I don’t hide that fact that I have a rather unusual MMO playing style. Did you know that my LOTRO “main” was level 33 a year ago, and is level 40 today. At this rate it’ll probably take me another 5 years to get him to cap, assuming Turbine continues to bump up the cap every 12-18 months.

Anyway, my characters always act as a kind of hive-mind, particularly in terms of crafting. And my woodworker finally got to where he needed some yew, but I didn’t have a character that could collect it. I had a level 8 or so Rune Keeper/Explorer collecting dust, so I decided to level him up to where he could get the woodworker some yew.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. He’s level 23 now. He went through the revamped Ered Luin, which I liked a lot more than I used to. Then he moved on to BreeTown. The new Bree experience is very, very much improved over the way things used to be. You’re shuttled logically from quest hub to quest hub. At one point the ‘quest path’ branches, with one branch heading into the Barrows and the other going north up the Greenway. Which ever one you pick, you’ll be kept in a fairly small area for nice chunks of time, with quest difficulty flowing smoothly.

I headed up the Greenway and did a bunch there. You go from a cabin just north of Bree to Thornley’s Work Site to that ranger outside his cottage across the road from Thornley’s to the Old Greenway Fort to Hengstacer Farm (the horse farm). All of these are now solo quests (no more LFG to do Breaking Alliances, yay!) At this point my Epic Quest to go talk to Tom Bombadil had gone green, so I recalled to Bree and headed out to see old Tom.

As you enter the Barrows you’ll find a corpse. It starts a quest that leads you to the Old Barrows road that runs between the Barrows and Bombadil’s house. On that road is a camp of expedition survivors who’ll give you all the low level Barrow quests. These were all green by the time I got there. They then pass you off to Dead Man’s Peak (?) farther south in the Barrows, where the rest of the expedition is hiding. I haven’t gone there yet.

Bonus points to Turbine for putting a traveling merchant at Thornley’s Work Site and at this came on the Old Barrows road. You can sell your vendor trash there, but you can’t repair for some reason.

The Old Forest is less annoying now. Those mobile trees and their root friends are no longer aggro, and they either die easier or the Rune Keeper is really powerful. But I’m still going to have to use a map to find all the flowers in there.

I realize that this is all old news, but if like me you’ve been hesitant about creating a new alt because of all the rather tedious running back and forth in Breeland, fear no more. Leveling through Bree is a BREEze (ha! I slay me) these days.