LOTRO: The Loremaster Lurks

It’s all about the alliteration, folks.

In response to my own questions, I sent my level 51 Loremaster into the game. I thought I could easily pick her specialization, (which had been re-set) so I chose the beast one, and wily nily grabbed all the skills in that specialization my 23 points could buy. It looked like I could change them at any time, and I just wanted to play.

First the map. It didn’t seem that bad, really, giving you a general area to look for your quest objects, shown in washed out colors, though. Also, I couldn’t tell my character was on the map, because her location was hidden behind the map legend. For the illustrative picture below, I had moved her to a different location to turn in a quest.

To practice moving about the map and fighting with my character, I grabbed all of the tasks from a Taskmaster Bulletin Board.

When I last played, the bog creature was my favorite companion. This time, though it fought well enough, it would not leave my side. I like the companion to go hold the fight away from my ranged character, not just pin itself to me and fight. What happened to Swampy?

I brought out the Bear, and at first it wouldn’t run over to fight the beasts either, but then it did. Is it something I picked in the specializations? I dunno.

One of the things I remember about this region my first time through was that there were so many berries, taters, drops of honey everywhere. Irresistible even now. However, there is the inventory issue that I will need to resolve.

It turns out this was a good character to choose to get back in the game. Not too high so she’s slogging through the dreaded Lothlorien or Mirkwood, not too low so I don’t feel like I’ll ever get anywhere.

Lord of the Rings Online: Just Let Me Into Moria, Come On!

I’ve been working on my Loremaster sooo close to the Gates of Moria, yet quest after new quest keeps me running between Orc camps and Redhorn Pass. Agh.   I feel like I’m not getting anywhere.

The first time I ever did this area, I liked it quite a bit, but I’m just itching to move forward. I think I’ll have to play a couple of characters in other areas of the game to dial down on the twitchy.

Maybe run a few quests with my Hunter in the Golden Woods (also agh).

My Burglar is in the Lonelands, an area I like.  She’s my official Cook too, so she’s fun.  Rotate her in, check.

I did finally use my Turbine Points to get all of the available Expansion areas.  Which I’ll reach someday.

 

Lord of The Rings (Back Online)

Though I wanted to log in during the Ninth Anniversary celebration, I had trouble updating with Steam, and when it finally did update, I couldn’t log into the game though Steam indicated it was running.  None of the fixes I read about helped so, I found an unopened! copy of Shadows of Angmar on the archival game shelves here and was able to update and launch the game from that.

I wanted to use my Hunter character to move on through the world, but when I swam down the river just a little bit to find a new area, everything was ten levels over my head.  That hurts.

I decided to drop back to my Loremaster in Angmar.  She was my second favorite, and her survivability is good, making her fun to play.  I’ve been re-learning her skills and can take mobs three levels over my head pretty easily, so off I go.

There is a dream like quality to this area of the game, with nighttime seeming to last longer than normal–maybe it is just the time of night that I’m playing.  The music is an odd kind of science-fictiony-a monster-is creeping-up thing that adds to the atmosphere.

Quest lines are interesting, though I found it a bit silly to be sent to pick some peas in an area where I had already threaded my way through a maze of a city to gather supplies.

I noticed I had an animal companion I didn’t recall from past play, a Bog Guardian.  He is unexpectedly cute, sporting Cattails and some other growth on his fuzzy green head.  Though his note says he excels at ranged damage, he is really tough and helps shorten fights immensely closeup.  I was sorely disappointed the game would not let me name him Swamp Thing.  Come on.

I was thinking of posts regarding Vanilla WOW and the commenters who say blah, blah, you’re viewing the game as it was with Rose Colored Glasses, blah blah.  How nice it is to be able to go back to an older game, and so far nothing is glaringly different than I recall.  I did like this particular area of Malenhad, for some reason, on the original play through.  Perhaps just because it was light and sunny all the time compared to the area before.  I think I liked the turtles for some reason.

My completionist ways aren’t happy with all of the Fellowship quests I’m bypassing.  On the one hand, I respect that these have been left as they were, on the other hand, a weasily part of me wishes some solo version of them was available.  It seems to me this could be done, just have the quest scale to a single player and the reward be less/different.

Speaking of things I don’t recall, where did this guy come from, and who is expected to be able to take him on?