Why a Mordor Sponsored Vacation is a BAD idea.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

So, I thought I'd do a let's play of this little interplay LOTR game. A simple RPG, really, that came out in 1990, so I'm warning anyone who happens be following this, the graphics are kind of garbagey.

So, starting a new game, you'd get a little opening cinematic, which I can't really capture with Dosbox's feature.

It looks like this




i.e., pretty damn lame.

in case you're wondering, those ten icons are various non-moving actions you can do.

Sword-Attack
Scroll-view stats
Hand grabbing ball- get
Hand holding ball -use
Diploma and scroll- skill list
Wand- Magic
Speech bubble- talk (also used to recruit people into the party and throw them out)
Human pyramid- select leader
Two guys- choose a character
Hobbit hole- leave menu and go into movement mode


Now, it wouldn't quite be an RPG without stats, would it? So here are our three starting members

Frodo

Sam

Pippin



At the top, is silver pennies, which is not a character stat per se, but how much money we have. Money isn't all that important in this game, shops are few and far between, but can be used for a little exploit which I'll mention later. As for the other 6 stats, we have

Dexterity: Most important is how it determines initiative order in combat, but it also seems to have some slight advantages in dodging hits and dishing them out.
Endurance: Your HP max
Life: Your current HP.
Strength: High strength gives a slight bonus to hit, as well as increases the damage done on each strike. Most importantly, however, is that weapons have strength prerequisites to be able to use.
Luck: Is hard to quantify exactly what it does. I had a friend who looked into the code once, and I know there are a number of encounter triggers that check against your luck stat, but if it has any combat feature, I'm not sure exactly what it is. I'm sure high luck is good though.
Will: Is used to resist corrupting effects of the Shadow, like having your will worn down by the one ring.



Now, we don't have a standard of comparison yet, but generally Hobbits have above average Dexterities, tiny amounts of endurance and strength, good scores for luck, and really good scores for will. Frodo has the highest willpower in the game, which is why he gets the ring. (And you're not allowed to give it to anyone else unless he dies.)


Now, possibly more important than your base stats are your skills.

Here's Pippin's list. I picked him because he's the only one who has exactly 5 skills, so we can see them all at once without scrolling. Yes, the graphics/interface is terrible, this was 1990.


He's got Brawl (helps with fighting unarmed), picklock, sneak, hide, climb, and jump, which allow us to pick locks, sneak around, hide from things, climb over things, and jump over things. Generally, these sorts of activities will be prompted, by little blocks of text that inform us of what's going on. There are other skills, of course, and I'll be mentioning them in due time, but I think it's time for this first post to come to a close.


Next post, we explore Bag End, and I'll show some skill usage, magic, and the inventory system.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

This is the inside step of Bag End. As you can see, we have a little scroll of text, which is how the game usually informs us of stuff. Generally, if there's an item or skill to be used, you'll get at least some bit of text indicating you might want to try something.


As we walk around the hole, we come across the library, which gives us this. At the time the game came out, it was viewed as both a way of saving file space, and as a means of copyright protection. The game manual had a number of little paragraphs of text, so when you had to refer to something, you could look it up. Nowadays, it's hard to get the manuals, but I do have a little PDF, if anyone is dying to know, and if anyone asks, I can reproduce a text. This one just says that this is the house library, and how Frodo doesn't like the idea of Lotho getting his hands on them. However, if we use read, (Frodo has it as one of his skills) we get another paragraph, this time about reading the Lay of Leithan, (It's that poem that Aragorn recites on Weathertop in the books)  

More importantly, it gave us a new word of power Words of powers are like skills, you can use them in specific instances, to get some sort of beneficial effect. Unlike skills and most items, however, a word of power is one use. As you can see, Frodo has "!Helphelp" and "!Luthien" (I didn't show you before, where he only had the helphelp, but take my word for it.) Although, I've always thought that screaming for help was a bit mundane to get on the magic list. And how does using it once preclude you from doing it again anyway?


Further ransacking of the house produces 65 silver pennies, a torch, and some rations. The money is held in common, but I gave both items to Frodo. Torches are weapons, although not very good ones, but they'll also light up dark areas, and they never run out. Rations can heal you, if injured, although you can only get healing from food once every day/night cycle.


It's not directly helpful to the quest, but I decide to jaunt next door, to talk to Frodo's neighbor Griffo Boffin.
He likes to gossip.

