How Much Can Three People DO?

Beyorn

My friends and I are taking a break from Rifts.  Guild problems and just rude poeple in the LFG tool has about killed the game for us. 

We want to try a game where we can do most of the content (excluding raids of course).  I was reading and it seems like they have made the dungeons completable by small groups now.  Since the main forums are down I cant confirm this.  Is this true and how many will we be able to do?  I would think with less people the loot would scale down as well.

I have a lifetime account and my friends will be on free accounts (until I convince them to sub anyway ;D).  Also can I gift items to them in game?

Thanks for all your help .

GaryM

Yes, you can do a lot with 3 people, that's the group size I'm usually involved with. The group of 3 that I play with spends the majority of our time doing Skirmishes, they are much more fun that way than solo. We ratchet up the difficulty level (Tier 2 or 3), and find them challenging and enjoyable. And there are currently four 3-man instances at level cap, and there are 3 more coming in december. Completing them on Challenge mode will give you Superior 4th Marks, which can be used to buy some of the best gear in the game. So yes, I think 3 players can have a lot of fun with this game, just make sure that you get at least one heavy class to tank and one class than can do at least some healing, especially if you want to be able to do the 3-man instances on Challenge mode.

mikahr

Theres quite enough content for 3 to do, regular 3-man instances (that do not scale with level), scalable (by level) 3-man instances and all skrmishes (those are scalable by number and level, there are 17 to play iirc).

"Regular" (classic instances) do not scale by number of people, so 6 man is 6 man, but its Turbines practice to release 3-6-12 man instances as a cluster lately, so youll be able to do 3-mans but for the rest youll have to get more people.

You cant give items from the store to others, but you can buy gift cards with Turbine points if you really want. Anyways, there isnt any gear and such in store if you ment that.

Beyorn

Well I was thinking of character classes and expansions.  I was hoping I could just buy them the expansion and gift it to them.  I have like 10k points in the store (since I'm a lifer).

arieste

I'm a part-time LoTRO player (most of my time is spent leading a raid guild in EQ2).  You can definitely do pretty much everything in the game except raids with 3 people.  Some of the 6-man instance you'll need to go into a few levels later, but you'll still enjoy them a great deal.

 

3 co-ordinated people that work together and know what they are doing are better than most of the 6-man pick-up groups.  

 

Now, couple of pieces of advice:

1. If you do want to run your 6-man instances as 3-mans, you need to roll the right classes.  Sure, people will say that "anything is possible", but c'mon, don't make your own life difficult.

That means one of you MUST roll a minstrel.  

Second person MUST be a tank.  I believe Guardian is easier than Warden for this.

Third person you need to pick carefully.. burg and lm would give you crowd control.  Champ or Hunter would give you DPS.  Hunter is also great for travel - and if you're going F2P, you'll be cut off from fast travel, so it's important!

 

2.  About the F2P.  As someone who used to sub is now F2P, the biggest thing is do it the right way.  First of all, have your friends sub for a month to unlock horses and virtue slots.  Beyond that, you have lots of content up to level 35 that is completely F2P.   Plus, a month if more than enough to figure out whether the 3 of you want to continue playing.  DO NOT buy content until you're ready to use it.  Seriously.  No need to buy Moria until you're 45 or isengard until you're 65.

Beyorn

Thank you guys for all the wonderful advice