Yeah, I tend to ignore a lot of the deeds. And I rarely give any attention to slayer deeds in particular - there’s more enjoyable things out there to do; and those just seem like grind for the sake of grinding.
Not to worry guys, I’m having fun closing out all these old zones specifically because I’ve…
- outleveled most of the content
- already completed the vast majority of quests in these areas in years past
- already killed enough critters in these areas in the past that slayer deeds are near completion
If I was starting these deeds from scratch it would be tedious, but in the case of the Evendim deed for example, I’d already killed enough trolls in Annuminas back when they gave me XP and/or I was completing quests for XP in the area that I’m down to needing only like 40 more to finish the Advanced Slayer deed. For Spirits Aiding Angmar, I do need like 150 of the dead in any Annuminas instance, but given how easy it is to kill Limrafn it shouldn’t pose a problem. Popping an acceleration buff means I need 20 Trolls and 75 Limrafn…probably less than an hour’s work and I’ve closed out all remaining deeds in Evendim. The story will be similar in Forochel, and then again in Angmar, especially since I just finished the second half of the Shadows of Angmar epic quest, which had me killing plenty of deed-related critters.
I’m not planning to play every zone to completion as I move through them. Once I get into Moria and beyond, I will progress normally through each zone, doing as many quests as I can while moving steadily forward. Once I’ve outleveld those zones I’ll come back at some point and clean up any remaining quest fragments and deeds when it’s easy to move around without aggro and kill critters with little effort.
For right now through, I plan to “retire” each of the SoA zones prior to moving on, mainly because doing so doesn’t take a ton of my time and makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something significant. It all started as a way to tour Middle Earth one last time, saying goodbye to familiar areas as I completed them, thinking I’d only have a year or so left with the game (back when the license was in question). Now that the game is secure for years to come, the intent hasn’t changed, just the urgency to complete it, and the feeling of bittersweet sadness on “closing down” a zone is now replaced by happy accomplishment.
So as of last night Evendim is even dimmer, as I’ve turned out the lights on yet another zone. As predicted, popping a slayer acceleration tome and spending about 45 minutes or so in Annuminas resulted in the 20 troll kills and 75 undead kills needed to complete the last of my Evendim slayer deeds and net me 230 Marks, 20 LOTRO points, some trait boosts and a lootbox/key combo. Since I still had over 30 minutes left on the slayer acceleration, I recalled to Bree, did some quick selling/banking, then fast traveled to Forochel to put in some time on those slayer deeds while the kill count was doubled. Of course I forgot how tedious travel in Forchel can be, so by the time I got to the spot I wanted (where there are 8 Grims that spawn in the same area) I only had like 15 minutes left on the accelerator. I still managed to kill about 25 Grims and many Worms and Gaurardan , advancing all three deeds nicely.
The one nice thing I can say about Forochel (my least favorite zone in all of Eriador) is that it does have several locations where critters of the same type (or sometimes even two types) are clustered together nicely making slayer deeds easier to accomplish. I’m in the Advanced stages for Grims, Angmarim, Worms, Gauradan, Dourhands and Sabre-Tooths, so a couple of short play sessions focused in areas of high concentration should be enough to finish them all off. I’m done with all the other Forochel deeds, so that would close yet another zone for me.
While banking last night I realized that I’m soaking up something like 20+ precious bank spaces with Metalsmithing recipes for the next tier I have yet to achieve (Supreme). One nice side benefit of doing all these slayer deeds is that I’ve been running around in areas with loads of Ancient Iron nodes, so I now have like 400+ Ancient Iron Ore. That should create more than enough ingots to advance me out of Master and into Supreme. So I may need to take a break and do some smithing soon, less for the actual product (I already have level 50+ pieces in nearly every slot) and more for the extra bank space it will afford me.
Truth is, Slainte, you never really retire a zone. You’ll find that a lot of the end-game/near-end-game quests will send you back to some of the old zones to run around and find stuff.
Yeah and finishing off Forochel isn’t easy anyways. Plus you’ll be back.
I like Lotro but if you are obsessive/compulsive it may not be the best game for you. I know I have this constant lingering feeling when I play that there is something undone and it drives me crazy. Hey that’s just me though, I am certainly not calling you names!
