LOTRO Players News Episode 655: Squirmish

0:00. Welcome everyone, this is Pallip Needles and you're listening to Locio Player's News where we take a look at Laces and Nitro and hear Locio Player's. And this week I'm joined by Krister! Hello! And Scinders! Hello! Hello everyone! And welcome to the last episode for February 2026!

1:00Where we're we're first going to have a little look at the last borrower for this test cycle. Let's see what they were doing this week as they were getting they prepared for the raid. First off, in the patch notes they were doing some tweaking of course to the upcoming raid. We won't discuss that since that's Raid's not in the game yet. But things of note is that they did have everything and they're ready for season 17 of the legendary item reward track so that means that when this update goes live we'll be starting season 17. Now if you look at the countdown or it looks like that's going to be sometimes next week so I'm going to assume then that most likely update 47 is going to go live next week unless

2:00something spectacularly bad happens. In addition to this there will be five new missions and delvings that have been added to out of game and that there will soon be five more that will be added to Kijon. There will be a few more missions than that will be available in the new areas. Now let's go into classes and skills for the burglar, mischievous delight once again once again restores power to your fellowship. For the hunter, explosive decoy now properly explodes more quickly and its ghost does not linger to taunt your enemies. Well it's probably a good thing that it explodes but it is a bummer the ghost doesn't linger to taunt them. Yes and it would be nice to have a little taunting the machine there while we're trying to give it back. For the mariner, having your balance

3:05forcibly reset to neutral now applies a short debuff minus 75% incoming healing plus 10% incoming damage and for a 4 second duration after rather than stunning you because currently you get stunned in this case so it looks like it's replacing it with this debuff instead. Which consider that most of the times where I do have it forcibly reset on me it's because I'm no longer in combat so that 4 second stun was very very annoying at that point. So I could imagine that if it is in the middle combat and there's someone bashing you on the head it is going to be a little bit of a problem. Stumbling forwards mischance penalty has been removed and has been replaced with minus 3% mitigations. For the runkeeper, firing ridicule no longer has an induction and it can no longer

4:09target multiple enemies with the max rank of configuration of runes. All right so it is faster to cast than but it's only going to hit one target even if you are it max traded on it all right. Yeah that sounds like it's less than no. Well it probably depends on what you or how you are using it. I mean for some it's probably a major nerf for others it might be a buff because if you're able to get it off instantaneously. Yeah maybe I guess you can cycle through enemies really quick and they had a bunch of short order. I suppose that we could get some

5:11response from red line runkeepers to give their opinions on that. I tend to play yellow line on my runkeepers or yellow line or blue line. I don't really play red so I don't use fire ridicule all that much. I often use it as a starter in which case if I'm using it as a starter maybe I don't want it to hit multiple targets. I don't want to pull everybody off the tank at all at once. Yeah you've got to get a point. For quest deeds and adventure areas it is now easier to swap from your fishing rod to your weapon before combat begins when running the Hootfold Daily Quest Terror of the Deep. All right I just wish that there was a way to make a possible switch from your fishing rod to your weapon while in combat. I could just imagine someone who's not expecting it.

6:16I mean I guess if you're expecting it then it's probably not going to be a problem but if you aren't expecting it I have a feeling things still go wrong because the person might not realize oh I've never switched my weapon now. I guess we have to see instances and skirmishes for the treasure case of Haru Makhana reduced blade fury flesh rend and poison blade damaged good reduced mountain gold hotspot damage good fixing issue where in certain possibilities would not correctly target the main threat. Poison blades is now correctly classified as a poison. Reduced the number of treasure tornadoes when Barlet's fight on all tiers. All right let's say at least from the at least from my playing it on tier one I will say that's

7:20good because yeah there were just too many tornadoes there and tornadoes of treasure now have a small knockback range to better match the tornado size a smaller knockback range okay as for the fallen palace dark priest this is um bar crani tier three fixed an issue where haunted specter spawning couldn't be inconsistent and they should more reliably start spawning 10 seconds into the phase every 45 seconds after that and after three times per phase increased cooldown of haunting specter shadow claw fourth real the entangler on all tiers pool of madness far zone is no longer avoidable by going to the very edges of the room full of madness far zone is no longer

