Knives at the Ready - LOTRO Burglar

Good morning to Blaugust Day 20! This is my 10th contribution to this shindig.

Well, good morning there Internets...an early post from me this time. I probably could have written something last night to give me an extra day in there, but after sorting books for a chunk of the day (as part of a booksale volunteer thing I do), I just didn't feel like doing the extra work to get a post out. I'm still going for a goal of 15 posts for the month, which is obviously much better than I usually post when it's not August.

Last night, after watching some LOTRO streams by Vayy and Bludborn, I decided to hop into the game myself once login servers were once again up. I presume something just went wonky after they started the first steps of live transfers - at least for existing EU servers. Eventually by the end of the year, we'll be sitting at five US servers and five EU servers surviving this server consolidation.

With a home server of Riddermark, as well as a couple of characters sitting on some other closing servers, I will indeed be moving over to a couple of surviving US servers once it is possible to do so. It seems my home kin will likely be moving to Landroval (where I already have a hunter), and Windfola kin over to Arkenstone (where I already have a hunter), so I know I'll at least be moving my non-hunters to those respective servers. I'll just have to figure out how/where I want to move the specifics so I can still be covering a range of characters/crafts on each...guess it'll be off to the spreadsheets to figure that out!

Anywho, all characters recently got a nice little world closure package, which contains hooded/hoodless cloaks, a housing decoration flag, and coolest of all a title for our characters - "of [server]" to commemorate our home destination (you can actually choose whatever server you'd like for that title, though I'll probably just stick to whatever server from which they originated). There is a level 10 requirement to use that title box, so I figured this was a good time to actually play my first burglar, Ilfina, that I had sitting in the intro at level two for quite some time. I've only been playing this game for what, like four/five years?

I feel like Ilfina doesn't quite understand how positional damage works yet.

Like I said, this is the first burglar that I have made to actually level. I have had others, but they were created pretty much just so I could do some slayer deeds for Turbine Points, or use consumable reputation on them. I think I was hesitant to play a burglar before because stealth mechanics are not always my strong suit, slowly moving around and playing the waiting game. So far, since she's only level 10, there isn't much stealth required, but it seems it's not necessarily as slow as I'd imagined it would be.

There are three different lines - basically play styles - you can take with a burglar. This includes the Gambler (blue line - seems to use damage-over-time and RNG chance-based skills), the Quiet Knife (red line - something of a stealth-based DPS killing machine), and the Mischief-Maker (yellow line - seems like the crowd control/stunning line). I think most may just roll with the red line for the damage, but for some reason the random nature of the blue line appealed to me, and so I have decided to use the Gambler as my main line. I also have the red line on switch, just for damage insurance. I also have a little cosmetic bunny, which I have aptly named Lucky.

He won't be snarling for much longer after those glowing blades hit their mark...

So far, I've only been doing some quests in the Shire, so it has been smooth sailing. Most of her skills are default stabby-stab skills that all lines of burglars get, along with a stealth skill and a couple of short buffs to help for defensive purposes. Then, on the Gambler side of things, she also has two skills - Hedge Your Bet and Lucky Strike. The latter skill can only be used after using another skill, Double-Edged Strike, which is only available after making a critical strike. Lucky Strike seems to then apply a damaging "gamble" of random strength, and Hedge Your Bet (along with doing damage of its own) can increase the potency of that gamble's strength. I know it'll only get more complex as I level and gain more Gambling skills, but I must love RNG so much I want to play a character based off this wonderful randomized system that all MMO players adore.

Obviously, as I'm only level 10 (100 is current cap in game), I can't say for sure whether I'll enjoy the burglar in the long-run. I just knew that I'd eventually have one of each character on my leveling table, and this was the only class I was missing (my Beorning is also still pretty young, but she's there). You can see my other characters' info/progress over here on this wiki page.

Played a Burglar in LOTRO before? Feel free to leave a tip below in the comments, or let me know what line you enjoy playing them in!