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[Yegolev]

Nebu, you are in a shit area doing a shit task.  Maybe the sights of Evendim are what you need.

[Nebu]

Nebu, you are in a shit area doing a shit task.  Maybe the sights of Evendim are what you need.

I may head there. 

Odd thing happened.  I hit 30 and got the quest to report to a skirmish camp.  The skirmish captain won't let me turn in the quest.  It's making me cry.

[caladein]

Yeah, I pretty much gave up on the GA region of Lone-Lands.  Most of the quests either involve Normals mixed in with Elites or have a small handful of spawns.  Really, once you're into the mid-late 30s, a lot of keeping your sanity is knowing which quests to not bother with by yourself.

[Yegolev]

Nebu, you are in a shit area doing a shit task.  Maybe the sights of Evendim are what you need.

I may head there. 

Odd thing happened.  I hit 30 and got the quest to report to a skirmish camp.  The skirmish captain won't let me turn in the quest.  It's making me cry.

Known bug.  I had this happen twice, as did the wife.  The one you can't complete, you will just have to delete it.  Would be nice if Turbine would file off that rough edge in the next major update, frankly it's damn embarrassing for the intro to a feature that they talk about so much.

While I do like Trollshaws, it might not be enough of a change from fighting gaunt men in eastern Lone Lands.  Plus it's very elfy.  Evendim is different enough visually to wash out the taste faster, and is dominated by Dunedain.  As indicated, start in Oatbarton which is north of Brockenborings.

To add to cal's post, I pretty much skip any of the instance dungeons due to the factor of trying to do anything in them.  Garth Agarwen is almost as bad as the Great Barrow.

[Mrbloodworth]

The whole "kill a bunch of orcs and do paperwork" thing before unlocking skirmishes will be gone come the 10th, also, skirmishes will now start at 20. So there is that. Issa and I are trying to get some levels on a set of 20's we have so we can tag along with Nebu.

I like to do the instances, and the whole Garth Agarwen set has a really cool storyline and some great rewards. In September they are breaking it up I think, into three wings so thats helpful.

[Nebu]

The whole "kill a bunch of orcs and do paperwork" thing before unlocking skirmishes will be gone come the 10th, also, skirmishes will now start at 20. So there is that.

Does that mean that I should just run around and kill orcs with the hope of advancing the quest or should I just forget about doing skirmishes until the 10th? 

I'll check the forums.

[Mrbloodworth]

The whole "kill a bunch of orcs and do paperwork" thing before unlocking skirmishes will be gone come the 10th, also, skirmishes will now start at 20. So there is that.

Does that mean that I should just run around and kill orcs with the hope of advancing the quest or should I just forget about doing skirmishes until the 10th? 

I'll check the forums.

I have no clue about that bug or whatever you are facing. I just know most of the "unlock" stuff for skirmishes (that I think was added to slow the flood of people into skirmishes around launch day) will be gone.

[Zetor]

Regarding instances: Great Barrow was meh, Garth Agarwen used to be semi-ok with severe pacing / layout / respawn issues, I haven't run it since the revamp (have they turned it into a 3-man winged dungeon yet, or is that coming with the f2p patch?).

The most important dungeon-related advice I can give (until the F2P update, which is supposed to have some instance revamps as well) is to stay away from Fornost. Friends don't let friends run Fornost. Fornost is the only instance in the game that can kill people IRL by annoying them to death. One does not simply walk into Fornost. (etc etc.)

Edit: There was one instance at the end of a looooooooooooooooooooooooong epic questline in Evendim (starts in Rivendell) that had a neat end boss, but it was very hard to find a group to do it and it was kinda long; also, many of the quests in the questline were timewaster-y to the effect of 'swim for 10 RL minutes across the zone, frob a glowie quest item, then swim for another 10 minutes'. I think it is usually refered to as the 'Tomb of Elendil'. That one might be worth doing, if you can find a group for it!

[Yegolev]

In September they are breaking it up I think, into three wings so thats helpful.

Already done, still not something I can duo.  Scaling may help as long as they don't suffer the same problem skirmishes do with duos.

[Yegolev]

Edit: There was one instance at the end of a looooooooooooooooooooooooong epic questline in Evendim (starts in Rivendell) that had a neat end boss, but it was very hard to find a group to do it and it was kinda long; also, many of the quests in the questline were timewaster-y to the effect of 'swim for 10 RL minutes across the zone, frob a glowie quest item, then swim for another 10 minutes'. I think it is usually refered to as the 'Tomb of Elendil'. That one might be worth doing, if you can find a group for it!

