeds to buy all the content for nothing. I imagine either deed increases, point decreases or outright "Once per account" pay outs will ultimately happen for Free/Premium players...

Why is this so hard to fathom? In announcing that the game is now F2P Turbine is obligated to provide a means to do just that. Now, I personally would never spend the time to grind out all the deeds required to do this because its just not fun for me, but it is possible to accomplish it if someone wants to.

hmm, I have a few noob questions regarding this...

I'm F2P, and I'm doing ALL quest's and all deed's I can find...yeah it gets boring at times but still TP FTW...

my question is...I'm aiming to get Moira 1st...wouled that be a mistake? would it be harder to lvl up?

whats the best selection on packs/expanions for lvling and geting TP?

for example would I earn more TP geting Evendim 1st, fallowed by rest of *quest packs*? OR would it be beter to get Moira? and would I have to make new characters on new servers? ect...

any pointers to get all content showed in OP(opening post) would be appriciated...no matter how time consuiming it might be(somebody said 2 years..but I think thats just a joke ).

ty

Meky: I would recommend other areas first so the grind isnt so bad to 50 as you cant do deeds/quests past the starter 3

As far as fathom someone being able to fully get alot of things with little to no money, its not so hard to fathom as not every F2P player will go that route. They either will balk at the time it will take to do something like that as it will not be an easy road. Most will either just go away or purchase points

The company I work for is offering HD Free For Life, but not everyone takes it. Either they dont want to or they dont want to agree to the ways we have they can sign up.

If you complete all the starter deeds, Lone Lands deeds, Evendim deeds, Angmar deeds, racials, class deeds, point quests, on 2 characters then you should have enough to buy Moria. (You should have 2615 points here.) After you complete Moria with the 2 characters you should have enough to buy Mirkwood and buy some more SoA areas and Enedwaith. You might have to deed on a 3rd character to unlock all the account restrictions, but you can unlock all the quest packs with just 2 characters.

Originally Posted by Meky22

hmm, I have a few noob questions regarding this...

I'm F2P, and I'm doing ALL quest's and all deed's I can find...yeah it gets boring at times but still TP FTW...

my question is...I'm aiming to get Moira 1st...wouled that be a mistake? would it be harder to lvl up?

whats the best selection on packs/expanions for lvling and geting TP?

for example would I earn more TP geting Evendim 1st, fallowed by rest of *quest packs*? OR would it be beter to get Moira? and would I have to make new characters on new servers? ect...

any pointers to get all content showed in OP(opening post) would be appriciated...no matter how time consuiming it might be(somebody said 2 years..but I think thats just a joke ).

ty

Buying the Lone Lands, Evendim and Angmar quest packs and completing all the deeds in these areas on 2 characters will mean you end up with more points that not buying them. All other quest packs (except Moria) require more than 2 characters to break even or make a profit in points on what you spent on them.

At this point, it is possible to wrack up ~100 tp in a characters first few hours (dual boxing with a higher toon helps). Delete and reload.

So in that sense, some of the TP deeds are "exploitable" and I expect Turbine to adjust it down the line. Maybe by capping the amount of characters you can delete in a month.

I don't like deleting toons. Plus, if you really crunch the numbers, all the work for free TP just doesn't add up So I've been playing normally. Since Sept 10th, on a premium account, I've unlocked Lone Lands and North Downs -- I have about 400-500 TP left (190 TP spent foolishly unlocking trait slots on my first toon). My next purchase will probably be Angmar...I'd rather buy Evendim, but all that swimming as a non-vip doesn't sound fun. One character is level ~30, another is ~25 and my third is ~12.

I imagine it is possible to play normally as a free to play. It's probably easy if someone doesn't mind deleting toons after soaking up the easy initial TP (or the easy 300+ to level 20, ignoring the grindy deeds). Still, that's quite a commitment. I can see unlocking all the quest packs through TP deeds. But still, even the free players should subscribe for at least one month to unlock the character-specific aspects....grinding TP out for that too is nuts. And then if you like the game, buying the expansions is the next goal. I think they are currently overpriced, personally, but 1495 for MoM I'd shell out -- theoretically.

There's no need to delete characters, really......there are 15 servers now available, and you can create 2 characters per server. In just the past couple of weeks of playing, trying to figure out a main, I've gotten around 2K points. It doesn't really matter to me, since I decided the value in a subscription far outweighed the cost, but still. Two thousand points - with 2 characters at 23 and the rest in their teens. It's easily doable - at least at the start.

tnx for the input guys, atm I have a lvl 11 Hunter and lvl 18 Lore-Master done all quests in shire, done 4/5 quest's in Erad and all deeds...gona start doing Bree Land today...

atm I have 350 free TP...but I did use my bonus 500 TP from Beta stupidly...(I unlocked gold restrictions lol)

eather way I see doin quest packs 1st is the way to go, so ty all for your input's

I like that Turbine really made it so you COULD play completely free. However, the time it would take to get some deeds that you have no desire to do, would be better spent as a day laborer for a day and just buy the points

Originally Posted by JeanCarlo

That would depend on how... knowledgeable the F2P player is. For one, the OP included All SoA Areas. Even an VIP player won't need some of those areas for quests to get to L50.

Well, this little exercise is about how to earn all the content for free. It's a little odd to answer that you can get all the content by not getting some of the content. If your only goal is to reach level 50, you could do that without ever doing a single quest beyond the one that gets you out of the intro instance, so you don't really need to buy any quest packs. You'd be missing out on all the game's content that way, though. An area's quest pack isn't about leveling to reach some other area, it's about getting to play the content there in the area you're buying. If you skip Evendim, for instance, sure you can still move on and play other areas instead, but you'll be missing out on the quests that are in Evendim.

Originally Posted by DathiusKahRek

Ered Luin deeds are "easy" with the help of the free gifts (2x slayer deed advancement).

We get that "2x slayer deed" item as a gift at the beginning, but I'm not going to waste mine on deeds in the "easy" areas. I've heard that the slayer deeds get harder further on, so I think I'll hang on to it for use in some of the harder slayer deeds in later regions.

Originally Posted by Kaarnyj

There's no need to delete characters, really......there are 15 servers now available, and you can create 2 characters per server. In just the past couple of weeks of playing, trying to figure out a main, I've gotten around 2K points.

Even if it weren't for the relatively easy TP that new characters can earn, there's a lot of advantages in starting with several characters spread across several different servers. While trying out what different classes and professions are like, you also get to see what the community of different servers is like. After trying out a few, you'll have a better idea of which server you want to start your main on. (Lots of people regard whichever character they started first as their main, even though that's the one whose server and class they chose when they didn't know the game yet. I started with a champion, but that was before I knew how much fun a hunter could be.)

its all about how you do that and if you enjoy it of not... i now have a lvl 5 toon Emenea (lowlevel forever XD), i trained an helper account with my main nad i am grinding deeds with him. leveling the helper will take some time, but you dont even need a software and w/o a software it should be legal, too. so create toons you like and have fun time grinding lol.
i always listen epic music while grinding and have a sleepy smile while playing at 1am (too heavy Õ_o?). and you dont have to grind it all at once, remember to live your own life..
good luck Õ__Õ!