LOTRO : Book 8 Dol Guldur notes released!

I already knew my class the Champion was going to get nerfed (made less powerful), but that is about the biggest impact on the changes for the next update to Lord of the Ring Online : Book 8 due next month.

If you have not seen them yet, the patch notes for Book 8 are here.

I always felt my Champ was rather useful despite not having all the latest lvl 60 gear. As long as you have reasonable armour and traits you can switch from full-on DeePeeS™ mode to tank by simply switching to Glory stance (to generate more threat) and equipping a heavy shield.

So Turbine felt that the Champ's versatility was putting the Guardian's role in jeopardy so they felt a nerf was required. Looks like all they have really done is to limit the legendary skill Controlled Burn's time to 2.5 minutes but to sweeten the shock they have also added a few extra buffs while it does last. The other major change is a penalty against incoming morale (from other players) when using Fervour - the main DeePeeS™ stance. So I will have to remember when playing in fellowships that if I'm not getting enough morale from Minstrels I should think about turning off Fervour!

It is no surprise also that Book 8 features goings on from the evil forces of Dol Guldur, although the action is set in Moria - no mention of any Dol Guldur instances. Boo.

No pics of Book 8 yet so here is my first take-down proof of the raid Turtle, sadly it just dissappears shortly after it's death so no corpse shot available!

LOTRO : Turtle Raid - Spoilers!

I have recently changed kin in LOTRO to the Eleventy-First. The two leaders are great and made me feel welcome straight away, it also helps that I have a couple of old friends in the kin too. Everyone seems to be playing the new Turtle raid at the moment, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to get to know my kin a little better.

Now there are some Tolkienites that mock the very idea that there should even be a giant turtle in Middle-Earth. I don't have such problems myself - Tolkien may not have thought of writing about a giant turtle, but he didn't forget to include the giant elephants, spiders and eagles did he? I suppose a turtle should probably not be part of the forces of evil, but I'm willing to let that slide.

Falin the Brave attacks from underneath...

So then, this turtle raid is just a 10 minute fight if you did not know that. There are no pre-req's or quests required or hours of grinding before hand - just enter the instance in the middle of the Water-Works, trudge though a couple of corridors and you are ready to face a nice little 12 man boss fight.

The catch is that it's a very hard fight and a bit of a DPS-fest.

I have not managed to defeat the turtle yet, but the favourite strategy seems to involve the groups strongest champion taking all the aggro and dps-ing his/her heart out. This leaves the guardian free to keep the champ constantly Shield-Walled which in theory keeps the champ protected from those nasty DOTs.

...then decides attacking from behind is more sensible

The guardian's shield wall takes a lot of power though, and this seems to be the main problem. Once we get the beast down past 200k morale the group quickly runs out of power. Another issue is that the hunters are always instructed to switch to an aggressive stance towards the end of the fight. When this happened I just could not keep the aggro (I happened to be the aggro-ing champ for a few of the fights), although this issue is probably secondary to the losing power one.

It's a nice challenge though, I have wiped nearly 10 times so far but the rewards include first-age weapons for a couple of lucky raiders. If you don't normally raid, but fancy a one-off 10 man boss fight, I recommend you try it.

Return to GTR2

I loved Race Driver:Grid when I got it.

The graphics blew me away, the best my trusty 8800GT has ever rendered. The handling was also pretty good, with fast and furious 3-5 lap races. The action alone made it the best driving game for a long time.

GRID : Great action orientated racer

But I have struggled to get into it lately. Like Gran Turismo there are loads of different class races to attend and you can quickly get lost after the first few hours. It actually gets quite tough later on too, unless I just got worse due to lack of playing the game.

I have had no Internet for the last few days and noticing the GTR2 icon on my desktop I thought I would give it a shot and I am pleased that I did.

Knowing that the ageing game has a graphics glitch (if you choose high quality cockpit, the frame rate judders even if you have a decent video card) I chose my graphics settings carefully wanting to get the most out of my card but so it was still smooth.

Cockpit quality : low
Car livery : low
Car detail : high
Wheel detail : high
Track detail : high
Resolution : 1440x900 (native) 32-bit colour
Shadows : low
Reflections : low
Headlights : high
Maximum number of visible cars : 8
Full screen Anti-Aliasing : x1

I could probably raise the settings a bit, I think it's just the high quality cockpit interior that causes problems.

GTR2 - Current king of the racing sims

I chose Spa for a race weekend and tentatively selected practice to get my eye back in. It felt lovely. Sure the latest season you can play is 2004 and the graphics had aged somewhat, especially with something as glossy as Grid still in my memory. But it felt great to be back playing a proper simulator, a game where I know if I do not increase the tire traction from realistic to 2x I won't last five minutes.

It was great nursing my car carefully around the track adjusting slowly to a simulator-class racing game. Failing miserably in qualifying (second from last I think) I dreaded the 7 lap race.

But then it was night-time and I had to turn on my headlights so I could see anything at all on the track in front of me. The headlight effects are great, even for Directx9. And I did not do too badly at all. I took it steady at first, naturally. But so did the other drivers it seemed so I quickly started overtaking some of the back markers. "This is fun!" I thought, concentrating on each corner, trying to slow down enough as it is so easy to end up in the gravel pit.

On the third lap I was chasing more challenging racers in the middle of the pack and still managing to push past them... Then on the fourth lap I either got tired or lazy or both, or more likely still started to lose tire grip and made my first mistake. I did not slow down enough and had to bounce the car across a gravel pit helplessly watching two cars instantly speed past.

The rest of the race was damage limitation, but I managed to hold my position and finish with a respectable 7th place. Can't wait for another go tonight!

This revisit to the current king of the racing sims could prepare me nicely for Codemasters' forthcoming F1 simulator which apparently has been delayed until 2010.