Is that in the epic line?  I do know that we did not even bother with the final dungeon in that one but I'm pretty sure I completed the epic.

[Zetor]

It wasn't in the epic books... I was more using it as an adjective. That questline is like 30+ quests long!

[Furiously]

I completed my 45/50 class quest last night. I had not done enough prior research on just how many skirmish points I would need.  2600+1300+1300+1300. I ended up buying three of the items for two and a half gold off the auction house.

I did the access quest to moria and wandered around inside for a bit. Pretty impressive.

Now I realize I am like a tier behind on my crafting. Grrr.

[Hutch]

The whole "kill a bunch of orcs and do paperwork" thing before unlocking skirmishes will be gone come the 10th, also, skirmishes will now start at 20. So there is that.

Does that mean that I should just run around and kill orcs with the hope of advancing the quest or should I just forget about doing skirmishes until the 10th? 

I'll check the forums.

Nebu: you need to delete the quest that told you to go visit the Skirmish Captain.
But, you should still go visit the Captain.
Once you've deleted the quest, the Captain will offer you a different quest, to gather the war orders.
It's a two-part quest by the way, you have to gather 10 war orders off of humanoids (i.e. orcs etc). Once you have those, the quest text changes to gather one more thing. Basically, you get 11 drops from the orcs, and then return to the Skirmish Captain.

I agree that it's kind of a black eye for Turbine that this thing is still broken like this. When I encountered it, I got so flustered by it that I actually travelled to two different camps, just in case the Captain at the first one had been bugged. Then, I put in a ticket for it, and had a GM respond to me almost immediately, to tell me to delete the quest. The support staff must see that one a LOT.

[Nebu]

When I encountered it, I got so flustered by it that I actually travelled to two different camps, just in case the Captain at the first one had been bugged. Then, I put in a ticket for it, and had a GM respond to me almost immediately, to tell me to delete the quest. The support staff must see that one a LOT.

I did this EXACT same thing.  I've done skirmishes on other characters and never had this happen.  I'm not sure what I did to encounter it.

Thanks for the tip.  Thanks A LOT!   

[caladein]

I completed my 45/50 class quest last night. I had not done enough prior research on just how many skirmish points I would need.  2600+1300+1300+1300. I ended up buying three of the items for two and a half gold off the auction house.

Gah!  After pretty much blowing most of my marks on gear at 40, I looked up what I'd need for my class quest items.  5070 Skirmish Marks .  Really though, since I'm sitting at a bit over 3g right now, just buying the items seems like a better option.

[Zetor]

Item price also depends on server. If you're a hunter, a captain or a LM, you'll be lucky if you see the Putrid Slime of H-whatever on the AH at all on Silverlode, and it will likely cost 14 gold at least; other items are not as extreme, but still hard to find. Hunters are doubly screwed since the other item they need costs just as much. I have a LM and a Captain whose class quests / legendary traits are pretty much mandatory for grouping, so I had to grind out a whole lot of skirmishes. I'm not bitter... ok, maybe a little. 

HOWEVER, you can wait until F2P launches and hope they changed the system (so that the dungeons that drop these items are actually run by groups, therefore providing some supply).

[caladein]

For the set of Burglar items on Brandywine it's 11g as of a few minutes ago.

[Mrbloodworth]

I think I got about half of mine buy running the required dungeons, and I used skirmish marks for the rest.

[Zetor]

Nobody actually runs those dungeons anymore (on Silverlode at least). Only chance is to go there with a kin group, but we got burned on Fornost and Goblintown enough to not do that. 

However, with the revamps and the new dungeon finder thing, I think people will be running those places again.

[Ingmar]

I bought all mine with cash other than a few of the outdoor drops that I had lying around anyway. It probably cost me 15g or so, champ items seem to run high. I bought a house too, and still had like 6 or 7 gold left over - this was at level 45 or so. Using skirmish marks for gear and just auctioning everything that I picked up on the way up meant I was basically rolling in money, I've never had a problem in LotRO with cash.

[Yegolev]

I completed my 45/50 class quest last night. I had not done enough prior research on just how many skirmish points I would need.  2600+1300+1300+1300. I ended up buying three of the items for two and a half gold off the auction house.

Gah!  After pretty much blowing most of my marks on gear at 40, I looked up what I'd need for my class quest items.  5070 Skirmish Marks .  Really though, since I'm sitting at a bit over 3g right now, just buying the items seems like a better option.