You talk by typing in one word ideas, and some of them will garner responses. If it's not on the trigger list, they'll usually say something about not knowing anything about that. Griffo knows about
News (You saw)
Lobelia (Doesn't like her, might sell his home and move away from her)
Green Dragon Inn (Ale isn't as good as it used to be.)
Dwarf (thinks they're odd)
Lotho (If I can't say something good about someone, I won't say anything at all)

Generally, talking will be more for flavor than for actual help. Even when people do say helpful stuff, it's never (to my knowledge) something your characters need to know, just stuff to inform you. If you have to reload or something and don't want to redo the conversations, you won't miss much by just skipping over them.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

So, we spoke to some annoying hobbit neighbors, who were more than happy to spread the latest gossip.  About the only things vaguely adventerous that we found out was that there are wolves in the ruins that the king built, long ago. (I presume that they meant the king built stuff long ago, which is now ruins. Building ruins would be....... odd.)

Oh, and there was something about scary guys in black cloaks riding around. But I'm sure they're just IRS agents or something.

So we go down the south road, and we run into Our favorite person, Lobelia. She hits Frodo, our fearless leader, with an umbrella, causing 1 damage (scripted) she wants the key. As tempting as it is to not give her the key after this, if we do that ,she'll kill us with that umbrella. (I kid, what she actually does is get the police to arrest us, and then the Nazgul catch up.)

So we can trade (it's a subsection of use item) the bag end key and give it to her. While the trade function is mostly used to shuffle inventory around between party members, once we have an inventory worth mentioning, you can also iuse it to give stuff to NPCs. Fortunately, the game has something of an adventure ethos, and will only allow you to trade something to someone if there's some benefit for you in doing so.


Once we give the key over, we can't go back to Bag End, but we already looted everything we can use. Trading the key also activates the progress music, which is surprisingly good, even after a few thousand repetitions I've been through. I tried looking for it on youtube, but it's contained in what seems to be an actual video walkthrough of the game, which would put me out of business. Although he doesn't seem to be all that good, on further study.

Continuing on the roadway, we talk to the old gaffer (Sam's Dad), who mentiojns that there is some commotion at the Hobbiton Inn, and a kid seems to be missing. Quest senses...... Tingling.

Still following the road, we take a side venture to Anson Goodbody's house. This game isn't quite as bad as other RPGs in this regard, but in general, people who have names are marginally more useful than ones described by race. He also mentions the dwarf at the inn, and asks for our help getting his dog, who ran off, and he's too lame to catch him.

Sadly, there's no option to point and laugh.  We run off to the fields to the west, where the dog is sitting.

He has the best dialog in the whole game We can't directly recruit the pooch, but Sam's Charisma skill will put him into our party.

An attack dog, he ain't. When we get close enough to Anson Goodbody, the dog leaves, and Anson tells us about the IRS agents, and how they're hanging around Buckland bridge. He also gives us a shovel, although I don't know what went through his head to decide that's an appropriate reward.


We skip over Lotho's house, for the nonce, and go look at the mill. If you remember your books, Lotho Pimple, with the help of Saruman, is starting to import industrial machinery to the shire, ruining its pastoral beauty and stuff.

If we try to go in during the day, they throw us out. I know it's night in the picture is at night, but we entered in, and fired the trigger, at daytime. When we go back in at night, they're asleep. It mentions that we should be quiet, or we might wake them up, but we stupidly go barging into the machinery room, whereupon the three attack us.


I took that pic to show the awful fail of the combat system. There's no way in hell the three hobbits with a torch between them can take on three human thugs, so we load. Sneaking past, we get to a "strange metal apparatus, with dials and wheels." In true adventurer fashion, we push random buttons which causes an explosion. After which, the mill is closed for repairs, and we can no longer enter.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

So, we spoke to some annoying hobbit neighbors, who were more than happy to spread the latest gossip.  About the only things vaguely adventerous that we found out was that there are wolves in the ruins that the king built, long ago. (I presume that they meant the king built stuff long ago, which is now ruins. Building ruins would be....... odd.)

Building odd things is, as I understand it, a kingly occupation. So, for kings, not as odd as you might think. ;-]

[Gabi]

Actually, it's happened before. There was a time in the late 18th century when owning a ruin was considered fashionable among the European high class. I saw an old chapel in the Monserrate Palace's garden in Sintra, Portugal, which was intentionally turned into a ruin so that its owner could show it off.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

So we head south, crossing a bridge, on our way to hobbiton proper. (this would be easier if I had a map to show you, but mine are actually printed out, and I don't have a scanner on me) We immediately head to the bar to get wasted and possibly run into Darkmoon because we heard that there's some sort of commotion.

We can actually buy some ale at the bar, but doing so would cost money, and all ale does in this game is be a food item, that heals 1 hp. Kind of a waste. Taffy Proudfoot is also present, and tells us to see paragraph 54. that her sister daisy and Freddi Grubb are lost in the east woods, and that she wished someone would help them before the wolves do.


