Moria Instances

Didn't do any but would love to hear some shared wisdom from Radiance Boy.

So gimme some insight whenever you read this Ben

Yes ~ I was going to suggest the same.
I believe hard mode at Fil Gashan drops a coin but would like some info of where Ben got his from.

Radiance Boy, i like it

Ok, here goes:

Forgotten Treasury

Fairly standard instance with 6 mini bosses and a puzzle to open door for main boss plus a couple of trolls. Have to work it fairly slowly as you could potentially pull quite a few mobs. This instance doesn't drop a coin but it does drop some nice loot including a cool cloak and a nie ring (well from a champ perspective anyway). A few quests to do as you go round which can be picked up in Deep Descent. I quite like this instance.

Grand Stairs

This has quest mode and hard mode in the instance, although i have only done the quest mode once and cant remember anything about it other than it took a long time and there was a lot to kill - i still have quests to complee too (there was about 15 to start with). In the hard mode howevere, there are 3 bosses and its a bit of a race inbetween the 1st and 2nd boss because of a countdown timer. The 3rd boss is not too bad although he has an add that you cant kill or you fail the instance. Might want to bring some fear pots with this one as fear heals the 1st boss. Loot from this instance includes a platinum coin, which you can exchange with your trainer for a pair of radiance boots. Also drops a nice heavy shield (wall of something or other) and an Incidious Cuff, sometimes, which is a great bangle. Think also a bronze or gold coin drops for the other armour sets - non radiance.

Forges of Khazad Dum

Again this has 2 modes to it, although I have only played the hard mode. The plot of this is based around the forge as expected and requires a lot of dancing over fire, blasting doors,taking out 4 bosses and a handful of trolls. Once you kill the 1st boss you have 30 mins to kill the 4th boss or you fail the instance and if you get wiped a couple of times its very difficult to complete. 2nd and 3rd boss are pretty routine but the 4th boss has some kick ass moves, a few trolls to help him, a skill that can take your health from full to 1/4 instantly and a fiery wall of death to maneuvre...good fun. The platinum coin drop for this can be exchanged for chest bit and there are a few other nice bits, including a golden earing i think which is nice.

Fil Gashan

I have only done the hard mode of this instance and dont even know if there is a quest mode. Its quite slow and tactical which makes a welcome change from the others as you need to take your time around the area. The main points to this are that you dont alarm the sentries as they ring the bell, pulling a ton of mobs and you all wipe in about 10 seconds. So to avoid this everyone takes on disguises which means 1 person going in and collecting orc uniform for everyone to wear and working your way upstairs. 3 bosses in the instance with the last one being quite challenging - you have to lead him through traps, get him in to certain positoions and close to the adds, it is good fun though. The coin exchanges for gloves and not sure if anything else is much good, although there is something good for someone.

Dark Delvings

This instance is bloody difficult. Again, dont know about quest mode but the hard mode will bring you to tears, from frustration and from the repair bill. A lot of shadow damage in here, wounds galore and its all in near darkness. Basically, you have to work your way around the area, going through tunnels which ar dark and if you dont stay in the light bits you get morale, power and speed sapped from you. 3 bosses of which the 3rd i have never completed as he is solid. There are a number of ways to kill him but you need everyone to know what they are doing and to work together - difficult to achieve with a PUG. The coin drop is for your helm and i have no idea what else he drops.

Skumfil

This instance is a bit of a mystery to me. There are quest modes and hard mode and I have done both although have no idea how to run the quest mode. The hard mode i have done a few times but you can only do it if someone in the fellowship has both key parts. So, to obtain the key you have to do the left side of Skumfil and the rightside of Skumfil, in quest mode. Once you have the keys you can go take on the 1 boss - a big spider which sprinkles acid (causing about 1k health damage every few seconds...ouch. Killing the boss isnt so bad, there are a few group of adds that come and its fairly doable. The difficult bit is getting to her. This can be achieved through fighting hundreds of spiders than respawn almost instantly or by running to a certain area and using the hobbit feign death trick although there are ongoing discussions as to whether this is an expolit - i dont think it is as the feign death skill is perfectly legitimate. The coin drop is for leggings but not much else drops on hard mode.

16th Hall

By far and away the most annoying of the instances, or it could be anyway. Its fairly standard tank and spank all the way to boss - a little sneaking, a lot of tactical pulling and a bit of luck should get you to the boss in about 1 1/2 hours. Then the fun begins. In order to complete the boss and not fail the instance you are not allowed to kill any bugs in the boss area. If you do, you fail and the last 1 1/2 hours is wasted - no AoE, no reflect damage items, no 'tabbing' to next target etc. If its done correctly killing this boss is very difficult, if done incorrectly everyone wipes very quickly. The coin is for shoulders an he also drops a very nice cloak

Turtle

I have done this once and it has no appeal to me at all. 12 people chasing a turtle with 650k health for 10 minutes is pointless although i would advise to do it at some time incase it drops a 1st age weapon, and just so you can say you did it. Its a 12 man raid and can be completed once a week. Unless you are lvl 60 you wont be considered for the raid.

Vile Maw

Going to kill the watcher requires a full set of radiance armour and so is something we wont be doing for a while. Its a 12 man raid and by all accounts it is hard, very hard.


Apologies for the lengthy post. I have tried not to give too much away as I dont want to spoil it for anyone although i would say that unless you know whats coming it is easy to wipe in all the instances and could leave a big hole in your gold reserves after a night of wipes, but thats part of the fun.

