Archive 2011

This page is an archive of Ravanel's talk page, containing 37 topics.

Prized Malledhrim Horse

Hi Rav - you still on? Wanted to ask your opinion on the picture that Sennedjem uploaded. I know you just put a stub tag on it, so you know what I'm talking about. :-P Sethladan 15:42, 9 February 2011 (EST)

Your boyfriend, what are we going to do with him?

It's not a huge deal since you are an admin. I guess there's one good reason to require an email address when registering. It's 'newpassword' make sure he changes immediately, logouts and back in. Let me know if you have any issues. --Lotroadmin 14:03, 19 February 2011 (EST)

You are my hero now! (Psst, don't tell my boyfriend!) --Ravanel 17:02, 19 February 2011 (EST)

Item:Medallions of the North-men

This deed rewards with 5 Medallions of the North-men, not one, but I am not able to fill this in in the template. Does anyone have a solution? --Ravanel 06:58, 28 March 2011 (EDT)

Just like that. -- Starbursty 15:16, 28 March 2011 (EDT)

I meant an elegant solution within the template - thanks for the help with the extra heading though. Sethladan is currently working on it. :) --Ravanel 20:39, 30 March 2011 (EDT)

"Sabre-tooth Cat"

Your comment for deleting the category made me laugh; I am in complete agreement, "Sabre-tooths" is not a word. However, yesterday or the day before, when I was updating barter icons, I found that not only is the barter item Item:Undamaged Sabre-tooth Corpse, but the trophy is called Item:Sabre-tooth Trophy. Do they want a dash in there or not? hah. I still think the category you deleted should be deleted, (and Sabre-tooths shouldn't be the plural, whatever the status of the word). Turbine is just trying to torture us, I think. This actually prompted a question. When I was adding the talismans for the sabertooth cats, I was looking at the categories and wondering. The alternate names all use the term "Sabercat" - Grey Sabercat, Dusky Sabercat, etc. - was the original name of the default cat Sabertooth Cat or Sabercat? My lore-master renamed hers long ago, and I just can't remember. I lean towards Sabertooth Cat, but I was wondering if you happen to remember - or didn't rename yours. Rubyctook 15:00, 30 March 2011 (EDT)

Haha, yes you are correct in noting that the game itself is pretty inconsistent in it's use of the word. I just tried to find the middle in between the official correct "Saber-toothed tiger" and "Sabretooths". And now after having a discussion about this most interesting subject at the IRC, we found out "sabre" is old British English and "saber" American English, but we agreed on keeping it this way. (You should jump in IRC chat one of these days to meet your fellow contributors and discuss these "important matters" - haha). As to your question: I have been playing my lore-master since the launch of the game, so it has been called "Sabbeltandtijgertje" for quite a long time now. I asked Fingolwë and Rogue, but they both have renamed their saber-tooth cat as well (apparently they are called respectively "Sten" and "FrigidKitty"). I wouldn't worry too much about it, though. ;-) --Ravanel 20:37, 30 March 2011 (EDT)

Actually, I saw someone running around in the Twenty-first Hall of Moria today with an unnamed cat! I asked in a tell to be certain and got confirmation of my suspicions. The exact default name for this pet is "Sabertooth Cat". --Ravanel 21:52, 31 March 2011 (EDT)

Bullcroak(er)

Hey Starbursty. I noticed you made a page for Bullcroak. Do you know if they changed the name of this creature? He always used to be called Bullcroaker. --Ravanel 12:53, 13 May 2011 (EDT)

When I encountered him and made the page, he was called Bullcroak. -- Starbursty 17:54, 13 May 2011 (EDT)

Lootbox

If anyone knows a way how to get rid of Drop Information within the lootbox, that would be great

What do you mean? -- Starbursty 16:06, 19 May 2011 (EDT)

Nothing, I found out and fixed just after (but didn't have to change that particular page, so couldn't update the message). Turned out there was a <includeonly> thingy missing on the item page. Thanks for wanting to help anyway, though. --Ravanel 19:05, 19 May 2011 (EDT)

Drakes

Sorry about the mess of the first dragon... And while I tried to edit the 2nd one, I got warnings about "Rav is also here" ;) --EoD 06:58, 25 May 2011 (EDT)

Hehe, don't worry about it. I know, I'm just a scary creature-guru. ^^ --Ravanel 07:37, 25 May 2011 (EDT)

Creature subcategories

Hi Starbursty. I was wondering wether there was a special reason you created all these subcategories under Category:Bree-land Creatures. I ask this because the creature categories used to be mixed up, some distinguishing between areas, some to places, some only to maps. It was a chaos, and therefore we agreed on sorting creatures on map only, with as only subcategories instances. Now you're doing it different again, and I wonder as to the reason. It is best to have this done the same for all creature categories: were you planning on doing it this way for all areas as well? --Ravanel 07:10, 26 May 2011 (EDT)

Yes, for all creatures as well. The creatures are distinguished for specific places which are, in turn, locations found in an area. Goes more by <specific location as dictated by the map while standing by mob/NPC>. These in turn are subcategories by area and then by map. I am mostly going by screenshots so I can't sub-categorize, say, Reniolind's Hideout Creatures. Reniolind's Hideout might be in Chetwood which is in Bree-land. This is mostly done to utilize the categorytree code. If you look at the Reniolind's Hideout and its resident Slimy Marsh-crawler, you can see that it shows up perfectly under the Mobs section of Reniolind's Hideout. The Slimy Marsh-crawler also shows up under the Category:Bree-land Creatures and the categorytree for Bree-land creatures if you code it out. -- Starbursty 07:34, 26 May 2011 (EDT)

Yes, I understand how it works. My point is, are you sure this is a good idea? In my view it creates a lot of extra unnecessary work. Which creatures live in which specific area should namely already been pointed out on that area page. Also, having pages in multiple categories within the same category is not really how categories should work. Pages should be put in the lowest category, but if you'd do it like that, we'd create a monster of a creature template. I understand how you want it to work, I'm just worried that you start this work and then at a certain point stop it, not completing Mirkwood, Enedwaith etc. Then we'd end up in the previous situation with inconsistent creature categories. Do we really have to invent the wheel again? There's so much quality (not quantity) work to be done on the wiki. Are you sure it's worth the effort? --Ravanel 07:50, 26 May 2011 (EDT)

