User talk:Gwenwyfar

I bumped you to Ninja to avoid some of the CAPTCHA annoyances --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:26, 15 August 2012 (EDT)

Promoted to Editor for consistent contributions and teamwork. Keep up the good work! -- Elinnea (talk) 11:36, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

Echo on all parts ;) -- Zimoon 17:20, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

Promoted to Administrator Thanks for all the edits! --Lotroadmin (talk) 16:36, 24 May 2013 (EDT)

Thank you :) I probably won't be able to be as active as I was before, but I'll keep editing when I can!

Gwenwyfar (talk) 11:42, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

---

Friday, or shortly before, i'm going to disable the user CSS and JS to see that resolves a search/css issue Zimoon and Magill noted around the time we enabled the user css/js. The issue is discussed here if you are interested. --Lotroadmin (talk) 13:47, 29 August 2012 (EDT)

Scroll Case Icons

I have added pages for Expert Scroll Case and Master Scroll Case as well. I am definitely not handy with graphic editors but with some fiddling I managed to produce an icon for Expert. If you have a tool handy for Master and upward, please ...  :)

Right now I used the icon for Expert also at the Master page, not good not good, norty me ;)
-- Zimoon 11:30, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

Was waiting to see if we were gonna do it or not before making the others. I'll upload one for all tiers then :)

Gwenwyfar (talk) 13:14, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

Cheers!! -- Zimoon 18:08, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

I have checked opening scholar scroll cases for Apprentice and Journeyman, it should be complete I think. It seems "rare" means 1:3 opened scrolls, not too bad, if my 6 of 19 scrolls is enough to give a fair number. However, the "rare" caused me to renaming, removing the "Master". Be prepared to some extra work if you want to pop more scrolls, for me it is enough now for some days :P -- Zimoon 06:25, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I would rather just say rare recipes are less common, after all it depends on luck and games always suck at that, some will just not get them and some will get them all the time, we can never know for sure what it is unless we hack into the game or do some serious testing. It probably varies between different scroll cases too.

That must be a rohan thing, I'm sure it was called master before.

Ah, opening more scrolls always looks like so much work anyways, I have so many of them... when I look at it and then at my inventory space I just get lazy :P

Gwenwyfar (talk) 12:26, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Yes, just that one, Journeyman Scholar requires 5 slots if you also get all duplicates with the rare. Then there are the other tiers :P
The rest of those I open, I vendor-sell them, they are plentiful enough. -- Zimoon 12:43, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I usually mail tailor, metalsmith, woodworker and weaponsmith ones for other characters, since I'm keeping them on my scholar so those I just use. And the mailing system is ... blah. And typing stuff from the game is work enough for me, haha, I really find that rather boring.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 12:46, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Would you mind creating an icon for the Item:Adorned Scroll Case page. I noticed there is a tier-7 icon but it is not for rare coloured scroll cases, and I think only those drop for adorned, right? -- Zimoon 06:56, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Ops! Did it again. That was supposed to say tier 6, for supreme. Fixed it, and made all the missing ones: .

Gwenwyfar (talk) 12:40, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Super, thanks :-) -- Zimoon 17:15, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Nice navigation-bar :) -- Zimoon 04:50, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

Starting over: Would you mind create an icon also for Item:Decorated Scroll Case. It seems this one drops from somewhat lower level mobs than Item:Adorned Scroll Case, but both emit scrolls for the Westfold tier. Wonder how to deal with that? Both would use VII but is it really good to have VIIa and VIIb or is it better to simply have VII for both, their name and looks making the diffence?

While at it, the VII renders somewhat dizzy at the last I in VII. Both in full and scaled down sizes. Is that possible to sharpen you think?
-- Zimoon 07:09, 9 November 2012 (EST)

PS: DOH DOH, I should have read through the section before ever typing anything, lazy me. DS. -- Zimoon 07:11, 9 November 2012 (EST)

:P

I've fixed the last I on vii, that is because of smoothing on the letters, looks fine on iii but on ii not so much. Maybe I should sharpen the V a little too so it doesn't look too different...

Gwenwyfar (talk) 07:22, 9 November 2012 (EST)

It looks great to me now. Thanks a lot. -- Zimoon 10:31, 9 November 2012 (EST)

png -> svg

Heya, I just saw your edit in ambox. A conversion from svg -> png is really something you would not want to do. I'm not sure how familiar you are with svg, but svg is both smaller and much nicer on higher resolutions as a png. Currently projects like wikipedia try to convert all png icons to svg icons. If you don't mind I will revert this edit tonight. --EoD (talk) 08:14, 27 September 2012 (EDT)

I know. I guess you didn't see that I commented about that in the png file talk page. We seem to only being using that file in ambox, though, and we can leave the svg there if we want to use it in a larger icon. I would have edited it to remove the background, but I can't seem to get the svg file, when I try to copy it it will just turn into png. Not even trying to drag it to inkscape works, so I really have no idea how to get the actual svg file. I did this because of the transparency, though... And for what its being used now, the png file is actually smaller :P

Gwenwyfar (talk) 14:54, 27 September 2012 (EDT)

Got the svg file, but there doesn't seem to be any element behind it that would be making the background... Wikipedia has the same file but theirs does not show a background. Is this an option of mediawiki somewhere? The merge icon seems to have the same issue.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 15:39, 27 September 2012 (EDT)

