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)

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 ↩

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 ↩