Essence gear begins to show up in the later levels towards Gondor. In short it is a way to enhance you gear through slottable "essenece" . Essense come in all kinds of flavors. The start around a rank 5 and go up to rank 12 I believe but I could be wrong.
An Essence is essentially a way to hone in your character's your role. So as tank I could have piece of gear with 2 essence slots, they could be a tier 9 with +4k block and maybe +3k tactical mitigation.
Gear can have up to 4 essence slots
Essences can be crafted as well and I believe that is when the higher ranks will come in.
The thing to keep in mind is when stacking, you will have a hard cap. So a hard cap on Critical Defense is 80%, so you can't have more then an overall score of 80% on that cap. SO each class will have it's own hard cap for every attribute from vitality, might , to Tactical Mastery ect.
Essence is one of better enhance modules of seen in mmorpg's in terms of usability and through output
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traveller, interloper, anomaly, iteration
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
From most of the generic repsonses, most of the people haven't played LotRO in awhile.
No need to reply to my thread, you are blocked.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Disclaimer: this applies to non-Legendary servers. So as just said essence gear is "mostly useless". This includes the aforesaid level 9 Gondor gear, everything that came before as well as level 10 and - less so - level 11.
Its meaningless in the sense that unless you turn off levelling there is no point focusing on having the "best" gear at that level because you will out level it. Only at max level does gear really matter. Level 11 may help with the last few drops - or level 10 etc. - hence the "less so" bit.
Pre-100 drops are rare. Less rare with Helm's Deep but you will out level the gear before you get the essences.
At 100 the level 9 stuff used to be much more common partly because crafting got a revamp and partly because there were multiple level 100 DLCs. So level 9 was cap for quite a while. And decent gear was available on the AH - cheaply available as well (I made sure of that on Crick!). And Big Battles were run frequently. So lots of essence drops, lots of stuff on the AH. There was a vibrancy.
Now that hasn't been the case for a while. And - as with earlier essences - no point focusing. There is a huge amount of level 100 content with many quests that will take you well beyond level 100. Just equip the drops.
Maybe you will use some level 10 essences - flowers or Tokens of the Lake and Rivers - but that will depend on when you visit Mordor. What gear you have will depend on what you decide to do. You can get to 115 without doing Mordor. Stopping in any area to focus on "all the content in a zone" will almost always take you well past cap. And that is before all the festivals etc. And from 115 you can go to 120. So maybe you have Mordor drops, or some level 10 essence gear, or some Lakeside gear or probably a mixture.
At max level you will start to focus.
So are essences bad?
The essence system is what it is. Neither good or bad. The "problem" is how the approach changed with Mordor; the change to drops, to crafting, to the way that stuff - gear and essences - is acquired. It took on a very "solo" feel. The game - imo - lost something.
I have all professions maxed, fully guilded; many unopened boxes with essences and gear - including unopened level 12 gold essences.
I know why Mordor introduced Black Steel Keys etc. And yes changes have been made but ...... (added summary) basically essences don't matter pre-120 whilst at 120 all that matters is what you need to do to open the "boxes".
The stench of Mordor lingers.
I'm on the "Black Book" quest Line now at the Lonely Mountain. I'm sure it will get me bback to Mordor at some point but all zone content in Mordor I've already completed. Maybe I was speaking a different language when I typed "I'm level 120"
everything you said, from my playing the game was 100% false. Still waiting for the bad part. Repeating how it is bad without actual fact of an example of essence % or type of essence is still negated in the arguments
I'm level 120, level 9 essences are a huge boost to my stats with the reward gear I'm getting to prepare for the dungeons.
All you did was repeat about out leveling gear, you can reapply new essence int he character pannel by dragging the armor intro the essence icon and overwriting.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I don't see anything wrong with it. I like I can choose what I can put into the slot. Output won't be so cookiecutter.
Crafting Tier 4 lvl 120 essences
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
My initial discussion was to talk about eessence in the game for those who didn't know about them, not to discuss how "hard" it was to get top tier essences. Then again, what was I thinking, in the era of communication....
you are 100% right on the money.
For the record: Being a lazy gamer from my perspective is not a proponent of a bad game design.
You clearly didn't read that I said the essence system is what it is; neither good or bad. I am however glad that you enjoyed version that existed at level 9. (Before which it was grinding for rare gear and grinding for rare random drops).
Post-Mordor however the essence system changed. Based on what you have said - and I am sure you will correct me if I am in error - it doesn't look like you have experienced what it now is. You may even believe its like what it used to be for level 9 essences?
Suffice to say its not the same. And when you have tried it I think you will answer your own question about what the "bad" part is.
Things have been tweaked - several times now - so you won't suffer the unabated horror that some of us have gone through but ...
the stench of Mordor still lingers.
Being mad at something doesn'trr exist is kind of a reduncy on your part, not mine.
Level 12? What I said is that you missed level 10 and level 11 and that either the grind was to much for you or .... people can just skip over stuff when leveling!
Now - since you felt the need to tell me (again!) that level 12 essences can be crafted - I obviously need to repeat that I have a full set of crafters - every profession - at max crafting level, fully guilded. Every profession.
I know. I have crafted them. And I know what it entails to craft them. You don't?
Mordor introduced a "loot box" approach. When it first came out the best gear was only - only - available from lock boxes!
Now that is o longer the case but the fact (taint!) remains: SSG really - really - want people to buy Black Steel Keys. They don't want is for people being able to readily craft gear. They would scrap Embers if they could as well! As a result what you have is not "grind" but an "endless treadmill" - which at some point pales.
Now you mentioned that you want to try raiding. Some great content. Hope you go for it. However:
You will - will - need to upgrade your level 9 essences - they are trivial at 120; you can't get away with being underpowered in the same way youi can when doing landscape stuff. It may be worth getting some level 11 essences on the way.
You will also need to upgrade your LIs. If you haven't raided they will be weaker than expected - for top tier raids in particular.
Discord is good if you haven't already joined.
Have fun. And remember that those of us who post in the LotR forum have been around a while and "like" the game. I feel confident in saying that the few "old LotR regulars here" are happy for you. Your post about essences though would have been fine when the level cap was 100 but its not what the (end) system is today.