Eh, it's not like we have anything important to be doing, right? In true RPG fashion, of course, nothing happens until we get there, but let's pretend we need to hurry. As we get there we get more help than usual for RPG save quests

Still, it doesn't give us directions, so we wander for a bit, and come across a nice gameworld touch. Remember those ruins that I mentioned earlier? Atheleas only grew where the Dunedan settled of old, and here some is, near the ruins. I think it's these little touches, more than anything else, which is why I liked the games so much. They make stuff up, sure, but they make stuff up that (generally) fits in with the LOTR setting. And don't worry, when they botch up, I'll be here to rant. We stuff the herbs in Sam's inventory. Nobody has herb lore, which can let us use it ourselves, but we can trade it to healers for a quick boost.


However, one can spend too much time herb picking. We probably ought to go save that kid. As we make our way towards there though we arrive in the nick of time. Actually, the thing is set to spawn a wolf to attack you once every so often in the woods, we just happened to be standing near Taffy at the time. Also, since she's not a party member, the wolf will ignore her.

Now, the three of us probably could take a wolf, or at least drive it away, but we'd get hurt doing it, and besides, Tape might get mad Fortunately, There are alternatives to fighting. Trade a wolf rations and they'll go away. Sam got bit for two points through, before we could toss the food at the wolf.

Anyway, Taffy won't join us unless we have Freddi with us, but she'll tell us he's in a cave nearby. So we search the cliffside, and find a cave. Fortunately, we have someone with climb (actually, everyone has climb) so we can move up and down those pesky cliff faces.

We go inside the cave, and are glad we brought along a torch. As you can see, areas designated as dark, are more or less impossible to navigate without either a torch or someone casting a light spell. Fortunately, we have the former. We head to the north of the cave, where we can see little Freddi held prisoner by a giant spider.

No choice but to fight here, but spiders are pretty weak. We kill it, but Frodo gets hit for 3, and Sam for another 4. We impress Freddi into the party, but he's essentially useless. Kind of cute though. More importantly, there's loot. A scroll, inviting Bilbo to come to Moria, an old axe, and a star shaped key. The axe is too heavy for any of the hobbits to use as a weapon, sadly, but maybe someone else will want it.

On our way out, we pass a chasm and jump over it. Fortunately, these skill checks are 100% reliable.
Continuing on, we see a weird door. It has a star shaped keyhole, so even though Pippin's picklock doesn't work, we can get in. It leads to a crypt of some sort. Trying to take the ruby or the money immediately will wake up that ghost, and then he'll kill us. But reading the elven script mentioned gives us a hint, that the stupid starkey is used, once again.

This causes that ghost to ask us if we'll swear loyalty to the King. Since he'll kill us if we say no, we quickly nod and agree to anything the scary ghost wants. In return for his coercion, he gives us the money and ruby.

We hightail it out of there, get Taffy, and get attacked by a second wolf. We don't have any more food to bribe it, so we fight. By the end of it, we're quite badly hurt, so we take a jaunt south, to the healer's cottage. I wonder how he avoids becoming a wolf snack, living alone like that. After treatment though, Sam is the only one left wounded, and him only slightly.

We hightail it back to hobbiton, where we return the wayward children. Freddi's father gives us a pony, as thanks, and Taffy's gives us some food, a portion of it fixes the rest of Sam's injuries. We then check in at the Green Dragon (which is mentioned in the books), to find that dwarf everyone's been talking about. He's looking for his uncle, and when we give him that axe we found in the spider cave, he concludes the old codger is dead, and joins us Unlike the hobbits, he can actually fight a decent amount. That axe can sting.

Come to think of it, the game would probably accept any old axe, not just that one. One day, when I'm feeling more abusive, I think I'll try that.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Ok, for the normal course of progression through the game, we're due to run into a made up character called Hawkeye (Real name Pellisar), one of Aragorn's rangers and all around helpful dude. He's easily the best character we can get for a long while.

The thing is, the Nazgul have been keeping an eye on him. What is "supposed" to happen, I think, is that soon after you run into him, he takes you to his cave, which the Ringwraiths track him, and you guys, to. You then have the choice of either fighting a pair of them (tricky) or leaving him behind to hold them off (and die), so the rest of you can escape.

However, those who are sufficiently cheapass, know a few ways of dodging the trigger that sends him back to the cave, which makes tings *much* easier.

So I'll leave it to you guys, anyone who happens to be following this thread. Do we pick

Option A) Leave Hawkeye to die
Option B) Try and fight the ringwraiths
Option C) Duck the whole encounter altogether and leave Green Hill country with the ranger in tow.


And if nobody responds, Uhm. I hadn't thought this through very well, but I'll come up with something at the last minute.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I'll vote for option C. I'm all for being sneaky and tricksy hobbits, yo.

[Inumo]

I say option B, and A if that fails. Mostly for the sake of story.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Well, I was hoping for more votes, but I'll do a compromise (after a secret tie-breaking session with my brother). I'll try to fight the ringwraiths, and if that doesn't work, we'll duck the combat entirely.


