So I got in, I actually visited Enedwaith in the F2P beta, made it as far as Echad Dagoras and restrained myself from going further.

View from Echad Dagoras in Fordirith

People say Enedwaith is a theme park, while there are big differences between, say, Mournshaws and Fordirith in terms of terrain, weather and mob population I can’t say I fell like going through a theme park, I barely cross two zones in a day.

I really like it, hills, trees, great outlooks from any highly situated camp, I guess Mirkwood would be the same if it wasn’t for the forest.

Since there’s a lot to talk about I’ll do several post, this one is about the environment – fauna and flora mostly.

Fordirith

The Northwatch is the northernmost area of the whole region and is not much different from Eregion, if you actually keep to the middle of the map everything seems kind of same. Fordirith is inhabited by Dunlendings of the Draig-lûth (Dragon clan – from Welsh ‘draig’ and ‘llwyth’) and black wolves.

Interesting things happen in Enedwaith when the night comes. The black wolves turn into creatures of shadow, looking as if a black smoke was coming from them and their eyes begin to glow. Other than that they are still wolves with their usual crippling attacks though they are able to perform some shadow based skills as well. They also got a corruption the removal of which causes them to take 20% more damage for about 20 seconds.

Now a little complaint – the actual border between Eregion (without dynamic layers) and Enedwaith (layered) lies somewhere in Fordirith, while I was questing in there I was crossing it every few steps – the result is loading screens and disappearing mobs and resource nodes. Certainly annoying but I’m already out of there.

Windfells

View on Amon Mîn in Windfells

I usually run with sounds turned off but I fortunately turned them up in Enedwaith. The sound of wind blowing across the plains really helps the immersion in this area. Here you find the remnants of what used to be North-south road which you may remember as the Green-way. The actual road starts in Fornost and goes all the way down through North Downs, Bree-land, Minhiriath (a region between Bree-land and Enedwaith), Enedwaith, Rohan (where it turns east), along the White Mountains into Gondor ending in Minas Tirith.

Anyway, the population of Windbluffs consists of Dunlendings (they really are almost everywhere) and again – wolves though they are white this time. They are also some occasional crebain, oxen – these are kinda new animals though they are not that interesting – and there is a herd of domesticated goats. As with Fordirith, interesting things happen at night. Druggavar and Cuthraul two kinds of fell spirits appear in the dark. Druggavar (‘drwg’ + ‘gafr’ literally ‘evil goat’) are black goats with glowing eyes and their bleating kinda sounds like someone ran it through a synthesizer, which is not bad, just weird. They behave like normal goats though they can make you unable to evade (permanent fear debuff as long as you are in combat). The Cuthraul (cythraul – demon) are pale Fell spirits with their eyes glowing more than usual and they are some of the few ghosts that actually say something:  ”Your spirit shall wither before the Eye!”, “Fall into shadows!”. They come in two variants – one (Dark Cuthraul) sports a corruption that will make him do more damage but also take more, and it tiers up every few seconds. The second – Cuthraul Fear-caster – will spawn a pair of crawling hands that will actually slow you down (-50% run speed aura). Finally someone realized they can clutch onto our legs A mithril-flake-dropping Warg can sometimes be seen here but Wargs don’t live here.

There is also an ancient Arnorian ruin – Amon Mín – currently held by the Dunlendings and there is not much happening in there, you are not even sent there to kill an evil leader of a local Dunlending band.

Nan Laeglin

Bridge between Windfells and Nan Laeglin, Lhanuch on the right

Nan Laeglin in the middle of Enedwaith (which I’ve been only able to translate as Valley of Green Pools though they aren’t any) is the place where you find Lhanuch (ox-village) the “capital” of Algraig, a friendly Dunlending clan – I said friendly though they are about as friendly as the Lossoth but at least you don’t start as an outsider. They belong to the Uch-lûth (Ox clan). Lhanuch stands on a hill near the great road, you can’t really miss it.

View on Nan Laeglin, Harndirion in the distance

Unfriendly Dunlendings don’t appear here but you start to feel Saruman’s presence. Half-orcs and Wargs walk through this area as if it was already theirs – “What are you doing out of your hole?”. Sometimes you can also stumble upon an angry Plains Ox Bull.

Thrór’s Coomb

East of Nan Laeglin, one of two areas with a proper forest. Named after Thrór who ruled under the Mountain when Smaug came. He escaped with his people and traveled south from Erebor through the Gap of Rohan and then turning north into Dunland (which is part of the proper Enedwaith) where he and his people spent some time.

View on on the borders of Thrór's Coomb from Harndirion

Thrór’s Coomb as well as Nan Laeglin is being overlooked by a great watchtower called Harndirion (Southern Watch/tower). Though you cannot reach the top of the tower even its base is situated high enough to give you a great view over the area. There are also some Dwarven ruins and most importantly a great library in Nár’s Peak where you’ll be taken if you follow the epic line.