I think once we all have the class quest items done, we should start with the forgotten treasury. We can then do whatever you like but maybe start off with grand stairs. Dan came in with me yesterday and it went well, we only wiped once and Dan won the coin on his first roll. Happy days.

Thanks for that one, nice post.

And grats to Dan *wonder what a Hobbit needs boots for*

Always wondered what the difference between "hardmode" and "questmode" is, still can't say i understand it.
Didn't even pick up all these quests because they are just so many that they would lock my quest book.

Well, at least it seems there is quiet a few things to do for our group in the future

Great post Ben ~ thanks.

Yes, certainly plenty for us to do and they do sound good fun and challenging.

Same as with Ish I am still not quite understanding the quest/hard modes and how they trigger.

I dont really get it either, other than the hard mode gives you the chance to fight the main instance boss and hopefully a share in the spoils of his loot.

On most instances you complete quest requirements as you go through, ie kill x amount of x, but some of the instances have a number of paths (both actual and virtual) you can take based on what you are doing.

So, in grand Stairs if you decide to go the 'other' way and not towards the boss and dont get to him within the 10 minutes then that boss is locked out and you do the quests.

And for Skumfil, you have to complete quests in order to obtain the key which allows you to confront the instance boss.

There is definitely lots for us to do and this should keep Kin nights fairly interesting.

Well we did FT last night with a couple of random LM,s thrown in to help healing and CC wise.
It was good fun and the cash and some of the drops were ok.
Ben suggested we should do this as a kin run as a bit of practice for the bigger things to come which makes sense.

Good info there Ben.

I'm looking forward to doing these runs with our group, we play well together and it makes the hard runs so much easier because we're so used to operating as a team. Better than random groups for sure.

As for hobbits and boots, well I just sling them over my shoulder like a tired footballer

Yea, FT was interesting fun and i think to it would be good practice.

Beeing a little ashamed, missed a couple points because of some distraction at home.
Specially the jewel wich i probably should have used to avoid the boss-fight-death and nearly wipe

Nice quickie there tonight. I thought there would be more to it, expected something more complicated for some reason.

At least the one we tried should be possible for us without to much struggle.

Wonder if all the other instances are also easier than i expected ?

Not an instance as such but that was an awesome run last night, full fellowship quest for V2 Bk4 with Bori, done with just four of us taking out the Watcher. Good job people and great fun.

Doing Quests in Grand Stair yesterday was fun, some good fights included.

Seems like a good way to learn a little bit about an instance before doing the hardmodes.

Maybe we should do it that way in the others as well ? yea, selfish, i like having time to look around

I think you are right stefan, its good to get a feel for the place.

...and we definitely got a feel for Skumfil - need to maybe start instances a little earlier (going back in at 1am was maybe the reason we didn't complete)

Its all good fun though

FG ~ another fun night last night, first visit there for me.
Was nice to have some of the recruits involved too
Pity we didnt take the end boss but am sure we will manage it at some point!

Fil Gashan was a really nice run. Interesting instance that can be quiet fun.

Think we did pretty good even though we didnt do the end boss.

The Turtle run

Did the turtle run on Tuesday, went in thinking it would more than likely be another wipe + repair bill but plesently surprised.

We had a raid of 12, nearly half of those from that legendary kin Valour of the Ancients!!!
Basically the main tactic was, spank him as hard as you can! Everyone and I mean everyone within melee range of the green one, yes including minstrels and hunters and LM's etc. Then all apart from the mini's hit him hard, hunters using fire-oil, not to sure if there were any essential requirements of the other classes, maybe Ben, Steve or Lee can add to this. Mini's just obviously healed until their fingers bled then slapped on fellowships heart when the turtle hit about 100,000 health left.

Needless to say his green ugly head is mounted upon the wall in the Kinship house, another one fallen to the might of Valour

Turtle Power!!!!!

Well the main reason we were able to avoid the passing the aggro around tactic was because the Turtle was being hit with enrage by the Burg.
Book 8 is being installed today and this has now been removed as an option # so will be interesting when we do it again to see what happens.
Well when Book 8 is finally installed anyway as its now been delayed.......

Just checked the patch notes for book 8 and it also says that the turtle will now be able to counter the shieldwall tactic,
wich i thought from reading chat conversations to be the major tactic for the turtle.

Well, we can find our own tactic anyway, proved that often enough

Think we should have seperate threads for the instances to make it easier for us to talk about them if needed (strategies & tactics).

To use this as we did until now:

Had a nice try at the new Hall of Mirrors. A really interesting instance, better than the old ones i saw yet.
Would say Dan, Ben and myself did pretty well there, think it was the last area we where when it got a little late for going on.

Good fun to try everything on your own...pretty funny to watch "Mr. Ants in the pants" in action (thats a quote from Dan, so dont blame me )

Good run on the newly improved GS end boss last night, I don't think tactics wise much has changed really, he is just a bit harder than he used to be, (if any disagree then please do shout )

Oh, and may I just take this opportunity to say:

"YES IT WAS US THAT DID THE FORGOTTEN TREASUREY WITH A GROUP OF ONLY FOUR LAST NIGHT, AND YES WE DID KICK SOME BUTTS. STRENGTH OF THE VALOUR!"

No wipes and it almost seemed strangely easier than doing it with six