So we set off from Hobbiton, following the road south to avoid the bridge that is under guard. Pippin takes point, and as we come along the road, we spot another damn ringwraith, but fortunately some elves arrive and drive him off.

They take us back to their camp, and tell us that the name of Elbereth can help drive off a Nazgul. This will come in handy shortly. (Sadly, only the party leader gets the word of power) We talk for a bit, and Gildor (elf leader) is somewhat perturbed that Gandalf is late, but offers no other useful advice.

On our way back to the road, we run into someone foreshadowed. He has a bow, which we gave to frodo (sam got the torch), and has a sword. I transferred druin's cloth armor (One size really does fit all), to Hawkeye, but it's not oging to be hugely helpful.


An orc scout attacks, but is easily dispatched. Hawkeye is spooked and takes us back to his bat-cave.


Crap.

We're morons.

The Nazgul go first, but thankfully don't do much, missing one attack. (the other hits frodo for 6)

Frodo fires and misses, but Hawkeye scores a solid hit. I never sliced into the code to check, but I think nazgul have about 45 hp. Sam helps Remember, they don't like fire., and Pippin drives one away with the name of Elbereth. The dwarf scores a hit  for five, and let me tell you, this is really lucky. Hawkeye usually hits, but the others are not so reliable.

Ouch. Frodo is knocked out, and ko'd people eventually die of their wounds if combat isn't won. Which he will. The Nazgul still has a lot of HP,(See that little bar on the left. The gray is how much of his life he has remaining) and we're not going to batter him down all that quickly. A lot of this fight is luck, unfortunately. You can  chase one Nazgul away with Elbereth, but after that, it's a race to see whether Druin and Hawkeye (your real heavy hitters) can knock the Nazgul down before he kills someone essential. The AI doesn't seem to use any strategy for picking targets, just choosing them at random, so you have to hope he spreads his attacks around a bit.


We tried.


*Time distortion Swirly Thing*


So, upon meeting the elf, we decide to explore the hill country, and come across a cave Climbing in, we wander and explore, and find a chest, and pick the lock open, yielding 30 silver pennies, 4 rations, a bladepart, and a signet ring.

We leave. Who is this Hawkeye fellow?


Oh. For some reason, I have this odd sentiment that he himself is being watched, and we decide to lose ourselves in the woods. I'm going to pretend we fought the Nazgul and throw out Sam's athelas, which would have gone towards healing us if we had fought and won, and we flee to the somewhat unwelcome protections of civilization.


Oh, wait, there was something I forgot to do.

Pretend this happened on the way out of the Green hill country.


We hear something weird., and it leads us to Another damn cave.  We climb in, and find a giant spider. With our new party members, he lasts about 6 seconds. There's a bird, that seemed to have been trapped by the spider, and upon our victory, he gives us cryptic warnings, to seek out the elves, and that the Enemy will not follow us into the Old Forest. Then he flies off. It wasn't as weird as hearing a bird talk in the first place.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Corgatha asked me if it was okay if he could keep posting in this thread, even though it's past necro time.

I said it was fine, since it was over Christmas/NYE, and he was polite about it. ;-]

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

OOC: Sorry guys, for the long absence, Finals ate into a lot of my free time to make stuff like this, and then I had only a sporadic connection for a long time. This'll probably be a short update, while I get back into the flow of things.


IC: So, harried, we run back to town, and catch up on the latest gossip. Surprisingly, he's not talking about us, or the Nazgul, but rather simply that hobbits from Hobbiton are weird (We're on the outskirts of Buckland now) We take the road north, and gather some more meaningless gossip, (a bird has been singing Gandalf's name), and then we travel to a staple of all RPGS.


A store! And the shopkeeper won't even talk to us!

Actually, the name is another one of those nice little touches, or maybe not. If you don't recall your LOTR trivia, a mathom was "an old birthday present, one whose original use has been forgotten." Most of these things were circulated in a round of gifts back and forth, but some of them are mentioned to be in a museum in Michael Delving. Still, it's a bit odd to see them in a store, but that could be why it went out of business.


Sharkey, as you all should remember, is a cover for Saruman (possibly derived from the Orcish word Sharku, meaning "old man".)

So, as loath as we are to finance Saruman's designs, we take a look at his inventory.

not much, but I suppose it's slightly better than old junk.

We have a shovel of our own, (and they never break or get lost or anything) so we don't need that, and we don't smoke, so we don't need the weed. The white hand is useful later, which helps us masquerade as a servant of Saruman, but since we have Hawkeye, we can instead opt for the "We'll just kill you" option.

The prybar, on the other hand, is useful, so we buy it and give it to Pippin, who is at least for now, our tool guy.

