The Khazad Guards Childsplay auction via CSTM!

Some of you probably already know about the fantastic yearly charity event organised by the fine folks at A Casual Stroll to Mordor. As usual the event involves a charity sponsored walk in-game on the Landroval server. The event itself is in aid of Childs Play a charity dedicated to bringing toys and games to children sick in hospital, and this is not just an American charity, indeed, Alder Hey Childrens’ Hospital, Royal Manchester Childrens’ Hospital, and Childrens’ Hospital in Sheffield, close to where we live in the UK all benefit from this charity.

Last year over $5000 was donated by the amazing LOTRO community, and this year CSTM has set its target at an impressive $7000! This year there are more ways you can donate than ever before, with a host of fantastic charity auctions hosted by CSTM, and provided by the LOTRO community.

You can find out more about CSTM, the event, and donate yourselves here: http://casualstrolltomordor.com/2012/09/childsplay2012/

We have donated on a yearly basis, but this year the Khazad Guard has scratched its beards and come up with a way to contribute themselves, after all it’s not just baby hobbits that get sick, but baby dwarves too!

We have provided CSTM with the Khazad Guards very own original copy of their Map of Beleriand in the First Age, and you too can bid and buy it for yourself here!

The map itself is pretty big 25″ (64cm) x 19″ (49cm) drawn in Black, Red, and Brown ink, on coarse heavy weight paper by Adam of the Khazad Guard, which has been and fake aged and stained, with creases, folds, cracks and burns/scorching, including one detached piece. This took over 10 hours to draw, and was done entirely by hand.

(There is no frame with this auction, just the map itself, you will have to buy or have a frame made yourself… be warned it is big!)

It is open to free European postage as we are providing this ourselves, but if you are willing to pay for postage (in advance please) we are prepared to post it elsewhere too. It will be folded carefully (where it already has crease folds) and packed in a padded envelope about A4 sized to be posted to the winner, It will be marked as “gift”, but any taxes due will be the bidders responsibility, as will any losses or damage in the postal system.

So get yourselves over there and check this and the other auctions out, and think about donating yourself!

thanks

The Khazad Guard

Crafting Preparations for Rohan

Yesterday saw the release of a Dev Diary by Dina “Ayvan” Monas, all about crafting, and it looks like crafting is getting a lot of love this expansion. There is going to be a new tier, Eastemnet, and also a new Guild tier, Grand Master, and a few other little tweaks. Resource gathering will be following the same process as it did with RoI, in that there will be normal resource nodes and rich resource nodes (eg. Skarn and Rich Skarn), which can then be processed into low, medium and high quality ingredients (eg. Low Quality, Medium Quality and High Quality Calenard Ingots). Rare items can again be processed into either optional crit ingredients (eg. Pure Calenard), or used as a more efficient way of processing the High Quality resources. This will probably still be gated behind reputation. As with RoI, special crafting ingredients for single use or Guild recipes, the Cracked Rhi Helvarch Sigil, or whatever it will be in Rohan, is a rare drop from all craft nodes. The good news is that all lower tiers will be following the same pattern, with sapphire, ruby, adamant and beryl shards, and mithril flakes potentially dropping from their relevant tier nodes also.

The way that the non gathering crafting professions (jeweller, tailor, metalworker, weaponsmith, and woodworkers) process the raw materials is being tweaked, so that you can level them without a lot of wastage. Jeweller is not too bad, you can very tediously polish gems until the cows come home without actually using up any resources, but for the others you have to put in an awful lot of raw materials, and often pricey vendor bought ingredients, to come out with a little XP and a pile of vendor trash which rarely makes you a profit.

They have facilitated this with new processing recipes, whereas low quality ingredients can be turned into a “shaving”, and then turned back into low quality items. Once the tier is mastered and you can crit, you could well end up with more resources than you started out with. This sounds like a very positive step.

The new recipes themselves will be more of the same, a few token auto granted and vendor bought, but world drops and reputation gated for the most part. The Dev Diary did say that there would be full armour sets to craft at both 80 and 85, which is good, as a lot of people were frustrated at the piecemeal crafting items in the RoI expansion. As reputation will be, like RoI, earned rather than bartered, this excludes all of us who have un-levelled crafting alts from being able to craft the whole spectrum. Looking at the forums, the community suggestion is that the rep recipes become bound to account to help this along, but whether this will appear in-game at some point or another is a different matter. Expect therefore that the world drop recipes will be at a premium on the Auction, at least for the first few months.

They have also announced another tier of Relics, including crafted relics, for both personal use and mounted combat, which is interesting and a potential source of income for dedicated crafters, and the next level ingredient, the Compendium of Middle Earth Vol IV. To facilitate this they are bringing back the Crafting resource instances like those in Moria, and similar to the Legendary item instances in Galtrev. These will be able to be run daily, and probably also be a nice little addition to reputation.

