Strayed Captain

Pren Gwyth (Wild Wood in Dunlendish) is where the two player groups who were separated by Bonevales and Trum Dreng meet again. This is the northern part of a great plain that forms most of Dunland and a political centre of sorts, the city of Galtrev lies here.

If you come from the Bonevales (and maybe even Trum Dreng) the first thing you’ll see is a tall Gondorian tower pretty much in the centre of Dunland, it’s visible from almost anywhere. Technically it’s in the Starkmoor but there’s not much to be told about it anyway. As I mentioned in the previous post there is a watchtower in Bonevales so I was almost certain this is a watchtower as well – technically it is, but as far as I can tell you cannot climb it up though there are Dunlendings encamped under it so I didn’t spend much time looking for a ladder. I do wish there was one.

Pren Gwyth looks more like the regular Enedwaith landscape and mobs around are more varied than in the Bonevales. We got wolves, wargs and goblins (there’s even a training camp for wargs with stables and all), crebain and of course evil Dunlendings. And what would be a zone without everyone’s favourite animals – boars.

In the middle of Pren Gwyth, slightly off the road, is the city of Galtrev (which more or less translates to Home). It is the biggest town since Caras Galadhon and it has everything you need and more – there are farming fields, skirmish camp, crafting hall, another crafting hall with craft guild representatives, a task-board, a barber (no new hairdos though), supposedly a sparring arena (with many Dunlendings around to cheer you up) and a playground for children. Yes, children, after four years Turbine finally invented children NPCs (the little Hobbits in Shire don’t count) and you can find plenty of them in every (friendly) settlement in Dunland. Being the main hub and thus having many players running around Galtrev has been soon renamed to Lagtrev and yes it feels like the Twenty-first Hall in a rainy day. The story in here is quite interesting and takes advantage of the phasing tech. When you first arrive in Galtrev you’ll meet a half-orc standing in the gate – the city has been taken over by the White Hand they were supposed to make an alliance with the people but it didn’t went well. Able men have been called south and those who remain are making weapons, supplies and other things to help with the war efforts. However the half-orcs are quite welcoming to visitors (as much as a half-orc can be) and will gladly let you in providing you lend them a hand. Lending a hand means figuring out why the work goes so slowly and consequently making it go faster, being compassionate we work sort of undercover and help the people with their tasks so they don’t get flogged (funnily enough the half-orcs will later assume that’s what we did to speed up the work and asks us for our special technique). You help craft spears, find lost hinges, deliver wood that has not been delivered since the wagon got ambushed and about 20 quests later you will retake Galtrev and the half-orcs will disappear (or phase out). Working “with” the bad guys was an interesting experience although there could have been some improvements. Even though the city has been suffering under half-orcs’ whips all the vendors were behaving like nothing was going on. It would add much to realism if there were no vendors until you liberate the city though it would require shortening the quests a bit (it took me two or three hours to do all the quests). Apart from certain parts of the city being seemingly unaffected by the political situation there is one thing that really bugs me: there is a Rohirrim reputation vendor standing inside the city (and neither he nor his Dunlending colleague offer any rep horses but that’s not the main issue). I understand that it’s convenient to have rep vendors in your main hub but the as much as the Dunlendings are our friends they hate the strawheads with a passion. Not to mention that even the half-orcs wouldn’t let him remain there. And you won’t need to speak with him for another four or five levels since you first arrive to Galtrev and by the time you will probably will be questing in the Gap of Rohan already. He would be much safer there.

Anyway, after you free the city there are still quests to do but let me sum up the Epics first. Coming into Pren Gwyth you’re required to find Halbarad, if you keep to the road and reach Galtrev from the south you won’t miss him but if you do it like me, take the short route and try to get to Galtrev from the north you may spend some time looking him up. The Epic line doesn’t get much more interesting just yet, Halbarad sends you to find someone in Galtrev willing to speak to you. After some searching you find and old woman named Caitrin, of the Falcon-clan. She tells you that if you want to learn about what’s going on you should visit the upper part of the village – there are people there that will teach you. Sure they will, teach you what’s the best place to put a sword through a person. After you return to that old hag she is surprised to see you alive but decides that you could be an asset, so she has you performing some minor sabotages and then you’re once again left with “Help the people of Pren Gwyth as much as you can and then travel to Tâl Methedras, home of the Falcon-clan”. And that’s just chapter 6 of the book.

