Thread: Please repeal, or revise the farming changes

Originally Posted by AdarinOuest

I remember spending an afternoon or two zooming through the ranks on my first and second farmer by exploiting the pipeweed system. All I had to do was buy a stack of store bought and get ten "rare" seeds (not the impossible task people are making it out to be).

After that I didn't have to buy anything but water and fertilizer as I zoomed all the way to master farming. The 3 seeds/1 poor crop was that out of control.

As for the current system I am a bit confused. Is it easier or harder? I mean Wizard Fire and Golden Fire can no longer be bought so it's going to be hard to produce those in any sizeable quantity. That's a substantial change that makes rare items rare. The other thing is that you can make low tier pipeweeds with generic seeds which doesn't really make it easier it just makes it more streamlined. I don't get the complaint.

All that said, I am disappointed they removed cross breeding, but I understand if they are trying to streamline things.

For regular food/ale farming I love the consolidation changes. It is more streamlined and it just lets me get the crop results I want. The seed reduction from 5:1 is also a very welcome improvement. I wouldn't want those changes reverted at all.

The pipeweed change isn't fun for me and doesn't have the same streamlined feel. If it actually felt more streamlined, like the food/ale crops, then I would probably be happy. My last test with this I used a farmer with supreme mastery and started with 100 T3 pipeweed fields. In the end I never got higher than T4 pipeweed before my seed supply was depleted and I needed to start over. I'm estimating that I would need to start with at least 500 T3 pipeweed fields to even have a chance at producing T5+ crops. So I have to spend a lot of time (due to the slow crop field inductions and need for micro-management) farming junk I don't want to try and get stuff I do want. I found it to be tedious and not very fun.

If all kinds of rare pipeweed seeds still drop from mobs and chests then I guess it's not quite as bad since there are multiple options to try and get the higher tier crops. That would mean I could go out and adventure, doing something I want, to try and collect the rarer seeds.

Originally Posted by BrianDavion

a few weeks ago, before the patch went live, it was suggested breaking pipeweed off from farming and making it a hobby, with the old ruleset. this seems to me, to be the best approuch. especially as the farming changes DO make it easier for cooks

Perhaps the smartest suggestion to come out of this thread. /signed

Originally Posted by FyreBrand

The seed reduction from 5:1 is also a very welcome improvement. I wouldn't want those changes reverted at all.

The 5-to-1 change is nice. The generic "apprentice seed" is too much dumbing down I think. No one really had a problem with this, and farming was already simpler than all other production crafting. If you make strawberries, you buy strawberry seeds, pretty simple.

My last test with this I used a farmer with supreme mastery and started with 100 T3 pipeweed fields. In the end I never got higher than T4 pipeweed before my seed supply was depleted and I needed to start over.

There is a lot of randomness with it, and it looks like you got a bad string of luck. I got to a collection of Wizard's Fire a very short time after starting from scratch (being able to start at T3 is a big shortcut), and before Moria that was the most difficult hybrid of all. Getting to Goldfire was still only about an hour. Less than 500 fields. The snag is that I think the change from 5 seeds to 1 messed up the odds of keeping a seed stock going. In the old system a bad result still gave you one poor crop, which was 3/5 of what you need for a field. In the new system a poor result can give you zero seeds, so you've lost a lot more.

But because it's still so easy to start from scratch and get to top tier, there's little need to keep and maintain a seed crop. Yes, it is more inconvenient for the player who had mastered all this previously, but it's a lot easier for someone new to it all to master it (especially for those not willing to just buy starter seed kits from someone else). It's so dumbed down though that it loses all the fun. And the very rare pipe weeds will now be common place.

Ie, the new process is: make the highest tier hybrid pipe-weed field you can; harvest; repeat. Just keep doing that over and over. There's no thinking involved.