I am sure it is worth the effort as is updating the locations. If it wasn't worth the effort, I would not have gone through the trouble of updating the locations either. If that one line of code (Category:<location> Creatures) wasn't there, then updating the locations with their respective mobs would be way too time-consuming. I know that it is better to add that one line of code to the creature than to manually add the creature to the every location individually. That is how I am using the categorytree code. And yes, if the locations were not updated like Brandywood, then there would be no reason to sub-categorize the creatures for the categorytree as used in Reniolind's Hideout. -- Starbursty 08:00, 26 May 2011 (EDT)

For the conclusion of this conversation, see User_talk:Starbursty#Creature_subcategories. --Ravanel (talk) 06:59, 5 August 2011 (EDT)

skirmish mobs

Heya,
is it common to put creature type, health and power like you did here? Or does the inspect also say "Type: Skirmish"? --EoD (talk) 18:42, 21 July 2011 (EDT)

Hey, it is common to put the health and power there if you have a full inspect, granted that you write down below on what level, grouping and tier it was made. Preferably level 65, since that is end-game. Then at least you can get an impression about how big the mob is, and what its weaknesses are. Of course you always add a table with the health/power info as well.

At least, that is what we thought of when skirmish creatures were just introduced. There's no way to enter all the information of the mobs since they are scalable, so the inspect is sort of an example, and the table below gives as much info as we currently have.

That said, I'm not sure what the [[Míthalagos#Stats|...]] code was actually doing there. We add type:Skirmish because the type differs per grouping sort (you can look it up in the table), and it automatically gets added to Category:Skirmish Difficulty. In the actual inspect it just says what the type of that particular mob at that grouping level is.

For location:Skirmish we could perhaps one day sort something out so they get sorted a bit more orderly (subcategories under Category:Skirmish Creatures for encounter mobs, and the general ones that pop up everywhere could stay there), but haven't gotten as far as to talk about this with people, nor do I know how to do this neatly in the creature template (would be best if it's seperate from the instances there, that part is already so long).

You got a bit more answer than you asked for I think, but hope that's alright. ;-) --Ravanel (talk) 08:44, 22 July 2011 (EDT)

Ok, I'll leave the type then. You should check out the old version and click on the "...". This is supposed to forward you to the stats table. I thought that's a good hint for people who are not used to the stats being below the creature template... --EoD (talk) 19:04, 22 July 2011 (EDT)

Happy post holiday!

Hope you had a good time.

FYI, just got the Isengard Beta Invite... beginning Wed 27 July (or maybe by tomorrow), Bullroarer will have open access to the Ettenmoors!

I'll finish (ha!) the rest of the update I've been working on for Monster Play. I think I only have one more location to create for the revised page, so that it has no "missing links." User:Magill/Sandbox-7 Then we can see what other changes are in the Beta Release notes.

Do you happen to know who else has been putting with the Moors. I'd like to coordinate as much as possible since there is undoubtedly A LOT of updating to do with Isengard's release. In case you haven't noticed, I started with some basic info, mostly lore, on Dunland, Gap of Rohan, and Isengard, the three new regions. They will need somebody else to look at them, and provide whoever category links are appropriate.

Got two new town names just from the Beta Invitation alone!

Sigh... my LM is only 49 1/3 ... guess won't be able to take 'em to Bullroarer.(We apparently only get to copy over one toon, and apparently Eyes & Guard is not open.)

Just so you know, the Beta is covered by a NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). This means you can't tell anyone about anything in the Beta, post it anywhere, or even tell anyone you've been accepted. If you break it you can be kicked out and I think they can take legal action too if they wanted to. https://twitter.com/#!/lotro/status/94410395850252288 Amphoras (talk) 19:26, 22 July 2011 (EDT)

Hi there, and thanks for the welcome! And... grats with your Beta acceptation! I think you might have to listen to Amphoras, though. It would sort of be bad if you and the wiki would get into problems by publishing stuff that's not supposed to be published yet. What you *could* do of course, is work on articles beforehand and store them on your computer, without publishing. Then with Isengard coming, you can publish them right away and make of wiki the best place of new information! That would be epic.

About the Moors, most of the stuff there has been added long ago before my time. As far as I know, no one has lately been actively keeping it up to date. Quite some quests are missing or using the old format, pretty much all the creatures are missing. Those are things that could be updated without breaking the NDA, as long as they're not about the new content. --Ravanel (talk) 07:40, 24 July 2011 (EDT)

You (Magill) might want to talk to RingTailCat - his user page says he's interested in Monster Play stuff. I know a few other people have tried to work on it from time to time, but it's a big intimidating projects...as you've discovered. :-P Sorry I can't help more with it! Sethladan 14:53, 24 July 2011 (EDT)

IRC

Hey Rav, I'm currently on IRC if you want to catch up :) Rogue (talk) 11:06, 2 August 2011 (EDT)

Type of skirmish mobs

Hey, saw you've been busy adding some stats of skirmish mobs, hurray! Just reminding you not to forget to add the type (normal, signature, elite etc.). You can see the type of a mob without inspecting it; just check what the ring around the portrait frame looks like. Examples on how to recognize them are found at the Creatures page. --Ravanel (talk) 06:55, 5 August 2011 (EDT)

OK, thanks for the link, I forgot to check if that was documented, my screenshots didn't show the text for type and I wasn't sure at all of the "round around picture" with or without the eye meant... Added to my page for reference :) --Goingbald (talk) 13:45, 7 August 2011 (EDT)

Info of skirmish mobs

Re recent edits to Big Fright. I'm not sure if it's useful to fill in the level, max health and max power for a skirmish mob. The level of the mob depends on the level at which you enter the skirmish. Since that is selectable on the skirmish join panel, it could be anything above the minimum level for the skirmish. The health and power maximums scale according to the skirmish level, the tier, and the group size (solo(1), duo(2), small fellowship(3), fellowship(6), raid(12), all items which can be adjusted when the skirmish is created. While the level could be filled with something like 20-80, or whatever the new max is, I don't think we can pick any one set of numbers to be representative of the creature or useful to everyone who researches the mob. I believe it must be very clear to the article reader that the stats table at the bottom of the page must be expanded to see the possible strengths for the mob. RingTailCat (talk) 06:15, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

I am aware of all variables regarding skirmish mobs. The mitigations and resistances also vary, dependent on tier (and of course, level). If you don't want to fill in anything that varies, the creature template should be totally empty apart from the genus, species and alignment. But empty creature templates is not something we want. Then we can just as well not use a template at all and say "Big Fright is a neutral bear".