So, what can crafters do to prepare for this?

For the Eastemnet tier, not really a lot, save make a little space in the vault to store all the new resources. However we can prepare for the new Guild Tier, by making Guild Rep items of lower tiers and stock piling them, ready to hand in. I cannot say how much XP is needed to progress from Master of the Guild to Grand Master (despite being in the BETA we didn’t investigate crafting that much), but I do remember that the last Guild tier was 45k. It is probably going to be in excess of 60k, so this is much better to level with lower tiers, and guild emblems that you don’t want, rather than waste the new tier ones which you want to use for nice new jewelry and armour, so get making and stock piling now.

In terms of crafted relics for your legendary, if you can craft them now, do so, for both the Westfold and Supreme tiers. The ideal ones to make are the basic relics which cost standard materials, and do not need the Compendium of middle earth (volume 1, 2, or 3), though the compendium recipes themselves are also worth doing if you have some spare. Whilst you might not want the relics themselves, the relics can be refined into shards at the Relic master, which will come in nice and handy for creating and customizing new tier relics, especially if (when!) we all want to bling out our War horses legendary bridles with new mounted combat relics. A standard crafted relic gives you 64 shards and are on a daily cooldown, and the compendium of middle earth volume 3 relics will give you in excess of 700 hundred, so they are worth doing as often as you can and, being shared in the wallet, on as many alts as you have, especially as we will certainly be looking at costs in the thousands for melding relics.

We have until 15th October to get what we want to in place so we can go out and explore Rohan, and hopefully come back with bags bulging with resources and recipes.

Changes to joining a Crafting Guild

Tedwise demonstrating the art of Home Brew

I was having a little look at crafting today and decided I would be really nice and do some cooking and farming for one of Adams little Hobbit alts. Between us we have an awful lot of characters and we try to craft on all of them and have them all in a Guild. Today was little Tedwise’s turn, as Adam is not such a fan of cooking and farming, and I agreed to do it for him, as he will often run skirmishes and such for me. When crafting, I throw nothing away. After levelling several of my farmers, I had a lot of fine crops left over which i had passed on, which needed turning into various fruit and vegetables (today it was mainly blackberries – I ended up with 1050 of them!). Tedwise could master many of his tiers without planting a field, and I could read a book while he did it, the best way to craft in my opinion.

The Cooks Guild Leader in Michael Delving

Anyway, with his bags bulging with fruit, I headed back to Michael Delving for him to cook it all up. He’s a fun-loving party hobbit, so naturally, this is mostly now beer. I opened up expert, and up popped the quest to join a Guild. We have very few characters who are not in a Guild, and those that are have been in for some time. Like before, you would be asked to go and speak with the Guild leader. Now though, the Guild leader asks you to speak to the person selling the Guild crest recipes, for the Cooks Guild this was the Repast Recipe Vendor. They then point you to the Improved Recipes Vendor, who then rewards you with a Small Expert level barter item, worth 400 reputation. That is definitely new, and I was pleasantly surprised. I had known that in previous updates, crafting had been changed – you no longer needed to go off to all parts of Middle Earth to get a strange Jewel/Mould/Hide/Stick/Herb/Relic etc. to advance the crafting tiers, but I had no idea that they had done a new “introduction to” quest chain for joining a Guild also.

The reward for completing the introduction to the Cooks Guild quest

Go on, and talk with your nearest Master of Guilds – there’s usually one in most craft areas, to join in the fun! They can be quite expensive in terms of materials, but it is definately worth it!

Happy Crafting,

Emma.

Westfold Tier 7 for Farmers

With RoI now live, I was keen to have a look at the changes to the farming profession, something I didn’t sneak a peek at in Beta. Tiers 1 to 6 seem to be unchanged, but Tier 7, the Westfold Tier has a number of changes, which personally I think are pretty good.

Fairwen trying out the Leek Field Recipe

You start with the recipes for Black Barley, which seems to be a must have for all the Tier 7 Cooks recipes, Leeks and Bilberries. The first major change you notice is that these fields are multi-output. You can make either the ordinary field, which uses ordinary crop seeds, and has a low to medium crop yield, and low chance of crit materials, or you can make a hearty field, which uses hearty crop seeds, and has a high crop yield and greater chance to acquire crit materials. This greater yield comes at a price, the Westfold crop seeds are 2.4 silver, and the Hearty ones are 12 silver. In terms of xp, the fields for both give 8 xp, yet the more crops you have the more xp will be gained in the process of turning them into useable items. Also, unlike the previous tiers, you no longer need a form of fertiliser, just the crop seed (or Hearty crop seed) and a barrel of water, bought from the vendors.