If all kinds of rare pipeweed seeds still drop from mobs and chests then I guess it's not quite as bad since there are multiple options to try and get the higher tier crops. That would mean I could go out and adventure, doing something I want, to try and collect the rarer seeds.

The drops are only those you can buy at the vendor anyway. You won't get drops of Eagle's Nest or Wizard's Fire (unless they changed it). And you can definitely make Eagle's Nest very quickly, in much less time than it takes to find a chest/bag that has a pipe weed seed in it.

I agree with the OP on this thread. The old method was an interesting minigame with tangible results. Now we just have a rare byproduct from a simplistic process. You get lots of dross with this method and there's sure to be plenty of wastage to get the pipeweed we want. Before, there was a feeling of accomplishment to get all the strains, now its a fun random thing. Fun and random is nice, but can't we keep that feeling of accomplishment and skill?

I would like to say that Lady Ashenwoods has supplied Ales and Tales with 1000s of pipeweeds of all sorts, and it has been one of the things that makes the event work. What's the new mechanic to produce the same? Farm up 10's of thousands of common pipeweed and save the rares out. That's wasteful and unfun. You did a good and creative thing with the original mechanic, Turbine. Lets not throw it out just to make crafting Rack of Lamb with Mint Sauce a little easier and straightforward.

--Harperella

This isn't the only change I'd like to repeal but add me to the list that thinks this change stinks.

Originally Posted by Harperelle

I agree with the OP on this thread. The old method was an interesting minigame with tangible results. Now we just have a rare byproduct from a simplistic process. You get lots of dross with this method and there's sure to be plenty of wastage to get the pipeweed we want. Before, there was a feeling of accomplishment to get all the strains, now its a fun random thing. Fun and random is nice, but can't we keep that feeling of accomplishment and skill?

I would like to say that Lady Ashenwoods has supplied Ales and Tales with 1000s of pipeweeds of all sorts, and it has been one of the things that makes the event work. What's the new mechanic to produce the same? Farm up 10's of thousands of common pipeweed and save the rares out. That's wasteful and unfun. You did a good and creative thing with the original mechanic, Turbine. Lets not throw it out just to make crafting Rack of Lamb with Mint Sauce a little easier and straightforward.

--Harperella

I think (read: hope) the changes to pipeweed and food production could be split out, keeping the updated method for crafting food components.

@Lohi - I'll try again. I agree a stack of 100 or so and a couple attempts is definitely not enough to judge. The first impression wasn't fun, but I'll give it a few more goes and see if I can make lemonade.

I must say that I am disappointed at the removal of cross-bred pipe-weed. It made farming fun. As a recent subscriber (prior to f2p by a few months), this was one of the things that I really liked about the game. It immersed you into the game environment in a way that was amazing, imo. And now they've removed it. I'm a sad panda.

I do agree that something needse to be done about the rare pipe-weed and how it drops. I"m not even shure how it drops now as I haven't had a chance to read up fully on it but, before you generated enough poor crop to replenish what you used. If it's all random now, I don't even see the point in continuing with my pipe-weed farming. It just isn't going to have the same "Flavor" it did before.

Another founder/lifetimer here. Ever since creating my first character, pipeweed farming/crossbreeding has been one of my favorite side activities in the game. Just a few weeks ago I was recommending LotRO to a friend, and used pipeweed farming as an example of one of the aspects that make the game so much fun... before I knew what the specifics of this update would be. I am definitely in favor of pipeweed farming being reverted to the way it was, or made into a hobby using the same system, or at least a system that retains the elements of strategy that made the old system so much fun.

Just wanted to add my vote. Definitely /signed!

/signed

I'm sitting on 3 stacks each of all the seeds, and a stack each of fair crops, and it is completely worthless and pointless.

Calling the current system cross breeding is a joke.

I like the no poor crops and one seed per field changes, but pipe weed and generic seeds were poorly thought out.

I Thank you all for your overwelming support.

Unfortunately, I see turbine has decided to remove the thread from the general forums and put it in crafting/farming...

