While Arwellyn has been adventuring in Lothlorien, working through the Epic Book quests there and into Mirkwood, while running Moria instances for more Radiance gear, there is still the question of alts.
In the Shadows of Angmar game, I created a hobbit minstrel, Myrra, solely for the purpose of group content. Between the kinship I had her in and the raid group Arwellyn was in, Myrra was just about as close to being power-leveled as I could get, given my job and time constraints. I also had ample opportunity for solo work and, at the time, was a pretty decent minstrel. Now, however, we’re in the Siege of Mirkwood game, and Myrra is really taking a beating in Eregion and the beginning stages of Moria. I’m not sure I have it in me to take another light armour, slow combat class leveling through Moria this soon, even though I’d really love to have Myrra at least 3 levels higher where she could easily get into groups if no one’s in need of a lore-master.
So I have Veldorran, the new warden. He’s currently level 28 – I really had a blast putting some work leveling him up last week – but I decided that if I want to have him become my new “main alt” that I wanted to make things easier for him down the road. I have a rule about never giving alts money, but I have no problem feeding them items such as crafting materials and recipes or reputation tokens.
I got to thinking perhaps I should park Veldorran at 28 for now and dust of my hunter Sethryndil to essentially be a farmer for the other alts. Hunters have the highest single-target dps in the game, and their Guide skills make it easy to travel anywhere at a moment’s notice. So last week, in between high-level sessions and instance runs with Arwellyn, I logged in Sethryndil for the first time in well over a year, and took him from level 37 to 43, finishing off with completing the entire chain of quests in Aughaire for the Vestments of Fém medium armour set, which should carry him to 50 or higher before any dire need of upgrade.
Then it occured to me, why not just use Arwellyn to farm those lower-level materials and reputation tokens? For my own personal role-play reasons, it has become important for any characters I actually care about playing to have the full set of Lossoth armour, which requires kindred reputation. Arwellyn has it, Myrra has it, and I want Veldorran to have it. Other regions have certain benefits to reputation, such as Rivendell and Angmar, then of course Moria for both the fast goat mount and the Legendary Trait book, although honestly tokens drop like confetti in Moria so that’s less of a concern. Things change after Moria, however, as all reputation tokens for both Lothlorien and Mirkwood are bound to one character so all token farming will cease after Moria.
On the one hand, I already have Arwellyn who can easily fight in Forochel, the Trollshaws, Angmar or anywhere else I would want reputation tokens for Veldorran. The downside to that it will likely still be a bit time-consuming since lore-masters fight slowly. As an experiment, I traited Arwellyn for the first time to the Master of Nature’s Fury which is a high dps trait set. It really is high dps and she’s killing those Gauradan in Forochel very quickly. However the overall experience is still slow because of skill cooldowns. The Gauradan die and I’m ready to work on the next but Improved Sticky Gourd – the heavy-hitting AoE Legendary skill of the set – is still on cooldown so either I wait it out of engage the next few mobs without it. Then there’s the problem of storage. Being an end-game character, Arwellyn’s bags are always nearly full with needed gear, potions, salves, etc. not to mention all the various tokens. A rabid, frothing at the mouth rant post about Turbine’s lack of handling of the storage issue will be coming soon.
On the other hand, if I choose to level up Sethryndil into his 50’s, I don’t have to wait on cooldowns for anything other than melee skills on a hunter. By that point, most mobs he’ll be farming will be grey or close to it and he should be able to easily kill them before the reach melee range unless he pulls multiple mobs. I’ve never really necessarily wanted Sethryndil as a group-content character, though i’ll admit LOTRO is still the only MMO where I routinely see groups “looking for dps” and “looking for hunter” for instances, so I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to learn to play him in a group setting, it’s just not a specific goal I have for him. I wouldn’t mind getting him a nice glowing legendary bow, for sure. Side note: why are hunter legendary bows friggin’ awesome-looking while Arwellyn’s legendary staff looks like a giant Q-Tip? I’m just sayin’…
So, decisions to be made. I’d love to get Myrra going but have been so disheartened at how minstrel’s are soloing these days I can’t bring myself to bother. I’m really enjoying the warden class but would like to help Veldorran as much as possible by having his reputation tokens taken care of ahead of time as well as a ready supply of hides, etc. for his tailoring profession. The hunter seems the obvious choice except for the required time to get at least 10 more levels in order to efficiently do the farming…
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