The benefits of using a Hearty Recipe

This is where te second noticeable change is. In Tier 7, there is the opportunity to process in bulk. All crops in Tier 7 work on a 1:1 basis, whereas in previous tiers it was 1:4. In the crafting panel there is two options for processing – you can process the crops one at a time (as with previous tiers) for 6xp each, or you can use the bulk option, and process them five at a time. Using the bulk option gives 8xp for five, so is no good if you need the xp, but once mastered it is a big time saver.

You have the option to Bulk process crops

In the process of farming there is a chance to get Pinches of Westfold Herbs, a crit item used by Cooks, and a Pile of Rich Soil. Rich Soil is a random crit item from faring, but it can also drop off humanoid mobs or be found in loot chests or off corpses, much the way whetstones are found. This item can either be used as part of the Compost recipe, which converts it into Peat, a crit item for farming, or it is an essential item in two other recipes. These are the Wild Flower recipe, which has a chance to drop the necessary dye components used by Scholars, for every dye (yep, Amaranth Petals, Iris Roots, Indigo, etc) or a Wild Pipe Weed recipe, which we can assume will do something similar, and get various different types of pipe weed. These two recipes are however only available from the Dunlending Reputation Vendors, and not from Expert Farmers. Unfortunately, none of my alts with farming as part of their crafts (erm I think that’s 5 of them!) will be venturing into the new expansion any time soon, so it will be a while before I get to test those recipes for myself.

Pile of Rich Soil

Pinches of Westfold Herbs are the new Cook crit materials

Hope this helps and Happy Crafting!

Emma

What can we expect from Jewellery in Isengard?

With the announcement that Beta will be closing on Monday 19th September, the Rise of isengard expansion will be here very soon. We came to Beta fairly late on, and we both had different things that we wanted to spend our time persuing, and investigating how they worked, and if we found problems, bugging them. Adams main one was to investigate and test the new Champion changes, which you can read all about here.

Neither of us wanted to run around Dunland and Isengard too much, especially not me. I wanted to save that for when the game was live, and I could go “oooooh” and “aaahhh” and explore everything properly, and be all excited about what I’d seen. Not so for the crafting – I wanted a look at that straight away. Crafting is a big part of my game (and real life to be honest) and I was keen to see what the new tier 7 Westfold items were like. With the removal of stat caps in the expansion, this could lead to some very interesting options for character builds, and thus crafted items, much more than we had seen before.

I concentrated on the jewellery because that is really the one craft where all classes can wear the benefits. Both Adam and myself have two Supreme Jewellers in the guilds for this very reason. I levelled up the jeweller in Beta to a level where I could see the stats for the critical successes of the Tier 7 recipes.

SPOILER ALERT – PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FOLLOWING IS A TASTER OF THE CRAFTED JEWELLERY CURRENTLY AVAILABLE IN BETA. AS SUCH ALL ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

The following are the recipes available from vendors, and do not form a complete set, indeed there are no complete sets for a level like there has been for previous tiers. The other recipes, like the other tiers, will be world drops. The critical success stats are alongside in blue. It’s interesting to note that this time the yellow items (that is the items which have yellow text in chat, but who’s icon has a light green colour background), both crated, skirmish, and world drops, are actually worth considering this time, at least temporarily, and not auto-trash that they have been in the past.

The guild recipes are well worth a look, but I’m not going into those here as they can be seen linked on the forums here. It is notable that a lot of the new gear concentrates on heavily loading a few key stats into an item, which could lead to the temptation of heavily investing in your core stat, but perhaps leaving your character a little lacking in other areas, and thus perhaps forcing the choice of giving up some primary stats on an obvious item for your class, for one with secondary stats for your class, to round your character out a little more for raids and such.

VIBRANT CALENARD NECKLACE (LEVEL 66)

46 Might, 47 Might

23 Vitality, 47 Vitality

218 Morale, 225Morale

FATED CALENARD NECKLACE (LEVEL 66)

46 Will, 47 Will

23 Fate, 47 Fate

218 Morale, 225 Morale

RESILIENT WESTFOLD BRACELET (LEVEL 68)

48 Agility, 49 Agility

102 ICPR, 102 ICPR

140 Crit Rate, 284 Crit Rate

VIBRANT WESTFOLD BRACELET (LEVEL68)

24 Vitality, 49 Vitality

48 Will, 49 Will

206 Power, 212 Power

POTENT GREEN GARNET BRACELET (LEVEL 72)

104.4 ICPR, 105 ICPR

240 Power, 236 Power

148 Crit Rate, 300 Crit Rate

RESOLUTE GREEN GARNET BRACELET (LEVEL72)

52 Vitality, 53 Vitality

260 Morale, 267 Morale

148 Crit Rate, 300 Crit Rate

GREEN GARNET NECKLACE OF THE WARRIOR (LEVEL 72)

