Talk:Acquiring LOTRO Points from Deeds

A beginning F2P Strategy

User:Martianunlimited began this table, and it seemed like a way to answer a "FAQ" by F2P playes.

The table is built from our Deed pages and may be missing TP deeds.

Please read it over, as well as the section "A beginning F2P Strategy" to both check for missing parts as well as math errors!.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 19:26, 30 September 2013 (EDT)

I just change this page to add collapsible table because this page was too long to read and most information is redundant with regional quest list. Also, Don't you think this page could be stored in the Game_Guides article as "Guide to Play for Free / Free to Play guidelines ". I don't have rights to do so, and don't want to make a mistake. Vulcrirus (talk) 12:42, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... don't know why I stuck it in the LOTRO Store category! Doesn't make much sense there.

I've moved it to the Category: Game Guides and inserted a pointer to it in the Getting Started and Game Guides articles.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 22:54, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I was wondering, wouldn't it be wise to point out to new players there's the Quest Pack: Eriador Bundle? While it costs a hefty 3995 Points, if you count all prices up from the quest packs it contains (North Downs - Eregion) it ends up being 570 points cheaper than if you buy them seperately. For pure F2P players, that's a considerable amount of grinding they no longer have to do.

HowDenKing 17:31, 21 March 2019 (GMT+1)

Yes, it would; in my opinion.

Mogafi (talk) 18:40, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

If you like, feel free to add it in! I can also mention once I start working on the strategy and finish updating the last zone. Balorgor (talk) 21:55, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Titles Moving to the Right

Does anyone know why starting with section 13, Moria, the title and the whole section moves to the right? The same things happens with each section after, each time it moves farther and farther to the right. Is there any way I can avoid/fix this? Balorgor (talk) 06:42, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

The sections just needed some closing blockquote tags. Neum (talk) 08:10, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Doh! Thanks man, stupid mistake on my part. :) Balorgor (talk) 17:01, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Adding More Than Just Area Deeds

I've been thinking about really expanding this page and adding how much TP can be gotten from not only area deeds but also instance, class, social, racial, and other type of deeds and making tables for them. However, this might crowd the page even more than it is already. So what do you all think, will it just be too much stuff on the page or will it work? Thanks for any opinions! Balorgor (talk) 04:39, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a single place to go to see where all sources of TP can be found. It may make this page too long, but that might be overcome by using more collapsible sections. --Barraz Forkbeard (talk) 17:56, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I'll add a few more different deeds soon and will also work some more on my guide. Cheers! (If anyone else has any opinions, please go ahead and say it, it would be nice to have a few more people's opinion) Balorgor (talk) 00:11, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I just made a test of how an instance cluster section would look like at User:Balorgor/Sandbox (I'm against making a section for each instance, as there is only one tab for each cluster in-game). The deeds go in the order of each instance, not by alphabetization. Does it look ok, or should I change something? EDIT: Just added racial deeds for Men and Elves too, please tell me how that looks. Balorgor (talk) 23:13, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Just added racial deeds for all five races. Hope it looks ok. :) Balorgor (talk) 05:31, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Deeds and Links

I noticed that some of the links in explorer deeds take you to the page for that area instead of a page listing the different locations needed for the deed. For instance the link for the Zelem-melek explorer deed takes you to the main Zelem-melek page instead of the Zelem-melek (Deed) page. First was this what was intended, or would it be better to open up the appropriate Deed page. --Barraz Forkbeard (talk) 18:04, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Suspect that this is a "vintage" problem. Many of the older Deeds were not created as the newer deeds are -- ie. with the locations and similar information listed "below" the basic deed information. While not an explorer deed this should give you an idea: Enmity of the Goblins (Beorning Deed) or Beacons of West Gondor

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:57, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Nope, I didn't intend that. I try to get all the links correct (and some deeds haven't even been made yet), but with such a big page, it would be great if someone, or preferably several people, checked the math and links. If there is an actual deed and the link is just wrong, feel free to correct it! If the page hasn't even been created, go ahead and make it! I changed all of the links in The Moria Central and Lower Halls, if you find any more, go ahead and correct the link. :) Thanks for the help mate! Balorgor (talk) 00:08, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Turbine apparently eliminating (severely restricting) TP acquisition for F2P players

I have not been able to find the original post, but there is at least one closed thread where Frelorn posted:

https://forums-old.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?561300-Important-Changes-to-some-Reputation-Items

For now given the time of year and the contentious nature of this we are going to table the change until we all get through the holidays and had some more time to implement this in way that is best for everyone involved. We thank everyone for the feedback and we will bring this discussion up again when we are ready to put in the changes. Thanks everyone.

Another thread is here: https://forums-old.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?561430-Reputation-Items-An-Analysis

I can't quite figure out what is happening or what the issue/problem is from all the comments I have seen so far, but there is clearly a major change afoot.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 01:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

What happened is Turbine added minimum levels to all reputation items. The deeds themselves remained unchanged, but the rep items had minimum levels (Cardolan trinkets-20, Mathoms-35, etc). After a big backlash, Turbine removed these minimum levels after a few hours and said they will implement this "after the holidays." They also deleted the original announcement about it, so you won't find it. This is being put into place to stop people who earn lots of TP by making an alt, taking him through the Introduction, and then using stacks of rep items on him, getting 50TP for each faction, so about 300-400 TP in about half an hour. Of course, rep items cost either gold or marks, but Turbine wants to put a stop to this as this is the most effective way to earn TP. Balorgor (talk) 02:21, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The little thought that they give to such things is astonishing.