So the city is freed and as I said there’s still stuff to do, mainly ensuring that the people are safe and well-fed. There are two quest arcs that I particularly liked (well, one, the other I liked simply for it’s existence). Let me start with a boar’s tale: Long time ago near the village of Archet in Bree-land there lived a boar called the Old Bloodtusk who claimed the lives of many a new adventurer, he was present in the intro instance every new player has to go through and his task was to test the skills of players – level 5 signature, if you could defeat him you were ready for the big world (there was also an Aurochs in Ered Luin for the same purpose). More than a year ago Turbine changed the intro instances and Old Bloodtusk went missing. Songs were sung in his memory and forums were mourning him. Now why am I talking about him – in Pren Gwyth there is a place called Bloodtusk’s den, it does indeed belong to long lost Old Bloodtusk who is said to have come here all the way from Archet (as the exploration deed will tell you). Now you won’t find Old Bloodtusk himself but pretty much every pig around Pren Gwyth is probably of his lineage. The quest arc itself (“Mean, Old Pigs in Pren Gwyth”, “Meaner, Older Pigs”, “Mean, Old Big Bloodtusk”) is just a boar-slaying chore – like we could live without those – but I’m glad Turbine remembered our favourite boar. The Big Bloodtusk at the end is the current patriarch of the family and the biggest boar you’ve ever seen, and as far as mammals are concerned there aren’t many larger than him.

The second quest arc is one of the funniest I’ve ever done – it starts in Galtrev with a boy who lost his shiny ball. As you’re looking around the town you discover that the ball has been taken by a craban (now why might that be?). After tracking down the craban, or rather following the general direction in which it has flown, you came upon a hut surrounded by many tamed crebain. Their tamer is called Rook, he’s from Bree-land and in his own words an apprentice of Saruman, and here’s what I remember from the dialog, more or less:
“Of course I have the palantír, but I won’t give to you, it’s a dangerous tool”. Rook wants to become a Wizard and there are several things he needs – he already has the palantír but he also needs a Ring of Power. So you gather some metal and make him a ring:
“A Ring of Power, wonderful, you were wise to give it to me.” Now he also needs a many-coloured cloak, he already has a cloak he just needs something to make it many-coloured. Seeing as there are plenty crebain around you go and kill them gathering their black feathers which have some fancy optical properties:
“Marvelous! Look at how it changes colors, looks almost like the feathers of my crows. But listen my friend, my flock of crebain seems to have shrunk I wonder what caused it. Go and gather some eggs from the wild crebain around”. And so you do:
“Now I am a true Wizard, Rook the Many Hued, soon I will take over Dunland and then the whole Middle-earth! And we will start with you!”. Unfortunately that’s where it stopped being funny and I had to kill the loony wizard. I recovered the “palantír” and returned it to the boy. When I finished the quest deed I still got one quest left to do, I wonder if they added one here and subtracted one from Trum Dreng. I should also mention that I gained another level.

Next stop: Tûr Morva and Starkmoor

Except it isn’t. It borders on the Lich Bluffs and it’s full of the Dead, they even have a place called the Bone Quarry (though I don’t think they actually go there to gather bones). Bonevales is one of two areas you can choose to go through into Dunland and this one follows the Old Road (which begs the question why did someone put a cemetery around or put a road through a cemetery but hey, the Dúnedain built a fortress in the Barrow Downs). If you don’t like the Dead then I think you’re safe to take the road through Trum Dreng and so far there haven’t been any other Dead on the road to Isengard.

If you’re following the Epics your “guide” through this area will be Prestadír which was a bit surprising to me. If you don’t remember we first meet Prestadír in the Haunted Inn in Mirkwood. Later on after the Grey Company is summoned Prestadír (along with his Mirkwood mates Idhrenfair and Himeinior) is encamped in Gloomglens in Enedwaith, which is north of Trum Dreng and has no dead around. There is however a Ranger in the Lich Bluffs who is kind of an expert on the Dead and has us running all around the tombs – Mincham. One would think that if we’re heading into yet another dead-infested area Mincham (or someone he works with) will take us through, not so. During the questing I’ve met another Ranger – Naeglanc and as far as I can tell he is an entirely new character. Again it’s kinda weird since Turbine has to thin the numbers of the Grey Company down to thirty before they meet with Aragorn and adding a new character seems counter-productive but I haven’t done the whole book yet, maybe they start dying fast (not that I’m looking forward to that, I felt sorry for Candaith).

If you’ve been to Mirkwood Bonevales kinda remind me of Scuttledells, except here we have the Dead and some Dunlendings instead of spiders. It feels maze-ish which is no problem for me but I guess the fact that PoIs don’t show up on maps (for some reason) only adds to the trouble of other people.

The story in here is quite interesting, unlike the Lich Bluffs where the dead have been allegedly walking for a while in the Bonevales there are a recent occurrence. This is the deal: the Bonevales are an ancient burial ground and a home to a clan of Dunlendings called Dievlig, the Accursed, who have been banished here long ago for some evil deeds. Now the leader (or brenin if you will) of the Dievlig allied himself with an evil spirit (who I think is one of Oathbreakers) and began raising the dead from their graves, he even tried to sacrifice his own daughter to help with the process. Since I was around I did of course put an end to it all, granted I did not kill the evil spirit – the Wild Huntsman showed up at the end and dealt with him. As I mentioned in the previous post I like the way the questing flows. You start at A who sends you do kill some dead but you don’t return to A to tell him that deed is done, instead you go meet up with B who is scouting ahead and continue from there (and thanks to the phasing tech you may not meet B until you need to). It helps create the sense of something actually going on and NPCs moving around instead of having a hub full of lazy NPCs who can’t be bothered with doing anything. As far as the Epic story is concerned not much is going on in Bonevales, I think there are only two chapters and both tell you “Help the people around as much as you can and then travel further south to meet with me again” on the other hand I happened to rescue yet another Ranger, the aforementioned Naeglanc.

