Auto-consumed Items

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Description

Auto-consumed Items are items that instantly are turned into a skill, an emote, a mount, or alike when it is obtained. The item as such will bounce through the inventory and the observant player may notice it for a split second, but it turns into the end result and vanishes. This event, or technique, is called auto-consumption; in theory the player is not ought to interact with any item, however, see below for abnormal events.

Some quests give rewards that instantly results in skills or emotes. For example, completing the level 20 quest Proving Your Quality will result in the Riding skill. Or, a Hunter completing the level 26 quest Hunter: Wilderness by Ost Guruth will obtain the Guide to Ost Guruth skill.

Buying skills, emotes, or mounts from the Lotro Store grants an item which instantly will provide the wanted result. For example, you may buy a Riding Skill from the store already at level 5 for 95 LOTRO Point  per character.

When obtaining certain tokens that grants a skill, emote, mount, or alike, it will instantly turn into the wanted result. For example, if you during the Spring Festival open an Envelope which yields the item Steed of the Dusk-watch, you will obtain and interact with an item but it instantly turns into the Steed of the Dusk-watch mount.

Anomalies

While the auto-consumed item normally turns into the wanted something right away, occasionally something glitches and the item is not consumed but will stay in inventory. There are a few different scenarios, but each may have many causes:

A temporary glitch prevented the auto-consumption to complete. This may be caused by a bug in Lotro, a sudden Internet connection failure so that some database could not be updated, any other hiccup that in some way stopped completion of the transaction. In this case it should be possible to interact with the item so that it is consumed and turned into the wanted result.

Or, the character may already have obtained the wanted end result, such as already learned an emote, obtained that mount, etc. Perhaps you bought something twice from the Lotro Store, either by mistake or by bad memory. Perhaps you opened another Envelope (mentioned above) and obtained yet another steed. In this case the item cannot be consumed by that character but unless it is bound-to-character you may hand it to another character. However, in some cases the only solution is to destroy the item (I am uncertain if Turbine support may help with such a matter).

Or, an item is bugged and does not auto-consume as expected. This has been the case in the past for certain items under certain circumstances. This also happens nowadays with new content that is added to game. Also in this case the possible solutions are from case to case, but the item should definitely be bug-reported to Turbine.

Discussion

Are these items for real? Or not?
Yes, they are for real. As they may remain in inventory, even if only after anomalies, they are for real. Normally a observant player may see it flashing by in inventory for a split second, bot not long enough to inspect. Clicking its name in chat (if that information-type is not turned off) will display the usual item information window.

Should quests, tokens, etc., link to the item? Or to the end result?
This is currently under debate and no decision is not yet made.

The user-friendly way is linking to the end result, perhaps with a brief reference to the item-page. In any circumstance the end result must always link to the item page.

If the quest or alike does not mention the item but the end result, probably best practice equals the user-friendly way. The item will flash through inventory but the source does not mention it.
The debate is more about quests or alike which actually mention the items as such. A suggestion is to link to both, with as little extra verbiage as possible, not to clutter the source page too much.

History

Pending -- To be filled in by a knowledgeable veteran who played Lotro from many years ago.

At a guess: Once upon a time skills, emote, mounts, and alike which were earned from quests, or rewarded from tokens, etc., were obtained as an item. The player gad to interact with the item in inventory and it was manually consumed and so it was turned into the end result. Turbine found that many players want less fuss with such stuff and decided to make such existing items "auto-consumed". It was perhaps easier to implement it that way than to change all of the quests and whatever that handed out the items to work in another fashion; either way, a decision was made, items were tagged as auto-consumable, and some new logic was added to the software. That is why we now happen to see "items" flash by in inventory where other games grant the end result right away. And I begun saying "at a guess". Zimoon 05:30, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

References