LOTRO: Halloween, Hobbits, and harvesting

Ahh, there’s nothing quite like the Shire at golden hour, is there? When the light hit the zone just right, I got frantic trying to get some good screenshots before it all went away.

And so we turn a corner into November with Lord of the Rings Online, which finds me and my Minstrel blazing ahead on Treebeard’s sluggish server. This run I feel focused and driven in a way I never have before — I’m doing all of the deeds, I’m maxing out every virtue that benefits my build, and I’m tweaking my rotation until I can lock down mobs and kill them with impunity. It’s glorious.

I’m also making very rapid progress through the zones, too. It wasn’t long before I’d written off the first five zones in their entirety and put level 50 and Moria within my grasp well before the server unlock happens. I’m not racing, per se, but that drive to push forward is very real. I’m also making sure to read the quest text and save up as much LP as possible to buy extra milestones. I want at least three milestones before I seriously start working on Volume 1 due to how much bopping around Middle-earth it entails (oh hey i’m going back to rivendell again what a surprise…).

I have been making some time for my kinship. We had a costume party on Halloween, and while I didn’t really have any incredible cosmetic options to present a winner, I did enjoy what everyone else had to display.

And I’ll tell you, I really am excited about the idea of doing a whole lot more dungeon running on this character once I hit level 50. It’s the part of the game that I’ve done perhaps the least, and Treebeard feels like the ideal place to dive into being a career munchkin.

And while I appreciate the glorious sights of Evendim, I do want to say this: Northcotton Farms needs to be burned to the ground. What dev thought it was a good idea to make a hard-to-navigate maze and then stick 30 quests inside of it, I’d like to know. It’s like someone went, “You miss the Shire? Aww, you miss all of those cute hobbits? Well after you do this, you’ll never want to see another hobbit hole again!”