The coomb is kind of split into two parts, the western is full of Dunlendings and the eastern part – a large coniferous forest being close to Misty Mountains and thus covered in snow – is inhabited by some Giants and Gwibers. I haven’t explored it much as it is meant for at least small fellowship. Ginats don’t need an introduction and the Gwiber (Welsh for adder) are fire drakes, though they look a bit different. For some reason Gwibberlings have the same amount of morale as a full-grown Gwiber. One beast worthy of mentioning is Cloben, Rare Nemesis Gwiber, who often falls prey to passer-by Wardens who like to solo him, I have yet to attempt that.

Lich Bluffs

South of Nan Laeglin along the great road. As the name suggests there are some Dead strolling (or floating, in the case of Oathbreakers) around as well as Cun Annun (hell-hounds). To me they look like a cross-breed between a barghest and a shar-pei. They don’t differ much from barghests though they start to chew on you really hard if they are low on morale (morale transfer + root).

A Lich Bluffs barrow (with yours truly in the front)

Overall the area is similar to Barrow Downs or Imlad Balchorth though there are no darkwater or crawling hands. The barrows do look a bit different though not by much.

Mournshaws

A thick forest west of Lich Bluffs and Nan Laeglin. There are some stonehenge-like structures within and if you are lucky you will meet The Hunstman, an Elder spirit who used to (though perhaps still does) serve Oromë. The forest is inhabited by Wood-trolls, Cun Annun and Elhudan who are the Enedwaith version of Limrafn. They have an interesting skill, when you fight them they may spawn a little Elhudan and if you don’t kill those they will heal the Elhudan for a big amount of morale (at least from half to full) fortunately one strike is often enough to get them. Not much really happens in here, it seems that the more south you the less there is to do.

Gloomglens

Remember Scuttledels? This similar but more grass and the rocks have the Grand Canyon hue (thanks to which they are being criticised as un-Middle-earth-ish). Inhabited by common white wolves and boars and two other interesting mobs. First are the white stags, they behave like normal deers (stuns, useless calls for help, etc.) but depending on the first attack you use on them they will debuff you accordingly (-25% melee damage, +100% power cost for tactical skills or something equally annoying for ranged attack which I haven’t been able to get since my captain does not have ranged attacks). It is an interesting defence mechanism and I salute Mother Nature for that though it will probably take quite some time for the stags to realize they are being pulled with other skills then the ones that are actually important for the class – at least in some cases, Captains pull with a cry (tactical), champions and guardians pull with bows (ranged).

A bugan

The other mobs are Bugan (Welsh for bogey) and I have to admit they are kinda creepy, they are basically goblins but they are dressed like hobbits and their features are more hobbit-ish.

Why would they be dressed like hobbits you may ask. Well that’s because there are hobbits in Gloomglens (but it’s not like you didn’t know before, is it? . They live in a small village called Maur Tulhau (Great Holes, or Smials perhaps ), and they very much resemble the hobbits we know – chatting about anything and everything – though their apparel might be not as fancy.

And that would be it, I hate saving this as a draft over and over and if I’d keep doing that I’d never publish anything, next time: Quests, Deeds and stuff.

So it begun. I was done patching early in the evening and fortunately no errors occurred, waiting for servers was another matter especially when the forums decided to stop working and Codies decided to turn the servers up one by one. Guess which was the last to come? Yes, our most beloved Laurelin

But after hours of waiting I finally got in, waited for the pop-up text of “New Deed: …” and “Deed Finished” to disappear and then went to look for changes. So how are they?

Day 1 (aka yesterday)

The Shop

3000 Points (just Points, though I think an unofficial poll decided to call them DNotes ) + 540 Points from Reputation. I think I should have more, and maybe I will; as I understand not all points have been handed out yet. I bought the Traveller’s hood as promised and now I look cool, but in order to look even cooler and keep with the theme of the last Epic Book I have to dye my stuff gray. I’ll include photos once I’m finished.

The Vault, the Shared Storage and the Wardrobe

Vault is changed and I don’t like it very much, fortunately it will be changed again with the next update into what looks much better. Shared Storage – no change but I wanted to include it in the heading. Wardrobe – this is a blessing for me but even the maximum of 50 slots won’t probably suffice. Still, it’s something. I haven’t bought any additional storage yet as I’m not sure I want to give almost 1000 Points for that. Either way, my Vault has finally some room in it.

