Lord of the Rings Online: Escape From Lothlorien

I purchased the Mirkwood expansion when it came out, played very little (as it turns out my character simply wasn’t high enough level for the area and things didn’t go well for her). 

I was never a fan of Lothlorien, and didn’t wish to continue playing there, nor did I want to drop my main character and level through older areas, only to get here again in the future.

So I stopped playing for a few years.

Here I am, frustrated with Lothlorien still, so I thought to look at the level for Mirkwood.   61-65!  Yay!  I’m level 62.

Abandon ship, I said, find the way to Mirkwood and la la la.

On the area map, it isn’t so far away.  I just need to cross the Anduin River and I’m off on new adventures.   Note my happy arrow.  Good ol’ Paint.

Ride, ride ride all the way across Lothlorien to the shores of the river.    Hmm, I can see they won’t let me get up on the other side from here.

Ride ride ride the shoreline.  This looks good, clearly I can swim over and climb up easily right from here.

Swim a few feet. Dead.  Inexplicably dead.  Retreat puts me back in the middle of Lothlorien.   If you’re going to cause me to die bogusly, at least stick me back on the shoreline where I apparently went so foul of the river’s swimming rules.

Many many bad words spoken.

I then looked up “How to get to Mirkwood for Lothlorien”.    How nice, I can get a quest from Haldir (which I likely unknowing got in 2009 but hmmpf), or I can ask the Elf at the Docks for a ride over.

Nice.  The boat awaits!

I actually wasn’t sure if I’d been to Mirkwood already, but I certainly had.  I had a FAILED quest in my log.  Welcome back, puny dog.   Been Here, Failed That.

Oh, man, we’re bunnoles deep in ORC territory.   How I’ve missed them!   Hubba hubba, ORCS, I say.

Damn. I was sooo eager to reach the Orc fortress, I didn’t see a Goblin in the murk.   He popped me off my horse, then completely grayed out all my skills so I had a tough time beating him, but I did get him, he’s a dead little goblin.

This doesn’t bode well.  Nope.  

PlayNotes: LOTRO

My goal this evening was to do as many quests as I could, to try to move on from Lothlorien.   The main set of quests took me into a sprawling orc camp, where I needed to find several locations as a scouting mission.

Way, way at the back of all the camps, there were weapon racks to destroy, a common past time in Middle Earth.

Unbelievably, when I got back to my quest giver he wanted me to go right back through all the camp locations and destroy five more weapon racks. 

You know how dogs look like they’re grinning but they’re really really concerned about your request?

Then the next three npcs to offer quests want me to go in several other orc camps and kill as many orcs as I can.

I had to log out.

Orcs aren’t my favorite foes.

Goblins are next worst.

Middle Earth as presented in LOTRO is full of orc and goblin camps.   Way too many.

Dear Diary:  Trapped In Lothlorien, surrounded by Orcs, send help!

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.