I am a lifetime VIP who can never get a character past level 30-ish due to continually:
10 create alts
20 get distracted by a different MMO
30 come back
40 start a new character
50 goto 10
So there are a few options to purchase a character level-up in the shop - 50, 95, 105, 120. I want to use it on at least one character, but I’m not sure which one may be the best option. Are there any opinions on specific level-specific content that is a “don’t miss”? And if you are over-leveled for content does it detract from it? So if I buy the level 120, and there is kick-ass content at level 50 can I still partake?
With the lastest expansion you could buy it (the most expensive one) and it should include a level 120 valar item, that immediately ranks and gears you up to 120, and includes a lot more skill points than I have attained by questing normally since release to 129…
I don’t have any experience with those shop level-up items. I would imagine you would lack a lot of deeds making your virtues non-existent? Unless it gives you virtue XP you can manually assign as well as unlocking your racial abilities? (more minor but is it part of having a complete character).
Opinions on content vary wildly. Moria and Isengard I think are considered of higher quality. Rohan takes a big hit due to mounted combat being so sub-par. Also perhaps one too many mead halls. All alike. I enjoyed parts of Mordor. Namely the Cirth Ungol infiltration quest line. Several of the quest lines have some sort of unique gimmick. There’s one where you also dress up as an Orc in order to fight in a gladiator pit. And one where you pit a Haradrim camp against an Easterling camp playing both sides. They are both neutral to you which is rather unique. Although it is kind of a quest grind and the conclusion is one of the most brutally unfair one-sided fights in the entire game. (To my knowledge it is a solo-instance so you can’t summon help)
If he’s a Lifetime subscriber, he doesn’t need the content from that expansion though – he’s got it already.
It gives you virtue xp boosts, though you’ll still have to go work on deeds even so.
Thanks! It looks like Moria is level 51-60 and I had previously heard great things about it. So it may be best to use the level 50 skip first in order to have the ideal Moria experience (since it is unlikely I would make it there by starting with a new character or even re-learning an existing one - especially with New Worlds on the horizon).
I will be curious @strummer to see how much you play that character you insta leveled up. In my experience whenever I use an item like that and I start playing the leveled up character I realize I don’t know what all the skills do, I don’t know where to go and I don’t know how to progress or what I’m even supposed to be doing!
I am also very much a “the journey is the reward “ kind of guy so maxing out a character would probably leave me thinking “why should I bother messing with this guy? “
No judgment though, so don’t think I’m criticizing you, I’m just explaining how those things work in my mind and why those kinds of items aren’t much of a temptation to me.
So while I hear your frustration about never getting a character above a fairly low level I’m not sure leveling a guy to max would work for me.
I generally agree with that - especially in LOTRO where the selling factor in playing it (instead of ESO, FFXIV, BDO, etc.) is the journey/story. But my personal history has shown I don’t have the time nor attention span to fully savor all aspects of that journey for very long. Basically I have found myself running around the Shire, Bree-land and the Lone Lands over and over. So I would like to experience some of the higher level content I have heard so much about and just peered at like a little kid through a toy store window.
Yeah, here is what the level 50 valar contains:
*A set of level 50 gear, *1 Gold piece, *An LIXP rune, worth enough XP to bring one LI to level 10, *4 ranks of each virtue, *The Riding skill, *A Dusky Nimblefoot Goat, *A 25-stack of food that scales with your level, *A 25-stack of Morale and Power potions that scale with your level, *5 +100% XP Boosts, *A single-use map to Rivendell, *25 Mithril Coins
I’m not sure how difficult it would be knocking out some of the deeds at that level.
The two higher level skips do grant deeds:
105
*Box of Class Deed Tomes, *Rohan Deed Tome, *Gondor Deed Tome, *Automatic completion of 4 class trait point granting deeds: Deeds of Old Anórien, Quests of Old Anórien, Promotion Points 1 & 2.
120
Valar Trait Points Tome that will bring your class trait point total up to 92 and automatically complete your class meta deeds and Promotion Points 1 & 2.
Moria is well worth the journey.
So a Valar to 50 would get you ready to spend a few months inside there :-)
I do recomend you get reshade + something to boost audio while in there, as the ambience sound effects in lotro are somewhat ‘lacking’ in many areas. I think windows sonic headphone tech might be enough, but the Dolby Atmos one is much better. My Realteak soundcard also (before Win10 anyway…) also had some Sound Equalizer that helped amplify ‘low volume’ sounds to make it better, like hearing your footsteps in the caverns etc.