Might be your browser or OS? I don't see a background on the svg version both here and on wikipedia with FF 15 and Chrome 22. --EoD (talk) 16:47, 27 September 2012 (EDT)

Don't think its my browser. I see it transparent in wikipedia, but white here. Also on both FF15 and Chrome, and if I save the rendered png file, it has a background. The SVG file viewed on the browser doesn't seem to, but then its the actual SVG, not the rendered png.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 16:54, 27 September 2012 (EDT)

Ah, you talked about the thumbnail. Yeah, indeed. Might be a that we force a white background with "-background white", like described here. I also see that white background on wikipedia's thumbnail. --EoD (talk) 17:02, 27 September 2012 (EDT)

You're probably seeing your browser's background looking the file itself, FF adds a white background if you view the file directly, but here you can see it transparent (and if you save it too).

Could we not do that, then? Or will it bug otherwise? Though I don't see a problem in using the png directly if we're only using it for 2 small files.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 17:08, 27 September 2012 (EDT)

• :) - My Firefox adds a gray background, both ours and the thumbnails on Wikipedia have the same background. The page you linked to me contains a file called Edit-clear.svg.png and has a white background (like ours) but if you click on it, you get redirect to the original svg file called Edit-clear.svg and this one has (like ours) a transparent background.
• If you really need a transparent background on the edit-clear file you can stay with the png file here, I don't see a good way to make it transparent without breaking compatibility with other OS'/browsers. Just out of curiosity, where do yo need the transparent background?

--EoD (talk) 07:04, 30 September 2012 (EDT)

Weird. The file I uploaded was the png from wikipedia I saved.

Its for the custom skins I'm making. The one with game-interface-theme and the one for tolkien-theme. The custom one (with interface theme) is much darker than tolkien one will be, but I don't think the tolkien one will be white, so it will clash anyways, just not like on the custom one. And perhaps there might be other skin options which might have the same issue, though I haven't thought much about what they will be yet, they might have white backgrounds. That's why I've also reuploaded some other files that had some white border on them, but since they were PNGs there wasn't a problem.

Well, we can always leave the svg there if we ever need a different size for the icon :)

Gwenwyfar (talk) 13:03, 30 September 2012 (EDT)

Indigo Plant

What about Indigo Plant now? After several edits the flower-information is kept at the flower page, but parts of it is transcluded to Item:Indigo Plant. I am always messy when editing those includeonly sections :)

I kind of turned 180º but that was mainly since I found all those other deposit pages and alike. While I understand the concept, having a separate page for a separate entity, I dislike it because of the lessened usability. The page splits do not add any real value for the casual visitor, they just add many extra mouse clicks. However, extracting and transcluding some information (the most valuable) may overcome those information split-ups. But then transclusions should be consequently done all over the line, resource spawns in this case.
-- Zimoon 05:55, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

Yeah, it can be kind of annoying on those plants, but not so much for profession nodes (though it would be nice to transclude them too). Definitely better to have the most important on the item :)

Just one thing though, but related to the info itself: I don't think they are found anywhere in Middle-earth, just some areas, I'm not sure though, but it just seems like they don't spawn in a lot of places. It would be nice if we could get the exact areas they spawn, or change that line to "is found through some/multiple areas in Middle-earth instead.

Just looked on some other plants and they're gonna need transcluding too, neither have location information. Can I leave that to you? :P

Gwenwyfar (talk) 11:13, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

I do not know exactly where they spawn, other than the Trollshaws, so I cannot say neither nay or yay. Perhaps they follow the resource-tier system, perhaps not. I guess somebody (not me) need to keep track of where different flowers and berries and alike are seen. -- Zimoon 12:39, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

Well, I can definitely say I noticed that blueberries are found in low tier areas, woad plants and yarrow roots in a slightly higher tier area, and indigo I never found in any of these, only in trollshaws-tier-level. The only thing that seems to go across all of them is honey, and even that seems to differ (there are two honey types I believe). I could keep track of what I find on my way along with the recipes page, I'm usually hunting some of those anyways.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 14:05, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

I've tried to look for a pattern with those, but if there is one it has eluded me so far. It was especially relevant before they added the wild-flower recipe that lets farmers harvest those things easily. I still have a compulsion to run over and pick up any dye material I come across - a friend always laughs at me when I go tearing off in the other direction when I catch sight of a bit of Woad.

I know I've found yarrow in the starting regions (Shire and Ered Luin), and I just picked one up in Ered Luin last week that I think was indigo, but I could be wrong. It seems like those three at least are just rare spawns that might pop up in any level region, although I am pretty sure that I've never seen any of them grow in Angmar, or Forochel, or Moria, which does make some sense. I can pay a bit more attention in the future. -- Elinnea (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

I'm too low level to get that recipe yet, so I still run around picking up dye ingredients :P

In north downs there is an area with some antique vases I was "camping" and woad always spawned there, on specific spots. I've also found woad in lone-lands and bree-land, but the first time I found indigo was in trollshaws. I usually never pay attention to the other plants so I really don't know, but maybe they have a pattern too, as well as specific spawning spots, though really, there is not much point in getting info for plants other than dye ingredients, they're completely useless. Maybe when we don't have anything else to do (... never? :P).