When skirmishes were just new, we decided we wanted to keep the template for them, since it's sort of a recognition point of each creature. People will see it and recognize that it's a creature article right away. We also wanted to provide some sort of information about the mitigations and resistances, even though they vary. They still provide information about what type of damage the creature is the most vulnerable to (that never changes). That's why we set the template up as an example, so someone gets an idea of a creature. It is said under Location on what level and tier the inspect is made. To provide more information, we added the stats table. As you can see, there was some thought put into this. Still, scalable creatures are a curse for a wiki like this one, as it's hard to find a way to present the mass amount of information in a practical way.

If I understand correctly, your concern is that people will be confused by the level and morale/power pool given as an example. They will not understand themselves that it is a skirmish creature they are looking at with thus a varying level. How would you see this solved? Would a sentence on top of a creature page be sufficient? Or do you want to fill in something else there - and then, what?

Last, I think it is good that you address this. It is always better to talk things through instead of having mutliple contributors making different sorts of changes - ending up with a big mess.--Ravanel (talk) 07:00, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

I wanted to review and summarize all the differences between the normal mobs and scalable skirmish mobs; I did not mean to sound like I was lecturing. And I want to reiterate that skirmishes have been drawn into the main stream of quest paths as Turbine's way of making more content accessible to more players. Level cap players are past that point now. There may be an "OMG, I have to do a skirmish" moment when newer players realize they have skipped a critical part of the game, and are unprepared. RingTailCat (talk) 12:32, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

It's OK, there was no sarcasm involved when I was asking what you'd like to see as a solution - or in any part of what I wrote, for that matter. I'm just not a fan of blank templates. ;) --Ravanel (talk) 13:13, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

I recall how I got into editing on Wikipedia - fix a spelling mistake here, correct some grammer there - very small stuff at first, and working up to more complex stuff as I learned the ropes. I guess having an article with missing info is better than no article, because it makes small edits simple and easy. It opens the possibility for doing an edit to more visitors. I know I don't like missing info either. We take advantage of and benefit from the "many hands" effect. RingTailCat (talk) 14:21, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

True, but deliberately leaving things empty on all skirmish creatures (how many are they, 300 or so?) is another thing. Then we should rather make another sort of template. Or add redirect links to the stats boxes below. I was just talking with Rogue about needing to sort something well working out for skirmish creatures regarding the help pages. The help page works for normal 'world' creatures, but we still need to figure something similar out for instance creatures, skirmish creatures and bosses.--Ravanel (talk) 14:29, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

Interesting observation about LM and mob stats

While playing with my newly advanced LM, I noticed something strictly by accident concerning, quite literally two adjacent mobs in Enedwaith.

see: Cuthraul Fear-caster and Dark Cuthraul Have you noticed any similar "differences" with mobs? One wonders if this is "correct" or a bug? Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:14, 15 August 2011 (EDT)

::groan:: This makes sense, though, that higher leveled mobs would have higher resistances. This reminds me of what Fin and Rav were saying about raid mobs - I guess the level 65 version of the mobs that Magill linked had some resistances at the upper end of the "range" that got boosted into the next "category" with level 66 stats. Grr, Turbine, grr. Sethladan 13:20, 15 August 2011 (EDT)

Guilty, when this comes up for me I just use the higher resistances and ignore the lower ones.. better safe than sorry, as the saying goes. Rogue (talk) 13:39, 15 August 2011 (EDT)

The reason the inspect information varies depending on the creatures' level is how the rating system works. The formula for converting ratings to percentages has one variable, which is player/monster level (depending on if it's an offensive or defensive stat). For instance, a Critical Rating of ~4500 is equal to 15% Critical Chance when hitting a level 65 enemy, while against a higher-level opponent it will be less (~4750 is equal to 15% versus a level 68). Similarly, a mitigation rating like Common/Fire/Shadow/etc Defense Rating or avoidance rating like Block Rating use the level of whatever is hitting you to determine the percentage. All creatures in the game has these ratings as well, and that's what Knowledge of the Lore-master reads. The Lore-master's level is used to convert all the creature's ratings into percentages, which are in turn displayed as "poor", "fair", "superior" etc. I obivously can't know the exact numbers, but the general idea is that 0-1% = feeble, 1-3% = poor, 3-5% = average, 5-7% = fair, 7-9% = good, 9-11% = superior, 11-13% = remarkable, 13-15% = incredible (for ratings that cap at 15%, like resistances). Because a resistance rating of, say, 1000 converts to less than 5% for a level 65 character, but a much higher number for a level 50 one, you'll get different results. In the case of the Cuthraul, a level 66 one has higher ratings than a level 65 one, and for some of the stats (notably resistances), the difference is big enough to cross over into the next category. In short, the values displayed are supposed to give an image of how tough the opponent is for the person inspecting it. Naturally, a creature above your level will have higher readings; they are slightly more difficult to kill, after all. /Fingolwë (talk) 07:03, 17 August 2011 (EDT)

I think you found an important point there, Magill! So basically, the resistances of mobs depend on the level of the Lore-master inspecting it, because it is relative. Theoretically speaking, if the Lore-master inspecting would be level 66 him/herself, the inspect of the level 66 Cuthraul Fear-caster would look like the one of the level 65 one as it is on the page now. I never really thought about this, but it makes sense, and it means that the level of a Lore-master taking inspects on the wiki influences the result strongly. This is also the case for all the low level mob inspects we made with level 65 Lore-masters. For instance, Lethal Tarkrîp (a victim of the level 65 Lore-master Ravanel) will probably not have such poor and feeble resistances when inspected by a level 28 Lore-master. The level 28 Lore-master might find himself disappointed if the Tarkrîp doesn't melt from his fire instantly because his resistance to fire is not actually feeble for him. I don't see any practical solution to this (unless you're a level 1 Lore-master on an epic journey to make inspects of all the mobs there are of the same level in the whole of Middle Earth), and luckily the relationship between resistances is (at least in my opinion) more important than how high they are in total (e.g. that a mob is more vulnerable to light damage than common damage vs how high its resistance to light damage exactly is).

