Michaleo
Early Impressions of PvMP
[There is a lot of stuff here that is new to me. Please let me know if you find errors.]
With the arrival of the new area for PvMP aka Monster Play, I decided to give it a try. Overall, it is too complicated to try to explain here, but I want to capture various notes before I forget them.
You have the choice of playing for the Free Peoples (freeps), which are the same characters played in the rest of the game, or the bad guys (creeps), which are completely new characters that are only in PvMP.
PvMP is free for VIP accounts. VIPs can take any character level 20+ to the PvMP area, or can create any creep class free. Premium and f2p players can play as freeps for 20 Mithril Coins (MC) for 6 hours of playing time. On the creep side, Premium and f2p players can play only the Reaver class free, but can buy other classes with Turbine Points (TP). There is no charge for playing time as a creep. Similar to the rest of the game, non-VIPs will have to buy additional trait slots with TP to reach the full potential of their creeps.
Freeps
You can take any level 20+ character into the PvMP area. It is scaled to 100 if necessary. You use the same skills and gear. An ordinary player can play in PvMP, but will be at a disadvantage against experienced and high ranked creeps. Because you are playing against other players, they will employ better strategy and tactics than NPCs in the rest of the game. Creeps also have a variety of Crowd Control (CC) skills, including stun, slow, and disarm. It will be a different experience than NPC mobs and bosses. Freeps can get additional defence by adding Audacity in armour that is available for barter, which decreases the duration of CC and decreases damage taken.
Since update 16.2, freeps are generally recognized as being more powerful than creeps, and there seems to be more of them. Especially in groups with healers, freeps can take on much larger groups of creeps. Even when outnumbered, although weaker freeps might get picked off, it is hard to wipe a whole group of freeps.
Commendations and Renown
Freeps go up in Rank by earning Renown, which is like XP for PvMP. by doing quests and defeating creep players. Quests and deeds also reward with Commendations, which can be used to barter for items useful for PvMP. Some items have a minimum rank as well as a cost in commendations. Commendations are shared by all characters, creeps and freeps, on the account.
The main thing freeps barter for is armour that includes audacity. Audacity increases your defences against the kinds of attacks that creeps can do. In particular, since aggro does not apply to creeps (the player can choose to attack whomever they want), you cannot rely on a tank to absorb most of the damage. Creeps also have a variety of crowd-control skills, and audacity can reduce the impact they have.
Quests
There are quests and deeds available to earn commendations and renown. Many quests involve collecting some number of items. Since your quest log may be partially filled with non-PvMP quests, you can avoid accepting item quests until you are ready to turn them in. You can collect excess items and pass them to other characters to turn in, since commendations are shared by the account.
Other quests involve defeating some number of a particular kind of mob or a specific mob or flipping a keep or outpost. You have to have the quest to get credit for doing it, so you should get those quests when they are available.
Keep quests
Some quest-givers are in the 5 keeps. Those quests can only be accepted or turned in if the keep is under freep control (or creep control for creeps). For item quests, it isn't a big issue. Other quests should be taken when available, since you may not be able to get them when you need them.
Mounts
In The Ettenmoors, freeps may use standard mounts, but not warsteeds. No mounts are permitted in Osgiliath.
Earning commendations as a creep
Even if you primarily play as a freep, creating creeps to earn commendations may be useful. Since creeps need to get commendations to improve their skills, new creeps can earn quite a few commendations doing quests and completing deeds. So you can make a creep, do some low-level quests and deeds to earn commendations, but not spend any commendations on the creep. When you reach the point of diminishing returns, delete it and create another.
Creeps
Because creeps are completely new characters, there is more to figure out, and more to do to make them useful. There are 6 classes of creep: Reaver (champion), Black Arrow (hunter), Warleader (captain), Defiler (minstrel), Weaver (lore-master), Stalker (burglar?). The correspondence with freep classes is only approximate. You can create only one of each class. Because of how rank and creep character building work, you would not want to split your efforts between two of the same class.
Although creeps start out at level 100 and have a lot of morale, their skills are few and weak. They can take on the weakest NPCs, but are no match for even noob freeps or the stronger NPCs. Creeps must build their characters by ranking up.