Gwenwyfar (talk) 14:44, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

Silly Question

I became curious when I noticed you used template ItemLink, why using it? I mean, it does nothing that [[Item:Some Name|]] does not do, except if the name contains some odd character such as ,() and alike. And the template does not substitute but is always called (unless temporarily cached). In my humble opinion it is one of the most useless templates we have ;) ... But I am still just curious. -- Zimoon 02:07, 22 October 2012 (EDT)

Actually, I was even wondering why we didn't have one till I saw we had but wasn't used. As for why I'm using it: Its much easier to type {{ItemLink|itemname}} than having to type Item:Itemname|itemname, specially the bigger names, and also leaves the code smaller :P No reason other than that, really.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 02:17, 22 October 2012 (EDT)

Comment: I always type only [[Item:Itemname|]], notice that the trailing | will automagically fill in the itemname part. However, it does not work if the itemname contains any of :() and maybe more. The same works for [[Quest:name|]], etc.

Personally I am not fond of too much template stuff, it makes it harder for newcomers to begin to edit. Many are cool though, such as Reward, etc. Secondly, I do not know in detail about server impact from templates. Some content will be "compiled" and cached at server for some time, other templates are never cached but looked up each and every time. I think that is why e.g. Suppliers load that slow, even if clicking the same link a few minutes in between and no edits done, still slow. But I am not into that part of the wiki-engine enough to tell, I just read up on {{PAGENAME}} versus {{subst:PAGENAME}}, and PAGENAME is not good. -- Zimoon 06:54, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

Ah, good to know that. I see everyone uses itemname|itemname everywhere and I really never worked in a wiki with special namespaces before, so I didn't know about that. Gonna start using it then ;)

Gwenwyfar (talk) 07:16, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

When you have saved it once it looks like itemname|itemname, but of course, that adds the burden to following editor if the name ever is changed, as for example the journals I just did ;) In that perspective using a template is perhaps neater, at the cost of confused beginners and possibly performance (but that I am uncertain about). -- Zimoon 12:20, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

Not sure about confused beginners either, seem so simple :P Maybe we could ask lotroadmin about performance. The only thing I recall seeing about it is if you keep transcluding one page into the other and so on, but then again I haven't seen much about this.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 22:33, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

Trying to find more about this, this can be interesting to test things out to see which is better: when a page loads, if you inspect the code, a part of it will say something like:

NewPP limit report

Preprocessor node count: 173488/1000000

Post-expand include size: 1557895/2048000 bytes

Template argument size: 561438/2048000 bytes

Highest expansion depth: 29/40

Expensive parser function count: 7/500

And that is somewhat like how much processing was done loading it, the last number in the end is the limit. This is for templates use I think.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 22:50, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

Rare Recipes from Scrolls

Maybe I am imagining but I wonder if the different rare recipes have different likelihood, I noticed earlier and also this last time that I git more of some than of others. But to get the numbers I guess we need such as 100 scrolls to pop ;) Just a thought, no action required :P -- Zimoon 06:54, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

Not really, seems completely random for me. I rarely get any specific recipe repeatedly (other than when opening a rare scroll, then the list is so small its hard not to). Sometimes it looks like some recipes drop more, then I open some more and have completely different results :P

Gwenwyfar (talk) 07:12, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

It may be a random peak for some which won't be there if I popped 100 scrolls, I usually just have about 20 or so per profession to try.

On another note; I just did Expert Scholar and again had to move quite a few "journal" recipes. But...

Do you prefer I add those to the template you made? And what format to use for the following line?

Rare recipes - obtained in roughly 1:3 opened scrolls

I believe it is good to separate them, right? Also, I have grouped the recipes a bit, dyes and potions, I believe for Scholar that is better, but for other professions I have not really looked. Probably the name differ them, at least for Tailor and Woodworker, maybe the others too. Suggestions? (But for now I am off to my mom-in-law, helping with some stuff there, laterz!) -- Zimoon 07:36, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

PS: Check what you think of having nav-bar at top. I just did Apprentice, for testing and your opinion. -- Zimoon 07:38, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

That would be better. Just add the list to the respective tier/profession/rarity. (Although I'm wondering if we shouldn't just remove the rarity parameter, since we'll always have both rare and common recipes displayed together anyways).

I think that's good as it is.

Wall-paints are actually separated from dyes, but that's the easiest part to adjust :) I'll check them later once they're all into the template list, they're usually organized by types and tiers (like carved xx vs smooth xx in some woodworker ones, or light armor vs medium on tailor.

On the top it doesn't look so nice, but is probably more useful and is not likely to get missed because the person wasn't interested in going all the way down for one reason or the other, and the other way around, so I guess we can stick with the less-good-looking-but-more-useful ;) I've just added a bit of space between it and the content, I'll change the others later (if you don't do it first :P)

Gwenwyfar (talk) 07:50, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

If the template would be use anywhere else the rarity thing is good to keep, otherwise not. And we can have that sentence per page, not in the template, that would make it more useful wherever it makes sense to use the template. Having the sentence potentially makes it useless for some pages.

Paints are named paints and dyes dye so... I will watch out better if I did it wrong.

