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Friday, May 04, 2007
LotRO Journal - 4-May-2007
I love the Shire. It is undoubtedly the best zone in the Lord of the Rings Online. The main difference between it and lets say a WoW zone is that it appears more alive. The NPC hobbits are moving around, giving a semblance of leading their own lives. You can hear them chatting about daily events, and there is even hobbit proposing marriage to his girlfriend, after which they run off to tell their parents. Even more importantly LotRO has a memory for what you did. Early you get a quest to join the local constabulary, the Bounders, and after doing a lot of quests for them you earn the titel honourary sherrif (sic). And from then on every time you pass a NPC bounder, they greet you by name. Things like that are a welcome change from WoW NPCs, who greet you as a stranger minutes after you finished all their quests for them.
But as much as I love the place, now that I can't farm any more, there isn't much to do for a level 18 minstrel in the Shire. I haven't done all quests there, there are far too many for that, but the remaining quests are all grey to me. So I decided to play my alt, the hobbit guardian yesterday. I leveled him up to level 9, mostly by doing the 12 post runs. These are easy to do if you know the place, and have the added advantage that you "discover" all the blank spots of the map in the process (which doesn't give any xp in LotRO, by the way).
If you remember, my guardian is the "son" of my minstrel, role-playing wise. Technically he's a twink. Guardians can only wear up to medium armor before level 15, and my minstrel as yeoman has tailoring besides farming and cooking, so I made the best possible medium leather armor for my guardian. That makes a big difference. This is a lot more clever than what I did in WoW, where I leveled my warrior to 60 first, and then started a priest. In all games tanks are the most gear-dependant class, and thus the best target for getting twinked. So leveling my healer first and twinking my tank with it works better than the other way round.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:03 AM Permanent Link
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Yesterday I went to the Shire with my higher-level dwarven guardian to explore. I figured it would be fun and give me the chance to work on some deeds at the same time. I was expecting a good atmosphere and was not disappointed. I was expecting new nice sights and was not disappointed. But...
Having read up on a few things I was also expecting more peaceful quest varieties, such as the message deliveries. I was, however, not prepared for the area designer to go completely overboard. In a few hours play I was given 35+ delivery quest possibilities and I think there's a lot more where that came from as I only scratched the surface. The concept is nice, but after 4-5 deliveries I had my fill. After 10 or so I left the Shire screaming for my dwarven mother (who does NOT have a beard, no, maybe a bit of a moustache but let's not dwell and let's certainly say nothing insulting about it).
Bottom line as far as I'm concerned: classic case of turning a good thing through overuse into a bad thing. Certainly there's more to the Shire than delivery quests, but it makes up a significant part of it from what I could see. And while easy, they are mind-numbingly boring on such a scale.
- Sveral
Having read up on a few things I was also expecting more peaceful quest varieties, such as the message deliveries. I was, however, not prepared for the area designer to go completely overboard. In a few hours play I was given 35+ delivery quest possibilities and I think there's a lot more where that came from as I only scratched the surface. The concept is nice, but after 4-5 deliveries I had my fill. After 10 or so I left the Shire screaming for my dwarven mother (who does NOT have a beard, no, maybe a bit of a moustache but let's not dwell and let's certainly say nothing insulting about it).
Bottom line as far as I'm concerned: classic case of turning a good thing through overuse into a bad thing. Certainly there's more to the Shire than delivery quests, but it makes up a significant part of it from what I could see. And while easy, they are mind-numbingly boring on such a scale.
- Sveral
# posted by 
: 4/5/07 08:48
: 4/5/07 08:48
Are the accomplishments in the shire easy to get or do they involve endless delivery runs? My dwarf Throg effectively bypassed the region but I might send him back on a deed collecting mission I have to say that I don't like Bree-land half as much as Ered Luin. Both the town and the areas around it are confusing to navigate and a lot of quests involve shuttling back and forth between quest giver and quest location multiple times. Bree is also far more crowded than the startign areas (convergence of races I guess)and I get lag in the town and have sometimes had to queue for a quest respawn.
Some Shire accomplishments are as easy as those of other zones, kill 90 mobs of one type, or visit half a dozen places. But if you want all accomplishments, you kind of need to do the delivery quests, as the post quest for example rewards you with an accomplishment *plus* counts as 12 quests done for the 75 quests you need for the third quest count accomplishment.
I kind of like the idea that not all newbie zones are the same style, with some having more peaceful quests than others. Nobody is forced to do them, you can always move to one of the more classical killing-quest zones.
I kind of like the idea that not all newbie zones are the same style, with some having more peaceful quests than others. Nobody is forced to do them, you can always move to one of the more classical killing-quest zones.