The question is, what do we do at the wiki if we have to choose? Fingolwë and I were talking about it yesterday, and both thought that it would be best to choose the inspect of the creature with the same level as the inspector by default. Then again, if you look at Dark Cuthraul, you see that the inspect of the higher leveled mob gave additional information, namely that his mitigation to common damage is higher than to that of other damage types, and that his resistances overall are higher than his mitigations. Like throwing Ancient Craft and using traited Rend on a boss mob might reveal 'hidden' weaknesses, inspecting over-leveled mobs might as well. Thoughts about what to do very welcome!

On another note: as some of you know I'm working on updating Lore-master skills. In time I will update the Knowledge of the Lore-master skill accordingly with this information as well. --Ravanel (talk) 06:35, 16 August 2011 (EDT)

I thought it's known that different LM levels give different inspects, but I seem to be wrong. Apparently I forgot to talk to Rav about that when I wanted to :p

I think we can make a proper solution using a little math in the templates and using this formula. So we need a new parameter of the LM's level who inspected the mob and let do the template the rest. First of all we need to figure out what percentage values each of the colours mean. A good starting point is probably this or that thread. In the far future we could also add a button (like Tier1/2) which allows changing of the LM inspection level.

For people being interested, I got multiple examples of high-level inspects (from Rogue), compared to my lvl25 inspects:

Tarkrîp Siege-engineer, Tarkrîp Shanker, Raging Tarkrîp, Tarkrîp Marksman, Tarkrîp Fight-master, Violent Tarkrîp - and no I didn't use c&p those stats from one mob to another. Those are all unique inspects.

--EoD (talk) 09:05, 16 August 2011 (EDT)

I like the idea of having the same level Lore-master inspect the creatures. Unfortunately it would be up to newer editors/Lore-masters to take up this task and be aware of it from the time they get the skill and every level after. Kinda impractical and asking a lot of people. I always thought that it strange that everything be feeble or low for me (but yah now that it's been explained it does really make sense). Also, there's a slippery slope when you start saying we should add a tier or section for every level Lore-master that inspects a creature. Might as well take that section out of the template and turn it into a massive table that has every level in it for inspection. (until we figure out the pattern (when it changes difficulty) and revise the table to reflect that. Sounds like an intense and conveluted process that will probably never get finished. Look at how long it takes just to get 1 or 2 (you get my meaning) Lore-masters to inspect every creature there is in the game. If we could get an accurate way of using the percentages idea, that would be useful, but I just don't see how that would work. The other thought would be to add a simple line in the additional information somewhere saying, this creature is least resistant to "this". In other words, use "this" against creature to be most effective. If the stats are all the same then I suppose we'd say something like This creature does not have any weaknesses or strengths. etc etc.. Still not really sure what to do to "fix" this situation that would be easy or practical. Rogue (talk) 11:30, 16 August 2011 (EDT)

Hmmm.. I'm not certain I completely understand/agree with all this.... The two Cuthrauls mentioned in the beginning were both inspected by the same LM, moments apart, in-fact. That LM was significantly above them in level (don't ask), and, surprisingly to me, my lvl 54 LM is unable to interrogate a lvl 65 or 66 (and get results)(both are purple).

Perhaps the new explanation that Fingolwë added above will explain it a bit better. Check it out. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if your KOLM gets resisted or misses all the time by creatures 11-12 levels higher than you and thus not being able to get your inspect results. A Lore-master close to the level of the creature he/she inspects is always better than a Lore-master of much lower or higher level.--Ravanel (talk) 07:46, 17 August 2011 (EDT)

One of the questions I had was... did one mob reflect before and the other after - Turbine updates? Both are from Enedwaith, the (currently) newest zone, which Itself has been "buffed" several times now by Turbine. Occasionally, Turbine is fairly detailed in what they have changed in their Release Notes, however many times they are quite "circumloquacious" in their descriptions... and sometimes things get "fixed" with no real statements. Or put another way ... read the Lore section on the page... one got fixed and the other did not?... neither Mob was engaged in any manner, so the first comment in the Forum Thread... "When I used Sticky Tar on it (which currently does a debuff of -842 fire defence, the Half-orc Skirmisher's Fire rating dropped from light blue Average to green Poor." clearly does not apply.

I have actually checked some Enedwaith creatures lately and didn't note any changes in them (I did the initial inspects of all Enedwaith creatures and was collecting some missing ones some weeks ago while at the same time inspecting old ones that happened to be in the vicinity). They didn't reflect as far as I know, nor do I see how that matters. Of the Cuthrauls, only Cuthraul Fear-caster has the updated lvl 66 inspect made by apparently another Lore-master than you. If this Lore-master was so many levels higher, it makes sense that the result is different (e.g. Average mitigations instead of Fair to a level 65 Lore-master). Also, do you know if this Lore-master used Ancient Craft? I always make sure not to use it on normal world creatures (actually, I make sure there are no debuffs at all on them, like no raven fire mitigation buff, no Ancient Craft, no traited Rend from Champions, no Tar etc etc), so the inspects stay the same. An exception can be made for bosses. Either way, the higher the Lore-master is, the smaller the difference in mitigations between low level mobs is, so this makes sense. This said, I'd prefer the inspects of a level 65 Lore-master on level 65-66 mobs over that of a level 75 Lore-master. --Ravanel (talk) 07:46, 17 August 2011 (EDT)

On the issue of using "on-level" inspectors... LMs are pretty squishy, even using one's pet to grab agro all the time. :)

That's why I quest together with a champion. ;-) But I've never encountered any problems here: you can inspect a creature from range without aggroing it, or daze it and then apply the inspect. Even if your target is immune to normal crowd-control and needs to be activated before you can expect it, you can slow and kite it around and use the pet-aggro swapping technique and inspect when the pet has aggro. When we're talking about bosses that cannot be slowed nor crowd-controlled we're well into group-content and someone else than the Lore-master will have aggro. I don't see any problems. --Ravanel (talk) 07:46, 17 August 2011 (EDT)

In that same thread, one of the Dev's comments was reproduced:

When you use "Knowledge of the Lore-master" out-of-combat, it will open the analyze-window and place the resistance debuff on your target.
When you use "Knowledge of the Lore-master" in-combat, it will open the analyze-window but will not place the resistance debuff on your target.

