They have posted what I expect we will all accept as the “final score” for the battle. Overall, the fight saw
ISK Lost: 29,111,604,784,863
Titans Destroyed: 257
Total Ships Destroyed: 3,404
USD Value of Losses: $378,012
CCP is careful to caveat that last number with the following statement:
Based on the average sale value of PLEX. This number is simply given as a way to represent the effort-value of the destruction and not an actual amount of money spent by participants on this fight.
I am sure that won’t stop any gaming sites from leading with that dollar amount in their headlines or failing to clarify in their stories.
The former seems semi-relevent, though as CCP points out, that does not represent any actual dollar amount directly spent by players, it is just an approximation based on the value of PLEX in real world dollars.
The latter looks pretty silly. Can you set records for things that can only occur within your own game? I might as well write to Guinness about records set within the perimeter of my home. Most pizza slices consumed by a middle-age man in a single sitting in our living room seems about as applicable to the “world” portion of “word records.”
Anyway.
Of course, everybody who plays the game wants to know how many titans were blown up on which side of the battle.
M2-XFE – Titan losses by Alliance
That breaks out into 122 lost by the Imperium versus 130 lost by PAPI forces, a fairly even split for hulls, though no doubt the ISK was even tighter for titans with Imperium losing a Vanquisher faction titan, which is valued at about four titans in ISK.
CCP Goes on to compare the battle to past epic battles in EVE Online history.
Largest Battles by ISK Destroyed
By that count M2-XFE saw more ISK destroyed than the next four battles combined and adds up to almost triple the cost of B-R5RB.
Of course, there is the dollar amount chart as well. The usual caveats apply.
Largest Battles measured in $USD
You can see, comparing the two charts, the issue with valuing things in dollars and ISK when the items in game change value on the market over time. Back in 2014, when the battle of B-R5RB took place, titans were more expensive in game as were the resources needed to construct them. They were also more rare. Before that battle a single titan loss was a headline worthy New Eden news story. We talked about Asakai for a year because that saw 3 titans and 5 supers destroyed.
Then there is a comparison of ships and titans lost in past battles.
I think I was at seven of those battles, for at least part of the fights. I know I passed on HED-GP and thus missed the server problems. But I was at B-R5RB, the latter parts of both X47L-Q fights, some of UALX-3, and the four fights listed from WWB.
Oddly, the battle at 9-4RP2, the dreaded “Million Dollar Battle,” is missing from these charts. I know the losses barely measured up, being approximately $340 billion, but it did set the previous world record for players in a fight with 6,142 players. That would put it in second place still. But if you didn’t get at least a trillion ISK in losses you don’t get to appear I guess.
So it goes.
CCP has some more charts and some silly metrics about the fight in the dev blog. (e.g. The length of all the dead titans, laid end to end, would be 20,538km.) It also seems that, due to the server problems that occurred around the second battle of M2-XFE when PAPI tried to jump 6,000 players into a system where there were already more than 4,000 setup, there will be no similar dev blog of statistics for that fight. Ghost titans apparently vex CCP as much as zKillboard.
There is also a preview of monument that CCP plans to put in place to commemorate the battle.
Planned monument
Hopefully they will put it somewhere a bit off to the side as we still have a Keepstar and several Fortizars on grid as we’re still camping the site for ~130 logged off titans. We don’t want that shiny new structure in the way or any of the workers getting hurt.
We got together on Saturday night and the question was, “Where should we go?”
I had suggested last week that perhaps we ought to take another week off to go level up a bit rather than jump straight into the cathedral in Scarlet Monastery. The three bosses there are all level 42, which seemed a bit steep, especially for a group of just four. I figured we might need to be level 38 to ensure some chance of success. I even came up with a couple of options for places we might go level. So when we logged on this was the group:
Viniki – level 37 gnome warrior
Ula – level 36 gnome mage
Skronk – level 37 dwarf priest
Moronae – level 36 night elf druid
But by the time we had logged on I had changed my mind. I figured why not just give it a try. If nothing else we would get some decent experience clearing out the instance. And if it didn’t work out we could always go slay Herod in the armory again.
I also had a bit of an additional motive. I have managed to find one more Scarlet Monastery quest, In The Name of the Light, and the reward options include a serious upgrade for Viniki. But to finish it you need to kill Loksey in the library (easy) and Herod in the armory (not so easy), along with the two big bosses in the cathedral (hard)
As nobody else had an alternative plan we all headed back up to Southshore, our now usual jumping off point for the Scarlet Monastery.
