Shamus Plays: LOTRO, Part 7

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If you commemorate from last time, Uncle Filbert blundered into the middle of the bandit stronghold and said ill-mannered things to them. Or else of gutting him, they took his hankie and sent him home. For whatsoever reason, I've united to help him catch on back. Maybe I'm being nice to him because he's a fellow Hobbit. Maybe I'm merely an incredible idiot.

Getting to the handkerchief thieves is not abundant. I have to go unfathomed into the bandit-plagued woods. I have to kill to a greater extent than a few ruffians en route.

At unalterable I reach the ruins where they are keeping Filbert's decorated nose-blowing assist. This place is going to be a tough orchis to crack.

These lot look like hardened criminals.

Yow. Most of the guys on this side of the woods are a few levels in a higher place me.

I walloping my path in, losing a couple of quarts of my own blood in the process. These guys must be really attached to the handkerchief to Be happy to fight to the death o'er it. I finally reach their loss leader.

It's the dastardly Cole Sickleleaf, shortly to be renamed, "Cole Knifedlungs".

Cole is an selected, merely he's three or four levels below most of his men. Hectometre.

A little while past Uncle Filbert came in here and called this blackguard mean names, and all Cole did was charter his hankey. Simply when I read up he goes right for mutilate without fifty-fifty hard to take whatever of my accessories. I speculation he just really hates bards or something.

We have a cut-and-thrust. Aft few stabs in the "you really should have worn a codpiece" neighborhood he gives up the ghost.

Fifteen minutes later I restitution to Filbert. I've killed a sizable number of brigands and have recovered his handkerchief, as requested. Belongings it with deuce fingers, I hand IT back down to him.

"Buckeye State bless ME, you found it!" he says with delight, tucking the blood-splattered thing rearmost into his breast scoop. "Those men were ever indeed rude. I do hope they've well-read their lesson!"

"Healthy, they're dead, so I'm not indisputable good how much encyclopedism took aim in those final moments of violence and screaming. But if they did learn anything, information technology was plausibly about how they were idiots to show you clemency."

"And I got my lucky handkerchief indorse!" he says gleefully.

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND? THEY Lashkar-e-Taiba YOU Go on, AND IN Regress YOU HAD ME END THE LIVES OF DOZEN Workforce FOR YOUR BOOGER-RAG!"

"If you ever find yourself in the neighborhood, plosive speech sound in for afternoon tea!" he waves at me cheerily.

I back out from the grin old codger, watching him smile happily with the crustlike, bloody handkerchief thrust up out of his pocket.

Afterwards bringing shame to my own mass, I adjudicate to work with the humans again.

Ted Pickthorn. His dad was a notorious robber, and was hanged close to years agone. If I was the offspring of a honourable bastard like that I credibly wouldn't bring IT upwardly when I met people, but Ted doesn't seem to intellect telling me. His dada had some unseeable riches someplace, and Ted wants me to help recover them. Apparently he's been waiting for a complete unknown to get on and then he tush feature them dig up his secret family treasure of parentage money.

We're drifting pretty out-of-the-way from my missionary work. Wasn't there something about "needing lumber"? I remember being told that this was the place to attend "help oneself the people of Archet rebuild." Where did this all go unsuitable?

Perversely, absinthe Pickthorn hid his dirty gains under the tree from which he was hung. I have no idea how he accomplished this, although I hold him rotund points for audacity. When they put him up to swing, he died just a fewer feet over the riches for which he was being put out to death.

Ted gives me the directions, a pick-ax, and sends me along my way. Atomic number 2 lets me know that if I recover his family hazard, he'll kick a whole 90 coppers my way. I preceptor't actually live why he gave me a pick-axe. Don't you dig holes with shovels? Furthermore, why is he having a unknown go and dig up hold dear that's just over Capitol Hill from his household?

But the plot thins:

The hangin' tree has been sliced refine. Remember that the logging camp is chopping down trees like a legion of dire beavers because they're trying to get over enough wood to rebuild the town of Archet. This place has been clear-excision.

There's no way to know where the treasure might be. The suspension Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was marked with an 'X', and that component of the shoetree is gone. I comprehend around a some of them, and manage to seed up empty. OH, and I'm attacked by a bear in the process.

Exactly for the record, I wish to say that dig holes low trees with a pick axe is a tough job symmetrical when bears aren't trying to eat you. As a result, I have a lousy afternoon.

I return to Ted and give him the bad news, "I fanny't find your father's stash of stolen loot, so it might be time to consider looking for honest employment."

In real time, if I was in Teddy boy's shoes and I stupidly told an armed alien where my mob destiny was, and if they had understanding to be mad at me – like maybe they just did some vexed Labor Party and got mauled by a wild animal – and if I was remunerative them some really insultingly small sum for their trouble, then I might abide whatever small, nagging doubts when they told me the appreciate wasn't there.

Ted has nary such doubts. Or else he sends Pine Tree State to take care A. E. W. Mason Thorne, who is in charge of the logging encampment. Ted thinks that peradventur Mason… keeps a record of the trees helium cuts down?

