Russ
1701
On Nimrodel, find us by typing /who knights of quarter to three but as others have said, it can be tough outside of Monday night. I should probably get a couple more of my alts in the kin for better visibility as I am on in one form or another most evenings.
Razgon
1702
Are you kidding? Its one of the most solo-friendly MMO games out there. Even the Epic books are soloquests now, if you so please.
/agree
That was a pretty boggling statement - MMOs don’t get much more solo-friendly than LOTRO.
Well, everything is re vectored, and re-tuned through level 30 to be solo friendly. The whole Epic book up to book 14 is now solo-able.
Jag
1705
This is why I originally quit because it was so hard to solo, especially the Epic books. I’ll give the free week a shot. I’m also on Nimrondel, but my old guild died.
Well, awesome then.
When I was really spending time with it, last summer-ish, it was decidedly not solo-friendly and finding a low-level group was tough. I’m glad to hear they’ve fixed that because it was a glaring flaw that basically drove me from the game. Maybe I’ll give it another shot and see.
The most active server is Landroval from what I can tell. You might make an alt to be with the Qt3 gang but I’d also make a second over there too just to find groups and keep busy at other times.
I felt so insignificant being the only non-officer during the hour I spent with you guys Monday night. :)
Still can’t get over how big this games world is. Just wish there were more people on Nimrodel, sucks to not be able to craft something because you can’t buy some component.
Russ
1710
I still see plenty of people once you get out of the newbie areas. I was running around Ered Luin a bit this week working on deeds for one of my alts and it was indeed quite barren. However, places like Bree, Esteldin, and 21st Hall still seem pretty populated to me most of the time.
I take it you don’t use alts to provide your crafting materials?
Yea, that’s a pretty underpopulated server - hence the reason I went from Windfola to Brandywine. The downside to a populated one is that you’ll have a lot of competition for the nodes. :)
As for how big the game is, someone recently walked from Thorin’s Gate to the Mirkwood area. It took 5 hours. So yea, it’s pretty darn huge.
dwolfe
1712
All 15 books of Volume 1 are soloable. You get a huge, multi-pronged self-buff to solo things. It’s not like you have Elite Orcs with only 1000hp.
So the self-buff actually makes it more fun, you feel way more powerful than you usually do in the game. Pull the whole room? Why not, you have a good chance of surviving!
You get, off the top of my head:
4x or so to power and morale pools
several x to power and morale regen
1/2 incoming damage
3x or so to outgoing damage and outgoing healing
I’m unsure if the self-buff would effect a LM’s pet or a Captain’s herald, as I haven’t taken either class that far yet.
Yeah, My heralds damm near unkillable with the buff, the Npc’s are another story.
My RK was damn near unkillable with that buff. I will say that there are a couple of very challenging (i.e., roadblocks) areas in trying to do the books. Escort quest mobs will still go down and there’s a few times you have to go into areas with elites to kill and you don’t get a buff. Particularly the Book 11 quest that has you go into a cave in the Trollshaws…I had to wait a few levels and do that one when it was light blue.
Did you guys play Monday night? I totally forgot to log in at 7pm EST.
DTG
1716
I started playing again about a month ago, after several months gone. A couple of hours a day after 9 pm EST, maybe 10 hours/week.
First I ramped up my abandoned level 50 Minstrel and started into Moria, but then backed off to grind some old deeds and level up some more because Minstrels just don’t solo all that well… it’s doable, but more enjoyable if you run quests 4 or 5 levels below you, even with Warrior spec.
Then I got my (now) 40 Burglar (the one I originally started for the Monday night groups in early 09) leveled up a bit and maxed out trade skills as far as I could at this level. He’s much more soloable … I can usually stealth into anywhere and take down 1 or 2 elites at a time near my level when a quest says it requires a fellowship. I’m liking this much more, especially since play time is erratic and usually only an hour or two at a time.
The most surprising new thing I did was take an old experiment … a level 10 Elf Historian…and ran him to the Shire to grind out farming to Master level so I could ramp up my Burglar’s cooking skill and rep with the Cooking Guild. But then I see low-level grains are selling for 300-500 silver per stack. While working or reading on the computer, I kept LOTRO in a small window and grinded out ginormous stacks of grain and pulled in 10 gold from the AH in about a week of on-again off-again farming.
Yeah, I wondered why you weren’t around. Sidd is on vacation for two weeks, but Russ and Peixia and I had a three hour session. You didn’t fall behind in anything, though. We went back to Eregion and did the 3-man instances there (School and Library). Join us next week and we will find something for the four of us to do until Sidd gets back.
Kal
Between 5 or 6 alts, I think I have all of the tradeskills covered, with my 40 champ armorer and my 37 hunter explorer being my main characters at the moment, in addition to the 23 warden tinker, 22 RK historian, and 22 Captain armsman. There is a graphic on lotro-wiki, I think, that shows the relationship interdependencies about who feeds who.
Right now I am just hung up on the tier 4/5 quests for all of those non-leveled guys. I might have to group with others to get past those “xxxxx of the xxxxx, Part IV” quests. The horror! Everyone seems to have at least one moneymaker in those tiers so no one is broke.
There have been a number of group quests that you can do or skip, however you want to play it. The groups have been almost universally fun. I am really impressed with the community and am still enjoying the heck out of this.
Razgon
1719
Heh, I have a hunter as Explorer as well - makes for some fast and good money that way.
Now, I’ve mostly played all my alts (7, sigh…I suffer from Altholism) into the early teens, with my champion at 28 now, and was wondering just how important it is to get all the deeds? Should I go bananas and kill every single freaking bird I can find in Lone-lands, or is okay to skip the extra 160 bird killings?
You only need the deeds that give bonuses to your character.
The craban-slayer deed gives +1 honesty (power, armor value, fate). As such, it was much more important to my RK than it is to your hunter.