I realize I will be back when I’m level 90 and beyond, I’ve already discovered most of the treasure chests that you can come back and find when you’re 90+ and I’ve seen the Roving Threat monsters and bounty collectors in each zone…but those are a looooong way off for me with my casual play schedule, and that’s fine. As I said above, after 10 years of on-again off-again play, I’m already so close to completing the level-specific content and deeds in each of these older zones that finishing them up now is easy and fun, and gives me a warm fuzzy completionist feeling. It’s also netted me a crapton of resources to use when crafting as well as vendor and auction house loot. Finally, finishing off all those region meta deeds results in a nice lootbox and key at the end of each one, from which I have pulled some nice stuff I’ve been able to use.
To me this is fun. With only Forochel and Angmar left, it won’t last much longer. Then I’ll move to Eregion, a zone I never really spent much time in pre-Moria because I (like everyone else at the time) was super-excited to move on to Moria itself. Most of the Eregion content still gives me xp (albeit a dribble), so I may as well take the time to do it and enjoy the zone before delving into Moria once again. I’ve done Moria once before with my old, original character, so there’s really no rush this time around.
I love the Eregion area for some reason. It moves pretty fast, has decent rewards, and overall I thought was very well done.
Then onto Moria, which is really great but wow. It’s a huge, sprawling, dark, masterpiece of design. Truly Lotro is a great singleplayer mmo, BTW some of the instances in Moria are really fun you should try and group up in there for the deeds.
Yes I agree completing everything (even that damn pie quest in the shire) gives me that warm fuzzy completionist feeling as well!
Eregion is a great zone. I love how the quests weave their way in and out of the that path the fellowship took on their way Moria; its like you are always a few days or so behind them.
Ha! That pie quest! The first and only time I ever completed that was with this current character (who is like the 10th character I’ve played since starting LOTRO in 2007). Slainte the Champion was born back in 2009/2010 when Tom and a bunch of other QT3 people decided to delve back into LOTRO as a huge group and play together. We all started new characters and met in the Shire, then started running Shire quests together. It was easily the most fun I’ve had in an MMO ever. Totally ridiculous, totally casual, kinship chat filled with running jokes and hilarious comments, and everyone giving Tom a hard time of course. A whole bunch of us did the pie quest together and it was glorious. I still have screenshots somewhere of like twenty characters with pies running through the Shire together.
The chicken thing was pretty hilarious as well.
Very productive weekend in LOTRO this weekend. Turned the lights out in Forochel, blitzing through the remaining slayer deeds easily as the zone conveniently puts lots of Dourhands in one instance, lots of sabertooth cats in one area and lots of wurms in another, then respawns them quickly.
After that I decided to do a little bank cleanup, which led to the realization that I’d neglected my crafting skills for some time. So I set about pushing Slainte up to Supreme in both Metalsmith (was already at Master) and Tailoring (was only at Expert). Thanks to all those slayer deeds I has collected more than enough resources (ore and hides) to crank out the required XP by simply doing processing tasks. I did have to do a quick run to Esteldin to advance Tailoring past Expert, but they have a bank, mailbox and superior crafting equipment in Esteldin now, so it was pretty easy. In order to process the hides for tailoring I needed to level crafting on Ariondel, my Hunter alt who has Forester, but with 500 hides of each level saved up, that was simple enough. So now my alt is a Supreme Forester, and Slainte is a Supreme Metalsmith and Tailor. All good to go for Moria.
The side effect of this was that I could pull about a dozen recipes from my bank that I had been saving for when I reached Master/Supreme. I also auctioned a handful more that were duplicates I’d been saving for when I crafted more often. Combining resources and sending most of the hides off to my alt gained me some additional space, so now I have over 20 free spaces in my bank and a large amount of empty inventory space in my bags. It sounds stupid, but having so much free inventory and bank space makes me feel awesome. It’s like I can move on to Moria now without needing to worry about finding new stuff and not having room for it or juggling items with an alt.