Commendations and Infamy
Creep XP is called Infamy. Your Rank increases when you earn a certain amount of infamy. Quests and deeds also reward with Commendations, which are used to barter for additional skills or upgrades to existing skills. More skills and upgrades become available as your rank increases. They are expensive and non-refundable, so be sure you know what you want before spending on them.
Creeps do not have any gear (armour, weapons, jewellery, etc.) The only way to improve their stats and capabilities is to barter for various attributes and skills. A primary one is audacity, which increases you defensive stats.
Quests
Unless you can find some high-rank creeps to take you along with them for PvMP fights, you’ll need to grind the quests for commendations and infamy. There are a number of quests available in the creep areas and from the keeps when they are under creep control. Many quests are item quests, so you can collect the items at any time, then accept and turn in the quest at the same time. You can farm extra items to turn in on other days or send them to other characters to turn in.
Maps
Creeps do not have mounts, but can acquire maps so they can port to different locations. The maps are rewards from deeds for doing quests in different areas. There are 3 levels of map, Crude, Poor, and Good, which have cooldowns of 30 minutes, 10 minutes, and 5 minutes, respectively. Maps of a particular level share the same cooldown.
Although the locations refer to the keeps (for example, Poor Map to Lugazag), the particular spot it takes you to may not be close to that keep.
Farming Commendations
Since creeps must build their characters by bartering for commendations, it is important that they are able to earn sufficient to be viable.
One technique for earning more commendations is to create additional creep characters. You can have one of each class. The commendations are shared among all PvMP characters (including your freeps), so you can earn them on other characters and spend them just on the one(s) you really want to play. For example, it is easy to farm dozens of a particular item, but you only need 10 for the quest. Pass the extras to your other creeps. (Creeps have no shared storage, but can mail to each other.) They can turn in the quest and the commendations can be used by your main creep.
There are also some deeds for completing quests in different areas that provide commendations. After doing the easiest ones and getting the commendations from the deeds, you can delete and recreate that character and start again, generating more commendations for the same deeds.
Life as a Creep
Life as a creep is hard at low rank. For the most part, all you can do is avoid freeps. If you get the chance and they are willing to take you, join a group. You may not be able to contribute much, but you can get some infamy and commendations, and see how groups work. Because players are not predictable like NPCs, the traditional roles in fellowships may not applicable.
Building Your Creep
Check the forums and other websites or ask other players for opinions about how to build your creep. Early on, commendations may limit how many skills you can buy. Check lotro-wiki.com to see what skills require what rank, so you save enough commendations to buy them when they are available.
At low rank, investing in defence may not help since other players will defeat you anyhow. Increasing offensive stats will at least make grinding the quests go faster.
Getting picked on
Individual and groups of freeps of all ranks are happy to attack you, despite the fact that you are just killing slugs and are no threat to them. Often, you will be defeated before you realize you’re being attacked. You can try running away, and sometimes they’ll give up because they just ran into you on their way to doing something else. But being defeated is just part of life as a creep. (Now you know how it feels to be a grey mob when someone is doing a slayer deed.)
Be sure to check anonymous on the fellowing tab of the Social panel. If you are not anonymous, spies will be able to see you on the fellowing tab, revealing your location. Since you’re going to get picked on, just note their names so when you get to rank 10, you and some friends can get payback. High rank creeps may be online looking for freeps to engage, so if someone is picking on you, report their classes and location on OOC chat.
Quest locations may be unavailable
Most daily quests are available at different keeps that may be under creep or freep control. Needless to say, you cannot get the quest or turn it in when it is controlled by the freeps. Some quests can be done only a limited number of times (by all players) until the keep flips to the freeps and flips back to the creeps. Sometimes you just can’t get much done.
The Ettenmoors
The Ettenmoors aka The Moors was the only PvMP area before 16.2. It consists of an area with safe spots for each side, a primary quest location for each side, five keeps that can be flipped to provide quests for current side, and four outposts that can be flipped to provide buffs for the current side.
Location abbreviations
When people are talking in chat about different locations, they will usually use the following abbreviations:
Lugz | Lugazag Keep |
TA | Tol Ascaren Keep |
TR | Tirith Rawr Keep |
LC | Grimwood Lumber Camp (Keep) |
Isen | Isendeep Mine (Keep) |
AEOP | Arador’s End Outpost |
IOP | Isendeep Outpost |
ROP | River Outpost |
HOP | Hithlad Outpost |
Grams | Gramsfoot (creep home) |
DG | Dar-Gazag (creep area) |
GV | Glen Veraig (freep home) |
OR | Ost Ringdyr (freep area) |
You will also see the keep locations prefixed with G, P, and C, indicating the Good, Poor, and Crude map locations for that keep.
