Mountain Climbing
Highlights: Rath Duath, The Black Book of Mordor, Filth-Well, Deep-Barrows
Rath Duath: One of the first areas you'll explore outside Mordor: Besieged is Rath Duath. There aren't many quests here, only a mere 25 are required for the deed. But there is a lot to see has you venture up the mountain-side. You'll get to meet wargs knawing on bones, flesh, and the remains of spiders. There are orc camps under some interesting orders to the north. You'll discover an abundance of morrovals hiding at the very top. The problem I have is that the quests don't really connect as well as they should. For example, you get a quest to collect three different samples of water. One is at the end of the warg camp, one is at the beginning of the Broken Houses, and another is tucked in a corner that's hard to find. Then afterwards you get another quest to find three urns. One is at the end of the Broken Houses, another in the middle of the morroval camp, and another by a mysterious family living in a van down by the river. Unless you have the appropriate quests at the right time, you'll find yourself going through the areas twice.
"Does Mr. Goblin need a stool?" - Resolina
There are a few other things you should check out. There are a few bounty quests at Estolad Lan and Echad Uial. It is a good idea to get the four guild quests to maximize your crafting guild reputation. And make sure to search for Tier 13 to grab any of the decorations too. There is a hunter campfire and stable-master at Taen Orwath. It might not show up on your map but its there south of Echad Uial. If you happen to come across a seal somewhere don't panic. It is part of a treasure hunt where you need 4 seals and 4 components to open a locked door. You won't get around to it until you finish the expansion. Amusingly I stumbled across a couple of dead adventurers that seemed to have jumped off the side of Minas Ithil. Though I wasn't too happy of finding someone back in the bone crypt behind The Broken Houses. There was a boxer with 4 lore-masters and 1 captain that had setup their pets to attack the wights as they spawned. Oh and they went around and stole all the chests that would appear too.
""Kill some Orcs? Kill some Goblins? Goats are the real threat!" - Bounty Poster
The Black Book of Mordor: Sadly the epic quests barely touches on this area at all. You'll gain a few quests in chapter 13 revisiting the Hall of Memories and Beorninghus. Then you'll gain a quest that simply preludes into Minas Ithil in Chapter 13.4. If you pay keen attention to the different rewards, they all have different sub-text, sometimes with hilarious results. Even the pivotal normal quests will have the same sub-text on every reward.
"Unremarkable, perhaps, and yet we marked it" - Gandalf
Instances: The nice thing about the zone quests is that they direct you to the stories inside the instances. Not just that but the instances also count as "resource instances" for completing daily quests. You'll discover a strange River Maiden in Eithel Gwaur: The Filth-Well and the Kegrim's mysterious bone ritual inside Gorthad Nur: The Deep-Barrow. If you paid attention, you would realize that the clean water up top funneled through a dirty pipe system and polluted the area in southern Lhingris. Completing these instances by yourself for the instance quest or 5 daily quests (3 in Filth, 2 in Barrows) can be easy enough, even at level 130. Doing them with 3-people, not so much. They can still be difficult if you aren't watching yourself since enemies deal out tactical damage and a few nasty power-drain abilities. Because of the vast size of The Filth-Well, many will avoid running it if they can. The gear you get is nigh trivial and will only disenchant into uncut gems. Then there is a very low chance of getting a crafting material box, in which you need around 12 to actually make something. Did I mention the boxes don't stack and the reagent inside is bound to your account? At least they're still fun to do on occasion for the weekly quests.
"You got this!" - Salt
2020-03-18