Move it back to bottom if you like to. I agree it is a bit ugly, nav-boxes are not cute...yet :P

On second thought, what about making them a table column and flow it right under the info-box? That space is unused now, mainly. Thoughts? (Andnow I am REALLY off for my mom-in-law, byeee.)
-- Zimoon 08:34, 28 October 2012 (EDT)

Well, I can't really think of anywhere else it could be used. Maybe a complete list of all recipes, and it would still be one besides the other. If I was doing it by myself I would personally just leave the lists, and not the rate, sounds like way too much work for it :P You'll probably take a long time to complete everything too.

They are separated when you look them in the scholar profession menu because they are used for a different thing I guess.

Nah, its good there, better ugly and useful than better-looking and useless.

Well, here there is not really much space there, just between the toc and infobox, but either way I think its better at the top :P

Do you happen to have...?

I was recently transcribing some information from the "original" (i.e. long ago) PDF files from Turbine documenting certain aspects of the UI.

One thing which they use in their manual is a set of "icons" to describe things like Keyboard "buttons" -- for example, they use the phrase "ctrl button" followed by a square box with rounded corners and the letters "ctrl" in it. The box fits on the line of text. I'd simply copy it but that's the problem -- the original is a PDF and I don't have the tools to do a "clean" job of it.See the actual Image file page to see what I'm talking about, I uploaded 3 different versions of the file.

What I'm looking for, and hoping you have in your "toolkit" is a set of icons for each of the keys on the keyboard!

In the "example" below from that PDF, the "c\" displays when copied as "c\" while in the original pdf, it displays as "ctrl \" with nice little boxes around the two keys. I've pasted a badly cropped png image in place of the 2nd one.

"Beyond the options available in the Options Menu, you can also tweak the locations of many UI windows directly.

By pressing c\ you can bring up the UI customisation mode, even if you are not in the Options menu. In this mode you can move your UI windows around and position them as you prefer. When done, press again to exit the customisation mode."

Googling around all I find are "artistic" versions of the key caps. :( ... and most of them huge -- Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 14:16, 8 November 2012 (EST)

I'm afraid not :( The icons and buttons I have here are only those used in the game itself. Some PDFs have the images kind of "linked" in them, though, if you can click in it and see a square around it, you can ctrl c ctrl v it. It might not have a transparent background even if it is "linked" though. But you could pass me the PDF and I could crop all the images for you if you want.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2012 (EST)

I think I found it. I recall seeing it somwehere in the game files before, actually. Doesn't even look like an image, actually, but copying only gives you an abbreviation.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 20:13, 8 November 2012 (EST)

Hmm... I wonder if its really an image? While viewing the PDF in a site while googling it, the images were loading slowly, and those keys were part of the text, and if you zoom into the actual pdf a lot, they will still be smooth just like the text, while you can see the pixels in the images. I do recall seeing them used somewhere else before, so maybe its one of those font symbols or alike?

Gwenwyfar (talk) 20:21, 8 November 2012 (EST)

Pasting it into a more detailed text editor brought me up with the font it uses, it is indeed those font-symbols, you can see them here: Font

Gwenwyfar (talk) 20:25, 8 November 2012 (EST)

Thank you. Of course, that makes them somewhat hard to use on the WIKI.... :( Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 12:12, 10 November 2012 (EST)

Legendary Icons

In a chat with User:moinante it seems that a specific level X legendary item may drop from any mob in a certain level. The raw data I had a peek at indicates that my earlier assumption is correct, e.g. Burglar's X level 55 may drop from any mob in the appropriate range, but so do also any other level 55 legendary item. This means we most probably could begin creating generic pages for Legendary Items, as we did for Scroll Cases.

However, for LIs the icons differ a lot more between weapon types and other criteria. If I interpret RTC's table (User:RingTailCat/Sandbox-4-example_icons)correct the 3 left-most columns are loot-drops, the others are crafted and reforged and outside of this scope.

Do you think there is any chance to create one (1!!) icon for generic pages that kind of conveys the message that it is a "looted Legendary Item"? An icon that could be used for those many generic pages? I guess there is no need to tell values as that will be part of the link, hence we are talking just one icon. -- Zimoon 14:15, 9 November 2012 (EST)

Hmm... If we're to create an all-purpose generic icon, I'd say it should be an icon that represents all weapons, like a sword, or maybe a sword crossed with a bow, the most generic weapon representation. It would be nice if we could organize them by class, just the LI background with a class icon, but it seems we need a completely generic icon... oh well. Maybe a LI background with an "?" ? In this case there is really no separation, it could be anything (as in any weapon from any class), right?

Gwenwyfar (talk) 07:06, 10 November 2012 (EST)

My first thought was kind of the common pink-ish background with "LI" in top. But a sword over pale shield or over a pale cloak would perhaps do? I guess it is the border + pink-ish background they all have on common. Yes, this is a tricky one and I don't think we will ever get everybody satisfied whatever we do ;)

PS: No question-mark, please, that indicates uncertainty and we are not ignorant.
-- Zimoon 08:05, 10 November 2012 (EST)

The legendary items dropped by mobs have a minimum level that is exactly the level of the mob. There are 55 (IIRC) different legendary items for each level from 51 to 75, and 58 for levels 76 to 85. (Multiply this by three if you count the very rare second age drops, and the possibly non-existant first age drops.) Legendary items are dropped by loot carrying mobs only. Mobs which only drop trophies will not drop LIs. There is an intermediate group of creatures which only drop Heritage Runes besides trophies.