Keeps it out of the eyes of the general population. "Let us see if we can bury our mistakes."

IMHO the farming changes were another case of turbine spending precious developers time to fix things that were not broken, yes maybe a bit clunky, but certainly not unclear or unmanageable. While the things which are truely broken are not getting fixed, and expansions of content are getting pushed back.

Originally Posted by Gaming_Gal

<snip>

I'm with the OP. I hate the new seeds--especially because they kill immersion. I'm not looking forward to apprentice wood, etc. which I'm sure are not far behind.

Why stop there? As immersion is no longer an obstacle, why not just do away with all resources and have "Tier I Stuff"? You then use 1 "Tier I Stuff" to make 1 "Tier I Thing" and then 1 "Tier I Thing" gets used to make the finished product. Think of the savings in developer time, inventory, need to read a 100 word note explaining how to craft ...

Are they trying to compete with Progress Quest with these changes?

Originally Posted by Burninion

Why stop there? As immersion is no longer an obstacle, why not just do away with all resources and have "Tier I Stuff"? You then use 1 "Tier I Stuff" to make 1 "Tier I Thing" and then 1 "Tier I Thing" gets used to make the finished product. Think of the savings in developer time, inventory, need to read a 100 word note explaining how to craft ...

Are they trying to compete with Progress Quest with these changes?

Completely agree. By the farming changes reasoning, they should replace copper and tin nodes to just 'tier 1 ore' nodes and 'tier 2 ore nodes' etc, all over the world. Because it's such a burden to have tin ore, copper ore, silver, barrow and ingots of each just sitting there in my inventory taking up space! Just make everything generic like farming, because I'd really like to halve the amound of ore I collect thanks Turbine.

Yes, I'm being very sarcastic.

I cook, and I farm. Yeah, I had inventory problems at times. But personally, I worked around them to accommodate the craft I was in, just like I work around having hafts, ingots, polished gems, hides, and chain links and stuff sitting on my other characters. It's part of the craft. Not only that, it makes sense to have them. Just like a 'golden shire tater' is for certain recipes, it'd cheapen the craft to have a generic 'tater' replace it, even if by doing so you're saved one inventory spot.

The change they enacted to 'fix' farming (when in my opinion it wasn't broken), was kind of like taking a chainsaw to a sapling. I logged in and saw that everything is just a generic seed. Made me cry a little inside. I hate it and it really kills the immersion for me. I mean, I can't go outside right now, plant a potato seed and get onions in three months time. The fact you can in this game just means the devs decided to revise farming with the kiddy gloves on, which they seem to be doing a lot now ftp is live. I agree there were issues with inventory created by discarded seeds and stock, but I still think in making it something generic they threw the baby out with the bathwater. I'd rather have a 'seed wallet' like the skirmish wallet than generic seeds for everything.

I never farmed pipe weed, but I can imagine how it would suck to put that much effort into something that you really enjoyed only to have it yanked from you thoughtlessly, because that's what it is.

/signed

I hope they listen, but I doubt it, given they buried the thread where people can't see it.

I started to work on my farmer before the changes to farming were announced. I won't be working on pipeweed farming till they make it a hobby or revise farming. Generic seeds might help the store but makes no sense to me and ruins the immersation aspect of farming ingame.

removing poor crops - ok
one seed per field - ok
generic seeds - not ok

I am so annoyed that after having worked for weeks, yes weeks on cross breeding pipe weed, that i find out all my hardwork is gone when i come back to LOTRO. No seeds, no ability to cross breed. I mean come on, farming was so easy before anyways, why do this?? It was such an enjoyable pastime in LOTRO and now it's gone.

It's not only the change to genetically mutated seeds from which you can grow what you want just by singing the right music during planting and the removal of crossbreeding of pipe weed seeds...