Does that imply that using KOLM in vs out of combat will give you different output? i.e. does the Analyze-window display the Resistances before or after the debuf?

KOLM applies a small debuff to the target if you use it out-of combat on a creature. I've tried and not seen different results on inspects. Either the difference is too small, or it gets applied after you get the inspect if you get what I mean. I'll test this in-game to be absolutely sure. Either way, wether you use the skill in or out of combat doesn't have an effect on the inspect result. --Ravanel (talk) 07:46, 17 August 2011 (EDT)

There is also a thread template KOLM w/level Which might be a way to deal with the LM level issue... (I don't know enough about templates yet to really figure out what it is doing.) "MyLevel -- level of the Lore-master taking the parse" As best I can tell, when used, it puts the level of the LM in ( ) at the top... which is not particularly intuitive, I would opt for something like "Level of LM reporting: ( ) at the bottom. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 17:20, 16 August 2011 (EDT)

Checked the link and saw an inspect template that's more ugly than ours at the wiki. Hurray for our template nerds! :P I agree that it would be nicer to put a sentence like that on the bottom of the inspect box. It could be a start to be able to improve the inspects we currently have on the wiki (so you don't replace a level 30 inspect of a level 30 mob by a level 65 inspect and the other way around), although the true answer (if there is any) should come from maths. Perhaps a template nerd (*looks at EoD, Amphoras, Rogue and Sethladan*) can look at it and share their opinions. --Ravanel (talk) 07:46, 17 August 2011 (EDT)

That template KOLM does nothing else than mentioning the LM level at the top. We can easily add this here too. There is no magic behind it. :) --EoD (talk) 09:35, 17 August 2011 (EDT)

Skill Values Table

Hiya Rav! When you have time, could you take a look at Cunning Attack and let me know if you have any thoughts on the values table? It's okay if you don't like it; I'm just trying to experiment with different ideas for skill pages. Thanks! See you in IRC after the weekend, I guess. :) Sethladan 21:49, 2 September 2011 (EDT)

It looks nice aesthetically, but I don't know if there's much point trying to include the bonus damage component of skills. For one, it's flat out impossible to find out the bonus damage value for loads of skills (all dual-wield versions of Champion skills and all Focus-fueled skills for Hunters, for example), and the practical uses of knowing them would be very limited. Damage is affected by so many factors (Offense ratings, stances, buffs, legacies, etc) that the only way to really find out how much damage your skills will deal is to look at your tooltips in-game. Once upon a time, the bonus damage for all skills was listed there... but that was changed a while back. I'm afraid adding it back into wiki articles might only confuse readers. If we want to have it explained somewhere, we could just make a separate article explaining how most skills work (% of weapon damage + bonus damage) and give some examples of skills where the value is possible to find.

That being said, the damage-over-time component might be a fixed value that only increases with legacies. I can check in-game quickly, and if it doesn't scale with Offense ratings, we can keep the damage over time in the table. Note that for this particular skill, it might be a good idea to make a separate table for the bleed with a short explanation; the bleed damage is different depending on if the skill scores a critical or devastating attack (and even produces a different effect on the enemy when doing so). /Fingolwë (talk) 06:24, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

Hey Seth! That looks like a neat table. That said, after being explained how weapon damage really works (as far as players have found out), most skill pages should not have damage bonuses etc listed in my opinion. If you're never able to fill them in correctly (since they vary from player to player), then I don't see the point of having all those ugly ???'s on a page. If there's only two columns (level and power cost), will the table still took so beautiful?

I've mixed feelings about this. I like the table, but I also liked the fact that the old one was simple and almost invisible. A visible table like this sort of pulls the attention from the reader to the table instead of the actual information. On the other hand, I really love the scroll thingy so that the information doesn't take up the whole page. Can you perhaps try a hybrid? The old fashioned version but scrollable?

Perhaps I'm just being boring conservative and a bit old fashioned and I shouldn't moan so much because your table looks nice. I have already completed 49 (out of ~95) lore-master skills and took care to make them all look the same. I get demoralized by the idea of having to update them all to a new table, or to do 50% with one and 50% with the other table. :P --Ravanel (talk) 06:56, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

Just a quick note, I checked the bleed damage in-game and it's modified by Melee Offense. It's what I expected to be honest, the Hunter and Guardian bleeds are affected by Offense as well. Not much point making a table for it then, as it'll never be "accurate". /Fingolwë (talk) 07:07, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

I edited the Cunning Attack article, let me know what you think. It's how I'd do it personally, since it doesn't seem to be possible to find out the bonus damage values other than by reverse engineering... /Fingolwë (talk) 09:05, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

Thanks both of you for your input!
@Fin: I like looking "behind the scenes" and knowing the numbers and mechanics that go into magically producing the damage amounts that I see on the tooltip. Since almost everything else that calculates damage (things that you listed, like stance, traits, legacies) are known values, it irks me that the bonus for each skill isn't readily available. (Of course, for Cunning Attack, there's no actual bonus, so that whole section is moot anyway.) Naturally, not everyone is that interested in the almost-pointless details, so I know it's a lot of work for little gain, heh.
It's entirely possible that I misunderstand the calculations that go into deducing the bonus damage; if you say it's flat out impossible (and you have more experience with this stuff than I do), it makes me second guess what I've learned about it. Will have to do more research and experimenting on my own, I guess. In the meantime, I'll defer to your knowledge and leave the damage issues in the background for now.
@Rav: I know you've been hard at work on skills, so that's why I wanted to check this with you! I feel really bad about proposing a change when you've already done so many of the LM pages, but that long narrow table of power costs just bothered me so much, hahah. I will try to see about the hybrid version you suggested, and experiment with a few other ideas.
Don't worry, I won't start tearing apart your work until you approve! :) Sethladan 12:12, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