We then go north and east, to the Buckland bridge. Crossing would be ordinarily something I'd avoid, but I want to drop the !elbereth so we can pretend we fought the Nazgul in the cave. See, crossing the bridge allows us to take the East road to Bree, without going through the Old Forest, but while the Old Forest is a pain in the ass to navigate through (if you don't know the trick, or if you aren't an anal-retentive weirdo who keeps an old map they made years ago), it also lets us meet Bombadil, and all the assorted goodies there.

So instead we head South, to Farmer Maggot's place, who tells us to look at paragraph 24 that his son was messed up by a Nazgul passing through, and could we fetch a healer. (In the books he does mention that a Nazgul knocked on a his door, asking for Baggins., but no mention of the black breath.)

We head back across the bridge and a bit into the forest, and we conscript The healer. I always thought it was a bit interesting that he doesn't have herb lore, which would let him use the athelas we could trade to him. We bring the healer back, and Farmer Maggot rewards us for saving his son's life with some shrooms. And they're not even the good sort of shrooms, although they'll heal us 3 points a hit.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

We continue onward in our quest to get away from the nazgul without ruining more undergarments than strictly necessary, and knowing that Tolkien draws from old Germanic myths where creatures of evil are averse to running water deciding to head for the ferry, and picking up our last hobbit along the way.

He ain't half bad. The only new skill he adds is "boat" (which can be used a grand total of once, and in an area that you don't really need to go to anyway.), and it highlights one of the problems with the , that most of the non-combat skills, you only need one person in the party to have, and as easily available as they are, new guys with them are mostly just there to shoot a bow or something. But I do want to collect the "core" Fellowship.


Heading a bit southeast, we run into an elf named Cirband

Or maybe his many millenia of living have made him senile. Despite not knowing his own name, he does say some useful things, queries about the Old Forest will have him tell you about Old Man Willow, and he'll warn you about the Barrow downs being dangerous. He doesn't say though, why he's in the shire, or what Elrond charges for rent. (nobody seems to have money in this game, maybe he got evicted.)

We follow the road north, and while we'll want to go to Brandy hall, I want to hit some of the surrounding stuff first. So we go north and across the street, to where the Cotton's live. Sadly, you cannot get Sam to do anything inappropriate with his girlfriend, she won't even talk to you., but she does give Sam a "token", which we add to our growing collection of Stuff That Will Be Useful Because This Is An Rpg.

We head further north because it's late, and we want some booze. Our stubby dwarf is overcome by the thought of ale, and leaves our august company. It is one of the most pointless gestures in the game, since you can just recruit him right back. Maybe, since your stock of silver pennies doesn't go down, he remembers he has no money to buy anything at the place.

The bartender, in the grand tradition of being an idiot, claims that the human over in the corner is a witch "Because they're all witches and wizards."

So we go chat to her. (Now that we saved Hawkeye, he needs a girlfriend) And what do you know, that Bartender wasn't completely moronic after all. She seems well informed, although some of the things she says are troubling.

Still, in what may be an error in judgment, we recruit her too, since she can do actual magic.

I'm too lazy to go back in the thread and check to see if I explained magic before; and besides, if I did, any of my readers probably forgot it by now. Basically, you can use a spell anytime, but it costs a few life points (exhaustion, I  guess).  Illuminate is kind of useless, as it basically emulates a torch. There are very few areas so dangerous we can't have a stupid hobbit holding a burning stick to light the way. Unlock does what it sounds like, but again, you can usually use picklock, or a key. It's more there in the case that something is wrong and you lost some members. 

Winterchill, on the other hand, is a combat spell, and it hits *hard*, Athelwyn can probably dish out more damage than any two other characters combined at this point. Countermagic is useful in all sorts of situations where there's magical doodlyfluff that needs to be broken into. Nothing left in the tavern besides overpriced booze, so we pick up our alcoholic dwarf on the way back, and head to Brandy Hall

Unfortunately, crazy old ladies exist in fantasy settings too. You'd think that Merry, you know, since he *lives there* would be able to get in, and maybe that's one of the several good but unlisted reasons she lets us in.

Remember kids, smoking is *REALLY* addictive! A shame, since we really do want to read those books to get some info on the old forest. Since none of us know how to perform an exorcism, we crash in the basement, grabbing Merry's pocket change (10 silver), an old bottle (no booze ), the gate key to the old forest (it's glittering in the bathtub, although why is not clear.) and a pipe and some pipeweed.

You cannot smoke the pipeweed, thus insuring that your fellowship members would come back as ghosts after the Nazgul get them

Still, it makes for a useful bargaining chip, and it is kind of funny, the effects of tobacco on the afterlife.

