Tom just wasn’t all there. Wait, not that Tom. Oh, not that Tom either. There we go, that’s the one. As he sang his tunes and started dancing around I turned and looked at Kasul. We were supposed to follow him? Was that even safe? It didn’t seem like it would be. Of course, good ‘ol Tom ended up leaving Kasul and I standing outside of a big deep cave with lots of creatures inside so maybe we should have followed him after all.
I was so close to hitting level 20 without a death. So close I could taste it. Then book one, volume one, chapter 11 came along. I died. I died a lot. I died from heal agro most of the time and when we went back to Bree broken and torn, my repair bill was 75 silver and I’ve never seen it that high before. I can’t even remember the number of times I died, but it seemed like I was always trying to make my way back to Kasul. Once we decided that there really was no way that we could complete the instance without a group or at least a few more people, we headed back to Bree to see what our options were.
We managed to gain almost two levels in the time we played. I am a little shy of half way to 20. I gathered together more supplies to craft with (story of my life) and contemplated switching to a cook because the food is quite handy, as opposed to a tailor where most of my gear seems to come from quests or drops and it’s far better then the items I can actually make myself. I’ll think about that more when I’m back in game again.
I’ve mentioned before how alive the world feels to me, and I’ll stress it again. As we were running through the woods it was dark, the music was scary and I FELT as though I was in the woods. As we fought our way through The Barrows and I looked across the rolling mountains with ruins scattered every which way, it just felt so atmospheric. Of course, there is also a lot of walking in the game which means I spend a lot of time trying to get from point A to point C (because point B would be silly!) and things are starting to get REALLY expensive (skills and what not) but I’m still having a great time. Were it not for the few items I’ve sold on the market I wouldn’t have even been able to afford my repair bills yesterday let alone my newest skills.
I’m looking forward to hitting 20 and finally getting some appearance slots although my hopes of ever owning a home are quickly diminishing, I have no idea how anyone manages to afford anything, especially since the home I wanted is over 900 gold and I learned that there is a thousand silver to every gold. The most money I’ve had on me has been 400 silver. This could take a while.
By the way, I hope you were either exaggerating or just read the price wrong at the housing broker. The most expensive house in the game is the kin house, and it’s “only” around 16 gold, give or take. The standard home is ~ 1.5g and the deluxe is ~7g.
The SoA game certainly did send you on some ridiculous quest travels. I’m only recently returning to the game after several months so I’m still getting a feel for the Moria traveling but it doesn’t seem *as bad* so far.
Regarding money, it’s slow coming at first but starts picking up with each block of ten levels. In your 20’s you’ll notice an increase, then again in your 30’s, and so forth. I’m not an Auction House player; in fact I rarely use the AH in any game. Every light and medium armour class I’ve had in LOTRO has earned the 4.22 gold for the first mount shortly after reaching level 35. My heavy armour classes have been into 37 before getting their mount because of their much higher repair bills. That seems to be the same with everyone else on my server I’ve talked to who are also not big AH players. On the other hand, if you devote time to selling crafting materials rather than actually crafting, you’ll find some of the materials sell like hotcakes.
As for professions, the SoA game ran a decent balance between crafted and quest reward gear as you level. I think it was something like 4 levels or so between each new crafted armour upgrade and there were often quest rewards that might serve as a minor upgrade to individual pieces in between the crafted gear levels. But gear wasn’t as extremely important either. I always crafted armour until my mid-30’s when I got my first 3-piece set from a quest chain in the Trollshaws. That usually lasted me until 40-42 when I’m starting in Angmar to pick up the next set which I had no problem using until 50. There’s a crafted robe that requires Kindred reputation with the Lossoth in Forochel that, for casting stats, was competing handily with the robe from the Rift raid at the time. Now, I doubt anyone would work for Kindred for that level 50 robe when they’d out-level it by the time they reached 50. The MoM game, though, has very noticeably placed a higher value on quest reward gear and especially instance reward gear. Not to mention Legendary Items which cannot be crafted. The cook is very rewarding, the food is extremely useful and they also make threat-reducing strings for Minstrel instruments. Plus if you take the Tinker profession it comes with not only cook but jeweler. Even at the new MoM end-game, crafted jewelry is top-notch and hope/radiance tokens will always be in demand as well.
The money really started flowing around 27 for me. I’m easily making 500 silver a session just selling the vendor trash, and I’d make a lot more if I sold all the hides that I am harvesting. I’m 33 now, and skills cost a lot, but I’ve just bought a standard house for 1 gold and 50 silver a week upkeep.
Travel is one of the beefs I have with LotRO, it can really get annoying especially starting as a Hobbit. There were a couple of quests that made me run all the way across the shire, to be told to run back to the starting point, and then — adding insult to injury — run back again to quest target.
Damn it Jim, I’m a hero, not a marathon runner!
You’ll start having more money soon. It starts to flow in a bit faster at 20.
They did a really outstanding job with the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs – I actually would go out of my way to avoid the Forest at night, because I’d get lost in there at night.
Sadly, your travel woes are just getting started. The sheer amount of time it takes to watch your character ride the autohorse from Bree to the adventuring zones in the 20’s and 30’s gets progressively longer, and leveling becomes downright painful if you run out of quests and have to ride through two zones to get to Bree to get on a different autohorse and ride through two zones in the opposite direction to get to your next quest. Turbine has gone through and added some unlockable “swift travel” paths which probably ease the pain a bit (typically, you’ll be able to skip to the last zone you’ve already completed and ride from there), but travel takes far too long, and I feel far too dependent on creative use of the hourly cooldowns on my map and racial recall ability (Men and Elves have it best, Bree is the best hub to have for the original game, but Rivendell is more convenient for the expansion).