52 Might, 53 Might

52 Agility, 53 Agility

26 Vitality, 53 Vitality

GREEN GARNET NECKLACE OF THE WIZARD (LEVEL 72)

52 Will, 53 Will

52 Fate, 53 Fate

26 Vitality, 53 Vitaity

WINGED NECKLACE (lEVEL 75)

This is a single use recipe which drops from the new Draigoch Raid. It appears as if there is a single use recipe which can be dropped relevant to all crafts. The frequency of the drop is unclear, though I imagine that it may be similar to the rare drop of the Tortoiseshell bracelet recipe, from the Turtle. Either way, its pretty special. I’ll leave the exact details for you to find out when RoI launches, but I think this sort of attempt to tie uber crafting gear to instaces and raids is a great idea, the raiders can’t complain crafted gear is to powerfull when you need to run group content to get it, and the crafters have a reason to have a craft, and a reason to raid, and some great stuff to make.

REPUTATION JEWELLERY

At Galtrev (and possibly else where; as I mentioned we did not explore that much), there are Quatermasters for both the Dunlending faction and the Riders of Theodred, who sell a range of armour, weapons and jewellery, and also crafting recipes, both permanent and single use. I didn’t have time to gain reputation with both the Riders and the Dunlendings, so though I could see their recipes, and what they produced, I was unable to to see what their critted counter-parts would be, though many are clearly just the single use versions of the guild recipes. As it is, I’m pretty excited about it. I’ll give you a sneaky peak, but don’t want to spoil the fun! The recipes and items range in price from a few hundred silver to several gold, and in my opinion, they are well worth it.

From the Riders of Theodred Quatermaster:

Bracelet from the Riders of Theodred

Pocket Item from the Riders of Theodred

From the Dunlending Quatermaster:

Ring from the Dunlendings

Another Ring from the Dunlendings

SKIRMISH JEWELLERY

Barter items from the Jewellery vendor in Skirmish camps are also pretty nice, and are a good alternative to crafted gear. They include some pocket items also. I am not going to list them all here, as you can all see the full range for yourselves in 10 days time.

The Master Guardsman of Erulian items (min Level 70) are 596 Skirmish marks, the Veteran Master Guardsman of Erulian items (min Level 70) are 1192 Skirmish Marks and two Fourth Marks. The Master Guardsman of Adlan items (min Level 75) are 716 Skirmish Marks, and the Veteran Master Guardsman of Adlan items (min Level 75) are 1432 Skirmish Marks and two Fourth Marks.

Level 70 Veterans Earring

Level 75 Bracelet

The Greatest Reputation Guide in the World – Tribute

With the Isenguard release day looming and twiddling my thumbs as I resist tinkering on one of my legion of ats, my thoughts turned again to Reputation, and just what it takes to get to Kindred with the various factions you meet in game. The goal for my alts is to get the World Renowned title and Steed of Eriador, as well as the Ambassador to the Elves, and the Elf Lords Horse, which is its reward. Adam and I have got there on Ganin and Azaghar, our Champ/RK duo, and are pretty close on our other 65’s. I get the distinct impression that I went about it the hard way, and so have compiled everything I know about gaining reputation, as a future aide de memoire, and also for others. I’ve gone through every faction currently in game (except the Eldgang of the Rift, as this does not contribute to either horse and it is a specialised area off the beaten track for many players), in the order that they appear in my character Reputation log.

Ganin on the Steed of Eriador

The Guide was made live last month, as a permanent page, under Guides, then Faction Reputation, but I’ve been tinkering with it and have now added all reputation gained through handing in Tasks – where to hand in and what levels the quests are available. Currently Eregion is the last place to hand tasks in at around Level 55, but none of the Eregion tasks give reputation, and no tasks can be handed in in Moria and beyond. However we have been told that Tasks will be back for Dunland.

I hope this guide proves to be of some help to you all, but please be aware that the level requirements for some of the reputation quests and hand ins may have been lowered following recent updates. If you think that I have missed anything out or you know of any discrepancies, please let me know so the guide can be ammended.

Thanks for Looking

Emma

Green Fingered Dwarfs

Most of you are probably aware of the little tweaks to the crafting system, in particular the new introduction taster quests where you are given the required ingredients to craft an apprentice tier item for each craft you have. I rolled a new Dwarf Hunter ( I know, that’s 16 alts now! ) something to just tootle along with while Adams raiding – at the moment we can’t have both of us raiding at the same time because Baby Dwarfs sleeping pattern is very erratic at the mo, as he’s teething. Anyway, I was wandering around Frerin’s Court and saw the new mini crafting area, which is on the right looking toward the stables, just before the road to the homesteads. There’s a little door set into the wall now and the crafting area is just inside. (I’m assuming each of the starter zones has one of these now, but as I keep rolling Dwarf characters, I haven’t come across it yet.)

