This week I made my first trip to Rivendell in Lord of the Rings Online (commonly known as LOTRO). It was a harrowing experience. My character, you see, is a level 20 Man Captain. If you don't play LOTRO, this number is fairly meaningless, but the LOTRO players among you will know that this is substantially lower than the level of the region that Rivendell is in. I'm pretty sure that a couple of the creatures that pursued me were level 37, nearly twice my own level, and everything for quite some distance on my walk was purple (a color code indicating a considerably higher level enemy than my own level). And yes, I did say WALK. I took a stable horse as far as the Forsaken Inn, and then walked my way from there through the Lone Lands, into the Trollshaws, and all the way to Rivendell. It was my first time ever past Ost Gutruth (Guruth?), and thus my map was most uninformative except to give me an idea of the general direction in which Rivendell lay. LOTRO's map system only displays regions that you've actually entered, and is sometimes seemingly a little unpredictable as to how far into a region you must go before the map unveils that section. Once you actually find Rivendell...which I did by running in the direction I thought it was with a lynx on my heels...it's a beautiful location. And I saw at least a few recognizable figures there, though I did not get to explore it all and thus may have missed more.
So why did I take a level 20 to so high level an area? The answer lies in crafting. You see, my Captain has gathered all the craft XP necessary for his Artisan Jeweler ranking, and the crafting quest to achieve it sends you to talk to an elf in Rivendell. Naturally, just when I was feeling self-congratulatory at making it to Rivendell alive, this elf felt it necessary to ask me to go to Angmar to retrieve a jewel with which some brilliant fellow has apparently decided to go waltzing through enemy territory. So now I am waiting to catch a properly high level Kinmate on who is willing to escort me into Angmar and kill Orcs for me till one drops what I need. Esteldin is nice this time of year. Well, not really, it's kind of a ruin. But it's a safe ruin, and that counts for much in the North Downs. I did make an attempt to follow the road north to Angmar, but after running into far too many giantkind, wargs, and hillmen, I decided that sneaking north was not going to work (for my nerves, if nothing else) and went back to Esteldin to wait in safety.
