Even as I march through Rohan with my level-80 Captain, I’ve been making serious headway with a new alt in LOTRO. A week or so ago I discovered that my multi-game guild, Mercy Gaming, had started a LOTRO chapter recently that was thriving. And, coincidentally, on the same server as my other characters. As they were all in their 20s and 30s, I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to start up an alt and dash up there to participate in group adventures and instances.
So I reclaimed the Syp name from a long-dormant Burglar and rolled a brand-new (wait for it) Minstrel. Yeah, I could’ve just picked back up my Warden, but for some reason the music was calling to me. I might be going back and forth between the two classes before settling on one, but there’s no urgency here.
Anyway, between the Warden and Minstrel, I’ve had the longest stretch of time in low-level areas in recent memory. It’s not a bad thing, to reconnect with lowbie roots. The Shire is always welcoming, the pace is pretty peaceful, and it’s almost charming to face off against bandits instead of Uruk-hai and giants.
I’m taking the same approach with both of these classes, namely, to ignore questing in general until the second epic volume begins and mostly just skirmish and work on shoring up virtues. While not engaging from a story perspective, it’s been pretty enjoyable as a relaxing activity. And, y’know, building up characters at these levels is actually interesting.
I haven’t run skirmishes in a long while, so doing one or two group skirmishes a night has done wonders toward making me appreciate this content again. I refuse to do them solo; just too long and boring. But with one or two other people? Suddenly it becomes a scrappy fight that moves at a good clip. Storm on Methedras is my absolute favorite low-level skirmish, mostly because it’s visually appealing, relatively fast to do, and full of fun mobs to beat up.
I haven’t queued up for instances yet and might not, I don’t know. With skirmishes, I know I’m not getting myself into a long slog, just a quick 30-minute adventure. With instances, who knows.
In any case, skirmishing is proving invaluable for XP as a majority of the deeds that I need to do are level 30 on up. I have had no problem going from 1 to 20 just deeding, but the 20s really slow down with only a sparse handful to accomplish (at least among the virtues I’ve picked).