Go ahead, go tear my work apart. As long as you change all 49 Lore-master skill pages with that new scrollable table for me, it's fine with me! :-D Looking forward to the results of experimenting. Although perhaps your initial proposal will look the best after all. We will see. : ) --Ravanel (talk) 12:36, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

Update: the new skill values table Sethladan proposed is now in use! It is found at Boilerplate:Skill. --Ravanel (talk) 09:11, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

Staff Icon Consolidation

Rogue, you're not going to like this, but I found a mistake in Category talk:Staff Icons. There are two different icons under "Style 1". The picture of the staff looks the same on first sight, but if you look closer, you'll see that the left side of the staff sometimes reaches the edge, and sometimes not. Both these very close, but still different icons exist in-game in all quality versions. I'm not sure how to solve the problem, since there's already a Type 2 and it's probably a lot of work to change them all again. This depends of course on how many pages have been fixed in the category, too. I'll leave this upto you, since it's your baby. For now I've uploaded one icon as File:Staff 1b (rare)-icon.png. The other icons of Style 1 should be sorted out in one way or another. --Ravanel (talk) 10:58, 28 August 2011 (EDT)

OK, I've fixed it in the way with "1b" (as we talked about) for now, with the icons that were available on the wiki. The page is still a mess with (quality) and (quality 1) used inconsistently for icons with and without glow, but at least there is a generic icon available for both small icon variations now. Cleaning up that talk page I'll leave up to someone else, as effect icons are enough of a job 'an sich'. ;-) --Ravanel (talk) 08:15, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

Sorry about being fairly MIA recently, I was in and out of my house all summer. This conversation isn't too old, though. When I was working on the weapon icons, I wanted to ask someone for a second opinion on a couple of things, and the glow issue was one of them. Do you think that an icon with a glow should get a separate number, like Staff 1 (uncommon) [has glow] and Staff 2 (uncommon) [no glow] as opposed to Staff 1 (uncommon) [no glow] and Staff 1 (uncommon 1) [has glow]? Problem is that icons for jewelry seem to be the only types that have rare and incomparable quality icons with no glow. I apologize, btw, I thought I had at least been consistent with the way it is now, I'll go and see if I do something about that. One problem with this issue is that Lorebook icons all have glow, regardless of whether the in-game icon does or not. Which doesn't make sense to me, since you'd think they'd have all the images that they use in game at their disposal, but I digress. I'll try to hop on IRC as soon as I get back home in a couple days (still traveling) and try to catch up. Anything else I've messed up on and need to fix? ;) Rubyctook (talk) 21:54, 3 September 2011 (EDT)

Haha, sorry, for some reason I was under the impression that Rogue had been busy with those and not you, sorry. Otherwise I'd have let you a note. First, I don't really care much about weapon icon consolidation so feel free to do with it what you want and ignore me. The thing I noticed at first and which I sort of fixed (I still need to do 2 icons if I want to keep it consistent) was another thing. But I did notice that the icons are a bit inconsistent. If you look at the icons, sometimes Staff <number> (uncommon 1) is the one with glow and Staff <number> (common) the one without, and sometimes it's the other way around. I was just thinking that it might be nice to keep a system, so that you can tell from the name only already whether they have a glow or not.

As far as I've heard, glow means Bind on Acquire (BoA) and no glow means Bind on Equip (BoE). Isn't Lorebook a bad resource for icons? I always understood they are pretty sloppy with icons. At least, they don't always give them the properly coloured background depending on quality. Anyway.

Problem is what to name them. Giving them a separate number would mean a different style and then you'd have to change a lot of pages. Also, they're sort of the same qua icon, so it would be a bit weird to give them a different style number. Your solution with (uncommon) and (uncommon 1) works, the only thing you could change is keeping it consistent. Then I'd propose you'd use (uncommon) for the ones with glow, simply because there are more of them. If you're not happy yourself about (uncommon) and (uncommon 1) you can always look for another solution:

Staff 1 (uncommon) vs Staff 1 (uncommon) (no glow)

Staff 1 (uncommon) vs Staff 1 (uncommon) (boe) / Staff 1 (uncommon) (BoE)

From these names you'd understand right away from reading what the difference is. But "Uncommon 1" works too, and I leave it entirely upto you if you want to change anything or not. Just had the thought that they could be a bit more consistent.

Finally, I hope you had a nice holiday! Don't hurry, those icons will still be there when you get home. :) And feel free to hop into IRC of course if you have time again. --Ravanel (talk) 04:24, 4 September 2011 (EDT)

Rogue was the one who started the system, so no worries. Hah, Lorebook is a terrible resource for icons. I think I'll implement those changes you suggested; originally I was trying to make the icon that seemed more prevalent "uncommon" and the one less so "uncommon 1", but I think consistency with naming is a better idea, yes. I'm not sure about the BoE/BoA thing, because some quest rewards for low levels have icons with no glow, and aren't all quest reward items BoA? It might be true for uncommon items, though. Hmmmm. I might change it to something like "Staff 1 (uncommon) (no glow)", I'll think on it. I wasn't really happy putting a number in, but I couldn't think of anything else at the time. Thanks for the input! Rubyctook (talk) 12:43, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

Cool to hear you're working on it! Staff 1 (uncommon) (no glow) sounds fine indeed. Good luck on the project! :) --Ravanel (talk) 13:02, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

Especially for you... (and other Lore Masters) :)

This is a temporary image... mostly because it's Cute... I assume Turbine will "update" the icon...

~~File:Improved_Sign_of_the_Wild-_Rage.png‎~~

Although, I've been told that he lives in a cave near OD. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk).

