My Journey to Gold

Thinking back over the past year, I have by far played League of Legends the most.  My first real "commitment" to the game started after the Season 7 World Championship but even then I only played in unranked games.  This was because the League of Legends, or LoL as it's affectionately called, has such a vast amount of content that I knew next to nothing.  And I also am quick to admit that my reflexes aren't that great - part of this is due to my age (I'm over 50 years old) while most of it is due to the fact that I'm just not great at gaming in general.

Still, when season 9 started I decided to commit to playing ranked and quickly got frustrated with it.  Even though I'm not a great player, I knew I was better than the Iron tier but had extreme difficulty getting out of it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with LoL, its ranking system is based on groupings (Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc.; this is my term) and then tiers within each category (IV to I, with the latter being the highest in any given category).  In order to advance from one tier to another and then from one grouping to the next you have to win a series of games.  Each win grants you a number of League Points (LP) while each loss deducts LP.  The exact amount added or subtracted is calculated based on a number of factors within that specific game.  When you are at 100 LP you enter promos (promotion games), where you need to win 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 5 depending on whether you are being promoted within the grouping or if you're moving to a new grouping entirely.  At the beginning of each season, each person has to play 10 ranked games to get an initial ranking which is calculated on a variety of factors during those 10 games as well as taking your previous season finish into account.

My younger brother and his friends have been playing LoL for some time and are quite good at it.  And, as gamers often do, they were quick to deride my playstyle as being hard stuck Bronze meaning I was not good enough to ever get out of the Bronze group.  This was as much a gamer jab as it was a direct insult, and for most of season 9 I simply accepted this as truth.

But toward the end of the season (which run from roughly mid-January until a week after the World Championship in mid-November), I decided to make a concerted push to get to Silver.  I am better than Bronze!  I am good at my role!  And so I did the grind, along with someone I met in game who played ranked with me, and eventually I finished the season at Silver IV.  Mission accomplished!

On Tuesday of this week, preseason for season 10 began.  At the beginning of each season, Riot Games rolls out several changes to the game and this season was no exception.  Now is the time to start familiarizing myself with the changes before the season officially starts.  Along the way, I will be documenting what has been happening as I make my push for Gold this season.  And since realistic goals were never "my thing," I'm actually going to strive for Platinum, which is the next grouping after Gold.

Will I make either?  Who knows.  But I'm going to give it my best shot playing my best champions in whatever role I feel inclined to play (top laner, mid laner, attack damage carry [or ADC], support or the master shot-caller, the jungler, who is like a floater that watches the ebb and flow of the game and alerts the teammates about enemy movements, objectives that are vulnerable, and who also jumps in any lane to support their teammate by applying pressure to the enemy team, something called ganking).

Currently, I main jungler, meaning that's the role I play most often.  In that role, I'm proficient in a number of champions, but I prefer to play any of the following four:  Warwick, who specializes in burst damage; Jax, who normally capitalizes on his attack speed to "split push" at take objectives in areas of the map where the enemy team isn't; Vi, a tank-bruiser who specializes in ganking enemy lanes and disabling champs with a charged attack; and Jarvan IV, who utilizes his gap-closer combination to gank enemies to allow your team to push for objectives.

Come back weekly to see how I've progressed (or not) toward my goal along with commentary about specific games, challenges I see in the group of players at my skill level, challenges I have had, etc.

A Questor's Guide to Mordor

Mordor. For years, the LOTRO community has been wondering what would happen after Mirkwood, then Isengard, then Rohan, and then Gondor. What would Mordor look like? How would the epic storyline work?

All of these questions and more were answered when the Mordor expansion was released in mid-2017. And as those who pre-ordered it - it wasn't available in the ingame story for LOTRO Points until much later - started exploring the regions, they found a few surprises:

All new gear is needed. All of the gear you worked so hard to get in Dagorlad and the Wastes was useless the moment you achieved level 106 due to the way stat percentages are calculated from the absolute numbers displayed in the Character panel.

Ever-present debuffs due to the landscape. Shadow of Mordor, which is eerily similar to the old radiance system, is brutal.

The grind for ash. Gorgoroth Ash is king but getting ash is far from a quick process and can be outright tedious in the beginning.

Four completely new reputation factions. Allegiances are confusing because while they originally had a purpose they no longer seem to have any usefulness.

We'll examine all of these in the rest of this article.

Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor is essentially a debuff that exists in much of Mordor and varies in intensity by location. To offset its effects, you acquire gear with Light of Elendil ("LOE") on it. If your LOE is greater than the Shadow in your location then no debuffing occurs. But if the Shadow is greater then you subtract from it your LOE value and then round up the result to the nearest multiple of 10. That becomes the percentage increase in incoming damage; percentage decrease in incoming healing; and percentage decrease in outgoing damage during fights.

