The Plague

Highlights: Resolina finishes up Mordor in Agarnaith and the Epic, slowly opening up the Allegiance System

January 10th - 13th

Agarnaith (Levels 114)
Missing Page: #1, 4, 5, 7, 14, 15, 16 (All found in Seregost Court)
Problems: Infested Orcs respawn invisible
Ventrilo Spoiler: "Run. Don't even try to kill the troll. We tried. Just run."

Agarnaith: This zone is very different than the other places. I feel like the developers got really lazy after treading through all of Mordor. That doesn't mean its bad. It is just... the majority of quests are Kill X quests. Even the Allegiance dailies follow suite (which I will talk about later). The zone is way easier and way more condensed then the other regions. The stories are still good. I'm hard-pressed not to include them because it was such a surprise for me but if you read this far into my blog that I'm going to go ahead and include them. You have Viznak, a crazy-looking fellow, help you combat the wickedness of the plague and the bats. He also comes up with some crazy schemes like a few hobbits I know that would put a smile on your face. You also encounter a small village of Wose that make you raise reputation for the Red Sky Clan before they trust you. I don't know why they included this system. You do the quests, turn them in, and never get any repeatables to raise it any further. I was also highly disappointed when the village charged the orc camp only for them to disappear just before the front gate. You only see them fight within the instance portion of the camp. (A couple pictures came out really dark).

Kala-gijak: The orc camp was difficult but nothing compared to Nargroth. I actually enjoyed going up-and-down the watchtowers (which there is a deed for). It's just that by the time I got to the final spot, I grew tired of fighting orcs. In that moment I told myself "Boy, I could use a distraction right now." Then a minstrel came flying by on their steed, aggroing all 30 orcs. Thank you kind stranger. You saved me some heartache.

Epic: If you noticed, the Black Book of Mordor quests revolve around the adventures of Ayorzén the Wily (only one of his many titles). Though Books 1 and 2 rely heavily on the zones, Books 3 and 4 almost detract from Mordor's questing zones all together. You see the slow changes in the refugees as you enter in Minas Tirith. You also attend a pinnacle meeting point where power shifts between the dark forces. All awesome. All rewarding. Of course, I really wish those scholars did something more with the head of a fellbeast other than stick it on the floor in the House of Lore.

Allegiance Main Quests: The quests aren't as interesting as I hoped them to be. Sometimes I feel like they are just making us run around. Other times I'm actually interested in remembering where all the Dwarf cities and all the Elf cities are located on the map. I had hoped they would have allowed us to expand the Allegiance Halls slowly like in Hytbold. Oh well.

Allegiance Daily Quests: I'm not angry. I'm not angry. I just have a huge problem when the quests have you facing multiple level 115 enemies that block, evade, and parry 50% of your attack. The good news? It doesn't matter anyways! Why?

Tokens of Service doesn't provide you with any good rewards. There is a very slim chance you can get enough allegiance marks to get these tokens before finishing Mordor or turning level 115. The only reward are item level 326 items for minimum level 112. At that point you might as well have someone craft you the item level 323 set (level 115), or better yet, turn in 70 ash for the exact item or 140 ash for the item level 330 set (level 115).
Allegiance Relics that give you Allegiance points are only given out one per day per faction. Do all four of them and you will complete the daily (except I'd exchange the one for saving people in Naerband for Pit-Fighter). This allows you to continue quests and open lootboxes without the hassle of fighting anything too difficult.
Resource Instances do give you more Allegiance Relics but are way too difficult solo. There is a reason why they offer you the chance to duo the instances. Take that opportunity if you must. Otherwise, there are other places I'd rather much spend my time. The only instance I was able to successfully complete by myself without rage quitting was the one with spiders in Lhingris (but it's an instance offered by a dude in Udun Foothhold).

Spreadsheet Friday: Western Gondor, Central Gondor, and East Gondor Roving Threats. We ran into a little snag in Western Gondor when another group killed a Roving Threat before we did. Then East Gondor also gave us some trouble trying to find the last threat in the far southwest corner of the map. Otherwise a pretty decent run.

Final Mordor Tally: Without landscape drops, I wondered how much ash I had from quests alone. However, that data was pretty skewed for my time in Court of Seregost. I also wanted to know how many signets I'd get. It is more accurate (despite what I got from the one scourge run). Also, I wanted to know how many Token of Service I would get before starting the dailies. What did I get?

3,080 Ash (No ash farms, plenty from Court of Seregost)
885 Silver Signets (A few extra from one Scourge Run)
97 Token of Service (Mostly from Lost Lore book quests)

I don't care too much for Ash simply because the cost of items is too high. Some pets and decorations require 450 which isn't too bad. 1,000 Ash is pretty steep. I'm going to have to skip out on trading signets for crafting. Even trading 75 signets for gear is too costly of a price. I would much rather trade 50 signets for a Mordor statue. Crazy, I know.

Treasure Hunt: There was a brief time where I went with Nierys through Udun and Dor Amarth. There was this moment where I stated I just had to take a screenshot. Well, here it is!

No wait... that's not it. Maybe it's this one:

Nope! That one is for El. Oh! Here it is:

2018-01-14