Hahahaha! That's *awesome*! Thanks for posting this. It was the first thing I saw after breakfast and it really made me laugh. :D --Ravanel (talk) 06:45, 5 September 2011 (EDT)

Back to the Moors

Those of you who have been working Ettenmoors pages, please take a look at User:Magill/Sandbox-7, and User_talk:Magill#Back_to_the_moors Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:02, 11 September 2011 (EDT)

See Talk:Lotro-Wiki Contributors' Corner#Back_to_the_Moors. --Ravanel (talk) 09:11, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

Creature abilities

It would be great if you could add |25px to the effect icons on creature pages. That way they don't show up so big and demanding. :) --Ravanel (talk) 07:16, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

Sure thing. -- Starbursty (talk) 07:36, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

Category:Umukh-ghâr Creatures

Didn't we agree to *not* make creature categories sorted by landmarks? (See conversation above: User talk:Starbursty#Creature subcategories.) Or is this a dungeon? --Ravanel (talk) 08:17, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

Ah yes, I knew I was forgetting something. Sure why not. I'll hold off on making mobs for a while until someone else wants to do them. -- Starbursty (talk) 08:19, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

Request on behalf of the Cures of the House of Healing

Without Healer trait (had to remove it :P )

Tend the Sick: Removes up to 3 disease effects with maximum strength of 65 from target. +2,435 Disease Resist Rating. Cost: 36 Power
Leechcraft: Removes up to 3 wound effects with maximum strength of 65 from target. +2,435 Wound Resist Rating. Cost: 20 Power

Rogue (talk) 13:02, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

Audaghaim

On my machines at home the picture looks really nice, but today I saw what you mean: It's far too dark. I can brighten it a little bit, but I need someone (you :p) to check if the new picture is better than the old one. I'll contact you somewhat around this evening. --EoD (talk) 08:39, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

It might be better to upload a new picture, taken when Mirkwood has a better mood/at day. Changing around brightness/contrast usually results in loss of image quality. But I'm of course available to check your new version out on my computer, when the time is there. :) --Ravanel (talk) 09:11, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

Unified skills

You are the master of unified skill pages, feel free to adjust the new Quick Shot and the new Split Shot page! If you don't all new Hunter skills will look like those. :p --EoD (talk) 16:41, 27 September 2011 (EDT)

Ugly colours

One-handed Weapons (Level 42-65) Index, what do you say? --EoD (talk) 22:21, 11 October 2011 (EDT)

That is what I prefer. I realize it looks basically like it used to and it's really old-fashioned to have such a boring page without flashing colours to read. But those indexes made me wish I had sunglasses. :P

I like {{Reward}} though. I guess I just had to get used to the idea. Sorry for all the trouble. --Ravanel (talk) 03:57, 12 October 2011 (EDT)

Benediction of the Raven

~~File:Benediction of the Raven Example.jpg~~
If you have spare time between yelling at EoD and yelling at Amphoras today... what needs to be changed on the skill template here? :) Sethladan 23:52, 11 October 2011 (EDT)

Yelling at? Did I do something wrong? :(

I was planning on doing that myself, but if you have time for that, that's even better, since you have a clear overview of the template. What needs to be added is easiest explained by a picture (see to the right), compared with the current Benediction of the Raven skill. As you can see the new text needs to end up after the power cost, but before the cooldown, in two different colours.

Note from a Lore-master's point of view: this 15% miss chance actually is the already existing effect Dizzy, which used to come from auto-attacks. I haven't tested in-game yet, but if they changed it from the auto-attacks to skill-only that is a nerf (sigh). That would also mean there's no reason not to use Benediction of the Raven any time you can if you have your Raven summoned. --Ravanel (talk) 04:13, 12 October 2011 (EDT)

Update: Dizzy is still caused by auto-attacks. Why they added this message to a skill that applies a buff and does not deal damage (and thus actually cannot crit or devastate and thus add Dizzy) is a mystery. --Ravanel (talk) 07:11, 14 December 2011 (EST)

Improved Sign of the Wild: Rage (Effect)

It looks....tiny. I clicked on the link to the skill and the link turned so dark purple that it blended with the black background. The link was barely readable after that. It looked like it only has a tiny icon and green text only. Hehe~ (default Chrome) -- Starbursty (talk) 06:48, 12 October 2011 (EDT)

Yeah, seems like something broke the Effect template recently. See Template talk:Effect. --Ravanel (talk) 06:50, 12 October 2011 (EDT)

LM Skills Tables

In your super-duper tables of the LM skills that are missing some values, the "Level acquired" column is not completely correct. For example, at level 12 I don't yet have Cracked Earth or Light of the Rising Dawn. Any chance you could update it, so I don't get any more confused than is strictly necessary? I could do it myself, but I'd feel weird editing in somebody else's sandbox. --Elinnea (talk) 22:02, 17 October 2011 (EDT)

Oh nooooooes.... my super-duper tables... incorrect...! *pulls hair out* :P Fixed it, as well as some RoI updates that weren't there yet. Feel free to change if you find something like that again, I really don't mind if you correct my Sandbox. Thanks for the catch! (And thanks even more for working on gathering the data!) :) --Ravanel (talk) 03:14, 18 October 2011 (EDT)

~

How about Sign of Power: Command? It also has a Parry rating stat. Or is that one different? At level 15 it has the same value as Sign of the Wild: Protection, if that means anything. -- Elinnea (talk) 11:16, 2 November 2011 (EDT)

That is a *really* good point! I had not come around to perfecting that skill page (only did the quick cosmetic changes), but it seems the parry rating is indeed shared with Sign of the Wild: Protection. Looking through my collection of screenshots, I found it also has the same parry rating at level 65 for both skills. That counts as enough evidence for me. --Ravanel (talk) 11:22, 2 November 2011 (EDT)

~

LVL 56 .. Finally !!! User:Magill/Sandbox-LM ... What I would like is a way to transclude your "Gathering Information" sections... when I "{{User:Ravanel/Sandbox2}}" I only get the tables and commentary, not the instructions. ... and naturally, when I started to add the lvl 56, I noticed the Sign of Power Command entries you had added to 55! Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 01:59, 23 December 2011 (EST)

Congratulations on level 56! Some skill values have changed with update 5 and I've updated my table accordingly. Transclusion <3. I posted that table on the talk pages of several Lore-master-owners and wanted it to automatically update there. I did not want to pollute their talk pages with gathering directions, though. So I've just added those manually to your Sandbox instead. I will see to updating important changes to them in your Sandbox as well. Thanks a lot for helping to collect the data! --Ravanel (talk) 08:45, 23 December 2011 (EST)

Cleaning up unused images

yeah, you can remove it, I want to put another image

thanks, I couldn't upload an image, it says it hasn't have MIME type

Oglamir (talk) 16:53, 19 October 2011 (EDT)

Autumn Festival

Hey, the Autumn Festival started in October 19th and finishes in November 7th. All quest and stuff are the same as all years, but they added 4 more clothes: Gown of the Autumn Nights, Tunic of Autumn Nights, Cloak of Autumn Nights and Wrap of Turning Leaves

[[1]] [[2]] [[3]] [[4]]

They added an option to get scrolls and change them for tokens too.