Hanging out in Southshore
From there I had another brilliant idea. It had been mentioned that the Chillwind Point flight point was the closest Alliance flight point to the Scarlet Monastery, so I thought maybe we ought to go grab that on the way and see how the path from there looked. I had gotten the flight point a while back, but had been slaughtered by the mobs on the way to Tirisfal Glades. But I was level 30 then. I figured we might have leveled up enough to get through.
Confident I knew where I was going, I led us off to a path through the mountains and into… the Hinterlands.
I don’t think this is the place
We were there, so we grabbed the flight path for later. We will need to go back there for the Mallet of Zul’Furrak if nothing else. Then we flew back to Southshore where I consulted a map and realized that we needed to go up the river.
On the second try I was successful. We arrived in the Western Plaguelands and got the flight point.
Chillwind Point vicinity
From there it was just a short run to Tirisfal Glades. We ran off down the road, south of the lake, only swimming across to the north bank. From there the Bulwark and Tirisfal Glades were practically in sight.
Just a simple path to Tirisfal Glades
Unfortunately, a bear who showed only a level “skull” to us had different ideas. As did the second bear and a spider.
We almost made it. In fact, I did make it, though it was a near run thing when trying to get past the Bulwark Ula and I fell into a pit that was hemmed in by the wall, a tree, and some spikes. I was able to hop my way out and run for it, but the spider got Ula.
So close to the destination
Everybody else released and ran back to their corpses and we met up on the “safe” side of the Bulwark to heal up, rebuff, and generally get ourselves sorted out.
Camping by the Bulwark
From there we ran north to the Scarlet Monastery, though we only made it about 20 feet before I ran us into a deathguard and we once again had to run for our lives. We all survived this time.
At the monastery itself things were busy. People were out playing on a Saturday night so we were able to wander though the opening areas to the cathedral door without the usual entanglements.
Inside, we were soon into the thick of things. The cathedral is not a big instance.
Scarlet Monastery map
It is, however, densely populated once you get past the opening hallway. I seemed to recall from back in the day that fighting from the fountain was a good plan. I may have run up into the fountain prematurely, but we found off the extra add and setup a base there to clear up the left side. The left side was also part of the vague memories from the group.
In the lower fountain
From there it was clearing to the steps to get into the upper fountain.
The upper fountain
The strip of grass between the upper fountain and the cathedral doors was populated mostly by casters. That meant pulling them back into the fountain, which I mostly accomplished by tagging them with the gun and then running back and jumping down into the stairway to break line of site. That seemed to work pretty well and we were soon opening the doors. Moronae hit 37 in the fountain, so we were all the same level.
If the outer fountain area is crowded, the cathedral itself is packed. We stood there at the open doors, Skronk marking the four mobs in the first row when we managed to proximity pull a pair of walkers around the corner. Skronk switched the markers and we were on to our clearing.
Not the pair we thought we would get
There are three rows in the center and then a series of walkers and bystanders in the aisles on the outside of the pillars. Some slow and steady work managed to clear the mobs group by group. We didn’t even get many accidental adds. Along the way I hit level 38, putting at least myself in the level range I thought we needed to be in.
We managed to clear the main area and had moved off to the left side to clear out the group there. That went well enough. We were wondering whether we needed to clear the side rooms or not when I said we ought to take care of the group on the other side. This led to our first wipe.
I ran over to the other side, steering wide of Morgaine, who is standing up on the altar. However, the rest of the group didn’t come with me and only saw me over on the other side, so ran straight to me.
Paths traveled
They proximity pulled Morgaine and things fell apart pretty quickly. But in doing that we did get the answer to the question of whether or not we needed to clear the mobs in the side rooms. When you engage Morgaine all of the remaining Scarlet Crusade mobs in the cathedral run to assist him. We would need to clear.
We ran back to the instance and revived inside. Fortunately the respawn time for the cathedral is much longer than the other wings. We had been at it for over an hour and nothing new had respawned. We were able to get back into the cathedral to carry on.
Back into the cathedral
We went back over to the left to clear the rooms and ended up with a runner from one room pulling the second room and the wheels came off again and we wiped. Back to the entrance to get ourselves put together again.
