Category: Gameplay

Hello, my name is Banhorn and I’m an Altholic

Last week I rounded out my stable of alts; I rebuilt my four-character team and added alts to experiment with two classes I’ve generally shunned: the minstrel and the captain. No more resisting my altholic tendencies, but my seventh slot will remain open for now.

I’ve run Camenecium, the minstrel, through eight already; it was much more fun and effective than my previous go–no succumbing to the sting of the Marsh Fly Queen in Archet this time! He’s based loosely on a bard I ran through Neverwinter Nights 2; maybe it’s time to review the plot line and borrow a few things since he doesn’t really have much of a backstory of his own. The minstrel’s shouting and music felt  less annoying, and I’m curious to see if melodic patterns across the tiers are real or imagined.

This week I’ll level the captain up to eight and start making some progress on Banhorn and Eohan who will be my co-mains for now. Maybe getting the whole group up to 20 will keep me occupied long enough to Lone Lands 2.0 to come out. Or maybe it’s time to find a 12 step program for my “problem”.

Lone Lands Refresh versus The No-Alt Reboot

Turbine is refreshing the Lone Lands with Siege of Mirkwood (SoM) just as I start my no-alt character reboot. my expectations are high after playing Bree before and after its refresh.  Now I don’t want to level up a new character and have to go through the old Lone Lands. December 1st is so close and yet so far!

Why the reboot? Repeating content and abusing spreadsheets led me to abandon my gang-of-four-alts approach based on a great LOTRO Wiki article about crafter interdependence. It maps out the minimum 4 vocations needed to cover all 10 professions, so I built a team to cover all races and professions:

  • Elven Rune-keeper Tinker
  • Human Lore-master Historian
  • Hobbit Hunter Woodsman
  • Dwarf Champion Armorer

I noticed that tinker and historian complemented each other nicely, and that pairing combined well with rune-keeper and lore-master. Historian’s farmer can level up without quests; an alt historian could supply the main’s cook without character leveling. I could run my main up to 60 and 6×6, then run the alt all the way up with a long enough break for old content to feel (or actually be) new again.

Ideally I’d run one character and suck up the cost of ingredients for the off-profession via the auction house, but I just hate paying for things I can mine or grow myself.  It’s also a problem that both the elf and human characters have long histories outside of LOTRO that need continuing.  The elf as historian has the advantage of Return to Rivendell for access to a superior workstation, but otherwise it’s a purely subjective spreadsheet-immune decision. I don’t do well with those.