The Captain

Got one new skill, Sure Strike, that I have to learn to use along with slightly rearranged quickslots. Retraited for 5y/2b: Tactical Prowess, Adherent of Elendil, Blood of Númenor, Intimidation, Defiance / Captain’s Hope, Now for Wrath. Might play with it a little but I wanted to try the new shield-brother. (The yellow capstone makes the shield-brother skills apply to the whole Felllowship by a lesser extent). I tried and looks fine, I think I’m going to stick with it for a while.

New instances

Kinnies decided to try the the Great Barrow and I went with them. After initial problems with the leader inviting us to an already cleared instance we got to Thadúr’s wing. Despite some people’s arguments that revamping an instance doesn’t make it new it actually did. The only thing that is the same is the layout, new mobs with new mechanics, new quests, everything. The fights weren’t really hard though and in the end Symbol of Celebrimbor dropped (I didn’t won the roll). On we went to the aptly named Maze and this time we decided to properly try the final fight’s Hard Mode (we tried it with Thadúr but misunderstood the objectives) – we got pummeled by the decayed wights who are apparently still attached to their severed arms and took the harm we brought to said arms badly. We got our revenge though and completed both prerequisites to enter Sambrog’s wing. I went to visit a vendor after the two short instances and though I probably didn’t loot every trash mob I sold what I got for 1.5g. Then we went to Sambrog but we did not achieve victory even without the Hard Mode, though we brought Sambrog to 10k health (from 95k) his fellow fell spirits healed him, we need to watch them closer next time. All in all good fun though Great Barrow doesn’t really offer anything useful for a level 65 character. One last thing worth of mentioning, the random quests – each member of the fellowship gets a random side-quest (kill x Ancient wights, light y braziers) – what I like about those is that if some of your fellows happen to share the same quest your progress is tied together, if you light one brazier it counts for others as well.

Day 2

The Forums

Complains upon complains, what should I tell you. I was genuinely surprised that people complained about things (Character Selection Screen, Instance Join) that were known since the NDA was lifted, months ago. But what can you do.

The Fall Festival

Well, I only visited the Haunted Burrow, perfected my quickest way through, got the Burrower title – which I would be using if it weren’t for the recently awarded “Purveyor of Odd Things” – and did not get the horse.

The Newbies

As I wrote earlier I wanted to welcome the new players but I guess I didn’t pick the right time, I advertised a hand-out of Copper bracelets in Celondim and Archet but no one actually came, will try again over the weekend I guess.

Volume 3 Book 2

Epic book is epic. I am only 3 chapters far but it looks very promising. SPOILERS FOLLOWING! (you have been warned). First of all I was sent to Arwen who dwells in Imdolen, overlooking Imladris from above and finishing a present for Aragorn. The lady gave me the present (the banner of a White Tree on a black field, an important thing it will be in the future) and sent me to the Stables to meet with Halbarad. As I was nearing the stables I noticed there are Rangers standing nearby, chatting with townsfolk or taking care of the horses (I really like the new tech they put into this). I spoke with Halbarad and the others and then I took part in the best session play so far learning about the lineage of Isildur.

The session play begins near Cirith Rhîw, a passage from Evendim into Forochel, and you play a part of Laegened who with his fellow Haerdor set out for north after Arvedui the last king of Arnor did not return on a ship as expected. You play as a ranger having basically the same skill as Laerdan did in the previous session plays but combat isn’t really important here. What is really really nice thing is that the session play is narrated as you go forward in the story. Haerdor sends you to clear the path off the worms that moved there, after you kill 3 of them Candaith’s voice exclaims: “Laegened worked quickly and soon half of the worms were defeated. Only three remained.” I cannot express how much I like this. Fade out.

Laegened and Haerdor arrived at the site of the shipwreck and met with Hasikkä, then chieftain of the Lossoth. He told us the tragic story of Arvedui and that he left something behind so it wasn’t lost to the sea. (It was actually the Ring of Barahir, a heirloom from the First Age). Fade out.

Ettenmoors, nine hundred years later, you (Corugúr) and Glangon set out to save Arador, Chieftain of the Rangers who has been captured by Trolls and taken to a place known as Troll-height. You are sent to search the area and you end up fighting goblins (while Candaith still narrates: “Corogúr carefully dealt with the Goblins he encountered”, “The Goblins would long whisper of the shadow that cut down their friends that day.” Just epic.) Unfortunately Arador was slain, and so his son Arathorn, (later to be) father of Aragorn was to become a Chieftain, in memory of the fallen warrior the area was renamed to Arador’s End (sound familiar?) and to this day still bears that name. Another fade out.

Nanduhirion, eaves of Lothlórien, you (Túgonn) are walking with Aragorn towards the Golden Wood and you meet an Old Man, clad in grey, leaning on a staff (yes, it’s him). He shares some wisdom with you and you part your ways with Aragorn as he wishes to go south and achieve feats worthy of his forefathers. You see him and Gandalf walk away. End of session play.