Inside is the Master of Apprentices, where you can train your craft vocation, as well as suppliers and a forge, oven and workbench. I chose Woodsman, mainly because I don’t play my other woodsman very often, and I have a load of explorers for the materials. On choosing Woodsman, three quests opened up – to speak to three NPC’s, one for each craft. As a Woodsman, you get Woodworker, Forrester and Farmer. The Forrester gives you a crate which contains some rowan wood and wax to treat. The woodworker gives you some treated roan to make a bow with (which was great – a free bow for my Hunter!) and then I still had to talk to the farmer.

The location of the Thorin's Hall Greenhouse

It was pretty obvious that there was no farmland in the little crafting room, and so I assumed that I would have to visit another area for the farmland – probably the Shire. I will add that these quests in Ered Luin are a little difficult as the quest has the wrong NPC names on it, probably the NPC names related to another starter area. So I changed the quest tracker to set the quest as the focus, and the arrow in the mini map pointed towards Thorin’s Hall, so I followed it. It took me up the stairs towards the Skirmish Camp, where I saw a little door, labelled as Greenhouse. In I went and it was a Dwarf Greenhouse with neat little farming plots inside. Even if you don’t have the quest, pop in next time you visit Thorin’s Hall, it really is very sweet. The NPC gave me some seeds and asked me to make some onions, which I did, and promptly posted to my Cook.

Fluzi inside the Thorin’s Hall Greenhouse

All in all, the new introduction to crafting is very good – it gives you all the materials you need and for new players or those who have never bothered with crafting, it’s a good taster of just what is involved with it. Experienced crafters can also do these quests as I’ve found out. Also each crafting vocation has a title associated to completing this little intro. I’ve included the titles here, they may tempt you to have a little look. Apparently if you are an experienced crafter, if you crit an item required by the quest it is not accepted. Also if you do not have a craft, you can do all of these vocational quests (just keep changing your profession after each one) and keep the titles for each.

Woodsman (Woodworker, Forrester, Farmer):Student of the Forrest

Tinker (Jeweller, Cook, Prospector): Handyman

Yeoman(Farmer, Cook, Tailor): Drudger

Historian (Scholar, Weaponsmith, Farmer): Student of the Past

Explorer (Forrester, Prospector, Tailor): Easily Lost

Armsman (Weaponsmith, Woodworker, Prospector): Apprentice of Blades

Armourer (Metalsmith, Porospector, Tailor): Student of Metalwork

Weaponsmith Crafting Quest Changes

 

The Weapon crafters in Thorin's Hall

 

 

Baby Dwarf had a little sleep this afternoon so I logged on to my Loremaster Fearien and decided to do some crafting. She’s a scholar, but it was the weaponsmith craft that I wanted to level up. I was partway through the first tier of Expert, and had a butt load of ingots in the vault ready to go, so off I went to Thorin’s Hall to use their Forges (force of habit really, used to going there for the Superior Forges on other characters).

I made a load of steel blades, which use only 2 rich iron ingots for 4 craft XP, and then used these to make Bright Steel Greatswords at 6xp, so each sword in effect results in 10 craft xp. I do it this way because its easier to judge how many you I need to make to complete the tier, and out of all the weapons, the greatsword is worth the most at a vendor, and only costs 2 ingots a go.

Very soon I had completed the first tier, and so wandered around the corner looking for the Weaponsmith, as I knew that there would be a quest to do before I was granted the ability to master that tier and open up Artisan. I remembered I had to go up to Othrikar for this (I had done it before on my Cappy Barandis who’s a Weaponsmith and Gilforniel my Elf Champ, who’s also a scholar) and was already summoning my horse to go off to the stable master.

The quest uses standard recipes

Then I read the quest. It was completely different to how I remembered it – rather than run off to the North Downs and do a favour for a Dwarf up there to convince them I’m good enough to make weapons, I had to talk to the master weaponcrafter in Thorin’s Hall (who was standing right next to the NPC I had picked the quest up from) He then instructed me to make a steel pommel, a bright steel greatsword and a bright steel axe. I did this promptly, expecting a catch. They are just basic recipes and still only use the standard two ingots, and no special ingredients. I handed this in, and was told to deliver the items. Aha, I thought, here’s the catch – run around all over to hand them out, but no one of the Dwarfs was in the Forge Hall a few feet away, and the other two were close together near the post box in the main hall. Back to hand in, still expecting to have to jump through a few hoops.

But no, was immediately granted Superior Forge access, Artisan was opened up and I got 36 craft XP too. I was also given two craft acceleration tomes, 25% craft xp for 10 mins. The whole quest process took less than three mins to complete, a great improvement!

 

Two of these are the quest reward

 

 

It makes me wonder what else has changed?

Happy Crafting!