I weighed my options and I'm going to try my luck getting barghest paws the old fashioned way.  The corrosive ooze will be easy enough, but I haven't been in Fornost so not sure how that will work out.  If it sucks I'll try Haudh Icarith for paws.  Not that I have too many options, I didn't find any rotted barghest paws on the AH yesterday.

[caladein]

I ran a Fornost today and maybe 5-6 paws dropped.  If you have the key I imagine you can skip most of the trash and go straight after the undead bosses (and dogs).  (Oh, and that 5k was just for the dungeon drops.  With big sets of items it's like 15k.)

[Mrbloodworth]

We used to stock pile that stuff in the kinhall, before we got robbed, the second time.

[Yegolev]

Second time?

The funny thing is that I have several stacks of class items for various classes, but zero paws.  As mentioned, haven't been in Fornost or anywhere else with lv45+ barghests.  Barghests in Angmar would be NICE.

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, due to not inviting randoms anymore, its safe to put stuff in the chests if you have items you don't need. Probably a good idea to start putting class items overflow in there again.

[Zetor]

The other option for barghest paws is killing the elites in the Bree rep dungeon in the barrows... not really worth it imo, even when compared to Fornost.

For my captain, I ended up buying the single boss drops from level 50 dungeons via skirmish marks (none of them were available on the AH over a month+ except for the 970 skirmish mark item on sale for 25 gold... haha, no), cost me around 6k marks or so. I had a few barghest paws left over from when my guild did Fornost runs (ugh), bought the last one one from the AH. Collected the Angmar trash mob drops myself.

For my LM it was similar, except that some of the stuff was actually on the AH, so I could buy it from there.

[Yegolev]

The other option for barghest paws is killing the elites in the Bree rep dungeon in the barrows... not really worth it imo, even when compared to Fornost.

Yea, Haudh Icarith.  There is one barghest near the entrance but he's backed by two elite gaunt men and I haven't been assed to go down the middle path since I was able to get plenty of scholar ingredients in the two non-elite wings.  I assumed this place was not an option.  I might think differently after Fornost.

Well, due to not inviting randoms anymore, its safe to put stuff in the chests if you have items you don't need. Probably a good idea to start putting class items overflow in there again.

I'll think about it... need a sign posted "XX Days Without Robbery".

[Ingmar]

There are barghests in Angmar, in Imlad Balchorth (the part in the middle with all the wights).

[Zetor]

Those guys don't drop the rotted barghest paws, however (iirc).

[Ingmar]

Oh, boo. Yeah it looks like they drop the Champ/Warden barghest bits only. That's kind of random.

[Yegolev]

Pain in the ass is what it is.  Well, even with that botherment, at least I'm still a RK.

[Nebu]

About to hit 39 and still enjoying the game.  I have to thank all of you for helping me keep advancing.  The chat in Kin and Ched's kindness are keeping the game enjoyable.  I may actually make it to the endgame this time. 

Skirmishes have improved this game in ways that I can't even put into words.  Love me some skirmishes. 

[Mrbloodworth]

Won't be on this WED, RL calls.

[Yegolev]

Today's extended maintenance makes me sad.  Legu Universe makes it all better, though.

[March]

Year after year I return to this hoping to like it more than I do.

My latest effort (approx 4 mos) has impressed me how the 1-20 journey has been supremely improved.  21-40, though, is still just 

I'm not trying to rush through content at all, but I find myself cursing the time I spend running over hill and over dale to talk to different people to advance quests.

Trying to hit all the Epic quests, I was particularly disappointed with Vol I, Book 4 (I think) where it had me running from Rivendell to Throenhad to participate in the Epic story of:

Aragorn: I am perplexed, go to Elladan
Elladan: I too am perplexed, find me a squab
Elladan: This is perplexing squab, best go back to Aragorn
Aragorn: Hmmn, I share Elladan's perplexity; go back to him and ask him what he thinks we should do with this perplexing squab.
Elladan: Perhaps we should show this to my father, Elrond... he is knowledgeable in the squabbish ways...
...at which you mutter, but I was _just at_ Rivendell you twit.

Perhaps that book is just an aberration... the earlier books seemed much better; but there is still something DAoC'ish about the questing... as if riding on my horse over long distances between quests somehow makes the quest feel epic.  I can understand if they don't want the WoW amusement park feel, but so far it seems to me like the lesson they learned was to cut the rides but keep the long lines.  I hope the F2P pass they are making over the entire game improves a number of these tedious aspects.

Tell me I'm just stuck in the land of by-passed content and that they pick up the ball again at Level XX.