Reputation woes
Faradwen is Kindred with Annúminas. (Yay! Huzzah! etc!) While I’m glad to be Kindred – and not only for the 20 TP – I think devs might have been a little too generous with the revamp.
Got to Kindred and all I got was a shiny statuette
Before the update came I have already been questing around Tinnudir, Ost Forod and Eavespires which got me about halfway through Acquaintance. Some reputation came from daily tasks (300 points per task), some from handing in the Tomb-Raider’s Sashes (300 points for 10 sashes) and the rest from quests.
After the update every single quest gives about a thousand points of reputation and killing single tomb-raiders and Angmarim gives some reputation as well. I have been gaining reputation about as fast as I have been leveling and I reached Kindred before setting foot to Annúminas and before being even able to trade in the higher reputation items (Bands of Númenor and Black Badges). Next time I’ll have an alt through I guess I can hit Kindred before visiting Eavespires or maybe even Ost Forod. There is one new low-level camp at the foot of the Colossus and Oatbarton I’ve heard has more quests as well and I haven’t been through those with Faradwen. I really think the devs should lower the rewards a bit, being Kindred used to require completing the region and then doing a little extra work – even if that extra work was one evening of cooking cauliflower (that’s how I got my captain to Kindred with the Mathom Society). As it is now, players reach Kindred halfway through Evendim and it doesn’t feel like much of an achievement.
Speaking of extra work the region of Enedwaith seems to be on the other side of the scale, there isn’t enough reputation. I don’t mind in particular that doing all the quests won’t get you to Kindred but what I mind is the way of advancing your reputation after you’ve done everything. There are two factions in Enedwaith – the Algraig and the Grey Company. Doing all the quests will get you to Friend with the Algraig and Ally with the Grey Company. Then you are left with repeatable quests and here starts the trouble. The Algraig quests are now pretty fine (they’ve been revamped already, prior to Update 2) there are 7 or 8 quests and the daily gain is almost 6000 points. On the other hand the 4 Grey Company quests only give about 2000 points a day and sadly, the new book did not provide any reputation. In the end you can very well be sooner Kindred with Algraig despite having to gather almost twice as many points. Nendhiniel (my Warden on Laurelin) is already Kindred with the Algraig and now she’s slowly trying to get Kindred with the Grey Company to acquire a shiny trinket. 3 or 4 days and I’ll be there and then I’m probably going to hide away from anything that would remind me of Enedwaith. I don’t mind repeating the same thing over and over but I’d like to see a larger increase in reputation (and I don’t particularly like visiting the Black Dens but that’s another issue).
One final paragraph that hasn’t got to do much with the reputation but with another grind. It has come to my attention that vendors in Ost Galadh (Mirkwood) invented some new food and are bartering new recipes. There are two issues with that – I’ve got rid of the barter tokens upon leaving Mirkwood for Enedwaith and the recipes are BoA. So I have to invest in yet another set of repeatables.
P.S. That’s Ancient Annúminas Statuette in the picture, a pocket item with +11 to all stats. You can click it and your toon will do the displayed pose. The cooldown for that is 10 minutes. 
(Rumour has it there is a hidden deed associated with that but no actual evidence has been presented. I still click it everytime I can)
Tags: reputation, update