In the next chapter you are sent to Gwingris where you met with another familiar face – Searadan – whose horse Erebrandir damaged one of his shoe. You are sent to fetch a farrier (now that’s a word I never heard before) who was last seen travelling east of Gwingris, you find him, protect him from two Uruks and that’s where I ended. Time to publish this and continue on

It’s LotRo launch day. The launch of F2P in Europe anyway. After nearly 2 months we’re finally getting it!

My plan was to start this blog prior to F2P launch which I did of course but due to the delays I haven’t had much to write about. I started a character on Landroval while taking a break from Laurelin, now that we’re back to business I’ll try to find a way to keep playing on both sides of the Pond.

Anyway today will be a busy day, while I don’t expect the patch servers to come up for a few more hours, which is good since I got some TV shows to catch up on, there will be much work to do. First thing I’m going to do is to shout a big thank you to Codemasters. After that there will be much respending of LI points and Skirmish Marks across several characters. Finally Wardrobe – my main vault chest (oh and the new vault comes as well) is full of cloaks, helmets and other stuff. After upgrading and filling up the wardrobe as much as possible I plan to head to Celondim, craft a few Copper Necklaces (necklaces seems to be neglected as a quest rewards) and hand them out to new players I happen to meet while spending the evening on advice channel. If that wasn’t enough the Haunted Burrow will be opened for business and I have to stop by as well. So those would be the short-term plans. The long-ish-term plans include getting some new armor from Helegrod, looking forward to raiding in there as I have only been there once about 3 months ago and that was only the drake hatchery and Thorog. Another thing I need to get preferably before the November update hits us is Kindred reputation with several factions so I can receive the shiny new horses, especially the horse of Elf-lords look really good. And one last thing – I need to get the Travellers Hood from the Store.

So that would be it, looking forward to a shinier Middle-earth.

I’ve recently stumbled upon an awesome site. It contains screenshots taken in 2003 from a game which was called Middle-earth Online (then in development). Here’s a little info about Middle-earth Online from Wikipedia (the LotRo article):

Sierra On-Line first announced the development of a licensed Middle-earth MMORPG in 1998. Sierra had financial troubles in 1999 and replaced the staff working on the game. Sierra continued to confirm development of the MMORPG but did not release any development details.

Vivendi Universal Games, the parent company of Sierra, secured eight-year rights to produce computer and video games based on The Lord of the Rings books in 2001. Vivendi announced an agreement with Turbine in 2003 to produce Middle-earth Online (at that time expected to be released in 2004). In March 2005, Turbine announced that it bought the rights to make an MMORPG based on Tolkien’s literature and that Turbine would publish The Lord of the Rings Online instead of Vivendi.

I find it interesting to see how much or how little have things changed before the game was released (of course it was near release back then). There are 185 screenshots in total, though some of them are not being linked to (and the later ones are nearly contemporary), I’m going to point out some of the interesting ones:

• Goldberry (warning: hi-res) part of that ruin – and I guess it is from this very picture – is an official avatar on US forums, I had no idea where it came from until now
• some other ruins that apparently got remodeled, might be those columns near Waymeet
• cloak with the hood cast back! and a most likely permanent torch (not to mention the cool looking armour)
• several shots of what was probably Carn Dûm (each word is a link)
• a shot of Bree-town – I believe we’re overlooking the area where the outside forges are now, near the West gate which is visible in the middle of the picture
• and another one featuring probably the Oldstone Ruins
• and not sure where this is but it might be the very first shot of The Stone (in the middle at the bottom)

Here goes my attempt on a newbie guide – and with pictures!

Haudh Iarchith^[1]

The Mound of Bloodfog (at least that’s what I think it means). When I started playing this used to be a 40-ish level public dungeon the sole purpose of which was to farm reputation with Men of Bree – the latter hasn’t changed. It was a huge dungeon with both solo and fellowhip areas full of any barrow monster imaginable (wights, spiders) and even unimaginable (the Kergrim). The problem with HI – and this is only my opinion, I don’t know what stood behind the changes – was the overall hugeness of the thing (look at the map in Lorebook, it hasn’t been updated yet) and the fact that good standing with Bree at level 40 probably wasn’t on your top-priority to-do-list. So our good old Haudh Iarchith was de-leveled to 20 and split into several wings each featuring different monsters. I’ll be covering the three wings in Northern Barrow downs that do not require group (all mobs inside are swarm, normal or single signatures).