8:25avoidable you mean that she's trying to get to the farthest person but if you went too far you could avoid it okay if that's what they mean then I will presume then that's that's fair enough rotuco the bloody's a lot of skill no longer has an induction as for UI fix the bug that caused confirmation pop-up windows to not be skilled correctly and carry all bags are now supported by UI scaling carry all bags use the inventory bags UI scaling option to scale their size so those are all the changes for the beta and I'm sure you'll be hearing some of those again next week because we will have update 47 released assuming nothing weirdly weird goes wrong and if that's the case then there will be a full release notes reading

9:29I'm sure Christa is really looking forward to all right please please be sure I guess is what you yeah tonight was reasonable this sounded great oh yeah I feel like something's on the horizon now oh well yes anyway as I as I read in that thing the legendary rewards track is scheduled to go to the next season next week which means that the update is expected next week which is consistent with them announcing that this that was the last four were billed so everything is pointing to there being a release next week barring any major disasters so Christa I guess I guess you're not quite up ready yet to do the raid yet so no no and I I want to be in the position to be ready

10:37so I'm working on that so okay all right so we have to see what we've got here because there's a lot of stuff on the guardian here and that's right I did read senders is a response to that last week a couple weeks ago did I yes yes all right also the name rerant if I'm not mistaken I don't remember any anger involved yes well that's how I'm gonna say it in any case also do we have next week is the next episode of the Rivers of Middle Earth this would be part two of their trip down the Anduin so I think that they were somewhere in the in the in the veils I think is about where they were at the time where they ended last time so maybe they can get down to

11:40the flurry in this time maybe to the great river section we'll have to see how far he's now looks like the most of the tributaries have sort of fed into it so maybe there won't be so many rivers feeding it I know when they get to the last part and going into gondor there will be rivers feeding into it constantly yeah oh actually we do have in La Florian we do have the Nimerdale which feeds into La Florian of course yeah so there are going to be some tributaries and that's it for our game news so let's head into our store sales and centers what's on sale on sale this week you can make your piece of middle earth shine yet 25% off of select housing decorations select housing sets and select cloaks through March 5th and there's the weekly coupon which is a free die a violet die with coupon code very good B E R R Y G O O D also through March 5th

12:48but it's the violet die shire plum colored no no no violet is not even remotely close to shire plum the closest color would be actually red in the game and that's not really the same thing yeah I'm just really far from all right then listen have another look at the reminiscing about where we're back to discussing cloaks it looks like yes what happened this week so this week while we were playing uh low trope I rounded up the guys who were willing to be in the picture uh pine leaf and oscar because we're not was like I don't have a cloak by uh that's only where's his cloaks and well hopefully he has a little more on luxurious prick about making sure you're

13:49covered um and so we pulled out our favorite cloaks and in oscar that is the cloak that his character has um thereby making it the most beautiful cloak so pictured on the left is pine leaf's cloak which is from the four calcets um then osc test his cloak and I'm not sure what set that is from and then I am wearing the o-fords cloak died shire plum of course and it dies beautifully um it's normally kind of a all silver color um but I really like the design on it and yeah mine is also died okay I don't know if yours was died is yours died yeah is mine mine mine I think it's uh seated I it's normally I wear turquoise but it does look a bit green in this picture but I normally I normally I wear turquoise it looks green green green green green yeah it certainly looks green in

14:55that picture it does um hey out so those are our favorite cloaks and we hope that you will post pictures of your favorite cloaks but next week we're moving on to something different what I don't know yet but it's not cloaks well in the next week is is a release notes week so it might be the week after will we move to it fair but I think we're done with the cloaks conversation at this point okay that was a February conversation yes unless you share your cloaks with us at which point they will show up down in the response category but we'll have we'll be doing something different um okay going far away very well then we will march into the weekend gaming Christopher what were you up to this week uh was back to focusing on my inventory uh across all my characters in Lorturo trying to consolidate everything and get rid of everything and I have this fundamental realization that when I spent the first 16 years with a inventory

