LOTRO: MoM Expansion Review – So Much to Do

In the afternoon of November 19th, a day after the lauch, one of my Kin mentioned that in every game they have ever played, they knew exactly what they were going to do when an expansion launched; now they had to decide which of fifteen things to do.

Obviously, there is Moria itself, but just getting in there requires traveling through the new area of Eregion… and it is awfully hard not to start questing away in there now that the level cap has gone up to 60. Of course, why quest with that old, top of the line crafted or raid loot weapon when you can head for Moria and start on your Legendary Weapons.

The new areas are thick with Deeds, which is good as the Trait System has been radically expanded and you might want to make some changes there. Specifically, each class now has 3 specialties to choose from, and the more Traits you slot from that path, the more it kicks in different additional benefits. There is also a whole whack of new Class Deeds and Legendary Traits to unlock.

If you already have your legendary weapon, or don’t feel like grabbing it yet, there is still an absurd amount of stuff to do. You could polish off Shadows of Angmar and finish Epic Volume 1 with the new Book 15. Heck, you can even roll yourself one of the new Classes; Warden and Rune-Keeper, and start from square one. I haven’t tried them myself yet, but they sound quite interesting, and people who have played them sound pretty excited.

Most noticeably you will spend some time taking advantage of inventory improvements. Any quest item that you don’t actually need to use for the quest (like a letter you need to right click to read) will go from your inventory to the quest log itself. You’ll still need an empty spot in your inventory to pick up the item, but it then zaps right to your log.

A “key-ring” system means that any keys that are permanent (as opposed to single use, e.g..: the Carn Dum ones as opposed to the Barad Guralan summoning ones) can be removed from inventory by right clicking. They will now appear as skills in your character window. Many inventory icons have been updated and are much easier to identify at a glance.

You’ll need the improved icons and extra space for crafting. A new 6th tier has been added to all of the crafting skills, and Crafting Guilds have been introduced. Like reputation factions, Crafting Guilds offer extra recipes and discounted supplies to their members. Note that, unlike with reputation, you can only be in one Crafting Guild at once.