Quests

Quests for this part of HI are obtainable at Broderic Willowmeade who is standing in front of the Hunting Lodge in Bree-town. Enter Bree through the South Gate, turn left at the Auction house and continue through the alley north^[2], you can’t miss it. He will hand you three quests – Gathering of Shards, Gathering Ancient Texts and Stalker of Haudh Iarchith – it is unfortunate that the NPC still refers to HI as a single dungeon and sends you the wrong way. You may slap him later. In order to complete the quests (or at least the gathering of the ancient texts) you will need to go through all the wings. The shards are dropped by any creature and the monsters you have to kill (you have to kill just one of them) are one in each of the wings.

All the creatures drop (very generously) Cardolan Trinkets and Barrow-treasures and also Mathoms and Well-kept Mathoms (for Bree and Shire reputation respectively). There are quests connected to these items but you don’t have to have those active to get a drop. Inside the barrows are also urns and vases that Scholars can “harvest” for crafting materials.

Wings

There are three wings of HI in the Northern Barrow Downs, easily recognisable on the new map as open mounds. And marked with letters for your convenience.

Barrow of Taradan (T)^[3]

• 2/6 of the ancient texts
• Gwigon (for the Stalker quests)

When you enter this barrow you might be immediately greeted by a headless handless Barrow-wight and his company of crawling arms. Another wight patrols the next circular room. The rest of the barrow is filled with Spiders, a couple of strayed Crawling hands and non-aggressive Barrow-lights (think wisps).

• Spiders (normal) – as big as a grown hobbit (and trust me, that’s a small size for a spider) but less cunning. Spiders use several poison abilities – a DoT (damage over time), a Poison resistance debuff and an Agility/Vitality debuff. They can also throw webs which root you in place hindering your escape or slow down your attack speed. They are not very dangerous but given the architecture of this particular barrow you may pull three or four at a time (because they were just around the corner) and it can get nasty.
• Wights (normal) – nothing special about them, other than that they may be linked to crawling arms (meaning the arms start attacking with the wight); I’ve only seen two of them in this barrow
• Crawling arms (swarm) – if you are suddenly in combat for no apparent reason know that a crawling arm spotted … smelled … sensed you (somehow). They are swarm and thus easy to kill, but they move very slowly. They do however count as humanoid mobs and their drop repertoire is wider, the can drop fancy rings and gems among other things. There are three right at the entrance and one in each of the dead-end circular rooms.
• Barrow-light (swarm) – non-aggressive, meaning it won’t attack you unless you attack it, however it will attach itself to you and its bright light will affect your performance (+20% miss chance), it will of course lose interest in you after some time (yeah, you’re really nothing special)
• Gwigon^[4] (rare signature) – a bigger spider, emphasis on rare, the respawn time of this mob is huge (and as of now it may not even work properly), if it’s not there don’t bother waiting; if by chance you met her^[5] she will drop a sapphire shard (an essential crafting component for extra nice recipes) and she can also drop some fancy equipment.

Barrow of Ringdor (R)^[6]

• 3/6 of the Ancient Texts
• Umnen

This is the largest wing, inhabited by Darkwater, Decaying Wights and one or two Kergrim. It is very humid and yet the wooden staircases are still holding. In one part of this dungeon there is something called the Watcher’s Workshop (see the picture) clicking on it brings up your crafting panel but you cannot execute any recipes on it and what in the name of Gandalf is it doing there, I don’t know.

• Decaying Wights (normal) – this is another kind of wights,
  

  

  the most preserved, they retain all their extremities and sport a comb-over. If their end is near (because of you bashing them) they administrate some bowel movements and push a crawler out of their body (guess which orifice?). The crawlers are swarm and can pose some trouble but if you kill the wight quickly the crawler won’t appear. These wights also have an aura of fear around them (every wight has), that gives you permanent shadow damage over time (but nothing huge), auras from multiple wights don’t stack.

• Darkwater (normal) – green spirits with glowy weapons, they have the ability to submerge and avoid damage for a short time. The skill can be interrupted (resp. the preparation for that skill, you can’t hit them afterwards) and they don’t use it very often; usually when in danger of imminent “death”. The darkwater (and every other spirit) have an aura of dread. 1 point of dread doesn’t do much, but as you progress further in the game, you will find yourself in areas filled with more dread, causing you to take more damage, do less damage and overall put you several levels below your actual state. The aura doesn’t stack.
• Kergrim (normal) – strange semi-intelligent creatures that are probably mammals. They can give you a disease which if not cured in time gives you several unpleasant debuffs. There are one or two in this barrow, you may not even come across them if you are just gathering the texts. They have one interesting ability and that is eating the dead which heals them over time, the ability can be interrupted and they don’t seem to like the wights, I only saw them eat their own kind.
• Umnen^[7] (rare signature) – darkwater, the same deal as Gwingon: rare, sapphire shard and fancy loot; this one patrols the area (as far as I know) so no accurate coordinations are given

Haudh Methernil (M)^[8]

• 1/6 of Ancient Texts
• Marrow

The Mound of the Prince’s End (or something) it can be the Prince Lalia is so fond of but who knows? This is a single room inhabited by 4 Kergrim, one Decaying Wight that patrols the room and if you are lucky then also Marrow – the head of the Kergrim in this area. And there really isn’t much to say, the two Kergrim on top and under the stairs are far apart enough to pull one at the time.

