Monday, October 12, 2020

Learning LOTRO: Lesson Thirty-Four - Task Items

 

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.


One man's trash is another man's treasure, or so the saying goes. And it's very true in Lord of the Rings Online! There are a lot of "junk" items that you pick up as loot from enemies. Instead of just selling it all to vendors for money, you can put that junk to work for you! Most of the junk will tell you if it can be turned in for tasks -- and those tasks net reputation rewards with various factions throughout the game. If you want to understand how this works, keep reading!


What Are Tasks?

As the name suggests, these aren't exactly quests and they are repeatable. Tasks usually require 10 of a specific item dropped by enemies in a particular area or level. Turning them in to an NPC or collection box completes the task and the player is rewarded with experience, reputation, and possibly Legendary Item experience. Tasks are never rewarded with money or items. 



Task Limits

Every player begins with the ability to complete 5 tasks per day. This can be increased in two ways: (1) The player can spend 10 Mithril Coins to reset the count for the day, or (2) completing tiered deeds will allow a character's daily limit to be increased by +1 for each tier completed, allowing the max daily limit of 10 tasks (there are 5 tiers of deeds to complete). If the deeds still reward a consumable item that increases the daily limit by +1, you can send the consumable to other characters (and I believe the maximum daily task quota per character is 15).





Task Bulletin Boards

Bulletin boards are available in many places, and which ones you use can depend entirely upon how you use task items. If task completion is an afterthought for you and you simply want to top off reputation with a particular faction, I recommend going to that faction's main quest hub which should be home to their task board as well. This will show you that faction's specific tasks that will reward you with their reputation.




Alternatively, if you just like to turn in tasks all the time, and you're a higher level that goes all over the place, the most convenient task board location is going to be your housing neighborhood. Each of the 4 original housing neighborhoods (Falathlorn, Thorin's Hall, Shire, Bree-land) have task boards for all levels, and collection boxes for their tasks. The premium housing neighborhoods (Belfalas, Rohan) also have these rows of task boards and collection boxes. If you aren't particular about finishing reputation, going to your neighborhood at the end of the day to turn in whatever quests you can before selling everything to vendors can be a smart way to make the most of what you loot.







Task Rewards

Depending on the level of the task, the player will receive one or more rewards. All tasks reward with experience. Most of them also reward with faction reputation. And any tasks over level 50 will also grant Legendary Item experience. The amount of experience isn't a lot, so the main reward everyone does tasks for is the reputation -- or the rewards for completing the deeds.


Task Deeds

As mentioned earlier, there are 5 tiers of task deeds. The first two tiers reward with titles. The third, fourth, and fifth tiers reward with titles and matching cloaks. I've been playing LOTRO for 8 years now, and I haven't completed all of the tiers on any of my characters! Only one of my characters has advanced with tasks, and that was my first main character who is halfway to completing the third tier.




Task Weekly Quest

There is also a weekly quest that is easy to complete! After finishing one task, you'll see a pop-up offering you the weekly quest. It asks you to complete 10 tasks and in return you'll receive a crafting item that, when used in a recipe, guarantees a critical outcome. So, basically, do your tasks just twice a week and every week you'll get this nifty crafting item!




Task Levels

If you sometimes quest ahead of yourself -- that is, you advance to harder areas and are under-level -- then you might see a message that says there aren't any tasks available to you. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until you're the right level to turn in any tasks at that board. My advice here is to keep stacks of the items tucked away, and then turn them in at your housing area when you're the right level. That is, if it matters to you!



Task Item Carry-all

During the Black Friday sale of 2019, SSG offered special bonus items to anyone who bought the LOTRO Points with bonus points. Depending on the Points package purchased, there was also a Task Item Carry-all included -- one per account. It was possible to obtain a Small size and a Medium size. The Carry-alls take up exactly one inventory or bag slot and hold big stacks of the type of item the Carry-all is for. They have a button that allows the player to auto-gather that item type from the player's bags, making it a snap to clean up after a long dungeon or questing afternoon. The Carry-alls can be passed between characters on the same account (on the same server, obviously), allowing a player to share the wealth of reputation between their characters with ease. 




SSG has made Crafting Carry-alls available in Small, Medium and Large sizes in the LOTRO Store, and a VIP item back in the spring offered a selection box to VIPs for Carry-alls of varying types. There's speculation that the many types will eventually become available for everyday purchase, but for now it's just the Crafting Carry-alls. It would be great if the Task Item Carry-alls are available again this November for Black Friday -- those and the Crafting Carry-alls have been fantastic in making more space in my storage!


Did I miss anything important about Task Items? Tell me on Twitter with the hashtag #GamerReverieBlog, or tag me @spottedsnark!

Was this entry helpful? Let me know! The series continues next Monday!
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