Casual Stroll to Mordor

Journey to Winter-home is the latest content update for Lord of the Rings Online. As with other content updates since Mirkwood, there are several changes to the skirmish system.

The Lord of the Rings Online includes two expansions: Mines of Moria and Siege of Mirkwood. The second of these (Siege of Mirkwood) is strongly tied to skirmishes. As such, today we will look into Siege of Mirkwood to help decide if the expansion is worth purchasing.

The LOTRO Vault is hosting a Valentine’s themed contest where the prize is five full versions of LOTRO. That includes Mines of Moria, Siege of Mirkwood and an Adventurer’s Pack!

Haven’t upgraded to Siege of Mirkwood but know someone who has? Turbine is offering you the chance to try the four Siege of Mirkwood only. From February 2nd – 23rd your friend with the SoM expansion can invite you into a fellowship and allow you to play in these Mirkwood only skirmishes.

The title and features of Volume 3: Allies of the King, Book 1: Oath of the Rangers was announced today by Turbine and Codemasters.

This Tuesday the servers will be brought down while the first patch for Mirkwood goes live as announced by Sapience on the forums. Servers are expected to be down from 7am – 11am EST (-5 GMT).

Our main topic this week was suggested by Osiran is “Growing With Your Game”. How has gaming evolved for us as we’ve grown older, started a career (left school), got married and had a baby?

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This episode of CStM we chat a bit more about the goodies we’ve been doing with the Yule Festival and the hunt for the elven snow globe. Goldenstar rants a bit about repair costs and skirmishes. Not to fear, although she is very upset and swears she won’t skirmish again she has done some even since the recording.

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The Bullroarer server is open once again to the general public in order to test Mirkwood’s first major patch.

We have a contest! Turbine is giving us 2 Adventurer’s Packs that was featured with the latest expansion, Siege of Mirkwood, to give away to our readers/listeners. This will grant your account the shared storage as well as the two extra character slots!

A Welcome Back Weekend (not a full week this time) starts Thursday, December 17th and runs until Monday, December 21st.

Update: It looks like the servers will be down until 1:00PM EST. Until then, I suggest doing what Doc Holiday recommend, go onto Bullroarer! This should give you just enough time to participate in the hardware Preview event and become eligible for a prize!

Expansions are a great time for players to make alts and try out different classes, or in my case to create a character of each class! What have you been doing with your alts lately?

In this episode of CStM we go over all the developer diaries, events and announcements we missed while spending Thanksgiving in Texas.

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A list of questions, answers, hints, tips, tricks, and other miscellaneous Skirmish related information gathered from the Devs and Players. If you have anything you’d like to add, please feel free to do so!

It seems for the most part that the Siege of Mirkwood launch went very smoothly. Apart from Landroval and Brandywine having server issues, there have been very few complaints I’ve heard. Perhaps part of this is due to some parts that were planned to be released being purposely held back. There are at least two items that are not in the current release that I’ve read about.

Yesterday I purposely left my laptop on and bugged Merric to remote in and start me loading the patch during lunch. I was prepared and ready. Baby Hobbit would be asleep by 9 p.m. and I would get an hour or two to dive into the new expansion.

Videos of the Skirmish Tutorial instances and a general guide on how to complete the Skirmishes Tutorial in order to open them for future use.

A look at the changes coming in crafting with Siege of Mirkwood. Some good, some bad, some amazingly good!