Learning LOTRO: Lesson Forty-Eight - Class Poll Discussed

 

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.

In February of 2020, I decided I needed to infuse some Lord of the Rings Online content into my blog because it's been my primary MMO for 8 years and there isn't a game I know better. Since the endgame content, raids, trait trees, and annual events all had plenty of coverage, I thought it would be good to get back to basics for the ever-present crop of new players that give the game a try and are left to fend for themselves in a sea of information. I put out a poll asking people to rank their favorite to least favorite classes and said I would cover them in whatever order resulted. As I'm wrapping up a full year of Learning LOTRO, I thought it was a good time to finally discuss those poll results and how it helped to shape the series.

Learning LOTRO: Lesson Nineteen - Lore-master Class Quests

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.

It's time for us to check back in with our third character, the rugged lore-master Brigarthlas. Our wise man of the mountains has grown up a bit and has had to face the Lore-master Class Quests. These quests rely on the unique talents of the Lore-master Class and put every Lore-master to the test!

Learning LOTRO: Lesson Twelve - Lore-master Class

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.

It's time for the third class-focused entry in the series! Today we get to talk about the Lore-master class! Some things won't need to be rehashed for a third time, but the race of this character means a different Introduction and starting area to look at and discuss!

The Lore-master class is restricted to Elf, High Elf, and Man. Having gone with Elf before, and wanting to cover the basic races before the additional ones, I went with the race of Man for this character. Incidentally, my other two Lore-masters are ALSO the race of Man (but are women).

Once again using my Welsh and input from my husband and BFF, I was tasked with using "blue" and "mountains" as a theme. (Ironic since this time we won't be starting in the Blue Mountains.) In any case, I took into consideration that the first animal companion of a Lore-master is a bear, and that resulted in a name that loosely means "blue bear mountain" -- Brigarthlas. I forgot to put as much thought into the bear's name, and was going to go with the Welsh for "Sir Furry" until the game chastised me for trying to do two words. So I went with "Furry Sir" and the Welsh rough equivalent, Blewogsyr. Yeah, I know that's not the greatest. Feel free to comment with better suggestions!

Names aside, the following is a basic summary of the creation process and some of the things you'll encounter when you start out in LOTRO with a Lore-master.

Creatures of LOTRO: Neekerbreekers Edition

"They spent a miserable day in this lonely and unpleasant country. Their camping-place was damp, cold, and uncomfortable; and the biting insects would not let them sleep. There were also abominable creatures haunting the reeds and tussocks that from the sound of them were evil relatives of the cricket. There were thousands of them, and they squeaked all round, neek-breek, breek-neek, unceasingly all the night, until the hobbits were nearly frantic.

The next day, the fourth, was little better, and the night almost as comfortless. Though the Neekerbreekers (as Sam called them) had been left behind, the midges still pursued them." 

-- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 11

Mentioned only briefly this way in the first book of the trilogy, it's easy for most Tolkien fans to forget the existence of these insects in Middle-earth -- particularly because they are never actually seen by the hobbits. But when you're a video game developer, and you need to fill in your mob list with lore-friendly enemies... neekers sure are handy to differentiate your MMORPG from the others who only have men who can't throw a punch, rabid wolves, skeletons/zombies, spiders, and swarms of rats.

Um... snark? Why are you writing a blog entry about... bugs?

Glad you asked, hypothetical-reader-who-probably-doesn't-exist! Last month, I told the webcomic artist, hoppystar, that if she finished an update of her webcomic before leaving on a several-weeks-long vacation across the ocean... then I would write a blog entry about her favorite creature from LOTRO. (No, I don't understand why she likes the things, either. Just roll with me here.) She got the webcomic updated in record time, so I am happily indulging her with this entry. It also gives me a fantastic springboard to make this into a series, and I have a few more creatures on my list. If you're reading this and have a LOTRO creature request, please let me know!

I had always sort of rolled my eyes when I found out I had to deal with these bugs. I mean... they're just overgrown bugs. But they're also annoying when they burrow into the ground mid-fight and you're stuck in combat waiting for them to resurface. Not having much else to go on for this blog entry, I turned my attention to the LOTRO wiki to dig up information about the roster of neekers in-game. I found a few interesting things!

Neekerbreeker Fact List

• There are 4 signature neekers in LOTRO; 2 are rare signatures.
• Only 3 of the signatures were given proper names.
• The lowest-level neeker in the game is one of the rare signatures.
• The list of neeker types in the game, by name, totals 31 in the wiki. 
• The nerbyg are considered a species variant of neekers.
• The neekers exist in only 12 of the 32 regions in LOTRO.
• The level range of neekers in the game spans from 9 to 115.
• Some are aggressive while others will threaten before attacking.
• They are weak to Beleriand damage but resistant to Common damage.
• If there isn't a petition for neekers to be cosmetic pets, hoppystar is likely to start one. 

Edit: Since publishing this, LOTRO has pushed out a game update that includes 3 neeker cosmetic pets! They are now available from lootboxes or for 2,500 Figments of Splendour each.

I took the time to hunt down the 3 signatures with names and used the skill Knowledge of the Lore-master in order to get a snapshot of their strengths and weaknesses. It took me about a week to find them (they don't spawn as consistently as I'd have liked), so I hope you appreciate the effort!

Allow me to present...