Another post-wipe picnic
We went back to the left side and, this time, managed to clear without incident. Then we ran over to the right side, giving Morgaine a wide berth this time, and knocked out the group over there and the singleton in the back room.
Then it was time to pull the torch to pick up the minor boss.
That torch, which opens the secret door
The Icy Veins guide says that High Inquisitor Fairbanks is skippable because he doesn’t drop anything cool, but we don’t skip anything as a group. He wasn’t too tough of a fight really. And he starts out asleep or dead or whatever on the floor so you can get all grouped up around him before you start in.
He looks about the same after as he did before the fight
And, while he doesn’t drop anything blue, he did drop the Inquisitor’s Shawl, which was an upgrade for Skronk (he has them on in the pic above) so it was easily worth the effort.
That left us with most everything cleared in the cathedral. We cleared up a couple of walkers, because while the zone doesn’t respawn quickly like the other instances, it does spawn random patrols now and again, and then sat down to prep for Scarlet Commander Mograine.
You can see we were still keeping our distance
Given the fight was above our level I went and took a quick look at how the fight was supposed to play out. I mostly remembered it, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to refresh that memory. The simple order of events is:
Fight and slay Scarlet Commander Mograine
High Inquisitor Whitemane shows up and revives Morgaine
Fight them both, kill Whitemane first, then Morgaine
So we got ourselves as prepped as we could and then got stuck in with Morgaine. He hits hard and I was putting up damage mitigation skills as often as they were ready, worried about keeping going as I was. However we got through Morgaine well enough and he went down. Then Whitemane walked in from the back room.
Announcing her arrival
She came out and stood next to the altar and we watched her, waiting for her to revive Morgaine. A few seconds passed and nothing happened. Finally I decided to take a poke at her, and when that seemed effective, we opened up on her. In glancing through the how the fight runs, I missed the part where you have to get her down to half health or so before she brings back Morgaine.
Silly us. I wonder how long we all might have sat there waiting.
So we beat Whitemane down, she revived Morgaine, and then we carried on with Whitemane, dropping her fairly quickly.
At that point, with the death of Whitemane, Ula hit level 38, which meant she got a full refill on health and mana. That was nice timing, though it might have been a bit better for us if Skronk had been the one to level up. We still had Morgaine on us and he was beating on me hard and I had already thrown up shield wall and used a big health potion and Skronk’s own mana was dwindling.
You know when the healer asks you about the cool down on your health potion that there might be an issue.
Skronk alerted Moronae that he might have to drop out of cat form and throw me some heals. Morgaine was down to the end of his hit points, but my own health bar was marching down at a steady clip as well and no heals were incoming.
Fortunately we were putting out enough damage that Moragine one the race… or lost the race… to the end of our health bars and fell at our feet. We had done it.
Our foes dead at our feet
And, as happens at these moments, there was some amount of surprise. First, because we managed it a bit under-level as a group of four, then in the frame of the memory of how hard this fight was back in the day with a full group at a higher level. We were bad back in the day.
It was time for some loot.
Morgaine gave us the Scarlet Leggings, mail pants which went to me.
They were a big upgrade, as I was still wearing mail that dropped back in Gnomeregan.
And Whitemane dropped the Hand of Righteousness, a one handed mace that is spec’d for a healing paladin I would imagine, but which was such an upgrade in DPS over my current sword that it went to me.
So I made out pretty well with the blue gear. That said, Skronk might have gotten the most coveted item that dropped. A trash mob had a 12 slot bag on its corpse. A 12 slot bag!
I am sure he would have traded that for Whitemane’s chapeau, but still it was a good drop and a reminder of how inventory constrained we all are. To this day I remember how overjoyed I was at one time back in vanilla when I got a 16 slot bag dropped. That was a minor miracle.
We made it.
Now we just have to do it again once people get that Scarlet Monastery quest I mentioned above and to get another shot at Whitemane’s chapeau. Also, I wouldn’t mind Morgaine’s shield, as that would be a serious upgrade for me.
Done with our task, we stood on the altar for one last screen shot of us all stoning home.
The group exiting
Ula has been at it again and has a video up of our run through the cathedral that covers the high points and aligns with a number of my screen shots.
There is even a very brief post-credits clip from the Bulwark part of our run. She managed to get her video capture turned on to record the last few seconds of a spider and a bear on her as she was trapped in that pocked in the fence before they killed her.
You can comment on the video over at Ula’s blog, where it was posted initially.
