After several attempts, I finally was able to complete the Collecting History quest, although it took until 12:30am. I say several attempts because I have been in other fellowships doing Great Barrows quests, collecting chalices as I went, but something always went wrong and I didn’t get all ten that you need. It doesn’t help, of course, that multiple people needed the quest, and they are in limited supply. Last night, I was able to get the four more that I needed, however.

The night started out with me making the decision to head to the Great Barrows in the hopes of finding a group to quest with. I only had two major quests remaining in the area, Collecting History and Broken Alliance. I decided that I’d go for Collecting History, since Broken Alliance is further north, and I wanted to wait to check out Trestlebridge later on.  I couldn’t find anyone that was working on Great Barrows quests, though, but someone was forming for Broken Alliance. I went ahead and changed my plans and joined up with them. We got the quest done pretty easily and the group actually had people that wanted to work on Great Barrows quests, so we all headed down there, anyway, so things worked out for me in the end.

The group was all level 21 and 22, which was probably the lowest average level that I’ve quested with, and you could definitely tell the difference. We were dropping like flies whenever we got to an area with multiple creatures to attack. Luckily, since we were in a private instance, we regenerated inside the Great Barrows, and not in the Old Forest like normal. Creatures also didn’t regenerate, so we were able to make our way back to the group easily enough. This made it take quite a while longer, though, and before I knew it, it was after midnight. I stayed online as long as I could, but Wednesdays are long days for me (I watch the twins myself after work), but at 12:30am I had to bow out and map home to Bree.

It was a long night, but I do think it was worth it. I leveled up to 22 and completed all of the Bree quests that I had, which I think are all of them that are at my level at this point. Now I’m free to continue on to another area without leaving things hanging, like I did in Erid Luin.

time: 2h

Had a pretty good night. Was able to finish the Ruins of Cardolan quest, which I had on my plate for a while. I fellowed with a Minstrel and the first attempt failed, but then we found another player and got through it without too much difficulty the second time.

I also realized that completing the Big Problems quest doesn’t actually involve needing to defeal the level 30 elite giant that is there. He eventually just walks away, and you can run in and grab the backpack without any problems.

I’m starting to figure out the economy of the game, especially the Auction House, a little more. There are certain items which definitely catch a much better price when auctioned. For instance, I had some Rushlight Seed that sell to a vendor for 2 copper, but auctioned for 2 silver, and that was the buyout price that I set. I’ll set a higher buyout price next time and see what happens.

time: 1.5h

I jumped online and was intending to solo quest for a little while, but got together with a group doing Evil’s Final Chapter and Heading West. We didn’t have a minstrel, and almost disbanded, but the fellowship leader asked us to give him a minute, and we got a high level character (>35), instead (I can’t remember if he was a captain or a guardian, I think he was a captain, though, which is good, since they can bring someone back to life if they get defeated).

We got through the quests with only one of us getting defeated, that I noticed, which was actually pretty good. There were certainly a couple of times that we had to sit and let our health build up, but I think we actually did pretty well. This also goes to show that you don’t always need a minstrel to get through these quests, and these two are supposed to be some of the more difficult to accomplish.

I learned a very hard lesson last night, too. One of the members of the fellowship was really low on power, so I initiated a trade with him and dragged a healing potion on my side and clicked trade. This basically offers him the item for free. I had ten of the potions, so I didn’t mind giving one away. What I didn’t realize was that  when you have a stack and drag it to the trade box, IT INCLUDES THE ENTIRE STACK! I gave away all of my potions, instead of just one.  UGH! I guess that’s a good way to learn, though.

time: 2h

[Note: I skipped blogging two nights, since nothing much happened]

I finally got my Scholar profession proficient in the first level! Now I can start on the next level, which includes a bunch of scrolls that I honestly don’t understand what they do. Time to check out the forums…

Also, I used a horse for the first time. In order to get the tier 1 proficiency, I had to go from Bree to Duillond, which was quite a haul. But, fast travel to Celondim, plus using my map home back to Bree afterwards made the trip much faster.

time: 1.5h