Reward Tracker growth seems to be greatly reduced since U34.

[TobiasEstForte]

Bear in mind two things.

1) This thread was posted before the new season. So anyone trying to finish S3 at the last minute is suddenly met with an unexpected hurdle to that.
2) There was nothing in the patch notes about reward tracker exp gain adjustments.

I don't have any hard data to prove this, because I have no "before" screenshots to compare but on average a 40-mission hand in with a 100% exp tome gave about 10 levels progress, at least based on my rough observations.

A friend of mine started tonight at lvl 81 (in the RT), he purchased a 200% exp tome and we accumulated Bilbo (x10), Wildwood (x10), Erebor (x10) and 1 rotation of AK (x8) - 38 in total - on the basis he would cap or come close. He logged out at lvl 87. It made little sense. So I am testing myself on a 100% tome, I've just handed in 44 missions and gone from 93 to 97. I don't remember having this slow growth pre u34.

Does anyone else notice this? To blue names; was there a stealth nerf or is this another unintended consequence? The RT exp accumulation already has a history of errors, I wouldn't be surprised if another occurred. Perhaps this is the planned rate for S4 but it was patched into the final day of S3 (without notifying).

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

It'd also be nice if they sent out an in-game mail to all toons that the reward track was about to reset.

[Hastran]

I read something somewhere about a rebalance of Reward Track contributions. Cap Level was going down and lower-level contributions were going up. I couldn't locate the source when I looked so take it for what it is worth.

There is a Timer in the top left corner of reward track....so it seems like an email would be superfluous. Press Shift I occasionally and look.

[DoRonRon]

Seems like it's down to us to check our various means to contribute to the tracker every update or maintenance cycle. We never got a mention of those changes to shard drops chances from nodes. They soon bore of telling us some vague change has been made.

It's all a bit academic when they leave some with vast quantities of Heritage runes mostly untouched and hammer the lower levels new to LIs. More likely yet more encouragement to level up into the later game confusion, where it is at least partially maintained. Ofc we have to choose which char we are going to park at 140 to process these runes. I'll just bump my heritage processors up to the next band and put a new char at 46 if I still have some of those runes left.

However they choose to hit back, they could only hit the majority of players far worse than I could ever be affected. Yet ~~~~### off the majority to attempt to hit the few hasn't made so much sense over the years. Nor help the few, in the case of Minstrels recently.

[Dosiere]

The amount of LIxp needed for reward track has either gone up or the LIxp rewards have gone down, for sure.

I really hate it. It's not a tiny change either, seems to be at least twice as hard to level it.

It was great for more casual people as it was. You still had to work for it, but it was fast enough to not feel like a grind but just a reward for playing the game. Giving you little presents and drops to look forward to. Now it's just another negative grind.

Ateast they could have made the 101 repeatable more expensive if they thought people were getting too much instead of just making the whole thing ####, and the entire first 50 rewards are not that great either.

[Narufind]

I read something somewhere about a rebalance of Reward Track contributions. Cap Level was going down and lower-level contributions were going up. I couldn't locate the source when I looked so take it for what it is worth.

There is a Timer in the top left corner of reward track....so it seems like an email would be superfluous. Press Shift I occasionally and look.

It was mentioned in the 33.2 patch notes https://www.lotro.com/update-notes/l...lease-notes-en

Having discovered an error in the Legendary Item XP required by the Legendary Item Reward Track across various levels, we have made adjustments to the curve. These changes will speed up progress through the Legendary Item Reward Track for characters of most levels. For levels 45 - 60 and 95 - 120 the Legendary Item XP required to advance the track has been reduced. For levels 61 - 94 the Legendary Item XP required to advance the track has been greatly reduced. For levels 121 - 130 the Legendary Item XP required to advance the track has been slightly reduced. For now, at levels 131 - 140, the Legendary Item XP required to advance the track remains exactly the same, however we plan to make adjustments in future seasons, likely requiring slightly more Legendary Item experience to advance at levels 131 and higher

So we knew a change was coming for 131-140 advancement, that said they should have had something in the Update 34 notes so that we knew the change was going into effect.

[Hastran]

I can say that the contributions on my lower-level toons really seems to have upscaled compared to before the update. As to the Heritage runes...why bother? I have a mule whose vault is completely filled with heritage runes (some in stacks of 200) as I have had no trouble at all completing Reward track every time without using any of them. The last one I had well over 200 boxes above the initial 100 and I am not a heavy raider...maybe one HH a week and I do try and complete Forges and lofts when I can.

Anything over the initial 100 is just gravy anyway.

[Polymachos]

I found that killing mobs and the wrapper quests for the missions in Annak-Khurfu and Vernozal give little to no rewards either. Doing the missions, and the tasks at Task Bulletin Board otoh provide a visible and quite remarkable boost. If you have a number of alts at Moria or higher level, and can hand them a stack of task items, you'll move the bar quickly.


Greetings, Polymachos

[TobiasEstForte]

It was mentioned in the 33.2 patch notes https://www.lotro.com/update-notes/l...lease-notes-en

So we knew a change was coming for 131-140 advancement, that said they should have had something in the Update 34 notes so that we knew the change was going into effect.

The disparity fix between lower levels, and levels upper of 105 was implemented in the same update you quote. This is something new; where prior to U34 but post 33.2 a lower level and a 140 got a generous amount, roughly the same if not exactly (I'm doing missions on level cap and mid-game) - though now both level bands are receiving much less - albeit still equal.

The safest bet is that S3 101+ rewards were farmed so heavily - people getting like 20 rolls a day - they decided to adjust the gains for S4 but it was implemented during the patch - One day prior to the changeover.