I haven’t been to Ered Luin since the game launched.  My first character was an Elven Hunter on Gladden that I got to 15 during the head-start week.  I ended up re-rolling a Man Hunter on Landroval after I read on the forums that it  was going to be the unofficial role-play server.  So it’s been nearly two years since I’ve spent any time there.  I have an Elven Rune-keeper, Calenel, that I’d started but only played to level 8, so Book 7 seemed a good time to get back to him and see what kind of changes Turbine had worked out.

First thing of course is the XP curve change, I killed a rat and dinged 9.  Pretty nice.

Celondim has been streamlined a bit.  I remember a fair bit more running from Celondim to Nen Hilith and to Limael’s Vineyard and back again.  Now there is a quest NPC that sends you out to Nen Hilith and then is a small quest hub of four NPC’s that the mouth of the dell.  The same thing Limael is now at the tower on the hill just before her Vineyard instead of back in Celondim.  So now instead of two or three trips out and back, it’s one.

Duillond has a bit more running, but it’s still much improved.

As Calenel reached the teen levels, I noticed I couldn’t find any elites and had no trouble soloing all of the quests I was given.  I was especially surprised to find that you can solo all the way through the Prologue now.  I’m working through the Bree Prologue quests on a Man Warden character and there are still Fellowship quests towards the end of that chain.  I’m interested to see if Turbine changes the Bree and Shire prologue quests as well with the next content release.

Overall, the new zone is much more streamlined and enjoyable.  I’m not sure why the Prologue quests were made solo-able but it might point to a general shortage of low-level players in the Ered Luin region.  It’s certainly nice to be able to join a Fellowship as an option, but not be blocked.  I remember the Lone-lands being especially bad for that, I would login with a quest log full of Fellowship quests that no one was doing.

Ered Luin Revisited
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3 thoughts on “Ered Luin Revisited

  • April 7, 2009 at 1:56 pm
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    Interesting. I’ve been meaning to try the revamped starter area.

    As for the Lone Lands, I hate the place. Your quest log gets clogged up with group quests very quickly, and quests flow around the zone poorly. I’m also not a fan of running back and forth to Bree repeatedly on some of the early chains there. The Battle for Weathertop is one of my favorite group quests, and the storyline of the book quest that runs through the zone is very well done. However, on the whole I think the LL badly need a revamp. It’s like hitting a brick wall after cruising through a starter zone and the Breelands.

    The last alt I took through those levels skipped it altogether and went straight to Amon Raith in the ND. My sanity was the better for it. He’s 38 now and I haven’t been to the LL at all.

  • April 7, 2009 at 2:24 pm
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    Yes, Lone Lands is the worst zone in the game, with Angmar being a close second. Way too much running around and tons of fellowship-only quests and elites. It was especially disappointing to me, because Weathertop is one of my favorite locations in the game from the books. I probably have more screen shots of Weathertop than anything else in the game.

    I’m getting close to the Lone Lands with most of my alts, and I’ve been thinking about whether to proceed there or skip straight to the North Downs. I may try a few quests there and see if anything has changed, since I haven’t been there since first year, but I’ll head to the Downs or to Evendim pretty quickly if it is still the same. I used to have an aversion to canceling quests and would spend hours trying to clear everything out of my log, but I’ve gotten over that issue so I have no problem with canceling everything for a particular zone and moving on to another area.

  • August 17, 2009 at 12:31 pm
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    On the german EU servers, most new players seem start with a human char, and the Bree-area is the most populated by far.

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