Thread: My first impressions and some questions

Hey,

I came accross some advertisements a couple of days ago that stated this game was free to play now (appearently already for quite a while, but I didn't know that ;p). So I figured I should give it a try and I'm happy I did, because it's a good game.

Now here are my first impressions on the game:

- What usually annoys me in rpg's is slow mana/health regen, but this game has really fast regeneration, so I think that's a big advantage. Now I can easily keep grinding monsters for a while without using lots of potions. (Might change later though I don't know how it will be late game, but I have good hopes.)

- Story so far is great, but that's what I would expect from a Lord of the Rings game.

- Only thing I don't like is that you still have to walk a lot in between location, but I have that feeling in most rpg's. The travel system with the horses should be just like teleporting I think. Now I still have to see myself riding on a horse for what feels like 5 minutes until I finally arrive at location.

- Graphics are getting a little bit outdated, but it has been out for 5 years, besides it isn't really a problem, because the gameplay is fine.

- So far I'm enjoying the game very much.

Now some questions:

- First of all I was wondering what the limit of currency you can carry is, because I read somewhere that there is a cap on how much gold a f2p character can carry and if this amount is account bound or character bound. I do know you can buy an item in the store to get rid of it.

- Do you still have to buy ALL expansions if you want to get that content or are those included in the f2p version? If you still need to buy the expansions, would you be able to get all content and expansions using the turbine points you can earn in-game?

welcome welcome

Originally Posted by slayerking

- First of all I was wondering what the limit of currency you can carry is, because I read somewhere that there is a cap on how much gold a f2p character can carry and if this amount is account bound or character bound. I do know you can buy an item in the store to get rid of it.

pure f2p players have a 2gold cap per character, if you earn over 2 gold anything over goes into escrow untill your gold cap changes or you remove the gold cap

if you purchase anything for RW cash your account becomes premium and the gold cap increases to 5 gold

if you become ViP your gold cap is removed for all characters which enter the game world during ViP time you will retain this after you downgrade to premium, weeeell the max anybody can own as ViP is 9999gold . any characters created in the future after your ViP expires will have a the 5 gold cap

or as you pointed out you can purchase the gold cap removal from the store but not 100% sure if this is per character or account but the item discription should say

- Do you still have to buy ALL expansions if you want to get that content or are those included in the f2p version? If you still need to buy the expansions, would you be able to get all content and expansions using the turbine points you can earn in-game?

you have access to quests in the 4 stater areas, shire, bree, eried luin, thorns and lone lands as f2p as well as the whole epic (main) story quests
f2p players can also explore all regions ingame including the expansion areas

everybody has to buy expansions including ViP, expansion content is available as either quest packs or expansions which usualy contain more than just the basic quest pack.. the only exception to this is Mirkwood which is only available to buy as a quest pack but needs to be purchased by everybody

all quest packs and expansions can be purchased with turbine points, turbine points are the same no matter how you obtain them

one last note expansions can only be purchased from the TP store after the content has been released, you cant pre-order quest packs from the store.
using RoI as an example it can take several weeks for the expansions to appear in the store after its finaly been released,

1. The limit is 2 Gold coins/character. Afterwards, all that you get is thrown in the overflow "vault", meaning you'll get it back once you unlock the cap(395 TP or VIP subscription).

2. In the F2P are included a few Quest Packs: Ered-Luin, The Shire, Bree-Land and Lone-Lands, any other QP or expansion are locked. You can still do the Epic quests in each zone, but at some point the level gap will be too much to continue the questline. The TP available from deeds are enough to unlock most content of the game, even though at some point will be slow. After you reach level 30-32 with your char you should have enough for Evendim(the best early QP), if not, start with your second character and do a couple of deeds, and that should definitely get you Evendim, and then you can get to 40. From there on, it's a matter of choice of what you want next, but still you can ask for advice. Hope this helped. Cheers

Originally Posted by slayerking

- What usually annoys me in rpg's is slow mana/health regen, but this game has really fast regeneration, so I think that's a big advantage. Now I can easily keep grinding monsters for a while without using lots of potions. (Might change later though I don't know how it will be late game, but I have good hopes.)

It gets a bit slower at higher levels but you can eat food to make it regenerate a lot quicker and the food is very cheap and easy to get

Originally Posted by slayerking

- Only thing I don't like is that you still have to walk a lot in between location, but I have that feeling in most rpg's. The travel system with the horses should be just like teleporting I think. Now I still have to see myself riding on a horse for what feels like 5 minutes until I finally arrive at location.

You unlock fast travel (basically teleporting) if you upgrade to VIP/Premium at most horse travel stations. There are also many skills that allow fast travel to major cities.

Originally Posted by slayerking

- First of all I was wondering what the limit of currency you can carry is, because I read somewhere that there is a cap on how much gold a f2p character can carry and if this amount is account bound or character bound. I do know you can buy an item in the store to get rid of it.

The gold limit for f2p is 2 gold but if you upgrade to VIP/Premium the cap is removed even if you downgrade later. Gold is character bound but you can mail it to other characters.

Originally Posted by slayerking

- Do you still have to buy ALL expansions if you want to get that content or are those included in the f2p version? If you still need to buy the expansions, would you be able to get all content and expansions using the turbine points you can earn in-game?

Yes. F2P comes with Bree-Land, the Shire, Ered-Luin, and the Lone-Lands. You can go anywhere else but the quest packs/expansions have to be bought if you want to do quests there or do instances. All content can be bought using in-game tp but it takes multiple characters farming tp then being deleted and creating new ones to repeat the process to do.

Heres an article about buying the whole game while being f2p: http://lotro.mmorsel.com/2011/01/rea...lay-dream.html
There is also a tp finder on that site that list every region and the amount of tp available in it.

Ok thanks everyone for answering my questions.
I thought the you would only be able to obtain the turbine points only once, but it's nice you can just get them over and over again by creating different characters. So I guess it should be possible to obtain almost everything f2p then, but I think I'll just spend 5$ for the premium and then try to get everything using in-game earned TP.

If you manage to follow through with that plan, I will hail you as an Uber Gamer. lol (Just saying, grinding for TP is a very, very long process. Especially when you take into consideration the TP Prices in the LOTRO Store)

I think it was already mentioned, but there is Regular Horse Travel and Swift Travel. Gaining Reputation with Factions or Completing certain quests (which tool tips will tell you which quests) will open up the Swift Travel for each location that it's available. So, as you progress further, you'll find that the "transporting" that you speak of, is available. Beyond Horse Travel, there are Travel Skills which are the actual Transport Skills. However, if you're not a Hunter Class, then there will be a 1 hour cooldown timer.

Between Milestone Travel, Horse Travel, and Travel Skills you shouldn't have to worry about spending so much time watching yourself on a horse. (Incidentally, I did time a horse ride once. And yes, some of those rides take 5 minutes or more. I try to avoid regular horse travel whenever possible. Thank God I'm an avid Hunter Class gamer!)

Welcome to the game.