Under the Banner

The following is a summary of the developer notes for Monday, May 14th.

• Petition for more clothes!
• Female Dwarves
• Can I use a LOTRO game card on DDO?
• Bug: Implements of the Hunt - Putrid Fingernails
• Lorebook Introduction
• Privacy issue with Kinships
• The Tome of Swords

Petition for more clothes!
There’s a petition asking for more clothing options within the game. Maybe a nice set of clothes to hang out in after a long day of adventuring through Middle Earth.

Floon had this to say.

Clothes are on our list. We’ll get more clothes in, it’s just a matter of when.

Later when asked about having variations based upon the ingredients added while crafting, he responded.

There are hundreds of weapons in the game. Each is hand-built by an artist. To do that x20 per weapon would consume our entire art team for far too long. And when you’re talking about a weapon that, most of the time, is only a few pixels on-screen, such that it’s difficult to tell two different swords apart unless they are extremely near the camera, it’s hard to justify putting so much work into that amount of variety.

New weapons are being added, but the sort of variety you suggest is beyond our ability right now.

Female Dwarves
Kianna82 is dismayed that there isn’t an option to be a female dwarf in the game and tells Turbine that they should have created a female dwarf avatar. While it’s a topic that’s been discussed before, what’s rather interesting is floon’s response.

I rather think that you would be the surprised one. Data on this sort of thing is available, and female dwarves are among the least-chosen character race/gender combinations there is, for every game that offers them. That, in combination with the fact that female dwarves are indistinguishable from male dwarves in appearance, and that there are no female dwarves referenced anywhere in the main text of LotR, made it an easy choice to not do an avatar’s worth of art for female dwarves.

That dwarves are not called out as male during chargen is a deliberate nod in this direction.

Can I use a LOTRO game card on DDO?
Had a DDO game card you wanted to use for LOTRO? Here is the official answer per Zodiac.

Just want to confirm that, no, you cann’t use a LOTRO game card on a DDO subscription, or vice versa.

Bug: Implements of the Hunt - Putrid Fingernails
Fingernails? Much less putrid fingernails? Ewww…

As disgusting as this may sound, there is a quest in the game for these. Sithgear reports that Putrid Fingernails are not dropping from the hands in Imlad Barchath.

Devs, please tell the hands to stop taking baths so when we kill them their fingernails are putrid and they fall off for us to loot.

MadeOfLions responds.

Sithgear, the hands have been told and the fingernails should be just putrid enough when Evendim is released. Sorry for the wait!

When asked if Medallion of Passage and Putrid Slime of Helchgam were going to drop, MadeOfLions replies.

You should be able to hunt for both the Putrid Slime of Helchgam and the Medallion of Passage now, because they’re not ‘quest items’ — they don’t require being on that stage of the quest for them to drop.

For all of the ‘Implements’ and ‘Articles’ quests, the first collection requires ‘quest items’ (meaning you need to get them personally, and they won’t drop unless you’re on that step of the quest), while the second and third collections are ‘trophy drops’ (meaning that they live in the loot profiles of the monsters in question, and can be freely traded/sold/whatever).

So that’s some good news, anyway!

Lorebook Introduction
Aylwyne provides another update on the Lorebook.

Based on a lot of the feedback we’ve seen, we’ve added item categorization / listing as one of the big things we’re looking into for one of the future updates to the lorebook.

Right now, we’re just using the built-in Mediawiki categorization tags. What we’d like to add are customized category pages that allow things like listing recipes by tier, armor by armor value, etc.

Of course, our number one priority is still getting the systems in place for opening the lorebook to community editing. By doing this, it will allow the community to fill in some of the gaps while we work on the bigger updates.

Privacy Issue with Kinships
This one is rather disturbing as a player reports kinship applications requiring account username and password. Saffron reiterates the warning to never give out personal information.

Never give out personal information…especially your username and password (Just for the record, Turbine will never ask for your password).

These things are private and attached to your credit card. It is not prudent in a world with ID theft and credit card fraud.

The Tome of Swords
When asked if the last 4 pages from The Tome of Swords are in the game, MadeOfLion responds.

From my data, it looks like these pages are dropping from Level 41-42 Snowreap goblins in the Misty Mountains. You’ve already gotten the book and spoken with Gimli?