The ghost leaving allows us to read in the library, which give a number of hints in the regions to come. There are hidden tunnels under weathertop, a few fragmented things about odd artifacts and strange spirits to the east, that we get strange dreams in the house of_______ (Fragment)

Most important though, is this piece, which I'll quote. " To escape the Old Forest maze, find the ruins in the northwest corner, proceed south, then east until you can go no further east, then south. Then follow the long and winding trail. Do not stray on the eastward paths, the true road is south and winding.

Thus armed,with gibberish, we head for the gate and venture into the Old Forest. Good thing we searched the bathtub. The game treats us to a little video of how the Nazgul break into the home that Frodo claimed to have moved too, and how it's a good thing you weren't there.

Cause, I mean, they'd probably get lost in this maze.

[techmaster-glitch]

Wait, I'm confused...the alchoholic dwarf is or isn't still in your party?

[Noone]

Druin leaves when you enter the bar. However, you can re-recruit him at the bar again, so he's still in the party.

Personally I think that it might be a bug, aka you're not supposed to be able to pick him back up, but oh well.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Apologies in advance, this one is going to look weird, a lot of the forest shots look alike.


So, running bawwing and screaming from the Nazgul, we decide that they wouldn't be dumb enough to look for us in a haunted forest. Also, because the gate is magic or something, they can't pick it open or smash it down, so we're reasonably safe.

First step, head northwest. We're looking for some sort of ruins. The forest is getting on our nerves. TBH, (and I know you can't tell from the screenie) we're almost all the way to the ruin by this point, which is roughly the halfway mark. Normally, I get more messages than this, so there's got to be some sort of random call, but I'm not sure what it's based on. Most of them don't do anything, although there are a few (pretty weak) attacks that might get called if you wander into the wrong part of the forest.


Well, here we are. I was hoping for more messages, IIRC there were 5 different types in total, but maybe we'll get lucky on the way out. So remember the directions, we go east, around a loop, to a crossroads, and then the path is "south and winding"


Ow Again, it's actually not that bad. It hits the leader for 1 or 2 damage, (there's also one about being tripped on a root, with the same effect.) I'm again, not really sure why this isn't happening more often, I usually get hit 3-5 times by now.

Round the loop., and we start marching west, and a little bit south, until we get to a tall tree. A little further south is the crossroads, and climbing up does not actually tell us much useful. I liked the metaphor they used here. Remember, once we're on the southward path, don't go east. The true path is south and winding. Once we're on it, there's only one way to go, until We're out! That wasn't so bad, really. In truth, it's a little easier since I'm a nerd who has played this game way too many times. The first time through, (and it's even worse in Moria), you tend to have no idea where you are.


Of course, there's actually an easier way out.

From the beginning, you don't head north, instead going south. When you can't go any further south, head east. Keep going east until you get to a trapped bird Climb up to save the thing (that makes two brown birds helped.), and it shows us something very useful At this point, you can walk up to that little eastern hedge, (if you're not at the right point, run north/south), and eventually you'll port through the thin tree wall. From there, it's a short jog north to the hill. We head east some more, looking for a way across the river we saw mentioned on the hill text.


You know, it's been a long march, I'm sure a quick nap couldn't hurt..


oops. You're given an option to attack the tree, but it's useless. As you can see, we've been stripped down to Frodo and Sam, and we really do need the others. Now, if we went with the "book option", we'd use the word of power !Helphelp, and summon Bombadil, which would get our friends back.  This option, misses out on a few goodies,  so we've got another plan.

Frodo uses perception, which reveals an opening in the trunk. Climbing in would ordinarily sound enormously stupid, but wait, it is. We do it anyway. I've never gotten the next part. It certainly doesn't look like the inside of any tree I've ever seen. Anyway, there are shinies in the cave. There are two hundred silver pennies (more than we've managed to accumulate everywhere else combined), and I give the bow and Smith's ring to Merry. Smith's ring, btw, is supposed to be broken, as much lter, there will be an option to reforge it. How you're supposed to know this when you get it (a fact which should be immediately obvious) is unclear.

Anyway, taking the ring triggers the willow trying to kill us. There are two ways out, well, a way to prevent it from happening (if you use sneak before grabbing the loot), or we can use climb to escape. What's weird is that it's climb that gets you out, and not the skill Swim, (which nobody in the party as of yet has, and doesn't have any actual usage as far as I can tell.

Anyway, that's the forest. Next, we'll loot the surrounding ruins and walk off with anything Tom has in his house that's nice.

P.S., this update had my 100th screenshot taken (although not used, I don't think. I don't put in quite all of them)

EDIT# Fixed the link problems, I think. If anyone is having trouble accessing any of the pictures, yell at me. I promise not to ignore you for any reason save extreme sloth.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Short update tonight, I'm not really feeling it, but I don't want this thread to die out.


After escaping from Old Man Willow and making off with its treasure, we skirt the edges of the forest and head north. Tom Bombadil's house is the other way, but there's some loot to be nabbed. We come across some ruins, but they're empty.