Eye-biter

Eye-biter is the lowest-level neekerbreeker in LOTRO, at a whopping single-digit 9. Despite this, it is a rare signature and will drop the item Eye-biter's Carapace when squished. It can be found wandering in a northern area of the Midgewater Marshes (northwest of Marshwater Fort) in Bree-land, but its distinct gold color stands out against the purple of the Marsh Spiders, or the green and orange of the Green Neeker-breekers and Dun Neeker-breekers.

There is also a type of neeker called Eye-biter's Kin -- but they're found all the way over in Mirkwood! (Specifically in a quest instance in the Drownholt -- Midnight in the Drownholt.) When I discovered this, I thought it was a neat little Easter egg for those who might remember the little signature in Bree-land.

Rattleclaw

Rattleclaw is a signature nerbyg at level 33 and blends in supremely well with a host of other nerbyg in the Barandalf area of Evendim. The Sand-mounds are crawling with Sand-nerbyg, Huge Sand-nerbyg, Burrowing Sand-nerbyg, and summoned Broodlings. It took several passes of mowing down the regular mobs to get this one to spawn, but when it did it was to the northern side of the mounds. Being just a normal signature, the only item drop from this nerbyg is an Adamant Shard.

Swale-singer

Swale-singer is a rare signature nerbyg at level 48 in Western Malenhad within Angmar (good news if you haven't finished the Epic far enough to get past the Watching-stones). The other good news is that there are no other nerbyg that spawn west of the Watching-stones, so it will be easy to spot. The catch? It has two general spots where it only sometimes spawns, and it isn't very often. Being a rare signature, it drops both a Beryl Shard and Swale-singer's Mandible.


The fourth signature neeker in LOTRO is a level 115 nerbyg simply named Frenzied Norbog. Killing this bug counts toward the deed Dangerous Foes of Agarnaith. It can be found in Mokál Rukh, which is an area on the Plateau of Gorgoroth in Mordor. Not being special enough to have a proper name, I didn't bother to hunt it down.

So now you know a little bit more about neekerbreekers in LOTRO! 

I think it's great to see how resourceful the LOTRO developers were to take this one reference and utilize it throughout the game. Nicely peppered through appropriate habitats in a handful of regions, there are enough neekers to be aggravating when you encounter them, but not so often in the game that you become bored with them.

If you enjoyed this...

• Go check out hoppystar's webcomic, The Only Star in Gorgoroth, which is based on LOTRO and follows an elf's misadventure in Mordor. Enjoy her story, and thank her for being the inspiration for this entry and others to come!
• Donate on my Extra Life page to help me be a hero for sick kids!
• Consider supporting me on Patreon for as little as $1 to enjoy sneak peeks, exclusive content, and random rewards!

The Oliphant in the Room

"Mister Frodo! Look! It's an Oliphant! No one at home will believe this."
-Samwise Gamgee

Pretend this is an elephant and it's in the room with you. You know what I'm talking about: I missed June's Feature Blog -- and I'm super sorry about it! 

I was playing Darkest Dungeon on the PS4 and I just didn't get a chance to play enough of it to make a worthwhile post. I'm planning to fix that by the end of this month. I'm hoping you can wait until then! The July Feature Blog may be tardy as well, but should be up by the end of this week. (It helps that I have played Child of Light before.) 

In the meantime, celebrate! Birle the lore-master finally reached the level 115 level cap... which is the only way I was able to get the screenshot of the Mûmak in the first place!

LOTRO Executive Producer Letter: Classes, Festivals, Dwarves, and a Spider

Today's letter from Executive Producer Rob Ciccolini (aka Severlin) left me with some mixed feelings, but overall pretty excited!

Classes

If you play LOTRO and keep up with the notes for Bullroarer, then you've likely already seen some of the initial plans for tweaking classes. I am generally not happy about the proposed changes to Hunter and Lore-master, and admittedly don't play enough of other classes to weigh in on them -- but some people are happy and others are not. I just hope all the people who can actually access Bullroarer and give quality feedback will do so! The good news about this process is that they plan to stagger it and work in gradual phases instead of massive, sweeping changes across the board all at the same time.

Update 23

This part doesn't really get me excited because I haven't even made it to Mordor yet, but it still sounds very awesome! The Lonely Mountain, the Iron Hills, and the Grey Mountains will get the dwarf fanatics pumped up -- and the instance cluster, promise of a new raid later in the year, and level cap increase to 120 will take care of everyone else.

Minas Morgul & Shelob

I am sad this has been pushed off to 2019, but also kind of happy they want to devote more time and size to it. Anyone who's played Shadow of War but is also a LOTRO player is probably twitchy with anticipation of this part of the game.

Festivals

I'm intrigued by the Seasonal Instances that will accompany the Summer Festival. It reminds me of the special raids in RIFT during the Anniversary event, as well as Instant Adventures. I just hope SSG does it right (so far, their track record is pretty good). The fact that they mention the instances being able to be done solo is a plus in my book. Group content in the game is plentiful (especially with Mordor, I hear), so giving some love to the solo/duo players is great to see.

Tidbits

• The ability to see sheathed musical instruments? I'm on the fence here. I hope they make the visibility optional, or set it up with cosmetic options the way they have standard weapons. Not all instruments look good dangling from your back or waist!
  
• Harvestmath additions? I hope this isn't just talking about the continuation of the Bingo Boffin quest they started last fall. That was great, and I look forward to the next leg of it, but something new that can be done every day of the festival would be great!
  
• And all I can say about tying off loose ends in North Rhovanion, including Gundabad...