Book XV is the final final act of Volume I of the epic quest line Lord of the Rings Online. Getting past it wraps up the tale of the game before the Mines of Moria is unlocked.
They’re just making up their own legends at this point
We left off previously with Amarthiel defeated, deprived of the ring Narchuil, the lesser ring that corrupter her, and forced to watch her father, who had strove so hard over these last few books in order to save his daughter, struck down before her.
Mordirith awarded the ring to Mordrambor and they both left, confident in their victory.
There on the ground the narrator told us that Amarthiel was taken into custody, which ended Book XIV.
Book XV starts off with Elrond ordering an investigation of Amarthiel, who has decided to return to her original name Narmeleth, to see whether or not she poses a threat to the free peoples. This got delegated down the Rivendell hierarchy until it landed back in my lap.
The first thing was to go out and speak with her at her prison in Delossad, where she had been held by her father previously… so lots of good memories there… and possibly where she murdered and took the guise of Sara Oakheart.
Setup for the final book
That sets you on a course through the next few chapters of investigating and reliving formative points, including when Antheron… Sauron in a fair disguise, name changed from Annatar probably due to Turbine not holding the rights to works outside of the trilogy… tempts her to the dark side by offering to teach her to make wonderful things.
Oversell much?
Feanor made the silmarils, the jewels which captured the light of the two trees, Laurelin and Telperion, which were deemed the greatest work of craft by the elves, the theft of which was the root cause of the problems of the Third Age.
Given that, I’m not sure a ring would really be beyond the imagination of Fearnor. And while it is within every salesperson to shade the truth, you’d think one of the Noldor, the kin of Fearnor might smell a rat in that. But given that they forged all those rings of power, maybe not. Elves.
The highlight of this set of investigative and marginally informative interludes is that even the devs seemed to have realized by that point that making you run, ride, or recall all over Eriador was really getting old, so the quest chain actually teleports you around. You accept some of the quests, like the one telling you to report in at Esteldin, and you just get sent there.
You still have to go do the ground work, find people, count noses, pick up a broken sword from a grave… I wasn’t aware that there would be so much broken gear and grave robbery when I signed up for this gig… but at least the whole series cut back on the whole need to travel to talk to somebody who will then send you off to do the actual task thing.
This all winds up with you and Narmeleth being sent off to defeat Mordrambor, destroy Narchuil, and throw down Mordirith, lest they overrun Eriador in the name of Sauron.
My thought on the plan was along the lines of, “Didn’t we get our asses handed to us by this duo a couple of times already, even when Narmeleth/Amarthiel had the ring helping her?” I mean, our ace in the hole was the broken blade of the sword that didn’t slay Mordirith back in Book 8. How it that going to work out well? But you go where the plot dictates, so I followed Narmeleth into Gador Gularan.
Narmeleth at least dropped the “must walk very slowly” trait she used when in the guise of Sara Oakheart. I will give her that. But one of the elements of this instance was keeping her alive and, in the grand style of LOTRO escort quests, she showed all the usual subtly in passing through danger… which means she couldn’t have drawn more aggro if she had walked into an Orc bar in Mordor clad in her elven finery and took a whizz on the symbol of the unblinking eye.
Keeping her alive was a chore, as she chose to run headlong into every room like a tank in a WoW Dungeon Finder group, intent on grabbing ALL the aggro right away. Fortunately, as a guardian, I can pull aggro back, but she seemed intent on swapping to target the mob I had the least hold on so as to beat on it until she got aggro back.
And to top that off, her speedy gait… literally running to the next fight at times… meant that she was headed into danger with half health as well. This must be a painful instance with a hunter or a burglar.
Still, I managed to shepherd her through the preliminaries despite her death wish, only to have her drop the usual NPC bombshell when the big fight looms.
Wait, after all that you’re not going to get close to him?
Playing “the ring might still have a power over me” card, Narmeleth said she would be there ringside for the fight, but there would be no tapping her in.
There was a bit of good news to go with this however.
Wait, how many of us do you see? How many fingers am I holding up?
For the square off against Mordrambor apparently only one member of your fellowship is supposed to get in there and fight him. This was good news, to me at least, since doing this solo I had been buffed up to have the strength of a whole fellowship in a single dwarf. In the classic Sir Robin, “That’s easy!” frame of mind I dove into the battle.