Pipe weed farming is totally messed up. I don't know if you've came across that yet, but I tried to use my old Wizard's Fire seeds to get a few of the supreme seeds. Guess what. Out of 10 fields a got plenty of Wizard's Fire weed but only 2 seeds and not a single supreme seed. So once you've used our old seeds up you will need approximately 100*20^3 = 800000 expert pipe weed fields to get 100 supreme seeds. That is even a positive estimation I think. You can't buy pipe weed seeds above expert level but 800000 fields to get 100 supreme seeds? Come on! This is just silly. And it isn't done with that. They will last a while but once they are used up you can do the whole story again. *thumbs down to hell* ^ infinite times. -.-

I immediately stopped using my old seeds in case this eventually gets fixed somewhere in the future TM until then high tier pipe weed farming is dead for me...

I mean as it was you at least hat a reasonable chance to get at least as many seeds back as you used up and there was a good chance to get more seeds. So once you did all the crossbreeding and found enough of the drop only pipe weed or met a fellow who gave/sold you some you had your stock of pipe weed seeds and didn't have to collect and start over again and again...

I concur that the farming changes need to be revised. I have been playing since Beta and spent hours and hours cross breeding pipeweed and stock piling the seed crops now all that time I invested is pointless and for no reason. Its great that you guys wanted to free up bag space and though at first I hated all the farming changes I do see the benefit to some of the changes however there is no benefit in my opinion to removing the pipeweed seed crop recipes. That was a fun part of the game in my opinion and should be brought back. Turbine please listen to those of us that enjoying farming and getting into the crafting part of the game and give us back the way pipeweed farming was before.

Keep the other changes if you want but please bring back the old pipeweed farming recipes and poor crops.

/signed

I can't remember the last time I saw this many people agree on the same point in a forum thread. Turbine please pay attention to your customers! We are not happy with the farming changes for pipeweed. If you can't revert the changes to pipeweed with the current farming system then please do as suggested and just break pipeweed farming off into a completely separate hobby. I for one would be very happy to have another hobby. The recent farming changes have destroyed pipeweed farming entirely and that makes me a very sad hobbit.

/signed

Put me down as supporting the OP.
Make pipe weed farming a hobby if necessary but please bring back the old system.

Even more bummed now! New F2P player that has been disappointed in the lack of skill required for a large section of the crafting professions. ...And Its totally BS that the tools one uses for crafting are tied to character lvl and not crafting skill level. I can take my lvl 9 tier 3 Master Prospector into dangerous lands to mine for ores but I'm forced to use ****** tools to do so! A crafter should be able to hone their skills without ever having to fight a single battle and an Expert prospector should be able to use decent tools without needing to be lvl 25, 30, or above! But I digress... I started a second character and took up the Historian profession as a Lore-master. After receiving a few strange pipeweed seeds from random chest drops during my search for artifacts, seeds I had either ignored before or hadn't been finding with my other character, I decided to plant those seeds and so began my research. Thats when I discovered there is (was) a whole mini-game (pipe weed crossbreeding) I could get into. THIS is what I was looking for from this game, a little substance! After being disappointed with the simplicity of the other crafting professions I had previously taken up, I eagerly started researching the finer art of crossbreeding pipe weed. Unfortunately after reading a couple of guides with it all sounding so promising, I saw the link to this thread. I've no 'skin' in yet so my disappointment is muted compared to those that have been in since the beginning. If the changes being made to simplify this game are being done for the F2P crowd, then exclude me! I'll keep my seeds for now hoping that there's enough noise to get Turbine to make some future changes. And someone mentioned that it was being done to better manage inventory? I don't get it. Frankly, anyone taking up a crafting profession should be given a crafting bag for holding nothing other than components, 10 items top. I'd love to see characters show all the bags they are carrying. If they can be outfitted with clothes it is a small step to also outfitting bags and packs. Those acting as pack mules should look the part. Okay, digressing again...