When it comes to LI drops, I have often had a suspicion that sometimes there is a bias against dropping LIs for your class.

Mobs have a high probability to drop an item or items from the trophy category. They have a slightly lower change of dropping uncommon resource items. Less of a change to drop rare resource items and LIs. Even less of a change to drop incomparable or epic items.

The combination of creature level and type determines the possible items that will drop. E.g. at level 18-23, a beast will drop a Item:Blackened Skin, Item:Blackened Fur, Item:Dusky Ear; but a bird will drop a Item:Dusky Wing or Item:Blackened Feather or Item:Cracked Beak; an insect will drop Item:Glistening Filth or Item:Bulbous Goo or Item:Blackened Carapace; the undead drop Item:Pitted Finger Bone or Item:Glistening Essence. Intelligent mobs drop Item:Broken Wooden Mace or Item:Blackened Sword Sheath; creatures of nature: Item:Dry Branch. Nothing (that I know of) in this range drops dust, heartwood, membranes, scales, or tails. For non-trophy drops, the loot tables are a bit more complex, but still, the tables themselves are well defined. Which tables is used and what item from that table is, of course, random.

Quest item drops are based on your current active quests. As soon as you have collected your quota of quest items, creatures will longer drop the item. These are the drops that may be of most interest.

The problem is that we are operating from imperfect knowledge. We are pretty sure the game has loot tables driving the drops, we just don't know the details of those tables. We can jump to the conclusion that we know the content of the loot table on the basis of limited observations, but unless you see a mob actually drop a Item:Supreme Scholar Scroll Case (and which one was it: the uncommon or the rare, because they have different content!), you can never be sure that it does not have a faulty loot table that includes all the other scroll cases, except for the scholar's. As well, we don't know that all the scroll cases have equal probability to drop. (How did they eliminate the drops for lower level cook scroll cases? Did they shorten the loot table, or do they intercept a drop of a Master Cook Scroll Case (e.g.), and give you nothing!)?

Signature, and named mobs, bosses, creatures in instances can all have unique loot tables or special drops in addition to, or instead of the loot tables that they might get by virtue of their type or location.

I am reluctant to remove detailed loot drops, or to replace specific drop information with generic drop information. Where there is no drop information, adding information about the deduced generic drop information is better than nothing. There is a significant difference between observed facts and conclusions. I would rather see the facts or both facts and conclusion rather than just conclusions.

-- RingTailCat (talk) 10:20, 10 November 2012 (EST)

I hear what you say, RTC, though this could perhaps have done better at the Cat:Legendary Items where I posted yesterday ;)

I also agree, we should not jump to conclusions too quickly. Certainly not!!!

On the other hand, right now we are filling up the major part of creature pages with info that is not irrelevant but not far from. I would never skim through a dozen creature pages to find if they do drop a certain item I want, I would expect that list to be at the item page to begin with. The generic pages are an effort to minimize that "crap" from those pages, and editors should IMHO rather add creatures to item pages than items to creature pages. Perhaps we should rather stop using the Lootbox at creature pages, and consider that a well-meant mistake. In the end of the day we want the right information to exist at the right place, being overly kind rather dilutes and/or shadows the information that should be at certain pages, don't you think? But that discussion is way better held at some other talk-page, you choose and we follow ;)
-- Zimoon 10:55, 10 November 2012 (EST)

I agree the information can be more useful on the item page rather than on monster pages, but we should always have both. Maybe we could have a template to help with that in case we weren't doing that since the beginning (would be too much work looking all pages of monsters to see a certain drop, a template could create a list automatically for each item, then we subst it).

Gwenwyfar (talk) 07:55, 11 November 2012 (EST)

It seems I'm going to need to get images from weapons by myself... (crop them all out, etc). The export in IRV (plugin to show images in the game) only exports a useless .plugindata file, so I can't get the images without background the game has. So for now I've just made this:

Gwenwyfar (talk) 08:30, 11 November 2012 (EST)

I concur with RTC.

I would just add... based on conversations in Kin and on various Forums, It appears that the entire structure/useage of "loot tables" has been revised with RoR.

In the past, it seems that there were individual loot tables for specific MOBs, etc. Now it seems that there are specific MOBs, etc for individual loot tables. A seemingly simple difference, but likely significant. I haven't completely guessed if any changes took place in "the old world" (i.e. anyplace in ME outside of Rohan), but I think not. It's hard to guess, from a programming point of view, which approach might be easier to implement. But comments from Turbine about Loot Boxes in particular imply a change -- comments like -- Loot Box contents are determined at the time of Drop and Loot Box contents are determined at time of opening. Sadly, both comments have been made by "blue names," in response to people's complaints about crap drops from lvl 75+ loot boxes.