Emma

 

The Eglain Rep Grind

Like many of you out there, we decided we needed the World Renowned Horse on at least one of our characters. So who better than Izbaruk and Haki, the Lord and the Heir of the Khazad Guard to go out there and get it. Thanks to crafting, being completionist in zones and alot of grinding, we managed to do pretty well, until it got to the Eglain. We were both Friend, having got the retrospective Rep from there when the Lone Lands was revamped, and thought it would be pretty easy to get to Kindred from there. Being 57, we were far too high to do any of the tasks, which grant 300 rep each, and grinding the Weathertop skirmish was out, because we couldn’t level up without our mate Anlafski, having levelled all the way up as a Trio, and it would take a lot of them. What we needed was minimum XP with maximum rep. With most of the other factions this is pretty easy – grind a load of rep barterables on a high level alt, or if golds burning a hole in your pocket, hit the Auction Hall. There are a few other ways to earn the trust of the Eglain other than skirmishes, tasks and quests (especially running Garth Agarwen). All humanoid mobs (no animals or swarms) give 8 rep when killed, which doesn’t make much of a dent when you’re grinding rep, but probably adds up when your on level questing around there and doing deeds (such as Orcs for Valour, always nice). Theres also bounty quests in Ost Haer in Harloeg which are repeatable three times, give about 500 rep each and you get a couple of Ruby Shards too.

We did those ones and were still a good chunk short of Kindred, so we thought rather than try more GA’s we’d have a go at the crafting quest ones. You can collect them for each craft you have (sorry Explorers, you’re stuck with just Tailor ones). The chain starts at Dol Vaeg, where you have to craft something and deliver it to Ost Guruth. This then opens up the chance of repeating the crafting quests for rep, which you can do as many times as you like, but be warned – you have to purchase each of these quests which cost around 21 silver (the price may fluctuate – remember you get vendor discount depending on your standing with the faction). You get 700 rep for each one, and get about 11 silver back as a quest reward. At this point we were just into Ally, so thought it would save a lot of time grinding if we just crafted our way from there. Adam started first, and as a Jeweller he could buy both the Jeweller and Cook quests, but decided to just go with the Cook ones so he didn’t have to use up a lot of ore. The quests are Expert level ones, so great if you want to get craft XP, but as anyone who has a Jeweller will know, you want to hoard that gold ore!

I sent him the veg he needed from an alt ( Yellow Onions and Taters) and he topped up by buying a stack on the Auction hall for about 20 silver, and after about 20-30 mins he was all done and Kindred. I thought that was pretty good so I did that too. My character Haki is an Explorer, so I could only buy the Tailor quest – make 6 Sturdy leather bindings. I thought this would be easy, I had over 600 hides sat on an alt, so I transferred them over and set to work. Of course, 600 hides turn into 300 leather (I’m not factoring in crits here, its by no means an exact science). You need 6 sturdy leather bindings for each quest hand in, and you use 2 leather for each one, so those 3oo hides I had actually equated to 25 quest hand ins, or 17500 rep, and 525 silver to complete. I was still only just over half way through Ally, and had gone through 600 Sturdy Hides. Rather than grind a butt load of hides, because I was being lazy and it was close to Midnight, and it had become a matter of principle that I had to get Kindred that day, I ventured to the AH. Man, hides and ore are expensive – and I came away a few gold poorer than when I went in, but at least I had enough hides to complete. Of course I had to wait about an hour while I processed the hides and crafted the bindings but eventually I handed in the last one and eventually got Kindred – at last! Now we just have to wait until we get into Enedwaith and get rep with the Algraig and Grey Company to reach the end and the Steed of Eriador.

But this got me thinking what other crafts had to do to get rep with the Eglain – I know from Adam crafting the Cook quests was a fairly quick, cheap and painless way of getting it (half an hour to my several hours, and fruit and veg is ridiculously cheap on the Auction compared to ore and hides, but then again it is a lot easier to get a stack of them. I know when I was trying to get juicy strawberries for my scholar in about half an hour I had over 400 strawberries and 8 juicies), but what did the other Crafts have to produce? Did they need to spend more on their items to get the same outcome? Is it worth it, and which is the best craft to have to get rep for the Eglain in this way? I set about investigating this, and have made a table so you can all see exactly what is needed.

