In this 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.
What makes a hero? Performing deeds, great and small! In this entry, I'll be talking about LOTRO's Deed Log and the many types of deeds that can -- and can't! -- be found in it throughout the game.
On the bottom of your User Interface, there's a series of small icons to the left of your skill bar. The one that looks like a moldy, olive-colored book is your Deed Log. If you click on it, it will open the panel shown in the picture -- and there are a lot of tabs. Even in the time I've been playing LOTRO, the number of tabs has increased as each batch of content has been added. I'm going to try breaking it all down for you so it doesn't seem so complicated!
Please note that not everything is going to show in your Deed Log when you're first starting out. Most deeds don't show up in the Log for you to track progress until you've taken an action that starts that progress -- or you've begun a set of quests or entered a specific area... there are a lot of things that could initiate the start of a deed!
Class/Race/Social
The default tab the Deed Log is open to is Class/Race/Epic, and the first bottom tab is Class. This section of the Log will show you deeds pertaining to your character's specific class. There are deeds for using your various class skills a certain number of times, and those deeds are grouped together to form tiers -- and each tier will dole out a Trait point to use in you Trait Tree. This means you'll have to either (a) unlock that 3rd trait build tab, or complete what you can with the first two trait builds and then go reset a tree to complete the third. (I have had the main character I've used for these screenshots for 3 years and haven't finished this yet.)
The next bottom tab is Race & Social. Here you will find deeds specific to your character's race which will unlock Racial Skills as you level up, as well as a myriad of rather silly things ranging from cosmetic pet collections to festival mounts to food eaten to festival checklists to consumable use and activity completion. The rewards for these social deeds are often titles but some come with more unique rewards you'll have to discover for yourself (because there are way too many to list in one blog entry).
The following bottom tab is one you'll almost certainly never find fully completed. This is the Epic tab where all of the core quest storylines are grouped together for progression. You'll unlock various rewards for each few books you complete, with various types of rewards attached to them.
This is also where those who purchased the Legendary version of the Riders of Rohan expansion will find two deeds relating to the mysterious horse that shows up in Combe. The easier one will net you the title "Destined for Rohan," whereas this other one I haven't even finished yet will gift me with a fun cloak that has a mock horse mane and tail. Completion of this quest depends on the rotation of daily quests pertaining to it, available at Hengstacer Farm in Bree. I'll finish it eventually. Maybe.
The final bottom tab in this section is reserved for Reputation. There are a LOT of factions, groups and peoples in the world of LOTRO with whom to earn reputation with, and this part of the Deed Log will help you see what rewards you might earn from increasing your reputation with them. The lower levels tend to just give you discounts with merchants and for stable rides, but as pictured here you can get a nice pile of goodies at the higher ranks, including barter tokens for the faction itself.
You can also earn faction-specific travel mounts for your reputation acquisition -- and much-coveted versions for maxing out reputation with sets of factions, as pictured with the Elf Ambassador deed above. If you want to more easily see your rewards in the deed log, you can use the Set Rewards checkbox -- an option I vastly under-utilize.
Locations
I'm not going to get into great detail with these tabs in the Deed Log because it would take FOR-EV-ER. Each of these tabs is for a specific area of Middle-earth in the game, and with the exception of Mordor they all have 6 or more bottom tabs that each represent a smaller region. Most of these will appear blank when you're starting out and will fill in as you play through the areas. Completionist players will, of course, want to finish their deeds in a region before moving on to the next one. But I tend to go back later to finish some of the deeds that would otherwise drag out so long that I'd start to hate the game. It's entirely up to you, and there are some interesting deeds to be found in these tabs!
Skirmish
I admittedly haven't done as much in this tab as I could have by now, but it tends to be content that's more fun to do with a group. Skirmishes can be done solo with your Skirmish Soldier, of course, but the rewards and challenges increase with a bigger group -- and will also help you with the second bottom tab here, the Skirmish Lieutenants. The more people you have running a skirmish, the more Lieutenants of the Enemy will show up, and will therefore make it easier and faster to complete these deeds. Skirmishing is a great way to pad your pockets with barter tokens for the Skirmish Camps where their wares can help you get the special items you need for crafting or improving your gear.
Instances
The next tab is for Instances. These are solo, duo or group content that are grouped by Expansions. Pictured here is one of the instances that is part of Shadow of Angmar, the Halls of Night. If I can run it as a Challenge (level cap) and succeed, I can earn some points and also a great emote. There are some fun rewards available for completing these instance deeds!
Hobbies
Alright, you got me. I don't really fish much with this character, so I only had the one deed to show you here (which I've only caught one fish for). Fishing is, sadly, the only hobby in the game (despite some great suggestions for new ones on the forums!), but they do have quite a number of deeds for it if you go looking for them. Most of them give you titles or trophies for your house as a reward.
The War
No picture here because I haven't done any PvMP on this character I used. That's short for Player vs Monster Player. Once you have successfully played through level 10 on a free people character on a server, you can then make a monster character which can be played either in the Ettenmoors or Osgiliath. In these areas, there are both PvE and PvMP quests that can be completed. We'll talk more about this later. If you're a PvMP player on Landroval, would you consider dropping me an e-mail? I have plans to organize a charity fundraiser with a PvMP competition later this year!
Other Deeds
There are other types of deeds not specifically listed or obvious in the game that are very much worth mentioning! The picture on the left is of a completed Meta Deed. These are deeds that are completed by completing a long laundry list of other deeds, often not easy to complete. This one was from completing a list of tasks associated with the Moria instances. It is the only way to acquire the beautiful Nimble Black Goat. The catch with these meta deeds? They won't show until you complete them, so you have to know which regular deeds to finish to complete them. You can find helpful information on the LOTRO wiki.
Additionally, there are deeds like the one pictured on the right which require you discover places or people in the game world that are off the beaten path. A great many things can be found in the world of LOTRO if you just go roaming and exploring -- especially if a quest does not send you there.
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