However, a nearby hill yields better results. Using a shovel on the top gets us some shinies



I've yet to find an actual use for the light gem, (one of the few things I don't know in this game ) and we already have a bottle, but a second one may be useful, so I grab all three items, giving the trove to Merry. They never give a number, but there were 200 silver pennies in there, bringing our total to 535.


We continue northward eventually getting to the east road. Traveling on the road itself is dangerous though, so we head north, climb some cliffs, and march west. The area I'm looking for is annoyingly hard to find. We fight a few wolves on the way there, and Hawkeye gets a shallow bite (2 damage points), but it doesn't slow us down much.


Here we are. Doesn't look like much, does it? Using perception reveals that something is buried here, and we need to use the shovel again to dig it up. After grabbing the gem and dagger (Sam takes both), a lone spider attacks us. They weren't very tough when we had 3 hobbits with a torch between us, and this one gets curbstomped too. After that, we make our way back to where we started, near Old Man Willow, ready to meet Tim Benzedrine.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

So we head south across the bridge, quickly coming to a garden. Everything but the pipeweed is useful, so we snatch it all. I do wonder what exactly "dwarfwort" is, because the name suggests something extremely unappetizing.......  but it does heal for four, so it goes in the pack.


Avoiding the house of the man whose garden we almost certainly looted for now, we head south until we run into Ruddyoak, a tree spirit. He has some useful information, that a hostile tree named Black Alder is nearby, and that we should head to the Master's (i.e. Tom Bombadil's) house. Who are we to argue with the gigantic tree dude?


Entering Tom's house for the first time heals all of our wounds, but we didn't have that much damage to begin with, and sadly, it's not a permanent effect, which would make the house an attractive base. He has some hot food in the kitchen (northeast) and we grab that before heading over to talk to him near the fireplace at the west side of the house.


As in the books, he asks to handle the ring and we let him. After he treats it like a carnival toy, he gives it back to Frodo and gives us the word of power !Bombadil, which can be used to summon his help later. (I believe Helphelp also works) He's a treasure trove of information, a good deal of it useless, but he tells us about the local dangers, (Black Alder and Old Man Willow) and tells us to avoid the barrows if we can, and skirt them to the west if we can't. Of course, barrows tend to have treasure......


We then go upstairs, and visit Goldberry. She's apparently very sick, and needs some fresh lilies. (Doctors, you may now rant about traditional medicine) She says we might have to deal with her mother, Withywindle, and that to get her help, we might need a token to show we're legit. It's the first real "quest" in this RPG, and completing it will give us a +2 to all the stats except strength to everyone in the fellowship. Because of that, we're in no huge hurry, as I want to get everyone in the main fellowship recruited before we start pumping stats.

We take a nap in the bedroom to the south. Paragraph 123 says that the ringbearer has a strange dream of a small brown bird in an eagle's eyrie. It tells us to say ANGMAR at the "stone alone". While it will prove helpful in the future, I always thought Angmar was an odd word of power for the good guys to be using.....

We go southeast, to the pool Goldberry mentioned. (And I didn't), but we run into a little problem. I would like to note, that in the books, when Tom rescues the hobbits from Old Man Willow, he is gathering lillies for Goldberry, and notes that it'll soon be too cold for them. So now we have to deal with an annoying river spirit. We head south, and follow the stream up to the cave, where a torch (currently held by Athelwyn) is needed to light the way.

Heading east we come to a pool, which has a "spider sword" In actuality, it's a dagger, although I didn't find that out until I used it in combat, and the first time through, I didn't get anyone who I thought could use swords (Hawkeye died my first time through) until I picked up Aragorn. I toss it to Sam and have him give his own mundane dagger to Pippin.

We continue onward into the cave, winding generally east and south. There's nothing that attacks us, fortunately.  Eventually, we come to a weird wall of what is supposed to be ice. The torch is pathetically insufficient to melt it. However, Athelwyn's countermagic is able to get us to the other side.

Rule of RPGs #1. When in a room with no obvious purpose, use the skill that lets you look more closely. Voila Merry grabs the Ice staff, which will let us walk over lava. It's not as nice as it sounds, this game was before the fully thought out RPG era, where they'd make sure to have some sort of nice loot behind an otherwise inaccessible patch of lava. Still, it'll keep us from getting fried if we're careless somewhere. We don't need any special procedures to walk back out.

To the west of the ice wall, sits Withywindle. We show her Goldberry's token,  and she tells us that we need the "springstone." (Something to do with the power of spring and making things warmer? She suggests we get ruddyoaks help, and to pick up a red acorn for that purpose.

So we leave the cave, and find a queer place for a red oak tree. (I've never even seen a red oak myself, but okay.....) We grab an acorn, and bring it back to Ruddyoak, who joins our party His stats are pretty decent, but he won't stay in the party long enough to get into any scrapes. In fact, his sole purpose is to avoid fighting Black Alder when we go fetch the springstone.


