Bonevales – the land of rainbows and unicorns
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.
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- Entrance to Bonevales
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- Hills and rocks
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- A watchtower, not the one I talked about
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- Road through the Bonevales
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- Plas-maru, Palace of the Dead
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- Detail of the tombs
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
Tags: dunland, region overview