And that’s it! Once you return to the Hunting Lodge, return the quests, speak with Tad Leafcutter to accept a quest for the Barrow-treasure, return that quest and barter all your Barrow-treasures for Bree reputation (or other things of your choosing). Then go inside, turn right immediately and speak with Anglinn, the ranger in the corner, accept, return and barter. Congratulations, your first run of reputation farming is complete, make sure to stop by tomorrow so you can repeat those quests.

I plan to do the second part someday, but that requires me to gather some fellows and after that I’ll copy this over to the Lorebook.

1. ^[1] HOW-th YAHR-khith, it isn’t accurate because the proper ‘ch’ sound – here represented by ‘kh’ – doesn’t exist in English ↩
2. ^[2] it’s called the Haunted Alley and for a good reason ↩
3. ^[3] TAH-rah-dahn ↩
4. ^[4] GWEE-gohn, the name has something to do with web (gwî), not sure about the second part, could be (gaun) which is valour or ruler ↩
5. ^[5] named spiders are female by default, I don’t think spider males have a chance to grow that much to become a named mob ↩
6. ^[6] RING-dohr ↩
7. ^[7] OOHM-nehn, the name means ‘Evil Water’ ↩
8. ^[8] HOW-th meh-THEHR-nihl ↩

So Faradwen has dinged 20, my.lotro still won’t acknowledge her existence but I can live without that. (And without an avatar and enabled BBCODE in my signature, and EU access to Lorebook, …)

Since she’s an Elf and I deliberately took a different route than my beta captain (Old Forest and Adso’s Camp) I am only Acquaintance with Bree. But with Andrath, Northern Bree-fields and Barrow-Downs quests still intact I expect it to change dramatically.

The Hunter quest on level 15 was quite interesting, though I don’t like the helm – don’t get me wrong I like wearing animal remains on my head (deer helmet in UO was just epic) but this one doesn’t look as horrifying as a bear should so I am sporting the Circlet of Men instead. Still the Warden quest is better but such is the way of the Warden. On a side note I was really looking forward to laughing evilly at the brigands who desperately want to run away from me but I kill them way too quickly, they turn around and fall dead, no running involved, no satisfaction.

So far the only F2P limitation I really feel is having only 3 bags, they fill quite fast especially with the stuff that comes out of the Gifts and of course I am reluctant to get rid of anything that may prove useful later.  I am now sitting at about 160 TP having completed almost every deed in Ered Luin. Half of the Bree-land and Shire still lay ahead of me; then I plan to buy North Downs but that’s a distant future. So far deed grinding isn’t as hard as I thought it would be (I’m only dreading Sickle-fly and Neeker-breeker slayer) however hunter class deeds require quite a high number of shots to perform (Penetrating Shot 1000 times anyone?). I know it can all be done in 10 days but I only concentrate on finishing class deeds when they are about 75% done.

Skirmishes – as I wrote before at this level they are really easy, so just for fun I got an Archer. Although he sometimes doesn’t feel like shooting – and like every graduate of the Skirmish University he cannot find his trail – in combination with Hunter we simply obliterate the enemies. I have even deliberately pulled the Tuckborough courtyard and we barely got scratched. Siege of Gondamon was equally easy, the only trouble I came across was the Daywalker Berserker who pummeled one of the guards before his shield went down and I couldn’t do anything with it. And for the first time I got no trouble with Blood-rooks. If the drake at the end wasn’t scripted to became hostile after landing I’m sure we wouldn’t allowed him to land at all. I spent almost all of my marks on weapons, armour and jewelry. In the end a difference of 20 Agility isn’t really that much but I feel better. /flex

Last but not least I’ve heard the Mariners have wrecked their ship again, I might check that out, after all you never know when an eye-patch may come handy.

So I rolled an Elven Huntress – Faradwen (which basically means ‘huntress’, simplicity FTW). She’s level 10, I am once again enjoying quests in Ered Luin and I’ve earned my first 5 Turbine points, yay!

But the whole hunter thingy will probably take some getting used to. When I play a melee class (say champion) the usual fight looks like this: *thrust*, *slash*, *swing*, *hack*, *slash*,  … you get the picture. And the situation with hunter? No matter the skills it’s *pew*, *pew*, *pew*, *pew* and occasional *slash*. Granted it’s more like *aaaaaaim* *pew*, *aaaim* *pew*, *aaaim* *pew*,*PEW* (cookie if you can name the skills). I understand that when it comes to animation there really is little to no possible variety with firing arrows and I play with sound turned off and thus have no idea what sound (if any) do Hunters make. Not to mention that I am currently in the possession of about 6 ranged skills so maybe it gets better later.