Just wanted to chime in. I'm a founder who played for years and then took a break. I came back yesterday and was puttering around the Shire to see what changed as a result of F2P and such. Someone asked whether they should bother farming pipeweed... everyone said no and I chimed in to say that it was the most enjoyable challenge I'd experienced in LOTRO: building a bank of rare seeds. I went on to extol the benefits of the hybrid system and the intricacies that Turbine had built into the fantastic farming system. Needless to say, I was quickly informed of the changes. Add my voice to the chorus who feel that this is a terrible change that removes an extremely fun aspect of the game. Magic seeds that can become any plant? Really? LOTRO is starting to feel like a sketch of an MMO rather than an actual game.

I agree (again) with the OP.

The move to generic seeds is a real immersion breaker across the board for farming. IMHO here's how Farming should be changed.

1) One field, dirt is dirt, a farming field should be used for any farming, remove the need to go to pipeweed farmland, crop farmland, vegetable farmland.

2) Drop fertilizer as a standard incredient and just need water for tier 1/2/3 crops, and purified water for 4/5/6. Use the fertilizers (and crit soils) as critical items and have a unique one for each level. Once you or proficient in the level you start using fertilizer, then the fertilizer should double results. But they would be like any other crit items and be found, not purchased. A critical success should guarantee a special result success item, but also should never be 100%

3) Drop seeds altogether from normal results you buy carrot seeds and plant them for 1-3 bushels of carrots (critical result doubles).

4) Crossbreeding pipeweed should a generate random selection of parent/crossbreed seeds only, get 1-4 seeds. Critical results generate more seeds, still no crops.

5) Drop the need for any skill to break up bushels. Allow the user of the food to break up their own bushels.

6) Allow some farming crops to be eaten without cooking, but would be equivalent to vendor food (i.e. not so good, non-combat gain only). Fruit for Power, Vegetables for Morale. This would give those landscape plants some use for all players.

7) Quests should be added to collect specific flowers or pipeweed for NPCs. All flowers and pipeweed should have some use within game.

So glad that the immense majority of people feel the same way I do. I am keeping my pipeweed AND other vegetable seeds, patiently awaiting Turbine's full repeal of the latest changes to farming. A seed pouch should perfectly solve the bag issue, and is a realistic approach since seeds are tiny items.

i have given up on farming cause turbine has given up on farming, especially pipe weed farming of which is what i specialize in, ive saved and stocked all my own seeds, which i just found out today are useless now and if i were to use them i would completely lose them with no chance of seed returns during harvesting

this makes me sad and i demand turbine to fix this immediatly

Originally Posted by corrakkas

this makes me sad and i demand turbine to fix this immediatly

You're a couple months late

IMO I'm afraid the farming changes are here to stay, there's just no incentive for them to change back and a lot of people like the extra bag space and the streamlining.

That being said........I agree that they did a great disservice to the pipe weed farmers.

What would be nice is if they would completely sever Pipe-weed farming from farming and make it their own hobby, expanding it and making it more complex and inviting.

Originally Posted by corrakkas

if i were to use them i would completely lose them with no chance of seed returns during harvesting

There is still a chance of seed return! It's just not as sure as it was under the old system, and there's randomness as to what seeds you will get.


Old system: you needed to be an expert to get started, and needed to spend a lot of time collecting very rare seeds (or wimp out and use auction house). But once you did all the hard work you could maintain your stock forever. This system favors the veteran expert, but anyone can get there eventually.

New System: newcomers can easily get up to speed and create top tier pipe weed in under an hour, from scratch. Maintaining a stock is harder though. This system favors the newcomer or casual farmer, but the veteran is not excluded.

Personally I do prefer the old system. The new system is dumbed down. But I disagree that it's useless or that your stock of seeds has become useless.

Originally Posted by Lohi

There is still a chance of seed return! It's just not as sure as it was under the old system, and there's randomness as to what seeds you will get.