Craft	Item	No.	Requires	From Vendor	Cost from Vendor	Useable Crit
Woodworker	Yew Fishing Pole	1	8x Yew Logs	4x Wax, 1x Sturdy Leather Wrap	4.96 silver	No
Metalsmith	Steel Prospectors Tool	1	10x Rich Iron Ore	5x Lump Coal, 1x Short Yew Shaft	16 silver	No
Weaponsmith	Basic Lure Trap	3	3x Bundle Straw	3x Long Yew Shaft, 3x Short Yew Shaft	24 silver	Yes
Scholar	Minor Foe Finder	8	16x Faded Sindarin Pages	8x Quill and Ink Set	19.20 silver	Yes
Cook	Hearty Onion Soup	2	2x Yellow Onions, 2x Green Onions, 2x Taters	2x Lamb Kidney, 2x Bottle of Water	2.88 silver	Yes
Jeweller	Ruby Ring	1	1x Polished Ruby, 8x Gold Ore			No
Tailor	Sturdy Leather Bindings	6	24x Sturdy Leather Hides			Yes

This table shows what it takes each craft vocation to produce for one quest only, which grants 700 Rep. I have also broken these down to the individual crafts and just what it takes in the real sense to get any decent chunk of Rep. Where I have said no to critical success items being used in the quests, this is because these produce superior items which are not required by the Eglain, they want basic stuff and lots of it. So those of you who have crafts which apply to this, make sure you have a little extra of the resources to accommodate for this. Those with crafts which on a critical success produce a higher quantity of the item rather than a single superior item, great! You can get away with a little less of the resources. I have broken this down further into the relevant crafts, so you can see just what you may be getting yourselves in for. Please note all prices are in silver, and the cost that I paid per quest was 21.50 silver, but this may be a little higher depending on your current standing and vendor discounts, and all vendor prices are the standard ones – remember to buy local if you have a house or a member of a Kin with Kinhouse.

Woodworker:

Rep	Quests	Quest Cost	Total Ingredients Required	Vendor Cost	Quest Reward	Monetary Outlay
700	1	21.50	8x Yew Logs, 4x Wax, 1x Sturdy Leather Wrapping	4.96	11.50	14.96
3500	5	107.50	40x Yew Logs, 20x Wax, 5x Sturdy Leather Wrappings	24.80	57.50	74.80
7000	10	215	80xYew Logs, 40x Wax, 10x Sturdy Leather Wrappings	49.60	115	149.60
10500	15	322.5	120x Yew Logs, 60x Wax, 15 x Sturdy Leather Wrappings	74.4	172.5	224.4

Metalworker:

Rep	Quests	Quest Cost	Total Ingredients Required	Vendor Cost	Quest Reward	Monetary Outlay
700	1	21.50	10x Rich Iron Ore, 5x Lump Coal, 1x Short Yew Shaft	16	11.50	26
3500	5	107.50	50x Rich Iron Ore, 25x Lump Coal, 5x Short Yew Shaft	80	57.50	130
7000	10	215	100x Rich Iron Ore, 50x Lump Coal, 10x Short Yew Shaft	160	115	260
10500	15	322.50	150x Rich Iron Ore, 75x Lump Coal, 15x Short Yew Shaft	240	172.50	390

Weaponsmith :

You need straw, and plenty of it! Straw is a random drop from grain farms only, so good luck!

Rep	Quests	Quest Cost	Total Ingredients Required	Vendor Cost	Quest Reward	Monetary Outlay
700	1	21.50	3x Bundle of Straw, 3x Long Yew Shaft, 3x Short Yew Shaft	24	11.50	34
3500	5	107.50	15x Bundle of Straw, 15x Long Yew Shaft, 15x Short Yew Shaft	120	57.50	170
7000	10	215	30x Bundle of Straw, 30x Long Yew Shaft, 30x Short Yew Shaft	240	115	340
10500	15	322.50	45x Bundle of Straw, 45x Long Yew Shaft, 45x Short Yew Shaft	360	172.50	510

Scholar :

Yikes! Good luck getting those Sindarin Pages! My advice is to go and farm a load of oats, get the Straw from your farms and go with Weaponsmith.

Rep	Quests	Quest Cost	Total Ingredients Required	Vendor Cost	Quest Reward	Monetary Outlay
700	1	21.50	16x Faded Sindarin Pages, 8x Quill and Ink Set	19.20	11.50	29.20
3500	5	107.50	80x Faded Sindarin Pages, 40x Quill and Ink Sets	96	57.50	146
7000	10	215	160x Faded Sindarin Pages, 80x Quill and Ink Sets	192	115	292
10500	15	322.50	240x Faded Sindarin Pages, 120x Quill and Ink Sets	288	172.50	438

Cook:

Aaaaah, a friendly Farmer or a cheap shop at the Auction, and you’re home and dry!

Rep	Quests	Quest Cost	Total Ingredients Required	Vendor Cost	Quest Reward	Monetary Outlay
700	1	21.50	2x Yellow Onions, 2x Green Onions, 2x Taters2x Lamb Kidney2x Bottle of Water	2.88	11.50	12.88
3500	5	107.50	10x Yellow Onions, 10x Green Onions, 10x Taters10x Lamb Kidney10x Bottle of Water	14.40	57.50	64.40
7000	10	215	20x Yellow Onions, 20x Green Onions, 20x Taters20x Lamb Kidney20x Bottle of Water	28.80	115	128.80
10500	15	322.50	30x Yellow Onions, 30x Green Onions, 30x Taters30x Lamb Kidney30x Bottle of Water	43.20	172.50	193.20

Jeweller:

Ooooooh – all that gold! You’ll need to be a veritable Smaug for this one. You sure you don’t want to cook?