Oglamir (talk) 19:49, 20 October 2011 (EDT)

Mark of the West

Heya,
I actually put that stub/expansion there as I assumed that stats of both the set and the armour itself is outdated. Does it still containt "+780 Poison Resist Rating" and stuff? Arrow of the West had quite some major changes (not only resistance stuff) to the set. --EoD (talk) 10:26, 21 October 2011 (EDT)

I will give it a second check in-game. --Ravanel (talk) 11:49, 21 October 2011 (EDT)

Thanks :) --EoD (talk) 12:50, 21 October 2011 (EDT)

Random

Last chance to drop a (random?) comment on the Sidebar talk :p --EoD (talk) 21:08, 25 October 2011 (EDT)

More random stuff: Try the new editor :) --EoD (talk) 23:34, 8 November 2011 (EST)

Erm, isn't that the same editor as we're already using on the lotro-wiki per default? (And which I btw don't ever use the buttons of and am thinking of disabling it if I can find out how, because they show more space between the lines than there actually is and thus look worse.) --Ravanel (talk) 06:46, 9 November 2011 (EST)

Erm, not really. Have a closer look at the buttons. --EoD (talk) 07:38, 9 November 2011 (EST)

I thought I had a closer look... please just tell me. :P --Ravanel (talk) 07:39, 9 November 2011 (EST)

Rav, you can disable the new editor in your preferences. Not sure what it says in Dutch, but for me it's under Editing -> Beta features -> uncheck the "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" (first box). Sethladan 12:44, 9 November 2011 (EST)

Beta

You removed the beta tag of that image. Is there really a rabbit ingame now? :D --EoD (talk) 15:54, 31 October 2011 (EDT)

Improved Sign of the Wild: Rage! : )

I will delete those example pages when it's time to archive this user talk page. --Ravanel (talk) 08:57, 1 November 2011 (EDT)

Awesome that they kept the rabbit :D --EoD (talk) 12:19, 1 November 2011 (EDT)

Effect Icons

I just wanted to come tell you how much I adore the generic Skill Effect Icons. That is all. :) -Adelas (talk) 19:00, 31 October 2011 (EDT)

Thank you kindly. I will redirect the compliment to Fingolwë as well! Perhaps the way they are called can be of some use to the item icon naming issue (e.g. only new styles if the icon truly looks different, other differences all between brackets, especially now when different gem colours are introduced to the icons). Good luck! --Ravanel (talk) 10:41, 1 November 2011 (EDT)

Phew... Category:Location Images

To you and Ravanel ... Today seems to overlap with what you folks are currently doing. Talk about getting sidetracked ... Started out adding the missing quests in Dunland Carreglyn...

Category:Location Images is now empty. All of the "top level" images have been moved to a Random (Arbitrary) subcategory :)

All of the "Festival" items are actually moved to Category:Event Images -- I started out creating ~~Category:Festival Location Images~~. Until I stumbled on the Category:Event Images, which contained both specific evens as well as images of things like theater. There may be others from Bree, Torins, etc. but they were left where they were. The event image locations are (I think) all from Frostbluff. ... so toss a coin as to what they get called.

I also noticed that there are several categories which are apparently obsolete -- under Category:Settlements - Category:Cities, Category:Towns and Category:Villages.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 23:41, 5 November 2011 (EDT)

You cleaned up the whole of Category:Location Images?! That's amazing! I've been cleaning up a bit now and then, and I know how much work it is. Really awesome work... can I also set you loose on creature categories? :P :P

I've deleted The Festival Location Images category, looks to me they're fine where they are now indeed. Only if categories become too big we can think about creating others. What they all look like is a major improvement to ALL images being in the same category.

As to the Cities, Towns and Villages categories, I agree they look a bit out of place and half-used. I will leave what to do about them to Zimoon, since he's been busy with Location categories intensively.

--Ravanel (talk) 06:14, 6 November 2011 (EST)

Scholar item

Hey. I think something is wrong with the "This item is used by" of Item:Long-lost Second Age Text. One link goes to a dead category e.g.. I didn't dare to touch it any further :) --EoD (talk) 20:06, 10 December 2011 (EST)

I will look into this one of these days, if I don't forget. --Ravanel (talk) 07:18, 14 December 2011 (EST)

OK, I have taken care of the weird links now. I have no idea if I did it correctly according to the item freaks, but at least the page is accurate now as it is. Feel free to change anything if you feel it should be done differently. --Ravanel (talk) 13:12, 14 December 2011 (EST)

Armour set items

Hey Goingbald. I noticed you updated the barter format on armour set items, nice. I was wondering if there would be a way to do so without removing the link to the set's name. I know it can be found somewhere in the tooltip to the right, but I think it's far neater and clearer to show it in the normal text as well. Let me hear what you think. --Ravanel (talk) 05:47, 10 December 2011 (EST)

OK, I tried to add automatically a Set Information section from Template:Item Tooltip but didn't succeed, at best the section is also repeated when using the Reward template, I couldn't figure how to have it showing only on the item page but not when using Reward... Any other idea? --Goingbald (talk) 13:06, 11 December 2011 (EST)

Erm, sorry. I don't really understand what you mean. --Ravanel (talk) 06:20, 12 December 2011 (EST)

Amphoras explained it to me now. A neat idea. Hope you get it to work, and am happy you don't think set information is just unimportant or something. ^^ --Ravanel (talk) 06:41, 12 December 2011 (EST)

Chat room MOTD

The URL posted as the MOTD in the IRC chatroom is not generally available. It requires some kind of account.

See User:Magill#The_Hobbit for alternatives... Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 21:39, 23 December 2011 (EST)

Oh, that's weird. Warner Bros must've changed the settings. I've updated the topic with a link that should work for everyone now, thanks for the catch! --Ravanel (talk) 06:01, 24 December 2011 (EST)

User talk:Ravanel/Archive 2011