Fighting Mordrambor wasn’t really a chore. With the buffs, and being a guardian, I was handling him pretty well. Only after a while did I realize what the rest of your fellowship is supposed to be doing while one of you fights Mordrambor; protect Narmeleth.
I suddenly realized that her health bar was extremely low. Fighting with my back to her I hadn’t noticed that she had attracted some mobs and was literally standing in the fire, quietly dying. I ran back to her and cleared off the attackers, but her health bar was dangerously low. After that I had to shuttle back and forth between her and Mordrambor. But her health was too low to last, and soon disaster struck.
Me either… say something next time! Also, get out of the damn fire!
So it was back to the start again.
This time, knowing her style, I immediately ran ahead to grab mobs before she got in the room, saving myself a lot of hassle in trying to rescue her every time the cave got wide enough for some orcs to hang out.
We faced Mordrambor again. This time I positioned myself to fight him while watching her, running back and forth as needed.
I’m watching you… don’t stand in the fire!
Mordrambor just stays in his spot when you run back to her, which seemed pretty sporting of him. It would have been easy for him to just stick me in the back while I was attending to other issues.
Forewarned of the dynamics, Mordrambor was defeated. Narmeleth took the ring from him and, after the usual reminiscing over the power the ring gave her, tossed it into the molten pool, destroying it.
That left Mordirith.
He was deeper in Gador Gularan and, when we arrived, acted the smug host saying that our arrival was not unexpected. The usual villain puffery. And so we got stuck into fighting him. His trick for the battle was to summon up people from past chapters in an effort to throw Narmeleth. But that wasn’t going to throw me.
Slay Sara Oakheart? Dare I live the Middle-earth dream?
Those multiplied in number with each round, though the individual illusions grew weaker as they were split, so five Laerdans were no more difficult than three Sara Oakhearts.
Talk about your daddy issues!
After that played out… who was he going to use after Laerdan… Narmeleth called out Mordirith to come and face her like a… whatever he is… and he didn’t, knocking her down, stunning me, and taking control of the camera to keep it focused on him. And then he proceeded to monologue.
Gloating villain mistake… soon you’ll be telling her your plans
During this whole speech the character models interact in a very odd way, with Narmeleth’s head lolling about, eyes open and an awkward look on her face, as Mordirith seems to move her about like he is rubbing her head on his torso. I realize that it is just that the models… and human bodies… just don’t bend that way gracefully, but I have to admit I found it a bit distracting.
This ends in the expected way, with the delay letting Narmeleth rally while the content of the monologue only enrages her, letting her anger and determination combine so that when he starts making fun of her father she strikes.
In with the red currents!
She sticks him with the sword and he is reported as “thrown into the void… never to return” as Narmeleth lays there. She declares that her time no Middle-earth is ending as well and asks me not to weep, though by this point I think she is delirious and mistaking relief with sorrow.
After that it was back to rewind up the chain of command, back to Elrond, who gives you an epilogue task that has you rooting around Laerdan’s room for a package he has left for you. That awards you a cosmetic cloak, a mount, some legendary item experience (wasted, since I don’t have one yet), a portrait of Narmeleth to hang in your house (also wasted, as LOTRO housing does not appeal to me), and a title to commemorate your deed.
Champion of Eriador
And so it goes.
At that point I had pretty much accomplished what I had set out to do on the legendary server. As with any run through content I’ve done before… some of it many times when it comes to LOTRO… I managed to go through some old favorites while seeing some bits I had not done before.
I had some idea about doing an alt or two through the original content as well, but at this point I am feeling more like taking a bit of a break. I played pretty regularly over the last three month, logging in nightly to play over the first eight weeks at least. That tapered off some towards the end as the end of the epic quest line came within sight.
I might go back and finish off some lower level deeds as the month goes by, but I doubt LOTRO will rank as high in my play time this month as it did last.
The main question is probably whether I will return for the unlocking of The Mines of Moria, currently slated for “March-ish.” That is in doubt. Most of my affection for LOTRO lays in the first fifty levels. I don’t dislike Moria, but neither do I yearn for it or the annoyance of the legendary item system. And beyond Moria there isn’t much to pull me. I found Mirkwood a bore, its dark tedium a barrier between me and any further content.
But the main issue is that come March we will be getting into the EverQuest 20th anniversary events, and there is a distinct possibility that my focus will lay there rather than in Middle-earth.
So we shall see where I end up come the end of the month I suppose.