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online:_Minas_Morgul
Pretty sure the ‘free’ stuff we got with lifetime didn’t include all the extras from this.
With the Valar to 105 (old one) I got my traits to this:
Which kinda sucks, since a lot of them are useless for my class and rather have something closer to 50.
If you were looking for a PVP REason to get a VIP Subscription:
The Tournament of the Twins has begun
Our newest Tournament World called the Tournament of the Twins has arrived! The sons of Elrond, Elladan and Elrohir, have begun a discussion with perhaps too much boldness, and are arguing about which of them would make the greatest leader and support the greatest heroes. Once you have reached level 10, you may take up the banner of either Elladan or Elrohir and venture forth to earn honour completing Deeds and challenging heroes that align with your rival. Brave players can earn rewards for completing Deeds, and those characters will appear in a special Leaderboard. Will you rush to honour your patron by completing Deeds, or will you spend your time challenging rivals?
- At level 10, approach either of the two sons of Elrond (Elrohir and Elladan), who are present in both Bree-town and Gondamon, and ask to join their faction by accepting a quest.
- Once you have accepted a quest from one of the twins, you will be able to engage in combat with members of the opposing faction. You will gain honour by completing deeds throughout Eriador.
- Each Eriador deed completed grants one hundred points of honor, which is tracked on a leaderboard. Use the Register of Heroes to view the current leaderboard. Deeds completed prior to accepting a quest from Elladan or Elrohir, or not in the Eriador category, will not count towards this score.
- Once you are engaged in this quest for honour, your safe zones from members of the opposing faction are in Bree-town, Gondamon, Rivendell, Michel Delving, Glóin’s Camp, Aughaire, Tinnudir, Gath Forthnír, Ost Guruth, and Othrikar.
- Characters who are defeated will get a short stealth and haste buff that will allow them to get back into the battle.
- During this event, you cannot gain experience points in any instance after level 10. This includes Instance Finder and quest instances.
- This event is focused in Eriador with a level cap of 50.
This server is available to VIP subscribers From June 17th through July 14th. Find Bombadil in the game launcher when the world is available starting at 12:00pm Eastern (-4 GMT) on June 17th.
It doesn’t include the extras, but it does include the Minas Morgul expansion.
And so if you want to buy a lot of the other stuff, it’s cheaper to do it that way, since you already own the content from the expansion.
In fact, last week you could by the valar gifts to 120 for under 6000 LOTRO bux, since they were on special for 20% off.
Finally hit 130… now to get some gear.
Used a slayer deed to kill insects, but had about 30 minutes left of it… then it ran out… THEN I get to a place with orcs and another deed… guess I’ll be getting another slayer accelerator for these guys then.
Figured I’d work on a Virtue to 68 before I do another, although the ones I have that are around 40 (equipped) have really low stats, so wonder if it might be better to spend some points on those than continuing from 58 with my highest leveled one, as it probably costs more than 2000 xp per level now (and thats what you get from most deeds).
Midsummer celebration in LOTRO now, includes the wedding of Arwen and Aragorn complete with loads of quests, repeatable, for the next 20 days, giving several mounts, easy to obtain skill point etc. Available for all levels.
A lot of the main quest is voiced also, and some nice fireworks at the end :-)
They also made new music variations of several of the themes to fit with the “happy event” theme.
For some ‘less happy’ theme I found an old screenshot of probably one of the ‘best’ looking mobs in the game.
dwinn
3954
So several servers were unavailable for a few days last week and Arkenstone is still down now almost a week later. Twitter updates seem to just be various permutations of “It’s down, we’ll let you know”
Yep, noticed that. Unable to play all weekend.
The heck did they do?
Betting it was a Windows 10 forced update.
Maybe they finally go 64-bit on their servers.
Any word on the next expansion? Gundabad?
Glad I did not try to get back into the game over the weekend like I’d originally planned. All of my characters are on Arkenstone too, so it looks like I picked the wrong week to think about coming back to LOTRO. ;-)
I checked in today and the wedding event was still ongoing in Evernight, missed out on Saturday/Sunday when I’d have time to do it, but since I missed out on the whole 10/20 completions (10 daily, per day for 20 days) I guess I’ll have to redo it all next year… But didn’t seem like the rewards for 10/20 were that good – Mainly after the stat point which you get for the nonrepeatable quest anyway.
Would’ve been nice to get it done on more of my characters… but, maybe next year.
So there’s no real word on what’s happening? I’ve tried to log in to Arkenstone several times since last Friday, and it’s always closed. The Twitter account just says “working on it” and the forums seem to be barely working. But a week of downtime is pretty ridiculous.