An example would be the war-band encounters... each member of the War Band (including the boss) drops "trash loot" -- which one could interpret as coming from a mob based loot table." Then when you turn the kill-quest in you get a set of fixed rewards, one of which is a "Box" containing "random stuff." The "trash loot" is always the same "range of things" -- hides, coin, wings, shields, jewels, etc. dropped by any mob anywhere in Rohan. (Implying a common loot table for all Rohan Mobs, see what I mean about MOB based table vs table based mobs.) The Box by comparison (supposedly) contains at least 1 special item. (see for example: Item:Blue Box of Wold Spoils or Item:Silver Box of Sutcrofts Spoils -- however, that is frequently NOT the case. One can probably assume that with next-week's release of 8.1, we will see significant "tweaking," as Turbine puts it, to the drop tables. This seems to be reminiscent of the issues surrounding the landscape "backpacks" when Dunland was first released or the problems with Scroll Cases when Enedwaith and Angmar were first released. (Cooks got no scrolls at all!)

As for the issue of LI's vs MOB level -- the answer there is yes but... It has been VERY clear in Dunland that while there may be level relationship, there is also a significant "type" relationship to MOBS. For example, with 7 toons, I never encountered a Rune Keeper drop outside of Nan Curunir, nor a Hunter Drop outside of Barnavon. One can cynically suppose that Turbine specifically forces matching-toon and LI types to be at extreme probabilities simply to encourage "trading" or to otherwise boost AH prices. But the "why" aside, it is pretty clear that the LI drops in Dunland are anything but truly random. I have frequently gotten LI drops for every Type BUT my Hunter, and usually multiples, but usually for classes not associated with my account -- like Champion, Guardian and Burglar. Am I being cynical. Not from what I see in KinChat. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk) at 11 Nov 2012.

If we concur with RTC, how could anybody then say "there was individual loot tables" and then how can anybody say "now they have loot-tables and individual mobs are assigned to one of them"? I concur with RTC 100% that we cannot possibly know anything for 100.0% certainty, we can but assume things based on what we find. Unless somebody of your Kin works at Turbine they are in no better situation than we are, meaning, your kin is as ignorant or well informed as we are. However, I believe we are in a better position as we see so much more data. From personal experience from many games: there are always players who think they have seen through the system and they are so confident in that they "know" how it works, let us not end up there, neither as believers nor non-believers.

However, if there are now some evidence, even the slightest, that the drop-system is somewhat changed (that the loot-tables indeed are adjusted in one way or the other, no matter how), then we may be in deep trouble. All of our data is what it has been up until RoR, if now the drops changed, how do we tell what data is obsolete and what is not? Without "tagging" an entry as "still valid" we have no chance in &$£@ to tell what is still valid and what is obsolete. Gees. --- It could be, of course, that RoR and later is using some new kind of loot-table system, but how do we know that?

Off topic but interesting for one specific reason: From a skilled software developers point of view I would rule out any statement such as "content of a box is determined when the box is obtained". Why? Simply because it would be so silly to hold on to that piece of information in a database until the box is opened, which could be years later if the player leaves game for so long. And possibly the obtained item would be obsolete by then. For a player it does not matter at all, he gets some items, that is it. But, this is a typical example of how some players believe they "know" ... and actually, developers may suffer from it too unless they actually implemented that piece of code on their own.

Your comments on drops in Dunland is interesting. If that is the case we cannot use generic-pages at all. So, let us just stop this discussion here and then, based on Magill's comment.

If we should do anything to stop the extreme loot growth at some creature pages we should perhaps just use plain links to the items. However, since the drop-section is bottommost already, let us continue as is, it is perhaps good to be able to see the stats of items when reading about a certain creature. After all, what do I know how people use this Wiki? Sorry for hogging your talk-page Gwen.
-- Zimoon 13:44, 11 November 2012 (EST)

I would suggest using reward in really long drop lists, if not most, and maybe separate them in a table for different item types. While it is nice to see status without having to hover, that makes it harder to look for the overall drops or find something specific because there is just too many items there, you have to sometimes scroll and look all around. And if you want to know the status of a certain item, you can always just hover it and see the details, while being able to see all the items dropped and the icon by its side to help see what it is. That is just my opinion anyways. I usually don't like it much when wikis (talking generally here) use tooltips in lists, but again, that is my opinion.

Hahaha, I don't mind, I just can't really say much, as I know almost nothing about the subject :P

Gwenwyfar (talk) 14:59, 11 November 2012 (EST)

(Simultaneous updates!) One thing to note, regarding long held items: items, like quests, are versioned. That means that when there are significant changes, a new item with the same name, but a different internal id, and different stats or characteristics is added to the game. Everything in-game works with the internal id, not the name. This is why we have lottery items with different stats than current in-game items: the lottery is awarding a different version of the item. This is why you can have Item:Skirmish Marks in the bank which have not been converted to Item:Marks and placed in your wallet.

Now, loot tables, and changes for RoR. In the non-Rohan areas, a loot table was, and still is, used to determine the items attached to a corpse, which is itself a temporary landscape item. Whether the loot table is evaluated to determine the actual items at drop time, or when the corpse is looted, that corpse has a selection of items which is the same for everyone who looks at the corpse. If you have loot-all turned off, or your group loot rules set approprately, you loot, but take nothing from the corpse, and you will still see the same items if you loot again. There may be items you only see on the corpse because they are quest item for your quests, but for non-quest items, everyone sees the same list.

