Quest Talk:Herding to the Trollshaws

Part 1

I haven't figured how to split this out -- the wrapper quest, isn't similar to others. It is simply a simple introduction -- it has no end. When you complete the session -- that's it. You return to the Horse farm, but to the horse. There is no "talk to Eogar again, or anything. The Quest and session are simply over.

Similarly, the Session itself starts out with ZERO objectives, until you have found the steed! No real clue as to what is to be done other than intuition and following the Radar. (As it was I finished the 30 minute session with 2 minutes to spare!) And, interestingly, you can still pick up the bridle from the earlier quest.

The session mobs are apparently level generated. All of the normal Trolls and etc are present, but 3 lvl 75 Cargul Searchers were spawned for me. (I ran it as a lvl 75.) It will take someone running this at a much lower level to determine what/if any other changes to the level of the mobs in the area take place.

The horse (at lvl 75) is 31,374/2,154 and had no problem dealing with the searchers at 12,944/1,077.

A number of the imbedded comments should go into the walkthrough section.

So far I have not managed to "find" the next two similar sessions -- North Downs and the Lone-lands, but I suspect from the intro quest comment "The horse from Combe followed you here, and seems content to stay put for the time being..." that on subsequent days, one will find that the horse is doing one of the other Sessions. The quest is tagged as repeatable. 24 hour timer.

All in all it is quite an interesting introduction to "war horse fighting" -- assuming that is what this really is!

One final thing -- I could find on "record" of this session in the completed quest log -- not under the "Special" section, which is where it should apparently have appeared. I have a number of screen shots, but clearly not enough. (And naturally, truncated some of the dialog.)
--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 06:58, 5 June 2012 (EDT)

I assume the question is about quest-chains and how to split them, right?

If the following quests have this quests as prerequistes, add this

{{Questbox| Quest Chain | collapsed | 
{{:Category:Herding to the Trollshaws Quest Chain}}
[[Category:Herding to the Trollshaws Quest Chain]]
}}

That adds the quest to that category. Follow the red category-link and fill out the page as usual for quest chains. Perhaps some sparse information, but often that is better had in the walk-through. Add the category to the Cat:REGION Quest Chains, or if there is no obvious region (the starting locations for all quests are very spread), add it to Cat:Quest Chains.

About objectives and so, do you think this is the final version? Or could it be beta-versions? If that is the case it could explain the missing objectives and not being in the Quest Log. I am now waiting for guru RTC to show up ;)

-- Zimoon (talk) 07:50, 5 June 2012 (EDT)

Celestrata confirmed on the forums that the quests are pairs of dailies and two new ones are offered each day. So it will take a while to finish the 60 for the deed. I'm probably not going to pre-order and I can't afford to get the Legendary package anyway, so I won't be able to help with these, sadly. They sound like a fun set of quests, and an interesting wiki-formatting challenge. -- Elinnea (talk) 15:08, 5 June 2012 (EDT)

Reading this quest through another time and having loads of caffeine I wonder if the "Session Trollshaws" is another quest in itself? Kind of an Instance quest with this quest as the main, is it? If so we use the old-style format. If not we need to think this through and arrive at some format style that is 1) informative, 2) intuitive, and 3) resemble the in-game format, in that order.

But as I am not even close to those quests, and do not plan to buy anything extra until I reach the required levels, I cannot help much. I really like pottering with this wiki, and that slows down my levelling of course, but that is what I am and what I enjoy so I am happy as-is. Consider that a hint that I won't arrive to level 75+ any time soon ;)
-- Zimoon (talk) 09:07, 6 June 2012 (EDT)

Yes, sort of. "Session Trollshaws" is definitely the actual quest. However, as I've now managed the second quest (haven't written it up yet) "Roaming the Horsefields," aka "Horsefields' Derby," it is obvious that we have some kind of "new" mechanic (and naming confusion) -- that is, the "wrapper quest" is identical -- two lines of dialog and then the Session, which then ends the quest. The primary difference here is that this new mechanic does NOT have a "complete" wrapper, rather it only has an introduction. The second "nasty" issue is that you can't take time to read the "quest dialog" because the session timer begins as soon as session play starts, but the dialog doesn't display until the timer is running! --Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 18:52, 6 June 2012 (EDT)

Thanks, now I think I perhaps understand, maybe ;)

In a way I like that change, often that finalizing part was superfluous and I think part of what I have considered an old quest mechanism. It did not always feel necessary to finish an outer wrapper quest just for its own sake.

Question: Is the "wrapper" the starting point for several, different "sessions"?
-- Zimoon (talk) 19:06, 6 June 2012 (EDT)

Part 2

This session is not much different than the sessions we see in Chicken Play. I'll bet that guy I met in the Trollshaws was surprised to see a horse trot up! You are a level 75 War-horse. You have 4 new skills to learn and use. Most of the mobs are your regular landscape mobs. The Cargûl Searchers are special, and a nasty surprise for any non-session players who are on-level for that area (if they encounter them). Auto-completing quests are not new. Just not very common. The quests so far, feel a bit rushed. The extra dialogs (quest comments), and quest items in the quest log are missing in many cases. RingTailCat (talk) 19:29, 6 June 2012 (EDT)

So this is new but not much new?

I ask rather to gather info if we need to tweak our way of doing things or not. Looks like "not". -- Zimoon (talk) 01:24, 7 June 2012 (EDT)

Quests usually have a quest ending dialog, because it is not seem very realistic to suddenly receive a quest reward, be it gear or money, from no one, in the middle of the wilderness. They have tried having an NPC trot along with us to take care of that in some cases, but then you have the overhead of a travelling NPC. For instance type quests, it is sometimes good to have a dialog at the end so one can run back and loot any remaining corpses, if you are into that. When there is no reward for doing a quest, other than to increment a deed, you can complete that quest on the spot.

