Simple twist of fate

In Lord of the Rings Online, you can improve your character by equipping traits. Virtue traits (Charity, Honour, Valour, Helping Old Hobbits Across The Road etc.) are acquired through exploration, completing quests, and wiping out vast swathes of orcs/goblins/insects/undead/similar plagues upon the land, so in the general run of things I’d acquired several of these with varying effects, and had more-or-less picked at random which to use.

In a bid to not run out of power after about ten seconds fighting, I thought I’d take a moment to look a bit closer at the improvements offered by the various traits, which meant trying to weigh up the benefits of +1.1 Power Regeneration (Non-Combat), -0.5% Magic Vulnerability and +2 Agility against +0.7 Power Regeneration (Non-Combat), -0.5% Wound Resistance and -0.25% Ranged Vulnerability. Is 0.5% good? Is 1.1 enough to make a noticeable difference compared to 0.7? Is Might better than Agility? And where does Fate fit in? It was a bit like reading food labels; “0.02 milligrams of sodium… sodium explodes in water; do I need 0.02 milligrams of that?”

In digging around, I found a splendid guide that lists the virtues, the benefits they give, and where they can be obtained, so I’ve picked out a few with increased power regeneration, maximum power, Will and/or Fate to hopefully give a bit more staying power in combat (as it were). As virtues stack (e.g. completing both the Lore of the Cardolan and Places of the Old Forest traits gives two ranks of Wisdom), I also set out on a trek to complete some of the exploration traits for a further boost; although I’d covered a fair amount of Bree-land in general questing, there were a couple of ruins I hadn’t yet visited, and some distant corners of the Barrow Downs and Old Forest (helpfully shown on the maps at The Brasse). I’m still not really sure whether Disease Resistance is more desirable than a reduction in Ranged Vulnerability, though…

2 thoughts on “Simple twist of fate

  1. mbp

    I too find it hard to choose between the “virtue” traits. They all seem to offer very similar variations on a theme – usually only a few per cent improvement in some resistance or other. The class traits on the other hand are far more significant – they give real improvement (I got +20 points of fate in my very first class trait and a hefty damage improvement in my next)

  2. Zoso

    Yeah, the class traits are much more useful, so it’s tough picking which ones to slot… and then I’ve got two spaces for racial traits and only one thing to slot in there, the utterly awful “Uppercut” attack! I must get killing more Wargs for the +20 Will racial.

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