Think about that for a second: if you're in an area where the effective shaow (i.e. the shadow for the area minus your LOE) is -44, then you are hit with an extra 50% incoming damage while simultaneously doing 50% less damage to mobs with your attacks. And you can't be healed as effectively either.

Stats to Percentages

To top this off, the formulas that are used to calculate, for example, the critical chance percent based on your critical chance value change dramatically starting at level 106. If you want to pour over the math that's used in the formulas, feel free to read this Wiki page. But to put it into perspective, where critical chance was capped (25%) at approximately 17,600 at 105, to get it at the cap at 115 you need 71,000 for that stat.

Gear

Gear that you acquire from quest rewards will help offset some of this.  In Mordor, it's not uncommon to see people with stats that were previously thought to be impossible.  Hunters with over 130K physical mastery while also having 100,000 finesse; captains with over 100,000 morale; etc. are frequently spotted.  But quest rewards will only take you so far.  To get to these types of stats, you'll need gear that you either craft yourself starting at 115 or that you barter for starting at 112.  The barter currency in Mordor is Gorgoroth Ash, and the only way to get it is to decon gear you've gotten for quest rewards that have been replaced with better gear; or as a reward for opening a Gorgoth Steel-bound Lootbox.  (See more on lootboxes, below.)

There are several tiers of gear that you can get starting at 112.  Some tiers have two sets depending on whether you want offensive or defensive gear.  These tiers are listed below.  The first three sets can be bartered for at the High Enchanter Elf Smith in 3 of the 4 main hubs (Udun Foothold; Ruins of Dingarth; and Magh Ashtu).

Towers and Last Alliance sets.  These cost 70 ash per armor piece; 60 ash per jewelry piece, but you may have a minimum level of 112 to equip them.

Expedition Vanguard Rare and Mordor's Bane Rare sets.  These cost 140 ash per armor piece; 110 ash per jewelry piece, but require you to be 115 to equip them.

Expedition Vanguard Incomparable and Mordor's Bane Incomparable sets.  These cost 420 ash per armor piece; 330 ash per jewelry piece, and also require you to equip them.

The fourth set is simply labelled Incomparable and may be bartered for at the Keeper of Mysteries in any of the Mordor hubs.  Each armor piece costs 1,750 ash, and there are two items for each armor piece each with different stats. There is no jewelry at this tier, but if you have this you probably already have a full set of Expedition Vanguard Incomparable jewelry.

There are two types of crafted gear.  Both sets require you to be level 115, and the recipies for each set are bartered for at the Quartermaster in each of the Mordor hubs using Silver Signets of the Thandrim, which are the currency that you get for completing the Mordor quests.  The better of the two sets require a Fragment of Gorgoroth Dungeons, which can drop from any of the Mordor instances or a Gorgoroth Steel-bound Lootbox.

The final two sets are found at the Quartermaster in the Allegiance Halls.  The first set of armor and jewelry only require you to be 112 and are bartered for using Tokens of Service, which you get by advancing in allegiance reputation:  armor and jewelry both cost 25 tokens per piece.  The second set requires you to be at 115 and are bartered for using Preserved Relics of the Last Alliance, which are the reputation items you get from completing certain landscape quests, deeds, or doing Mordor Daily quests.  Each armor piece will cost you 65 relics while the jewelry pieces will cost you 50 relics.

Some of these sets are intentionally missing pieces.  The Expedition Vanguard / Mordor's Bane Incomparable sets are missing the chest piece and leggings, for example.  These pieces may be found elsewhere such as in the instances or Gorgoroth Steel-bound Lootboxes.

Finally, a number of gear pieces are slotted.  Just like there are multiple tiers of gear, there are multiple tiers of essences.  Some will drop from landscape mobs, but the majority of them will be found in Gorgoroth Steel-bound lootboxes.  Additionally, you may craft them although some recipes are single use.

Instances/Raid

Not unlike other instances or raids (but not always required either), the only pre-requisite for running the 3-man Court of Seregost; 6-man Dungeons of Naerband; or 12-man The Abyss of Mordath is that you have discovered the entrance to the one you wish to join or lead.

In order of difficulty for the discovery and not the run itself...