Rep	Quests	Quest Cost	Total Ingredients Required	Vendor Cost	Quest Reward	Monetary Outlay
700	1	21.50	1x Polished Ruby, 8x Gold Ore		11.50	10
3500	5	107.50	5x Polished Ruby, 40x Gold Ore		57.50	50
7000	10	215	10x Polished Ruby, 80x Gold Ore		115	100
10500	15	322.50	15x Polished Ruby, 120x Gold Ore		172.50	150

Tailor:

You need serious amounts of hides for this – time to do the Warg deed?

Rep	Quests	Quest Cost	Total Ingredients Required	Vendor Cost	Quest Reward	Monetary Outlay
700	1	21.50	24x Sturdy Leather Hides		11.50	10
3500	5	107.50	130x Sturdy Leather Hides		57.50	50
7000	10	215	260x Sturdy Leather Hides		115	100
10500	15	322.50	390x Sturdy Leather Hides		172.50	150

My conclusion from all this is; don’t use this method of getting Rep unless your vault is stuffed to the rafters with your crafts expert level resources and you have a healthy bank balance. If you really want the Rep, take a little time to see how much you need and try to take all your resources with you – remember Ost Guruth only has the basic crafting facilities and vendors, no vault access and no Auction Hall, so you may not be able to get everything you need on site.

Hope this helps!

Emma

The Ultimate Forochel Outfit

Barandis in the Heavy Mammutti Armour

Pretty much since I first saw the Mammutti Heavy Armour, I wanted it, but it took a bit of getting. My Cappy is my third toon to quest around Forochel (for some reason Eggy and Azbo never did it as a zone), my second heavy armour to get there and the first to wear the armour. And what a hard slog o get there! Ganin and Az both got to Kindred with the Lossoth on their travels, clearing every single quest there was, even two manning all the Battle for Forochel ones. Even doing all this, handing in all the rep items you get from killing stuff, we still needed to play the Auction Hall a bit to get enough rep to make it to Kindred. (If you need to do the same Luistins are the way to go – 700 rep for 1, rather than 300 – 500 for 10 of the spearheads and claws)

Being an armourer, and Kindred with the Lossoth I could now make the coveted Mammuti Armour, but I decided to wait a bit. Ganin could have worn it, and I love it even just cosmetically equipped, but by that point he was 52 or 53, and over level to wear it as armour. The armour is for 42, and is actually really nice stuff, better than the same level critted crafted stuff and probably on a par with the Fem stuff from Angmar. I wanted to see if I could get a toon to wear it on level. Easier said than done! All my spare rep items had been thrown at Ganin just so I could make the stuff, so Barandis would have to start from scratch, level 42, Outsider with the Lossoth.

As Forochel starts around 45, she went in with Adams friendly neighbourhood Hunter Tyri, level 53, who wanted enough rep for the port. The first zone was okay, and I probably could have survived on my own there as a Cappy, being equipped with “Oh poop!” skills, but it was a lot quicker with two. Although as you get to Suri-Kyla the quests and mobs all seem to be 48-50, so I definately needed a hand there, especially as thats where you can hand in the rep items.

By the time we hit Suri-Kyla I’d dinged 43, and with a bit of help from the Auction Hall managed to get to aquaintance with the Lossoth, enabling me to pick up the quests allowing you to hand in all of the rep items. You need aquaintance to be able to wear the gloves and boots, friend to put on the chest and shoulders and ally to wear the helm and leggings. Currently I’m about 5k away from ally so it wont be long until I can complete the set, and at level 43 I think thats pretty good going. You would have to come in way under level with friends and a butload of gold to buy the extra rep to be able to put the set on on level, but if you can I think its worth it – it looks awesome, especially dyed red, and is one of the few armour sets whick looks good on all races. Usually Dwarfs get the short end of the stick and look wierd in alot of the armour available, but this set looks pretty good. And if like me you cant face another tour of Angmar on your latest toon to get the Fem set, its really good gear. The full set gives:

2822 Armour

45 Morale

120 NCMR

45 Power

105 Might

60 Agility

45 Will

15 Fate

75 Vitality

20% Run speed, 381 Frost defence, 25% Frost disperse chance

I’m really pleased that I’m so close to having the armour now, and then once we poor souls in Europe get F2P and the wardrobe slot, all my toons are gonna have a chance to wear it!

Emma