Back in UO I actually played an Archer and it was fine, UO doesn’t have skills so I was happy auto-pew-pewing from a distance, running a bit away once the slow-moving Ettin, Troll or Earth Elemental reached me, picking arrows from the ground along the way and then start shooting again, slowly taking him down, it was fun. Not that Hunter in LotRO is hard to play it’s just the combat feels rather monotonous. Granted I haven’t really tried moving around more-so when I’m being encouraged to stay in place to remain focused. When in melee the skills have quite a cooldown and, well, I keep forgetting to use my bow in melee range (it’s just unnatural!). I guess I’d need to group a bit, I actually had quite a fun in Skrogrím’s Tomb, peeling Dwarves and goblins off Dwalin. I am also really looking forward to fight brigands in Bree – no more chasing after them if they decide to run away because I’m not worth the trouble.

In the meantime – US forums, lorebook and everything has been compressed into one huge and (currently) really buggy yet somewhat visually appealing site and the European release of Enedwaith and F2P has been postponed – we can only hope for soon™.

As you probably are aware, the US servers are up for the head-start and people are awaiting the arrival of F2P players, read ravaging hordes thereof

Yesterday, after the dev chat (radiance will be leaving!) the patch servers went up and I experienced one of the quickest patches, it barely took an hour. Unfortunately the servers did get up much later – at about 2 a.m. when I was already in bed. But they’re up now and I need to roll a Free character on Landroval anyway. I’m thinking about an Elven Hunter, the other choices are Guardian (and I’m not sure I want to roll one) and Burglar (which I really don’t want to roll). I usually spend hours inventing a name for my characters but fortunately I got one spare – Fandiriel – and I hope it’s not taken. By the time I’m writing this Landroval is probably mostly sleeping so I am going to listen to the Hunter roundtable and see if I’d like a hunter

Meanwhile: EU servers continue to go on as if nothing was happening and Codies haven’t really told us anything. I can only hope I will be patched on Friday. I expect Enedwaith to be pretty crowded the first week so I’m probably not heading there right from the start, though from what I have seen the area is just beautiful. What I am gonna do is enjoy my new wardrobe, my vault contains about 50 pieces of clothing a good quarter of which are cloaks and with all the chests bought I don’t have much space in there.  After that some tedious respending of LI points and Skirmish Marks and then I’d like to visit some renewed instanced.

So see you in Middle-earth, from now on at both sides of the Pond (Laurelin and Landroval).

I was about to do a Lorebook guide of sorts but I still can’t get my head around that one. Instead have a look at my investigative skills

I was looking at the housing items listed in Lorebook and trying to think of a way to recategorize them (so you can get a list of all the paintings and such) and then I found something. I know people do complain about the fact that Lorebook is often not up-to-date (i.e. it doesn’t contain the things it should) but did you know it is also ahead of the current state of the game?

First a little introduction. Lorebook is being updated by a bot called Admin (the link is not broken, it just really leads to a non-existent page). This Admin does, from time to time, flood the Lorebook with huge amount of updates – I’d be interested to know how he manages to do that because the Lorebook isn’t really fast to load . Luckily for us, what happens in Lorebook gets logged in Lorebook – while on the Admin’s user page go to Toolbox -> User Contributions and you’ll see.

Now what have I found – I was skimming through one of the Item categories and Item:Crow’s Cage caught my eye. A skirmish decoration! From Breaching the Gate! So I thought hey, maybe there’s more. And there is, I’ve looked into what our fellow Admin was doing around that time (17:10, December 10th, 2009 – given the date I suppose someone else has found this before I did but I don’t recall seeing it) and apparently rewards were planned for each of the skirmishes. Here they are, ordered by skirmish – hover should do since some of the pages won’t load anyway:

Here’s the link to Admin’s Contribution page from that time, the decorations start with Thorin’s Bust. I hope we will see those, preferably soon, the Bonfire is a definite must have. On the other hand I have no room for any additional decorations.

And icing on the cake? If you’ve been to Enedwaith in Beta or read the dev diary, you may know about the two reputation factions in there – Algraig and the Grey Company. Well their barter items despite being described as Malledhrim items (Algraig gold and silver token, Grey Company gold and silver token) are in Lorebook since March 4th, 2010. That’s before we even knew about Enedwaith.

It is not my intention to say that the developers are a bunch of slackers who can’t release things in time. However if you want to poke them about this (by, say, starting a forum thread) go ahead.