One thing you’ll notice in each area is a pair of deeds, one for exploration and one for completing all (or almost all) quests. Each of those has a meta-deed associated with it (that is for completing all the exploration and quest deeds across Dunland). Bonevales was so far the only area where the number of quests needed was the exact number of all the quests in the area – in the other areas I have finished the deed while still having stuff to do, except for Starkmoor were I’m missing several Fellowship quests and Trum Dreng doesn’t have enough quests for the deed (that is a known bug). I did all of the Bonevales in one go and and earned a level just I was handing in the last quest. Felt great.

Overall the area looks nice (unless you really don’t like the Dead) and a hidden Ranger camp is really well hidden unless you approach it from the right direction. What surprised me was a watchtower I found somewhere in the middle of it. It looks like an overgrown silo and has a ladder on the side; it’s not tied to any quest (that I know of). You can climb it up and have a look around. I haven’t seen anything like it in the other areas I have visited so far. Unfortunately it was dark and I haven’t made any screenshots from the top. Since there are plenty ancient structures around there are also plenty of Scholar nodes – and I mean many, the banded coffers must be the most common resource in Dunland or at least in the Bonevales. Or maybe people weren’t bothered with gathering, I saw plenty people around yet I don’t remember anyone actually picking up stuff. Even the skarn nodes that I fully expected people to race to were being passed by. Well, at least there were more left for me.

Next stop: Pren Gwydh

So, Isengard is here and I got to play it for a while. When I say a while I mean about 3 days since I’ve been in the Lands of no Internet. Nevertheless my captain is already 68. He is the only class I’ve taken to Dunland so far (and only character I’ve played since RoI) so let’s have a look on what he saw. Although I could probably cover every change RoI brought in one post I decided not to. I will make shorter posts about every area I’ve visited.

Still, this would be a really short post so I add my general impressions about RoI.

Launch

Despite the launch being a day early and people having already been patching by the time I got home I was among the unfortunate ones and spent 6 hours trying to connect to the server. When I finally did the patching process went smoothly and I got in fairly easily. Then my computer froze I didn’t have the will to log in again.

Gameplay

Stats were changed an all that but I didn’t really feel much different, not yet anyway. Yes I’m close to having 1000 points of Might (something I could’ve never hope to achieve pre-RoI) but I don’t really do significantly more damage and I’m not traited for it. Class traits changed as well so I had to do some swapping, the biggest difference for me (in Leader of Man) is that Routing Cry is no longer tied to on-defeat response and now causes Forced attack. There is another trait that gives Routing Cry a stun so I’m kinda wondering how would those two things play together.

Gameplay in general isn’t bad and even though the areas were somewhat overcrowded the mobs kept respawning fast and I didn’t have to wait to kill the number required for the quests. I am running into another issue though – my bags are full. I usually have a bag or so empty and the other four are full of stuff I don’t wish to part with. Now my issue isn’t that I would need to keep all the drops, there are only two kinds of ore and one gem (my captain is a Jeweller) the issue is that all the quests reward these superb looking armour pieces that I’d really like to keep but I can’t, my Wardrobe (90 slots) is full as well. Fortunately my Warden seems to have a lot free space so by the time I’ll be taking her through Dunland I would be able to keep all the stuff. Right now I’m only picking pieces for a new outfit and discarding the rest (with much sadness).

The quests flow rather smoothly and in such a manner that you aren’t bound to one central hub that you keep visiting over and over again. Usually an NPC in a hub sends you to some tasks and then talk to another NPC somewhere near the area where your quests take place and the NPC will take it from there. Epic quests have also an interesting approach, usually you help a Ranger with some tasks and he then continued further south. You’re left to help the Dunlendings in the area as much as you can (or see fit) before meeting with that Ranger (or another one) further down the road. The quests also reward a hefty chunk of XP (about a 10k per quest) so I made a whole level on the first day which was around 30 quests. I heard rumours there aren’t enough quests to actually reach 75 by questing but we shall see.

Crafting

I haven’t crafted much yet as the quest rewards are quite good but I was surprised with how many recipes a Jeweller actually starts. In the previous tiers I would usually get a full basic set (earring, bracelet, necklace, ring) then I could get some advanced sets from drops. In the new Westfold tier I’m starting out with a recipe for Polished Green Garnet and a necklace, just a necklace. The other stuff should come from drops but – as Murphy’s law would have it – I’m only getting drops for other professions.

Apart from the inventory issue I haven’t encountered any bad thing and I’m looking forward to the rest of Dunland as well as Nan Curunír and of course the Gap of Rohan. I don’t think I will be disappointed.