Old system: you needed to be an expert to get started, and needed to spend a lot of time collecting very rare seeds (or wimp out and use auction house). But once you did all the hard work you could maintain your stock forever. This system favors the veteran expert, but anyone can get there eventually.

New System: newcomers can easily get up to speed and create top tier pipe weed in under an hour, from scratch. Maintaining a stock is harder though. This system favors the newcomer or casual farmer, but the veteran is not excluded.

Personally I do prefer the old system. The new system is dumbed down. But I disagree that it's useless or that your stock of seeds has become useless.

What do you mean, Lohi, about the seed stocks? The old ones before the updates, which were named? or something else? Because there's no recipes using the old before update seeds, so they are useless

Originally Posted by Vilost

What do you mean, Lohi, about the seed stocks? The old ones before the updates, which were named? or something else? Because there's no recipes using the old before update seeds, so they are useless

The old seeds are still plantable. You do not use "artisan pipe-weed seed", you use "Eagle's Nest Pipe-weed seed". Ie, http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Item:...pe_%28Store%29

All the rare pipe-weeds have their own specific seeds. Common pipe-weeds have a tier equivalent seed pack.

Just want to say though, I took my supreme farmer and decided to try my hand at Pipe-weed farming before they made all the changes. I'd been stocking up on the rare seeds, as well as the common ones that couldn't be bought. So the weed before the dreaded update to farming I began the wonderful journey that is pipe-weed cross-breeding. I got stuck though since I had not yet acquired a few of the higher tier rare seeds. I did try stocking up a bit on the seeds, since nearly every fields dropped at least one poor crop that I could turn into 3 seeds. (The perfect amount for mixing into a cross-breed field) Sadly, I didn't have enough to build a large stockpile. The next week I had a go at it, and even planted nearly 30 fields of all the different pipeweeds... only to end up exhausting my seed stock and didn't even get a tier 5 seed from any drop. I'm pretty sure that I planted, in total, around 50 each of dragon's breath and tighfield choice (or whichever are the tier 4 rare fields) and kept getting seeds for one or the other, from every few fields though, but never a tier 5 seed.

I have this to say about the new pipe-weed system. It's more difficult and frustrating now since you're more likely to run out of inventory space, even with 5 bags, before you get enough seeds to plant a few crops at a higher tier of rare pipe-weed. I'm sure anyone can use the tier generic seeds up through tier 3, but beyond that, good luck getting tier 5 seed from your tier 4 fields. Seems that those higher tier pipe-weeds are becoming much more rare than they were before.

I've seen it said in other places, but the I'm going to repeat it here in my own words. The farming changes made things slightly more convenient, but if they were going for the goal of saving bag space with farming, they should have turned their attention to Cooking, since that's what really uses up the bag space. Sure, 1 seed per field makes sense, not having poor crops is great, but needing ten different items to craft ingredients and etc. for a repast is rather clunky. (Of course, I really do like the cooking system and don't really know what they could change without it loosing it's uniqueness and fun.)

if they think its going to improve f2p, thats great. they can lose my vip payments then for removing any joy i had in collecting seeds, etc.

let me know if they ever remove all these changes. maybe ill come back.

Originally Posted by HumphreyMilkweed

As would I. Those games sucked. No offense, but I, and many others, have a real life which we enjoy. I could never spend 18 hours of my day trying to do the same boring tasks over and over, ignoring my wife and family, and eventually neglecting all aspects of my life strictly to play some game that only a VERY lonely person, with a lot of time on my hands, can play. Here's some of the wonderful social achievements of Everquest:

and yet, if I wanted a level 50 toon in albion I could make one in about 8 hrs from scratch. (daoc) I think if I looked around it would take me longer in hibernia or midgard but it could be done. Of course, getting Ml's and CL's done would be another story... Even less if I wanted my end game to start in Thid or Molvik. (which I've done) Its not about the grinding. In fact, if you know someone its probably less grinding than there is here. DAoC sucked cuz you weren't any good at it and you fall right into the "pong" type of player. the LCD. (search for Thidranki or Molvik on youtube to see what that type of endgame was.)

