Well as promised I have pictures and information about my latest adventure in LOTRO – Monster play! I made my Reaver yesterday evening after getting level 10 on my “Freep” aka Free Peoples character. I rushed the quests as quickly as possible in order to get into monster and it definitely payed off. So as the title says my monster’s name is Neeknaem… I wonder what that spells backwards?
At first the whole Ettenmoors zeon was very confusing. I had no idea what to do first because right from the start you are presented with 10 or more quests. Some quests were titled ‘raid’ and some were noted as repeatable and others ‘scouting’. Once I gathered all these quests up I set out to do my first killing a monster. Was it going to be Elves? Dwarves? Maybe I could eat a Hobbit or two. Nope, my first job as a monster was to go out and kill slugs! The basic mechanics behind the monster play system are quite simple. You get destiny points by questing and use those DP’s to buy skills and upgrades that you unlock by gaining infamy from killing players. Yeah it sounds confusing at first but it’s simple. Once you realize that most all the quests are repeatable every 2 hours or so you can set yourself up on a nice timer to gain a steady amount of destiny thus making your monster truly a monster.
After slugs I was invited by a few fellow monsters to go kill Freeps. This was my first outing so I was afraid that with my lack of destiny points my monster would stand little
to no chance against a real enemy player. Traveling for what felt like an eternity I eventually found myself outside of the location that freeps enter the Ettenmoors. Holy flashabcks of DAOC RVR … I was basically useless because both sides were at a stalemate just shooting arrows back and forth at eachother. Being a Reaver I can only use my melee weapons. Occasionally a Freep would feel brave and run forward only to be completely destroyed by the crowd of monsters. My RVR experience really has given me some slight edge. I recognize the same strategies being applied on this battlefield and I can tell where the “good” hiding spots are at.
I have a feeling Monster Play is going to be exciting as I rank up, skill up, and become a devastating killing machine.