Finished the Seven Swords quest/deed line in Angmar, and I have a couple of locations on one of the explorer deeds left as well. I actually have a few quests in Angmar unfinished, so by the time I do those and kill the associated critters I should be able to mop up the slayer deeds and move on to Eregion. I did get a little sidetracked by the Summer Festival though. I don’t have any of the Summer Festival mounts, so I spent some time last night running festival quests to earn tokens, and should have enough tonight to buy one of the mounts. It’s only 62%, so I probably won’t ride it much, but gotta catch 'em all and whatnot…
I’ll jump in, even though I know it’s a dead game around here, like someone going on about Ultima Online.
Other than a couple of 1 or 2-year hiatuses, I’ve been on board since 2007. I’ve stayed VIP the whole time. I should have bought the $200 lifetime when it was offered, but I underestimated the game’s draw to me across the years
In my current stretch I’ve been playing for about 11 months. When I have played, I tend to play almost every day I’m home for about one hour/day. But those years have added up. Not like those few who have made it their lifestyle, but great for someone like me who finds something in their inventory that they forgot about that makes life at a higher level easier.
11 months ago I pulled my original 2007 minstrel out of mothballs and she’s now at lvl 102 in Central Gondor…the furthest I’ve reached on any character. She sucks resources/ LIs /crafted gear from my older lvl 80 - 85 characters’’ accounts (who I barely remember playing), and adds resources to their potential future needs.
I give Turbine/SSG credit for keeping things relatively consistent over the years. Individual class things changed a few times, but not in a game-breaking way. The fact that I can equip my 2017 lvl 102 minstrel with relevant gear crafted from a scholar that I last played in 2013 is cool.
I like being years behind the content expansions. By the time I’ve gotten there, the bugs have been worked out and in some cases the content made easier. I bought Mordor, but at my pace I won’t be there for at least another year. Maybe more, if I decide to take up one of my older lvl 80-ish characters stranded in Rohan.
And for Slainte … if you’re a completionist … you’re in for a world of hurt past Rohan ! But you’ve got a ways to go for that.
Hey now! LOTRO is retro-cool. Ultima Online is clearly only for losers. ;-)
Totally agree, having played off and on over the past 10 years this is definitely the most streamlined version of the game yet. In the past few months I’ve (re)experienced grinding for deeds, completing an Epic quest line, unlocking and working with Legendary Items, advancing my crafting levels and playing in skirmish instances. All of these things have been made better and more entertaining than they were the previous times I’d done them. While nothing will ever top the experience of starting over fresh with dozens of QT3 folks way back when, this is easily the most engaged I’ve been as a solo player with LOTRO.
I’m only doing the completionist thing up to Moria. Once in Moria I will do content normally, advance past Moria, then probably swing back around at some much later point when I’ve far outleveled the content and clean up all the remaining LOTRO points from Moria. I own nearly all the content up through Helm’s Deep (I think I am missing only the Great River quest pack), so I’m pretty much just banking LOTRO points towards the later purchase of all the updates that are only available as quest packs beyond Rohan and Helm’s Deep.
Still in Central Gondor. Using my level disabler because this whole region was created when the cap was 100. I think With VIP expanded XP I would get too far ahead level-wise. I’m lvl 102.
I hit the next Epic Battles roadblock at Pelargir. Since I did the minimum needed to get through the epic quest battles at Helm’s Deep, I didn’t have the epic battle skills needed to just coast through this one. Every online guide I found focused on die-harders at Rank 5 wanting to get platinum on every side-quest. I only got to Rank 1 at Helm’s Deep. It took me 4 tries until I figured out the trick to do the minimum here to progress through the main quest. Not looking forward to what I probably have to do at Minas Tirith. I hate the idea of doing the same quests multiple times…even back to WoW…it’s supposed to be an RPG … if I complete something, what’s the point of doing it again ?? Didn’t I win this already ??
Central Gondor is the first place I found an obvious cash-grab, PTW, etc. One needs reputation acceleration tomes to get to the end-game (that is…Kindred and the capstone quests) in this area, unless you’re willing to spend months and crazy repetition grinding to get through it. One can buy the tomes in the store, but they’re rarely on sale. I’m getting most (but not all) at skirmish camps with the marks and medallions I’ve accumulated over the years, mainly from those dumb hobbit presents. And they don’t offer points for making reputation here.
Going through all my characters and cleaning up inventories and finishing up some of the tasks.
