Lord of the Rings Online - Beta Glimpse 1

Posted by Stropp on March 6, 2007

In playing the LotRO beta I’ve come across a few features that I thought you might find interesting. Over the next few weeks before the release of the game, I’ll be posting some glimpses of these features.

The first glimpse that I’m going to give you is of the Deed Log and Traits.

The Deed Log keeps track of your in game accomplishments. These accomplishments aren’t individual quests, but can be any of a number of achievements. In the picture above you can see three deeds that are available to me in Ered Luin. The Defender of Ered Luin is completed when I finish 30 of the quests available in Ered Luin area. The Goblin Slayer and Hendroyal Slayer accomplishments are completed when I slay a certain number of each creature.

When an accomplishment is completed, the player is rewarded. The Defender of Ered Luin reward is the Compassionate trait which is displayed in the tooltip in the screenshot. I’ve also seen a few folks running around with a title ‘Defender of Ered Luin’ so I assume I’ll get this title when I complete the accomplishment.

This is an example of the Title panel. You’ll notice I’ve selected Klarm the Wary as my active title. I received that when I reached the 5th level without being defeated. The title ‘of the Iron Hills’ is the title I was given when I started my character. Klarm is still pretty low level, so he doesn’t have many titles yet. Frankly, I’m disappointed that there is no ‘the Short and Hairy’ title.

Now you remember the Compassionate trait that was being tooltipped in the first screenshot?

Since I haven’t completed the achievement, it’s not available to use yet. However it just so happens that I a couple of traits I prepared earlier. Charity and Patience both alter some of my attributes. However, this alteration may not be positive for all attributes. Some traits may boost one attribute and lower another. Before you can gain the benefits of traits you must equip them.

Traits can only be equipped by dealing with a Bard. You should find a Bard in most major towns, and possibly in some more out of the way places. When you get close to a bard, you’ll see a lute image on the minimap. There will probably be a few NPC dancing around the place that will give him away too.

Once you find him, open up a conversation by right clicking him and choose the equip traits option. Choose the traits you want to equip, or unequip and give the man some coin for each trait you want changed. Voila! Your traits have been changed.

One other thing. You are limited in the trait slots that will open up by your level. I can only have two traits equipped here until I level up enough to open up another slot. You’ll also notice that there are different categories of traits. Race and Class are pretty self explanatory, but I’m not sure what the Legendary traits are yet, or how they will be gained by players.

Usage of the Deed Log and the Traits system should allow players to come up with some unique builds. There are plenty of tabs in the deed log, one for each major map area plus the class and race tabs. This means that there will be plenty of traits to choose from. More in fact than there will be slots to equip them. If the trait system has been designed right, there shouldn’t be any cookie cutter templates to choose from, allowing a the player a lot of diverse options for his character.

I also think it’s a great idea to vary the gameplay. Now, players are no longer dependent on just quests to progress their characters, and I also think that this is a step above the reputation system in WoW. Yes, there’s still a mechanic of kill x of this, or do y of that, but it seems to me to be a somewhat more organic way of achieving.

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