Has anyone looked at Cartographile_--_Eriador?

Mogafi (talk) 19:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Those still have no minimum level and are a good way of getting TP. Balorgor (talk) 22:21, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Fascinating, I will have to try this exploit before it gets nerfed. After all, others are using it, so I am losing out in comparison if I don't also use this idea. But I wonder why they backpedaled on such an idea, just because a few people got upset at having their exploit countered? Hmm. Also interesting is the apparent numbers of people who think they are owed such an exploit, seemingly. Exploiting bugs and cracks in a game go back as far as games do. I'm guesing it requires more gold than I have, though. Can someone point me to a walk-through of the crack? Friimynd (talk) 20:27, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

They actually implemented minimum levels on reputation items over a month ago. Balorgor (talk) 23:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

The thing to be aware of is what you can't see. LOTRO like ALL on line games is heavily instrumented. It is recording information all of the time, just like the NAS is constantly scarfing up "metadata" for your cell-phone calls. And, just like with the NSA, "they" acquire this data "just in case they need it or ever want to use it." It is a well established "fact of life" in computer programming -- if you do NOT instrument when you first write the code, you can never go back and do it later. If, for no other reason, when the instrumentation is turned on, it impacts performance! So you leave it turned on all the time. When Turbine or any other Vendor talks about "stress testing" something, they are looking at two things -- one, will "IT" fall-over and die because the server is over loaded and two, what is the instrumentation actually telling us. There is simply too much data coming in to look at all of it all of the time, and "reports" are based upon whatever it was that was of interest at the time the report was written. I.e. what question was being asked. So, during a stress test, somebody actually looks at ALL of the data being collected.

Right now (i.e. for the past six months at least) Turbine has been closely scrutinizing the data they collect for multiple reasons -- first to try to find out what is causing the various "LAG Issues" which players complain about. I.e. looking at things which cause performance issues. Then, as part of the overall strategy relating to these performance issues, the ideas of moving the EU servers back to Amsterdam, Consolidating Servers, Transferring characters from one server to another, etc. These all trigger a very close look at data which has not been scrutinized before. So, somebody said, "Wow, look at this phenomenon." And somebody else said, "Well, we can fix that." Did the issue actually impact the cash sale of TP? We cannot guess how they would correlate the source of TP with the Sale of TP easily because we have no data -- but "They do."

Relatedly, there was a post recently on some forum where Forbes claimed that Turbine's LOTRO made something like 113 Million Dollars for WB/Turbine last year, making it the third or fourth highest game earner, with WoW being number one. (I never saw the article, so my memory may be a bit fuzzy). The question came up -- since Turbine does not release numbers, where did those numbers come from. There is a firm (the only one as I recall and whose name escapes me now) which provided economic data on the Gaming Industry. They get than data, not from the Gaming Companies, but from Gaming Retailers and Service Providers. Turbine does not operate the LOTRO Store. It is run by a subsidiary (now) of VISA International. The transaction data from the LOTRO Store, and Digital River, which handles store.lotro.com is where the data on the success of LOTRO comes from.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 19:39, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I am fairly certain that there are no people playing from places where their wages are comparable to the amount of TP earned per hour of playtime, except possibly for some wealtheir exceptions who likely make far more per hour than the relative amount of TP earned per hour playing LOTRO. It is a cute mechanism to entice people to spend TP and thus create a habit of spending TP in the store so they feel compelled to buy more TP to spend more, etc. It could be safely removed from the game entirely with no real effect, other than a removal of a detail people sometimes obsess over. Rather than TP people could receive Mithril Coins for their characters to use individually. The idea of a 'purely f2p strategy' for playing LOTRO or any game is rather absurd, as it obviously takes money to make games and NOBODY is making them for free. I will say that I was happy to be able to buy a character slot with the TP I earned recently during the sale for character slots. So, the argument is does the free TP really encourage me to spend money? Idk, maybe so. But, the argument against free TP is also strong. I will not be farming for TP to buy Moria. I will buy the 4-pack of expansions like any sane person would. But not today. My next purchase will be whenever I have farmed enough TP to buy North Downs or some other mission pack. So, what if there were only Mithril from deeds? or no TP.... idk, how bout you? what do you think about doing away with free TP? what would be the outcome? less players or more? Friimynd (talk) 00:52, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Samwise Gamgee Starter Pack

This has been 'removed' from the market, currently still the 'turbine' market, who knows for how long. But if you do a web search for 'lotro market samwise' you can find this: https://store.turbine.com/store/turbine/en_US/pd/id.ProductDetailsPage/categoryID.58516200/productID.258048600 . I suppose it is still purchasable just not listed on the main market pages. I've already bought it since long ago thanks to advice from this page. I'm concerned about updating the page regarding the starter pack. What should be done about it? I understand the '4th bag' is not valid? I think it was converted to a +10 inventory spaces boost. But i don't exactly recall. What is the 411 on this now? I don't want to keep recommending it to others if it is no good or not purchasable or not worth purchasing. Thanks. Friimynd (talk) 03:34, 7 February 2017 (UTC)