With the Riders of Rohan expansion, we have a new loot distribution mechanism. Mob drops are not placed in a corpse available to everyone. Instead, every participant in the mob defeat gets their own selection of loot, which is evaluated for each player at the time they are credited with the defeat. It does not seems so much different than the previous mechanism when you are playing solo and do a solo kill. The main difference is that your loot selection does not change because others helped with the kill or because you are grouped. If fact, the new mechanism appears to be more consistent and predictable than the old system.

The devs made a big deal about changes to the loot system, but I think that was a lot of propaganda: Hype for the expansion. The new loot system looks to be a simplification which removes the dependency on participation and grouping. It eliminates the corpses that litter the landscape in the lower levels parts of the game. It makes your loot more predictable, as it does not depend on the whims of your group leader and other group members. It makes loot distribution much faster, as there is not need for handshaking and roll exchanges between clients and server to divvy up the loot.

This does not mean I like the new loot system: the realism has been reduced. The idea of loot magically appearing in my inventory as I race across the plains of Rohan stretches the imagination in the wrong direction.

-- RingTailCat (talk) 15:25, 11 November 2012 (EST)

The loot-bag part of the looting system is a new addition yes, but it does not necessarily mean that much behind the curtains had to change much. Loot is added (in Rohan) to the bag and you pick it up when you like to. Log out and the bag is gone I'd guess, right? It is a temporary bag per player and is quite cheap storage-wise. But that does not relate to loot-tables. The bag is filled with items from the loot-tables, yes, random items from the particular table.

Modern games have much more dynamic "loot-tables" than old games which had much more static tables, and not so many of them either. Once upon a time I implemented a loot-table algorithm which actually just used one table with all possible items, but an indexed lookup system based on half a dozen parameters (could be more without penalty) and it had Ordo(1) performance (for the nerdy developers). But it was not for a real game but a prototype showing it was possible. I would not be surprised if Class is a parameter Turbine is using, or maybe item characteristics spanning just a few classes each. But as hinted above, it could equally well be certain areas yielding certain kind of items.

However, if many same-level NPCs do not share loot-table (in whatever shape or form the tables are) so that a specific item can drop from whatever the mob type (or wherever a mob exist) then we cannot use generic pages. At least not as we first thought. Maybe we could, over time and by careful studies of loot/droppers/where/own-class -- all versus each other -- maybe we could find patterns. But that is not immediate I think, and requires quite a lot of data to be trustworthy. I am leaning towards dropping this subject altogether for now. Including any changes to current presentation. We could easily create bot-jobs for such changes in the future .. the data is at a very solid format right now, that is a piece of cake for a bot to chew and spit out in whatever other form. When we would like that ;) -- Zimoon 16:41, 11 November 2012 (EST)

I've upgrade to MW 1.20 and the custom skin seems out of wack

The custom skin seems to be impacted by the MW1.20 upgrade. Let me know if you need me to do anything on the server. I did a quick glance and didn't see anything pressing. --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:24, 19 November 2012 (EST)

Yeah, seems like all the css that made the monobook skin is gone and only the custom skin css is there. Its ok though, hope it really cleared everything, I was already thinking of asking you to change it to a completely empty background skin so I could have everything made in the custom css itself, just so we don't have any problems in the future.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 13:20, 19 November 2012 (EST)

It seems some really basic stuff are still there, I wonder if there is a "global css and js" that goes on all skins? (for instance, the js for the expandable recentchanges, and the css that makes images go left or right).

Gwenwyfar (talk) 13:25, 19 November 2012 (EST)

Just cleared the css for testing, and yup, its completely empty, nothing there besides those really basic stuff :)

I wonder if that wasn't just a really late result of that time you cleared the css before. Either way, its perfect that way :D

Gwenwyfar (talk) 13:46, 19 November 2012 (EST)

Let me know if you need me to do anything, btw you can take over the other skins like myskin and simple, it might make the transitions easier which the cadence has been about twice a year. --Lotroadmin (talk) 19:11, 19 November 2012 (EST)

I think using that one is fine, haven't found any problems so far besides wanting to use a clean skin to do all the css which now we have, but I could move over to myskin if that's easier for the updates. The only thing I'm wondering if won't be a problem with those skins is the php part, it seems like vector has some things different in the organization of the HTML. I only noticed one or two which don't really matter much, don't know if we're missing anything else that might be useful/important. There are also no ads in these skins (or, at least, in custom there isn't).

Just one thing about those skins that I talked about with Seth on irc quite a while ago was that if there was even much of a point in having some of those skins. Its basically like a bunch of skins that practically nobody will ever use, they're just filling up the options, just a few are actually "usable". If someone decides to browse through, it will be like looking many "useless" skins which most people won't choose anyways. Not really important, but could make things better/cleaner if they weren't there, specially if we're going to have many options later.