Some of us do not want to buy the game from the store. We prefer to have some kind of accomplishment associated with things we do online. I would much rather get a group to do othrongroth than have a 65 lead me by the nose through it and even do it solo before being dragged around. (maybe after the 30th time I need it done though...)

/signed

I have to agree with general concensus here with regards to Pipeweed farming. Pipeweed should be broken off and made a Hobby and reverted to it's former greatness.

As a woodworker, I hadn't bothered levelling up my farming until my kinship's cook raised a general request for ingredients. That was last Sunday. I am now tier 5 farmer and only stopped because of the migration.

Now, that to me just seemed a little bit *too* easy, not to mention completely boring. I literally stood in a field harvesting crops for several hours, with absolutely guaranteed outcomes every time. And the stuff I was producing... pretty boring as well. Couldn't do anything with it myself at all - it all went to my kinships cook or scholar. And the the whole levelling process cost me less than 200 silver.

Farming in this game at the moment = YAWN.

Seriously, the old way sounds like so much more fun from what I'm reading here! I'd love to try that cross-breeding function!

Originally Posted by Padraich

Seriously, the old way sounds like so much more fun from what I'm reading here! I'd love to try that cross-breeding function!

A lot of farmers never messed with this functionality. You had serious storage issues with keeping all the special seeds. Turbine really neutered the use of player grown pipe weed. Turbine gives out thousands or ten of thousands of bags of pipe weed via the Lotto. During many festivals, you can buy finished pipe weed at very low prices from Festival vendors with out having to deal with the extremely high prices the farmer specialists charged for their product.

I must have several hundred bags of Lotto pipe weed at the moment.

I understand the frustration from farmers when Turbine put this final nail in the coffin. This reminds me. I need to write a bug report. The bird smoke is screwed up. No birdie appears.

As the guy who wrote not one but two pipeweed guides, I'm here to agree wholeheartedly with the original poster.
I could wax verbose, but after two pipeweed guides and this forum post I think I've said my say.

This thread is pretty old, but I just now discovered the pipeweed changes. Back before the changes were implemented, a gold farmer got into my account and sold every item I had with a coin value. My pipeweed seed collection was the most painful loss, considering how long it took me to collect enough of the four rare base seeds to begin the crossbreeding chain. A few days ago I randomly decided that I wanted to get back into it and build my stock back up.

But the new system has absolutely no strategy or control. It's like repeatedly shoving quarters into a toy capsule machine until you get the right fake mustache that you want. It's completely sapped my enthusiasm for pipeweed farming.

Please consider reverting the pipeweed changes, Turbine! Since it's pure fluff, it wouldn't throw off the balance of the game or interfere with the F2P strategy.


I do have to say thank you for finally giving the Tier 6 Pipeweed unique animations, though.

Originally Posted by Padraich

As a woodworker, I hadn't bothered levelling up my farming until my kinship's cook raised a general request for ingredients. That was last Sunday. I am now tier 5 farmer and only stopped because of the migration.

Now, that to me just seemed a little bit *too* easy, not to mention completely boring.

It was also easy before the changes to farming. I have two Supreme tier farmers from before the Mirkwood expansion and the farming simplifications. With one, I went from zero to crafting cap (at the time) in two days. The other took just a few days. It was costly and monotonous, but easy.

Originally Posted by AaronKI

But the new system has absolutely no strategy or control. It's like repeatedly shoving quarters into a toy capsule machine until you get the right fake mustache that you want. It's completely sapped my enthusiasm for pipeweed farming.

Hmm, a lottery-like system with a completely random chance of getting what you want after hundreds of tries. Now why does that sound familiar?

Next week: Rare pipe-weed seeds in the Lotro store!