Retreat locations
When you are defeated, you retreat to your safe area (GV for freeps, Grams for creeps) or one of two rally points (aka retreat circles or rezes). One is located south of Lugz, the other north of TR. Only the side that controls the corresponding keep can retreat there, and they are protected by one-shot archers. Note that if you have retreated to one and that keep flips while you are there, the other side’s archers take over and immediately defeat you.
Chat
PvMP chat channels work differently than in the rest of the game. First, creeps cannot access the freep channels (and vice versa). Creeps can use world chat, but it is only visible to creeps. Historically, creeps have used OOC as their main chat channel. Freeps can use world chat, which is visible in PvMP and non-PvMP locations as well. Freeps usually use OOC as their PvMP chat, since it is only visible on PvMP areas.
Because there is no way to chat, send a tell or mail between freeps and creeps, some people will create a spy (a creep for freeps or a freep for creeps) on a separate account, so they can taunt, troll, and spy on the other side. This common but annoying practice means that chat channels are often filled with nonsense and are less than useful for the players that actually want to communicate with people on their side. Since most players are anonymous to avoid having opponents know their locations, it is difficult to know who is online and who is really on your side.
Fighting Other Players
Rating is an indication of how well you are doing fighting other players. Defeating a player makes your rating go up, being defeated makes it go down. Defeating players with higher ratings gives you higher rewards. Until you get to higher rank, it isn’t worth worrying about, since you will certainly be defeated more often than you can defeat other players.
For higher rank creeps and freeps, certain skills and tactics are considered unfair by some. In particular, when two players agree to fight each other one-on-one, some things are avoided to make the fight more balanced. There is no consensus as to what the rules are, and there is a lot of complaining about players who do certain things.
Although the devs try to adjust the balance between creeps and freeps, the trend has favoured freeps. While making freeps ever-more-powerful in the rest of the game (so well-geared freeps can solo instances and Roving Threats, for example), they have added nothing comparable for creeps.
Sundering of Osgiliath
Update 16.2 added another PvMP area based on the Osgiliath map. So far, it has not been popular, so most players stay in the Ettenmoors. The quests in Osgiliath are less efficient for a starting player. Since there aren’t any item quests, you have to get the drops while you have the particular quest, and you can’t collect extras for use later or by other characters. The quests also take longer to complete than they do in the Moors.
Notes
These are some miscellaneous things I noticed.
Irrational drops
It is possible to get drops and pick up items in the landscape that are useless. For example, creeps can get armour or IXP runes, freeps can get Stone-troll slabs and Grimwood-roots.
Creep Lootboxes and Keys
Creeps can get lootboxes and keys. They may contain Sigils that can be bartered for skills or upgrades.
Inconsistent item names
Items have multiple names in inventory and quests. Kindling, Grimwood-kindling, and Bundle of Grimwood-kindling are all the same thing. Unrefined ore, Iron ore, and Bundle of Unrefined Isendeep Ore are the same thing.
Unstealth lag
When a stalker comes out of stealth, the game seems to freeze for several seconds. Experiments have shown that the lotro client thrashes the disk during this period. A stalker may be able to queue several skills, either defeating or substantially damaging the victim before their client unfreezes. This seems to be a bug introduced in update 16.2.
Flipping locations
Locations can be flipped to creep or freep by defeating the NPCs inside. There are four outposts and five keeps. Locations also flip without player involvement according to some unspecified scheme.
Audacity Cost for Creeps vs Freeps
The first 13 ranks of audacity are relatively inexpensive for creeps. The cost in commendations for ranks 2 to 13 is: 100, 125, 150, 200, 250, 300, 325, 350, 400, 450, 475, and 525. Ranks 14 to 19 cost 6,000 commendations each. Ranks 20 to 25 cost 7,500 each.
For freeps, audacity comes with armour that is bartered for. For level 100 essence armour, each piece adds +4 audacity, and costs 4,000 to 7,500 commendations.
by Michaleo on 2015-10-15 08:52:24