By the way, sorry for not working too much in this lately, been busy with some personal stuff :P

Gwenwyfar (talk) 21:46, 19 November 2012 (EST)

Greetings

I read your update to your user page and hope to see you back soonish. And that you enjoy the upcoming holidays. -- Zimoon 06:33, 22 December 2012 (EST)

I'm also sort of waiting to be able to play with one of my friends who'll test the game, so I probably won't be very active till then, but I'll be a bit more active than I was these last weeks meanwhile I hope :P

You too :) Do swedes celebrate Jules too, by the way? Or Christmas? (not that they're much different beside the name :P)

Gwenwyfar (talk) 11:29, 22 December 2012 (EST)

Hmm, I have actually never thought about any difference. It is named "Jul" here, but as soon as we talk about in English everyone says Christmas. Sweden is not a religious country as such, but these hedonistic holidays are celebrated, yes, in one way or the other ;)
-- Zimoon 13:39, 22 December 2012 (EST)

Yeah, they're basically the same thing, just different names, was just curious if it was also that way in Sweden :P I guess its the same for many not very religious countries, most of them end celebrating in a way. Here its an excuse to give gifts and do a dinner at 25th, but besides that, not that many people take it seriously (although it is still probably taken more seriously than scandinavian countries probably do, heh).

Gwenwyfar (talk) 18:12, 22 December 2012 (EST)

CSS Magic

Hopefully you still randomly pop on here....Awhile ago you worked your css magic to fix the image flow of Cosmetics - Head so different heights would not 'catch' on each other. I'm running into a similar issue with item tooltip height, where mob drops are listed (example can be seen here). I have absolutely NO idea where to find the page (if there is one) to see how you coded the div class thumb-gallery to perhaps figure it out myself. Do you think the same technique can be used in this situation and how would it be done?--Savi (talk) 10:40, 20 May 2013 (EDT)

Hey there. Yeah, after that problem with my lotro client I was quite busy with some things here, I've been having more time recently, and also took the time to reinstall lotro but still wasn't really playing much, I've been wanting to come back to the wiki these last weeks but then another problem popped up and I delayed it a bit, but I think I'll be back soon enough :)

I'll give a look on that issue, if I recall correctly I simply made thumbnails inside a certain class become that way, so probably I just need to make the same to the divs of these items tooltips, now the question of how: Should I make another class for it, or should I simply change both to become simply "gallery" or something of that sort? Should probably be easier to remember and use if its something simpler and a single command for any gallery, as long as it doesn't conflict with each other.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 18:58, 20 May 2013 (EDT)

I'm sure reinstalling took awhile xD But glad to see you around!

If there was a way to make it flexible, so said div type could be used for any tooltip, image, or whatever that would seem ideal; but I've no idea if that is a realistic goal or not. However, before you spend your time tinkering, you may want to check the discussion here. If the mob drop format changes to hover icons only (which I'm hoping does), then the flow would no longer be an issue (as icons are the same size). May still be helpful in general though.

--Savi (talk) 09:05, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

Your timing is excellent!!! If you have a chance, can you take a look at: User:Magill/Sandbox-table practice? I'm trying to convert a "table rule=cols" into css. No luck so far. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:01, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

I recall doing something similar once, only it was to have only the rows lines, and no column lines. Its been quite some time ago, though, I think it had something to do with making only one border appear and collapsing them or something like that. I'll see if I can find it again. I think the only limitation is that when you do that you can't have rounded borders for some reason, and that was the problem back then, which fortunately isn't a problem in this case :)

Gwenwyfar (talk) 15:16, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

There, try putting this css on your user css and give a look at this page:

.colstest td {
border-right: 1px solid black; }

table.colstest {
border-collapse: collapse;
}

Gwenwyfar (talk) 15:27, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

That doesn't seem to do anything in either Safari or Firefox. BTW I never used the personal css page before User:Magill/monobook.css do I need to do anything to activate it or to reference it?

For what it's worth, getting the horizontal rules is easy: |- style="column-rule:3px outset #ff00ff;"

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 16:07, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

Hm, now I don't remember if you need to. I'll just move it to common css just so you can see it then. I'm in ff here and both look exactly the same. I'm without chrome to test it there right now, but I don't think that's anything complex, should work even in IE.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 22:39, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

Oh, I see, you used monobook, the default skin is vector. Now I've already moved it to main css, though, just give it a look.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 22:43, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

Interesting ... never tried to use the private css page before ... guess the default skin changed or somebody told me the wrong thing long ago.

Well, it works in the global.css but is there any way to do that same thing for a single table? I suspect there are precedence rules for the border parameters which I have not yet found :)

Hehe, its very useful for testing random stuff you wouldn't do on the main css. I usually just use my user common css so it goes for all skins as well. And the default skin was indeed monobook till some time ago, for most wiki sites, now I believe even wikipedia uses vector. I didn't even notice you used the wrong skin till I saw the preferences pages either (which says which is default and links for the css pages) :P

If that's needed for a single table you could try making the same rules inside it, but I'm not sure if it would work or how exactly to do it. Even though some css is the same as what you can use in the table styling, the table styling is not css, if I'm not mistaken, its just html, so some css-only things won't work in it. The border-collapse might work as a style rule, but I don't know how to do the border-right one, probably need to do it on each row, since you can't specify where border-right would go in the main table style rules.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 17:00, 22 May 2013 (EDT)

Managed to get it working, its just a whole lot more of text, though if its not used for many tables it should be ok :P

Just have to add border-collapse:collapse on the main table style, which should make all borders look the same as the other table, then add border-right: 1px solid black to every column. The last table on my sandbox page is working that way if you want to have a look.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 17:12, 22 May 2013 (EDT)