16:02organization system of chaos and desperation that it's incredibly hard to transform that into a system of order and so I'm struggling with that but slowly but surely but finding uh finding interesting things that I hung on to uh just hanging on to that have no practical use whatsoever so it's been kind of a nostalgic thing I think if you're a pack rat you know when you finally have to go through your boxes and figure out what you throw away even though you haven't opened that box in 10 years you can't throw away anything that box for some reason so it's been hard but I'm determined to do it because I think I can literally free up hundreds of inventory spaces once I get this organization done um and then uh in ESO we had a lot of fun grouping and doing some adventuring um and then in hell divers uh I got to uh get some delicious

17:02revenge and it's just a uh was a uh had had several fun adventures uh cinders what were you up to this week um I spent most of my week in ESO uh starting with pvp in ESO on Sunday morning and we got lots of alliance points and it was really fun because by leave ran with us and by leave does it pvp and I was so proud of finally for pvp um I got the moment I got to have a moment where pvp uh finally was under attack and I came and I saved him isn't that like the best feeling ever it's Julia I'm at my heart I'm a tank so save my teammate by sacrificing myself I did my job and I I think we were still playing that same day and uh uh at one point I was dead says was dead oh no no that was Wednesday um hey out and then Christopher came in and saved the day again so he does it more often than we give him credit for um mostly because we don't want

18:07it to go to a set uh then on Monday I did lunch with the guys um and we squirmished squirmished squirmished squirmished squirmished uh you figure out how to spell it uh we squirmished quote unquote responsibly uh we did not have a full fellowship but Pineleaf did not object so we uh did eerie a mischief and events of the brancing pony uh with do we have four people now I say we had four people um doing six man instances so that was interesting um but nobody important died uh I only died a couple of times uh because brawlers don't really have a heal um and then I spent some time playing eosle with Pineleaf and working on our out of myriad of minion characters on the off-hand chance that pvp is not going to be in dagger fall covenant this time

19:12so um we decided to work on some of the other characters and then we're going to just spend some time working on our ebb and heart pack characters too because they're babies yeah who knows which point they will have to work because the campaign that does that it reset start the month or does it reset uh I believe it's a monthly reset was how it sounded and so they're expecting a new um campaign this next like tomorrow so um now all of our characters are over 15 um even though there's still a pretty big jump between you know 19 and 50 um so aside from having slow horses though I think they'll be just fine and Pineleaf how was your work all right maybe well my warden who fought to save gondor from a song and in ddo I finished my journeys in the Feywild so I'm getting

20:17ready to head out towards the Isle of Dread and at the very end of it I did try out the latest character archetype that they are just releasing in ddo the arcane trickster just going to know it at the beginning now so I don't have too much to say about it I mean it looks interesting so far but we had to see if I'm still saying the same thing after playing it for a couple months and then the nia so there was a helmet that I needed that drops from veteran ships right regret so I thought okay since couple days since yesterday was the was it yesterday or no no couple it was two days so on Thursday I decided to make a request to step run veteran ship rights regret in order to in order to get that helmet and when we were doing

21:18the final boss fight I think the regret part was very very strong that that boss fight because that's the first time I did that dungeon and doing that boss fight in vet was really really oh my goodness gracious is this helmet worth it I was so it's her not feeling really up to it by the time that was over it was really really when we finally were able to get through it but let's just say that it did not give me a good feeling on my record as a healer during that run oh we were oh they were wiping the deck of us well anyways we did match eventually finish it and I got the shiny helmet as result of that and that includes my week in gaming if you have any feedback like comments about our

22:24cloaks or anything like that then you could send a message to podcast at loachapplayers.com the players the last his two shows will start is today third of the Easter time we have video players news of those virtual players news oh my goodness gracious and rerecord video players news when drag is available and that's all for tonight and this is finally don't reminding you this garbage responsible Hey do, Mary do!

23:29Until next time.