Monday, May 28, 2007

LotRO Journal - 29-May-2007

I keep playing Lord of the Rings Online in a low intensity way. My minstrel is level 21 now, and my guardian is level 19. I'm mostly playing the guardian, who is on a tour to explore Bree-land, and collect deeds there. I visited all the ruins and other points of interest on the various lists of things to see, and now I'm on the deeds to kill various critters. Including my very first orc in this game.

The critter-slaying deeds difficulty lies in finding enough of that type of mob to kill. The easiest were the neeker-beekers, because there is a dungeon that has over 20 of them in it, and can be run repeatedly. Mobs like brigands or orcs are usually easy, because they tend to live in camps in high concentrations. The animal mobs are sometimes more difficult. Some live concentrated in some places, like spiders in the middle of the marsh, but others are all over the place. I don't know how I'm supposed to kill 90 sickle-flies, I haven't found more than one at a time yet.

Collecting all the deeds isn't strictly necessary, but I like it. It is a low-key way to play, killing mostly mobs far lower in level than myself. That is a good way to earn money, as you get tons of loot for very little repair cost. And it forces you to visit all the corners of the zone, which is great from an exploration point of view. I especially like to do it with my guardian, who is miner, because the remote corners tend to be full of ore nodes. Not the fastest way to level, but I'm not in a hurry to get anywhere.

I did a couple of quests beside the deeds, as opportunity arose. There are a lot of group quests in Bree-land, and I didn't want to organize a group myself, so I just joined groups that were looking for more. The LFG system in LotRO isn't used any more than the WoW system is, which is a pity. Most groups form in the old-fashioned way of shouting for more people in the LFG chat channel. Just like in WoW there are quest series which get harder as the series progresses. For example the quest series on the alliance between orcs and brigands, I did the start by myself, teamed up with another guy for the middle part, and joined a full group for the final mini-dungeon instance.

I'm enjoying LotRO whenever I play it, but usually 2 hours a day is enough for me. I don't feel the urge to play every free minute as I did with WoW. That is probably a good thing. I get around to play some other games and get more Real Life ® done. Last night I installed Heroes of Might and Magic V, and it looks very promising.

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