@Mbp, a significant share of the Shire quests involves deliveries. I was not exaggerating when I said in my few hours stint with my dwarf guardian to explore the Shire I ran into 35+ deliveries. There's the post-man deliveries deed (12) and the pie-retrievals (12) to begin with. These are big chunks of it, but I bet there's at least another 15-20 additional deliveries. It's different, it's a fresh concept, but it was too much of the same for my action-oriented dwarven mind. I ran away screaming and dread having to return to get those delivery deeds done eventually.
Bree-Lands are indeed a bit wonky. The Old Forest is my favorite "sub-zone" so far in the game though and the Barrows Down is a great place as well.
If you are experiencing lag in Bree, you may be able to fix this by upgrading your RAM to 2Gb. This made all the difference to me and several other people I know experienced the same improvement after upgrading. Relatively inexpensive and easy.
- Sveral
Bree-Lands are indeed a bit wonky. The Old Forest is my favorite "sub-zone" so far in the game though and the Barrows Down is a great place as well.
If you are experiencing lag in Bree, you may be able to fix this by upgrading your RAM to 2Gb. This made all the difference to me and several other people I know experienced the same improvement after upgrading. Relatively inexpensive and easy.
- Sveral
# posted by : 4/5/07 11:54
: 4/5/07 11:54
Just got to the shire yesterday, and just wow. I love the "feel" of it. (It helps being a fan of the books and movies since seeing things like buckleberry ferry and the maggot farm has special meaning) I havent had a the chance yet to do the mail runs, but even though alot of quests will nearly be grey to me i'll still be doing em since i've come to enjoy reading all the small stories in the game). And yeah been to the old forest at night, *shudder* without a map it can be a scary place if you're not willing to get defeated :P
# posted by : 4/5/07 12:19
: 4/5/07 12:19
I'm running a small experiment with a Hobbit burglar, skipping the intro and doing only "non-violent" quests, mostly deliveries.
So far I'm up to level 11 without having so much as harmed a single creature. I only played WoW before LOTRO, but it seems to me that the mere fact that it is possible to go that far (OK, 11 isn't very high but still) without any sort of combat is refreshingly new for the genre. Would love to have your opinion on this, Tobold.
One final word on the delivery quests: they are straight out of Zelda, which as everyone knows is the best game series ever created.
They may not be for everyone, but for me, running around beats grinding any time.
So far I'm up to level 11 without having so much as harmed a single creature. I only played WoW before LOTRO, but it seems to me that the mere fact that it is possible to go that far (OK, 11 isn't very high but still) without any sort of combat is refreshingly new for the genre. Would love to have your opinion on this, Tobold.
One final word on the delivery quests: they are straight out of Zelda, which as everyone knows is the best game series ever created.
They may not be for everyone, but for me, running around beats grinding any time.
My level 14 Minstrel has not used a weapon or offensive song since level 1 and has not been in a fellowship that killed something since level 4.
With each of my characters I am trying a different approach. My “main” is level 21. Has completed every quest and every deed in both the Shire and Ered except for trade skill quests. Has completed every non trade skill quest under level 18 in Breeland and done every deed in Breeland except killing the elite trees. Additionally only 3 of the quests were grey at the time of completing. Every kill deed has been done with higher than grey mobs except for the Breeland spider one because the level 1 spiders were so easy to kill. However to not out level quests and kill deeds this has meant doing barely any quests above green before level 19. After 18 have had to do more light blue and blue quests to continue advancing as have run low of green ones.
My third character is doing only fast easy quests or ones with good rewards and as a result is leveling the fastest for time spent playing.
With each of my characters I am trying a different approach. My “main” is level 21. Has completed every quest and every deed in both the Shire and Ered except for trade skill quests. Has completed every non trade skill quest under level 18 in Breeland and done every deed in Breeland except killing the elite trees. Additionally only 3 of the quests were grey at the time of completing. Every kill deed has been done with higher than grey mobs except for the Breeland spider one because the level 1 spiders were so easy to kill. However to not out level quests and kill deeds this has meant doing barely any quests above green before level 19. After 18 have had to do more light blue and blue quests to continue advancing as have run low of green ones.
My third character is doing only fast easy quests or ones with good rewards and as a result is leveling the fastest for time spent playing.
# posted by : 4/5/07 18:14
: 4/5/07 18:14
I'm playing a human character and haven't visited the Shire at all, on purpose. I've been to Buckland and the Old Forest only as much as the storyline quests require.
I know that at some point I'll create a second character and I wanted to leave all those areas and the quests in them to be something completely new for me to discover later.
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I know that at some point I'll create a second character and I wanted to leave all those areas and the quests in them to be something completely new for me to discover later.
# posted by : 5/5/07 22:49
: 5/5/07 22:49<< Home
