In this new series, I talk about various aspects of The Lord of the Rings Online. This series is meant for newcomers, but may also help veteran players find more to love about the game.
These items are my personal recommendations to players who have tasted enough of LOTRO to know they want to continue playing and are willing to spend some LOTRO Points to improve their experience. It's important to note that you can complete a lot of deeds in the game and receive LOTRO Points as a reward. If you do this enough, you can skip purchasing Points with real money.
Suggested Purchases for New Players
1.) 1 month of VIP (subscription)
This you have to purchase with real money, but it is worth its weight in mithril. Or gold, if you prefer. The VIP pays for itself in a number of ways:
- Access to all quests, instances and skirmishes (except those from the 7 Expansions).
- 500 LOTRO points per month of VIP.
- 7 Character slots per server.
- 5 Inventory bags.
- All trait slots and class bonus skills available.
- Swift Travel to more than the starting zones.
- Acquire riding skill for free from a quest at level 20.
- No currency cap.
- Bonus XP (Automatic Rest XP).
- Weekly Gold Hobbit Present.
- 20 Shared Wardrobe slots.
- Maximum Active Auction House listings.
- Unlimited Crafting Guild access.
- Ability to spend Destiny Points on in-game perks.
- Free People access to PvMP.
- All monster classes available in PvMP.
- Priority Login.
- Unlimited Chat.
- Access to mail from anywhere.
Most of these things have to be paid for with LOTRO points if you are not a VIP. And some you will still have to pay for if you don't renew your VIP after the one month. Others, however -- like the trait slots, currency cap, inventory bags, and swift travel -- you get to keep after unlocking them the one time. If you only plan to have VIP the one time, make any and all characters you intend to play while your VIP is active -- that will unlock these things for them and you can save your Points for other things later.
2.) Premium Wallet Upgrade
This is probably more important than the VIP, to be honest. If you do not have this upgrade, then all of the barter items will sit in your inventory bags or vault storage. If you have ever played an MMO of any kind, they all usually have some kind of barter currency/item. Some MMOs manage them more efficiently than others. In the case of LOTRO, they crowd your pockets unless you purchase this upgrade. This includes items like instance/skirmish tokens, regional barter tokens (sometimes more than one type per region), festival tokens (one for each festival), taxidermy items, legendary item tokens, crafting instance tokens, and crafted runic barter items. The good news? Once you purchase this, it will apply to your whole account and any future characters you make, even on a different server.
3.) Journeyman Riding Trait
This is a personal preference of mine, so kindly take this suggestion with a grain of salt. This trait applies to your account, and it will give your characters access to riding (and at a faster pace) as soon as you are out of the introduction. The purchase includes 4 items:
Trait: Riding Characteristic - The ability to ride your own mount or festival race mounts, otherwise gated behind a level 20 VIP quest or by purchasing the Basic Riding Trait in the Store. Mounts allow a player to move faster than 60%.
Apprentice Riding - This skill increases all of your personal travelling mount speeds to +68%.
Journeyman Riding - This skill increases all of your personal travelling mount speeds to +78%.
Smell the Roses - This is a skill you can toggle to turn your speed buffs on or off.
Now, I like being a bit faster than the base speed, but some other people may not even care. Given that this is an account-wide purchase, it's generally a good option if you are an alt-oholic like myself. If you plan on only playing one or two characters, then you may wish to skip it. Buying the items individually would cost you over 2000 Points per character, so 2995 for account-wide is a steal for people who have 25+ characters. (Don't look at me in that tone of voice.)
4.) Quest Pack: Eriador Bundle
If you're in it for the long haul, and don't feel like being a VIP for however long it takes you to reach level 65, then this is a great purchase to make. It sometimes goes on sale, but your best bet is to purchase when you're ready to leave the Lone-lands. It will save you 24% of the cost of buying the quest packs individually, and give you plenty of time to hoard up the Points to buy the Mines of Moria and Rise of Isengard expansions that follow this content. It's much harder for new players to acquire the content these days because the level cap at the time of me writing this is at 130. When I started playing back in 2012, the level cap was 75. I typically advise people to become a VIP, which is essentially renting the content, but doesn't restrict your progress or activities. There are plenty of players who do the 1 month of VIP and simply save up to buy only the quest packs that they want. Whatever works best for you!
5.) Universal Toolkit (or) Enduring Universal Toolkit
The difference in benefit between these two items is slight, but very noticeable in price. Despite that, I leave it to the user's discretion which to invest in (if either).
The Universal Toolkit costs 150 LOTRO Points in the store. It can also be obtained as a random prize from a Steel-bound Lootbox (which you must buy a key for) or as a reward from Hobbit Presents. The benefits are +20% critical chance or -3 second duration for various crafting professions. The item can be shared across all characters on the same account and server.
The Enduring Universal Toolkit costs 450 LOTRO Points in the store only. The benefits are +20% critical chance or -4.5 second duration for various crafting professions. Time is money, as they say, so if that extra 1.5 seconds per item is worth an extra 300 LOTRO Points to you, then this may be a good purchase. If you are a die hard crafter and walk away during long craft sessions, this may also be a good purchase because of the doubled durability.
great recommendations! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure! Please feel free to suggest anything you'd like to see in future entries of this series. The "big ones" are going to be class specific, but I intend to cover smaller topics in between.
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