It is different. I have a level 21 Captain on Bullroarer and I am already Friend with Bree which gives me a nice discount on horses in that area (not that I’m using it atm.). With Ally I will have a discount on all the vendor items and I assume something equally nice awaits me at Kindred.

Bree Reputation

One of the reasons my reputation is that high is the fact that Haudh Iarchith^[1] has been revamped. It has been brought to level 20 and split, the solo part (spiders, kergrim and fat wights/darkwater) now consist of a three separate dungeons – well the kergrim dungeon is a single room with 5-6 (providing Marrow is home) mobs – accessible through various mounds in the Northern Barrow Downs (all are named and visible on the new map), haven’t been too far South but I assume it’s similar there. All mobs inside happily drop Barrow-Downs Treasure and Trinkets of Cardolan along with Mathoms and Well-kept Mathoms (I assume Mathom House reputation will be brought down as well). I haven’t seen any of the elusive Shard-droppers in there though.

Bree Rep vendors offer some helmets and cloaks but they require level 30, it’s safe to assume you will be Kindred for some time when you reach it.

Skirmishes

Skirmishes now start at level 20 and you no longer need to gather any sheets of paper from humanoid monsters. Just speak to Skirmish Captain, go through the tutorial and you’re ready. However if you are a Free Player you will have free access only to 2 skirmishes: Siege of Gondamon and Trouble in Tuckborough, you can read more about skirmishes and F2P in an article over at Casual Stroll to Mordor. Lowering the requirements also means creating some new armour sets, weapons and jewelry and a new “rank” – Recruit.

To me bringing it to level 20 is maybe too much, at this level you are still in the kind of situation where mobs die after a few seconds – well, certainly not my case, I’m a captain but other classes would probably agree. The fights overall seems too easy but it’s not that skirmishes are hard overall. Nonetheless I finished the tutorial and picked up an Archer. I went ahead and bought a helmet and a nice greatsword with Westernesse damage. The next day I decided to try Trouble in Tuckborough:

So there I am trying to liberate the town of Tuckborough, first mob – Venomous Blood-Arrow – 400 morale, I put him to my Archer’s attention and start running towards the lieutenant, I think I was able to score on hit before he fell. I should probably mention that my Archer is effectively at level 24 and does 100 damage with his auto-attack, I do barely half as much and my herald does 10 providing the weather is nice. Lieutenants at this level really pose little threat, I’d be interested to see how group skirmishes go though and 12-man raid at level 20? Well that might certainly be interesting. Anyway, Encounters were a little more “challenging” as they got about 1200 morale. Got Fíkthrokh who wasn’t really hard though he certainly seemed to be and Old Fright who pummeled my archer in four or five hits (did I mention I cannot hold aggro over my soldier?), luckily for the rest of us (my herald and me) he managed to get the bear to about half morale and we finished him. At the final courtyard my herald kinda rushed ahead and pulled half of the mobs there though we dispatched them quickly. At last we met Filzof – 600 morale. I know fights aren’t about the morale of mobs and there are other things that affect difficulty but at this level it still is about overcoming one single obstacle and that’s the mob’s morale. He barely had the time to say his monologue. All in all, 21 minutes, but that’s because I wasn’t really aiming for the time. One thing to mention, my herald has bigger pathing issues than my soldier.

Now the rewards, I got 64 Marks, one Veteran Recruit (I sense a big oxymoron) bounty and four normal Recruit bounties and in the chest I’ve found 8 silver, yay! And of course I got two Eruilan and then two Recruit Marks (barter ration 1:5).

The final count of one Trouble in Tuckborough is:

• 124 Skirmish Marks
• 54 silver
• close to 4k XP (one level is about 20k)

I have of course sold and bartered everything. At this point – unless you absolutely positively must have that one piece of cosmetics – Eruilan marks have no use other than barter (25 marks each). You probably want to have a different soldier appearance but that particular trait isn’t available before level 30. As the rewards go one yellow piece of heavy armor costs 15 SM and a purple one (veteran) costs 30 with no special (First, Second, etc.) mark needed. But of course it’s skirmish armour, you’ll probably find better stuff at your local crafting center. Archer being 4 levels above me doesn’t need upgrading and I cannot wear personal traits yet. I suppose after a few skirmishes I would be swimming in Skirmish Marks as the lieutenant slayer deeds will yield a big chunk of them. On the other hand, the new rewards from Great Barrow will cost a little more than the classic skirmish stuff and players might not have that many SM to spare.

Overall I like the changes, at least Free players are probably going to spend quite some time in Bree-land. And the reputation would certainly come handy, I never understood why (even in SoA days) would players gather reputation at later levels when they no longer need it. After you’ve left Bree for Lone-lands or North Downs you weren’t likely to be coming back.

1. ^[1] Sindarin for Mound of Bloodfog ↩