Comments in the forum suggest that this whole quest line is exclusive content for the legendary pre-order players. It looks to me like it is a little rough around the edges, perhaps beta quality, and even a little short on vigorous play testing. I know I have noticed a few problems that I will likely bug report as I run my several players through these quests. The clarity of bestowal and objective dialogs is very important for first time players, and those of us that write about the quests.

I am curious as to why we would want to do two quests a day for a month to complete a deed. Where does this fit into the process of getting a War-horse, which is apparently only available from a level 75 quest after the expansion arrives. I'm looking for something stronger than "Let's give the pre-order folks a little something to do".

RingTailCat (talk) 02:22, 7 June 2012 (EDT)

Yeah, I agree when considering the historical context..without notion of instant notification to whoever. I could imagine a reward put into one's vault as if crebain brought the news to somebody, but hardly into one's bag ;)

On the other hand, I hate being forced to travel long distances just to finish a quest, then nothing more...usually just another "transition" quest to some location, sometimes not even that. I have no objections that a quest ends wherever, with the above reward-giving difference, but are you just left there? Nothing else to pick up doing? If the answer is "no" it is lame indeed.

Whatever, information so far does not indicate any change to our current scheme, we may have to indicate at the end of the quest that "Your receive your rewards into ..." or alike. -- Zimoon (talk) 15:42, 7 June 2012 (EDT)

1- All of the session play sessions are as a Lvl 75 horse. At first blush, this is not obvious. But, in reality, the Cargûl Searchers, (and the trolls) are easily defeated. (One "rear-kick" boots the Trolls through the air and dispatches them -- and I ran the other way when I first encountered the Searchers -- lol!) I have to find out which way you have to be facing when you "rear kick" as it has a 5m RADIUS, not tagged as restricted to "from the rear." This may be the reason why this session is a 30 minute session when it only takes about 7 minutes to complete it once you know how it works -- to give players a chance to "practice" with the War-steed.

2- It appears that if you start the quest at some level (I assume below the level for the Moors -- lvl 40 now?) you do not get any reward for the session play. However if you are of a higher level you get 164 Commendations for each session run. I've run the different sessions now with different level toons (24 and 75) and that is the pattern. Both toons are on an account with the ROR Pre-order. This makes sense as the Commendations imply that the "Mounted combat" is either the long-promised new PvMP area, or somehow related to it.

3- Running around to check -- with a F2P (lvl 7) toon, the Stable-hand is simply pitching hay, not offering any quest, and no "new horse" is in the stable at Combe.

4- I agree with Elena's comment over on Category_talk:Warhorse_Skills which echos RTC's. I had never seen/done the Chicken or Ranger Session play stuff so I was not familiar with that structure.

5- And yes, I believe this is strictly - Pre-order content. Other than the titles, it is also speculated that the end result will be another? War-steed. Especially as the "rewards" for pre-purchasing are pretty thin -- really, only the 6th bag, the cosmetics are strictly that -- cosmetics, and the Rohan Elite Guard Statted Cloak and Item:Crystal of Remembrance pretty wimpy. (I have a crafted cloak with significantly better stats.)

6- Have to fix Rohan Elite Guard Statted Cloak to show all 4 cloaks, not just the box. And there is only one set - lvl 75, no other levels.

7- I started User:Magill/Projects-ROR-pre-order to capture and hopefully organize all of the various parts. There are a lot and spread all over.

8 Confirmed -- you need to be facing away (target at the rear) to use the rear kick.

--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 01:07, 8 June 2012 (EDT)

Great Magill, I could read this without having to reread :) And now I get the whole picture.

4) You have not done the Chicken races? Not that they are extremely exciting but they are a good time-killer and not really a walk in the park. While I could live without the emote I think the cloak looks good. Cluck cluck. -- Zimoon (talk) 03:05, 8 June 2012 (EDT)

I am not seeing commendation rewards for characters from level 25 to level 75. All my level 40+ characters have visited the Moors. I did the Quest:Session -- Trollshaws without having to defeat the Cargûl Searchers. Did you get commendations for defeating them, rather than for the quests themselves? Is this something specific to your server due to one of the moors server wide buffs (A Quiet Calm, Peace and Quiet)? RingTailCat (talk) 03:42, 8 June 2012 (EDT)

6) I'm pretty sure there are level 20 cloaks. I've seen screenshots of them on the official forums, and there was a little hullabaloo from the people who bought the legendary package, since they didn't get the 20 cloaks from the lower two tiers and they wanted them for cosmetics. I undid that change on the news page, though I can't actually fill in the info myself - unless pictures on the forums are considered good enough evidence, in which case I could copy some over. Or we can wait for a wiki friend to order a base or heroic edition. -- Elinnea (talk) 11:00, 8 June 2012 (EDT)

If necessary, we can even post the screenshot of the item tooltip until such time as a contributor here, with a base or heroic editions comes forth. I'll even do that if I find the link (or you post it for me). RingTailCat (talk) 11:55, 8 June 2012 (EDT)

I found a forum post with Level 20 Eastemnet Cloaks. I imagine the first gift box has a different name for the Base and Heroic editions, so that item is still missing. Also, I did not get a properly sized icon from the image posted on the forum. Someone else will need to get that as I have the Legendary edition, and the cloak icons are different between the level 20 and level 75 cloaks. I'm curious as well, if there are item differences between the base and heroic editions. RingTailCat (talk) 13:30, 8 June 2012 (EDT)