Tobold's Blog
Monday, June 04, 2007
 
LotRO Journal - 4-June-2007

While being busy all Saturday with restarting Heroes of Might and Magic 5 at higher difficulty, and finishing the first campaign that way, I played quite a lot of Lord of the Rings Online on Sunday. That advanced my guardian by two levels to level 21. And I managed to solo the crafting quest that is needed to advance beyond journeyman metalsmith, by killing some level 23-24 shades. Then I spent the rest of the day hunting for smithing components.

Metalsmithing is actually the best balanced craft in LotRO. Every producing craft has a quest to pass journeyman level, and each of these quests requires you to be in your low 20's. For metalsmithing that is fine, because once you do that you can make level 18 and 21 mastery armor, which is quite good. But this is because metalsmithing only starts at level 15, the lowest level where you can wear heavy armor for any class. For comparison tailoring starts at level 7, and the journeyman armors are level 10 and 16. So by the time you do the level 20ish quest to master journeyman, you won't need the armor you can tailor any more. So metalsmithing is much better, as you can smith mastery armor for yourself which is better than anything you can find.

The only difficulty in making this nice mastery armor is getting the rare ingredient. For level 18 heavy armor that is a Blackened Huorn Root from the elite evil treants in the Old Forest. For the level 21 heavy armor you need Dusky Lynx Claws from lynxes in the Lone Lands, east of Weathertop. The treants are easier to find, there are tons of them and few people hunt them, but them being elite, even at level 21 killing a level 14 elite treant isn't easy. I killed enough to get the "root-hewer" title, but then decided I'll come back one level later for the advanced deed and more of the roots. The lynxes are easy to kill, but hard to find, as they are far from each other and there are lots of other mobs in between. But in the end I got a nice mix of level 18 and 21 mastery armor. Probably better than just pure level 21 armor, because some of the stats weren't that useful for me. What do I want with gloves with a healing bonus? The level 18 gloves have 11 armor class less, but they give +11 to Might, which is a lot more useful for a guardian.

I enjoyed questing in the Lone Lands. There are tons of quests you can get from the Forsaken Inn, with lots of follow-ups still keeping me busy for a while. I guess that when I've finished those I'll move to North Downs. But I'm not in a hurry.
Comments:
My Gmome Warrior is busy leveling Blacksmithing. At lvl 53 his BS Skill is 260. I think I'd need to get BSing to 300 (or thereabouts) to be able to make anything worth using, as most of my Gear is from Maraudon and ZF.

WoW crafting skills are literally nothing more than a money sink, which is just plain wrong. I'm glad LOTRO got at least one crafting skill right.
 
There is quite a bit of overlap in level between the Lone Lands and the North Downs in the 20 to 30 region so don't be shy about heading over to the Downs whenever you get bored with the Lone Lands. If you haven't been to Trestle-bridge it is definitely worth a look. Throg got quite a shock when I first saw it.
 
And don't forget to find Candiath the ranger over by Weathertop. He has good quests for this level as well.

Lothlosse Giltauriel
 
You make LotRo sound better with every entry guv.

I purchased a founder subscription and have yet to get pass lvl 10 with my Gaurdian. WoW being the problem for now, but account cancelled and game time till the 18th of July... social ties keep dragging me back to Azeroth.

Keep it up and I might quit a little earlier.
 
One thing I do not like about the LoTRO quests, especially when it comes to Lone-lands, is that there are so many "kill ten rats", "collect ten rat tails" type of quests. I find that quite uninspiring. And for some of them the spawns gets a bit rare, unless you and/or your group are alone in the area.
 
I have had that experience too @Sente - killing Norbergs in the Red Swamp comes to mind as a nightmare in spawn camping. On the plus side though I find group quests especially PUGs to be a lot more fun in lotro than they were at similar levels in WOW. I amn't sure whether this is due to game design or the fact that the community seems more mature. Has anyone else found this?
 
mbp, I agree that Trestlebridge is an amazingly designed town. I hit it for the first time last night, and nearly filled up my screenshot folder taking tourist snapshots from the various hills.

I guess I have a fetish for covered bridges...
 
For Capn John...Looking back at the time I have invested. I would say your warcraft money would be better served if you go into enchanting or alchemy. I have found that many of the pre-BC gear was below standard and a lot of the quests give up decent rewards. Also the crafted items shortly after passing the 60 level are really cheap at the AH. Much cheaper than the ore it cost to make the item. Not sure if it's me or not but I chose to do a lot of things solo and it's hard for me to imagine that a guild mate would discount his work for me without showing that I am the baddest thing that walked out of Darnassus. Just a though.
 
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