Why would anyone record the show of the trees they chop? Are they worried they mightiness want to put them clog again at a advanced time?

The alone thing to a greater extent absurd than Ted's suggestion is the fact that he's right. Thorne actually does keep a tree-chopping diary. Unsurprisingly, he no more has it. George Mason Thorn keeps a journal of cut trees, merely he perplexed IT when helium was run off by brigands. He suggests I hunt down a brigand leader and convalesce the diary.

Yes, I'm sure a hot point like a book titled, "A Painstakingly Detailed Story of Totally the Trees I've Ever Bring down, Past Freemason Thorn" would naturally finish up in the hands of a principal. Why, he'd get to keep information technology for himself just to keep his work force from killing all other over it!

This call for is what they Call, "Attempted murder of your character by the secret plan designers". It's supposedly A level 8 bay. But to get the logbook you have to assail a Brigand leader, who is grouped with other guys. Hera is the camp you have to knock o'er:

I was stage ten here. If I was level 8 – which is purportedly the level of this quest – I'd be looking at a group with deuce identical-level guys and two guys that have a pair off of levels on me. And all four of them are linked, so you backside't pick them bump off one at a time without playing a insecure spunky of hit-and-run. Also, some of the mooks hide along the other side of the Hill and soda water up after you attack, increasing the chances that you'll start a fight you can't finish. Add in the fact that there's a wandering even out 10 elite in the area, and you are very likely to die hilariously in the service of process of Ted Pickthorn.

There's some other quest like this in the Shire, where killing a single Gnome on the boundary of the Overshadow camp is a level 10 seeking, but assaulting the entire ingroup and killing everyone in it is supposedly a level 8 quest. Not a "mathematical group" quest, just a diarrhoetic level 8 quest.

I Don River't mind a difficult delegac, only the pun needs to signal to the player "this one is a handful." It sucks getting pancaked by something under your level. It sucks hike out into the Wilderness to find something that's fair-and-square too dang hard for you.

I think it's a truly nice policy to have a rubbery mission in there once in a while for civilized or daring players, as long As you get a little supererogatory honor for the extra effort and risk. But this delegac gives out the same 90 coppers you make for most past quests. At the end, Ted gets "several" gold coins as set forth of his dad's treasure. Just one gold coin is worth 100,000 coppers. So he gets (sound out) 500,000 coppers, and you get… 90. Yeah. F#@% you too, Ted.

And the same goes for you, quest backlog.

Mason is in the middle of explaining where I can bump the nearest team of elite killer bandits when I stop him and suggest that he whirl and bugger a Goblin.

I return to Ted Pickthorn and tell him to occupy his pick-axe, his father's treasure, and the hanging tree, and shove them entirely raised his ass. Sidewise. In that order.

Forthwith that we'Ra done making friends, let's find soul else to help. I guess part of the blame for this mess goes to me for agreeing to help the son of a highwayman.

Okay, actually I skipped the quietus of this call for because there wasn't anything interesting leftish to say about information technology. I would induce gone after the treasure if there was a laugh in it for you.

Moral of the tarradiddle: Be diligent and don't always trust the "recommended level" in the request manoeuvre. Also don't forget to check those quests rewards in front you check to do the job. Just about people will hand you pocket vary to bleed to Tonne. Doom and swipe the newspaper publisher off of Sauron's doorstep, and others will give you a Flaming Sword of Amazing for getting a stuck palpebra off a jar of pickles.

I pull off to track down a sullen young madam who of necessity my help. During the foray into her late father's fishing rod was purloined, and she'd corresponding it punt. Yes, I can see how a used sportfishing ro would be a hot detail for rampaging brigands who live in the woods miles from piss. I've been through the woods a dozen times now, and one thing I do acknowledge about these brigands is that they don't make a habit of carrying whatsoever fishing gear. Clearly this job is a derisory waste of time.

I tell the lass I'll do it.

I march out into the woods, find a bandit, and jab her guts out.

Turns out she's carrying the exact fishing ro I'm looking. What are the odds?

Quest-driven drops can be odd sometimes.

I return the pole to Gail. She's grateful, and pays ME the exit rate of 90 coppers that all the locals pay for random jobs of delivery and murder. While this one was technically a win for me, I'm still kind of feeling like handsome a fishing rod to a non-fisher hasn't really improved the quality of life for people here in township.

Let's learn the score. So distant the bandits give claimed the following loot:

1) Purse (recovered)
2) Tree journal
3) Fishing pole (recovered)
4) Handkerchief (recovered)

So now the hundred operating room so of them will accept to share the tree diagram diary, I guess. Glad I was able to leave them with something.

The brigands are tender. Chief Cole decomposes.
I took bet on the hankie, for the blowing of noses.

Ted needs loot (from thieving) though it's guarded by bears.
He is wrong in believing that I'm a Hobbit World Health Organization cares.

Out for a stroll here, late inside the wood proper.
I recovered your Pole Gail, thus gimmie my coppers.

Future Time: Rest home over again, home again, jiggity jig.

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Operative Young is the bozo behind Reset Button, Twenty Sided, DM of the Rings, and Stolen Pixels.

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