Groupshothorse

Our fellowship continues its journey through LOTRO with Volume 1 Book 4 solidly under way. We’ve come to Rivendell and met several members of the fellowship (oh how Salennia pines after Legolas, and Isanni after Aragorn). We’ve even managed to play a riddle game with Bilbo! Having recently re-read The Hobbit, this part excited me to no end!

Garth Agarwen is also successfully behind us. I’m very happy to have been through it in its original form, before the big changes are completed. Although I do like the changes that are coming (see here for my thoughts) I hate to have content that is impossible for me to see. We found that we where able to do the majority of the instance with our group of 5, except for Ivar and the Fortress section. Yes, I know thats a large portion of it, but we did get through the rest just fine. Another couple of levels, and we probably could have gotten through the entire thing without needing a 6th.

I find Trollshaw to be a great zone to level in. I think that I’m in the minority here, but the zone layout is great, and that there are plenty of crafting materials to harvest while you’re out there. I like that there are some sections of the area that challenge our group, while it’s still possible for me to solo other areas to gather crafting materials. We’ve gotten to Chapter 5 of Book 4, and so far I love the story of this Chapter. The only thing that I really have a gripe about is the amount of going back and forth that we have to do for those first few quests of  Book 4. I know that this is a common complaint in this game, but it still needs to be said. Yes, we do have our mounts, which makes a big difference, but when you have to run 10 minutes, use 1 items in a specific area, then run 10 minutes back, it gets annoying.

Yes, we used all of the port powers available to us, but we had to do it a few times, so it was still a pain.

That complaint aside, I love the idea that we’re chasing after the Ringwraiths in a way. Looking for signs of them around Trollshaws really draws me into the story.

Overall, our group is still having a great time. I think we’re starting to get out of that level 30 grind, and we can start to see the light (or darkness) of Moria ahead of us. I’m really looking forward to getting legendary Traits for our characters, as well as finally getting to the point where we can have some legendary weapons.

One other benefit of getting to the higher levels is that there tends to be more instanced content (Great Barrows, Garth Agarwan, etc.) at the higher level. I understand what some of the reasons that the designers chose to have higher level content have more instanced content: Players take more time to level at that point, and therefore having more instances makes sense; instanced content at lower level is not likely to be run through more than once; and characters at max level should have content to go through (50 used to be max level). I could also, however, see an argument being made for having more instances at the lower levels. I am sure that there are many players like myself who prefer instances to questing. In fact, I would gladly spend half my time running instances if I could level my character that way. But I can’t. Oh well, at least there will be plenty of instances once we hit 45+.

See you in game!