• The Abyss of Mordath is in Barad Dur (47.3S, 26.5E) but that's the entrance to Barad Dur.  The entrance to the raid is at the bottom of the interior, for which LOTRO does not provide coordinates.
• The Dungeons of Naerband is in Talath Urei (61.9S, 19.7E).  It's the exit of a tunnel, so it should be fairly obvious.
• The Court of Seregost is in Agarnaith (49.0S, 32.9E).  There's a watcher stone here, so it's not obvious, but that's the discovery location.

Allegiances

Allegiances are identical to reputation factions with 3 exceptions:

1. Allegiance quests are most often started in that faction's Allegiance Hall.  (There are one or two that don't, but those are rare.)  To get to the Allegiance Hall, you need to have done the first quest - started just inside the Black Gate - that rewards you with a port to that hall.
2. There are 30 reputation levels within each allegiance simply number 1 through 30 instead of the usual Known, Friend, Ally, and Kindred.
3. The amount of reputation required to advance increases in the order that you joined the allegiance.  In other words, to advance in the second allegiance you join it will cost more reputation than the first.  To advance in the third, it will cost more reputation than the second.  Etc.

When the first update after Mordor was released was poured over by the masses, people discovered that the allegiance gear was not as good as the incomparable set that you get at the High Enchanter.  This puzzled people since it seemed that the original purpose of the allegiances was to get the gear, which was now obsolete.

However, the Allegiance Hall ports are valuable as you can instantly port out to Magh Ashtu.  Since that is the central hub in Mordor from Bree, Galtrev, etc. it allows quick access to anywhere in the game.  Additionally, of all of the quests that you can do for the Mordor Dailies, the ones that you acquire in the Allegiance Halls are the easiest to complete, so don't completely write-off the allegiances.

Gorgoroth Ash

Since ash is the currency used to get the best gear currently in-game, let's look at acquiring it.  There are 4 tiers of gear quality in Mordor:  green, purple, teal, and gold.  Each of these quality levels yield more ash as the level increase from green to gold, and sometimes the amount changes based on where you acquired the gear.  Generally speaking, gear that you get as quest rewards will not reduce to as much ash as gear that you get from running one of the instances.

Ash may also be acquired from Gorgoroth Steel-bound lootboxes, which may be opened only with Black Steel Keys. You can only get these by completing certain meta-deeds (which are unbound) or by bartering 3 key slivers after doing an appropriate amount of dailies (which are bound to account).  Obviously, you can also buy these keys in the store if you are so inclined.

Mordor Dailies

Contrary to what /world will tell you, unlocking the daily quests in Mordor do not require you to do every quest in Mordor.  Instead there are eight quest chains that you need to complete.  To be fair, these represent a substantial portion of the quests in Mordor.  But if you do only the minimum number of quests to complete the chains then you can also avoid a substantial portion of the quests, allowing you to start doing the dailies sooner; getting Black Steel Keys sooner; and ultimately getting ash sooner.

The eight quest chains are:

1. The entire Black Book of Mordor, i.e. you need to complete Chapter 4.4:  Union of Evil.
2. A Solemn Gathering (Udun)
3. What was Spoken and What was Revealed (Udun)
4. Into the Abyss (Dor Amarth)
5. Aiglos (Dor Amarth)
6. Eyes in the Dark (Lhingris)
7. Under the Fires of Orodruin (Talath Urei)
8. The Secrets of Seregost (Agarnaith)

Of all of these, the single chain in Talath Urei is the longest by far and will have the highest probability of needing assistance from a kinmate or friend.  To complete these, I highly recommend looking up each quest in the LOTRO Wiki (each item in the list above has a link to the corresponding Wiki page) and doing only the quests at the leftmost indentation level unless you are required to do the next indentation level for a quest in the chain.

Once you've completed these, the next time you login you'll get an auto-bestowed quest called Continue the Conquest.  After accepting this, you'll get a set of 2 regions in Mordor.  You'll need to complete 4 quests in either or both of these regions to complete the daily and get the reward, which is 2,000 allegiance rep.  The quests for these regions can be found on bulletin boards at each hub. (In Agarnaith, the board is at the Ranger Camp; for Lhingris, you go to the Ruins of Dingarth.)  Additionally, each Allegiance Hall has a single quest, called the Daily Request, that also takes place in one of the 2 regions.  Completing this quest gives an additional 2,000 allegiance rep.

Here's the secret to doing dailies:  if you grab all 4 Daily Requests, you'll not only compete 4 quests in the 2 regions which yields 2,000 allegiance rep for completing the daily, but you'll also get another 2,000 allegiance rep for each of the Daily Request quests for a total of 10,000 allegiance rep per day.  Doing this will greatly accelerate your path to achieving the maximum rep level with each allegiance.