All my idle characters are located at the premium housing area where there are taskmassters for everything, so they can just use shared storage to pickup quest items (using addon “Daily Task” to track everything) for quick completion. It isn’t the best xp, but at least they get some XP+REP while basically standing idle. The only thing that could make this area better would be if the crafting equipment was located here as well, since that is what my alts are mostly used for.
Looked into some of my alt inventories and I had around 50 Bonus XP scrolls. I guess I should start using them… Just that it seems they will time out while offline? - Gonna try one and see.
Logged in and got one of those insta 105 level items. Problem is to decide which character to use it on. My Burglar is 96… and the rest of my characters are in the 30s, so probably best to use it on one of them, but not sure if I want to play any of them, so maybe better to boost my Burglar to max level so I can easier complete quests/stuff in older zones.
Suppose at some point I should open the ‘year X’ boxes as well, you can never have too much fireworks after all.
Edit: Have a feeling the 105 levelup would be best spent on my hunter, thats the highest leveled non-burglar I have at least. On the other hand, Rune-keeper was kinda fun… Do not think I have a beoring, I probably have to buy that one if it wasn’t included with VIP?
Edit2: Seems like they changed the graphics .dll for the game in recent patch? I suddenly had 3 x ReShade running, the game looked horrible.
Edit3: Looks like the time limited XP Bonus scrolls only count while ingame, so thats good.
This is your must-have addon for Daily Tasks.
http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=498
Turns out it was updated recently, so maybe a few of those ‘unknown’ task items I had in my inventory actually had a use… shame I deleted those.
Would’ve been nice if Tur… Standing Stone updated the tooltip for all task items to indicate their use, and removed the tooltip for ‘task items’ that aren’t task items.
This looks great, any idea how to install it? Their instructions are a bit weird.
Extract the archive into
%userprofile%\Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Plugins
So you get a folder \Vinny\ (under \Plugins)
When you launch the game there should be a Plugin button to activate it, alternatively start one of your characters and type
- /plugins manager
Then pick which characters to “load” it on in a GUI that looks like this:
For the plugin:
- To enable/disable the GUI window (I normally have it disabled) type /dtw
The features to show Task items from vault, shared storage or bounty board require you to either be at the board or have the correct vault/shared vault open.
Wow, I’ll try that, thanks!
I run with zero add-ins currently, but I may have to try that daily task thing, that looks handy.
Spent the holiday weekend running all the quests in Eregion, the majority of which still granted XP (as did the mobs). Finished up all the deeds there except Slayer deeds and Ridge Racer (which I will try to get tonight). Collected quite a few legendary experience point items which I am saving for the new, higher level legendary sword I also looted. My current one is at max DPS level, so when I flip to Moria I will change out swords to gain DPS and recraft with better runes and such I’ve found since making the first one.
I also have around 20 lootboxes from both completing deeds and finding them in the wild, and nearly as many keys, so maybe it’s time I sat down and opened them. Not sure what I’m saving them for. There isn’t going to be a whole lot in a level 20/30/40 lootbox that a level 60 character can use other than the consumables. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a Pick-A-Mount token in one.
I’ve only had time to play in short bursts the past few weeks, mainly 20-40 minutes sessions during the week before bed. Because of this, I mostly focused on finishing off deeds in Eregion and Angmar. Eregion is done, I even collected Ridge Racer on the first try (woo!). I dropped a few of the gold pieces I scored off selling extra Anniversary dragon kites on some slayer/skill acceleration tomes. Since the tomes are 90 minutes each, and only tick down when you are actively logged in, they are perfect for short play sessions camped out in areas where there are lots of trolls/orcs/wights/wargs/etc. to burn through slayer deeds fast. That’s exactly what I did, and I have now finished Angmar, closing out all of the “original” zones and bringing to a close my “Farewell Tour” of the Shadows of Angmar content.
Next stop is The Great Delving, and the long dark trek through Moria. I may need to do some housekeeping first though, as I still haven’t cleaned up all those lootboxes in my bank, and I have a higher level Legendary sword I should look at forging. Between recovering stuff from my existing Legendary sword and the ton of xp items, runes, etc. I’ve saved up, I should be able to craft a pretty nice new sword for my Moria adventure.