LotRO 2.5 Years Later
I started playing Lord of the Rings Online during its beta period – my current main character has been ‘alive’ since the game was released in April of 2007; that makes it over 2 years of playing LotRO. In this 2 year period I have had to take quite a few breaks due to Real Life, and thus have just managed to start advancing again. I bought Mines of Moria when it first came out, but I haven’t yet reached the level cap that Shadows of Angmar had! With Siege of Mirkwood around the corner it is getting a little crazy trying to keep up, but with the help of my Kinship I should be able to make it.
Getting back into the game the new XP Curve (that went into effect a few patches ago apparently) bumped me up to 41 without me doing much of anything, I killed a ‘trash’ mob and bam – 41 (+ about 1/4 of a level). My main goal at this point is to get to 45 so I can get my first Legendary Item and join my kinships new ‘End Game’ group (not truly End Game, but a group to help people get Radiance Gear and do the various Raids available). I had some disorientation when logging back in after so long, the UI had changed a bit (more features, Quest Tracker addition, etc) and I had no bloody clue where I was, or why I was there! First step was to comb through my quest log, I realized that I needed to drop a bunch of out-leveled (grey) and soon to be out-leveled (-4 levels or more) quests and pick up some new ones in my level range if I wanted to get good XP; So I dropped a bunch of quests and headed over to Angmar to meet with some kinmates. They logged onto level 60 alts and helped me complete a bunch of quests and random mob destruction, opened up 3 new deeds and got a taste of what Angmar is all about.
I ended that night of excursions with only 24,000 XP +/- to get to level 42 (which I now had something to look forward at, a full set of crit crafted armor from one of my Kinship members!). I logged in the next night (which happened to be Monday) and managed to knock out the rest of the level, and was able to equip my spiffy new armor:
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| My main (Branadoc) standing in front of his Hobbit Hole in his newly crafted Armor |
This is a shot of the nifty cloak that came with my new armor set. |
At that point I decided to do another long needed task: get my crafting levels up to where they should be. I had been sitting on 300 pieces of Treated Yew to finish out Expert Woodworker, but needed to finish out Journeyman first – problem was that Ash wood didn’t spawn in the areas I was in, and going back to low level areas to scavenge for it wasn’t really fair to the low level players also going for it (mobs would either ignore me or die in a second). I decided to sink to the temptation and bought a stack of Treated Ash on the Auction House, that allowed me to finish up Journeyman on Monday night; I then finished up Expert yesterday afternoon. Next goal is to just keep adventuring and try and get to 45 by the end of the month (personal goal).
All in all my return to LotRO was great, my Kinship (Gray Council of Arnor) is awesome and it was great to be greeted like a long lost brother on my return. Groups like this are few and far between in gaming, and when you find one you have to stick with it. I will keep the blog updated with my exploits, and hopefully I’ll remember to shoot some videos of more interesting encounters.
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