Grrr. You're supposed to be able to get a message about Ruddyoak tripping on something buried, being a "long-rooted fellow" (huh!?), but I can't seem to get it to trigger. Regardless, if we use a shovel here, we get  that damn rock.

We head back toward's Withywindle's cave, and Ruddyoak gets homesick. We flog the brick, and finally, although like I said I'm going to hold off on giving the lillies to Goldberry just now.

That concludes the immediate area around Tom's house. Next stop, the Barrow Downs.



WARNING! I AM ENDING THIS POST WITH LITERARY THEORY! FEEL FREE TO SKIP!
For my final thoughts, I just wanted to say that in the books, I always enjoyed the chapter with Tom. He gets a *lot* of flak, which I think is unfortunate; mostly centered around how he's "useless for the plot." I think most of those objections are rooted in a somewhat faulty assumption, that the main plot is the whole war of the ring and the aftermath. Now, it's not a wildly inappropriate assumption, the book series is called "The Lord of the Rings" after all.

But look at things a little more closely. Except for the brief interlude where captured by the Uruk-hai, the halflings are at every major event that the fellowship participates in. It's Merry and Pippin who are at least present when Fangorn marches, and we all know they're the ones who really beat Saruman, and then they split up to the two main participants in the war against Mordor, with Merry in Rohan and Pippin in Gondor. Frodo and Sam's part need not be rehashed. And the book doesn't end with the ring's destruction. Sure, you'd probably need the chapter where things wrap up in Gondor, but then you get two more about how they all go home, and the scouring the Shire. Tolkien says it himself in the introduction to the Fellowship. This is a book about hobbits!

So recast Tom's actions in that light, the next time you think of the book.


I actually have my own pet theory concerning him though, which is more concerned with narrative form than narrative substance. Tolkien uses the fiction of the "finder" as opposed to author, that he was the latest of a series of translators of the actual Red Book of Westmarch, the mythical chronicle of the legendary events. Like other myths, it has been passed down for thousands of years, and along the way, it's almost a given that things have gotten a little blurry. If anyone ever reading this thread gets the chance, I heartily recommend The Greek Myths, by Robert Graves, who delves into the phenomenon far more eloquently than I can.

Tom, to me, represents a foreign element, a sign that the narrative isn't all as coherent as a novel, and pushes the proper genre of LOTR into "fictional mythology". He's obviously powerful, as he's unaffected by the ring and is the "master" of the Old Forest. But he doesn't fit into the main cosmology of Men, (hobbits are technically an offshoot of men) Elves, and Ainur. Furthermore, he speaks of how he's the Eldest, he mentions being around before the "Enemy" came. Since when he recites his list he seems to be going backwards through time and mentions things like the first tree, he's almost certainly referring not to Sauron, but to Morgoth. And Morgoth, if you read the Simirillion, was the first Ainur to visit Arda, and that was before they got around to creating life.

I still can't decide whether Tom would be a "later" or an "earlier" addition, although I lean towards the latter. The whole Simirillion complex is very Miltonesque, with Illuvatar as God and Melkor as Satan. Tom seems to fit the idea more of some sort of fertility or localized forest deity, which is obviously more of a Pre-Christian belief set.  Either way, he's something that got grafted on, or an earlier story, with a different set of characters, got muted around a new belief system.

I'd love to talk this over with anyone who's interested, but I have this sinking feeling that I'm not going to get any takers........... So I'll just end this update. Hope you guys enjoy reading.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I have to say, I'm interested in your take on Tom. I'm not sure I have a lot to offer to the conversation, since I haven't read the Silmarillion, but other than that...

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

So we lurch out and head eastwards, towards the downs. If you recall, Tom warned us to stay away from the barrows, which is undoubtedly the safer alternative, misses out on all the treasure the dead dudes have.

So we head east from withywindle's cave, climbing the cliffsides, until we hit some ruins.  As said before, this place is not hugely safe, especially at night. Wights are slow, but they hit hard and seem to ignore about half the damage we inflict on them. Fortunately, this one starts a good deal off from us, which gives us a chance to shoot arrows and use the winterchill spell on them from a distance.

Athelwyn gets the first hit in., and as it plods towards us, we manage to hit it good. At the end, we bring it down without it striking us, although Athelwyn loses some hp from spellcasting fatigue. At least there's only one, and it started a good way away from us.


Following the wight attack, we head north, coming to a strange stone circle. What do you mean it might be dangerous to approach at night? Oh. Fortunately, they're just normal humans, and not really all that tough. They do manage to put a few dings in us though. Reasoning they must have been there for a reason, we try perception first, which yields nothing, and on our second attempt, we use the shovel, which is a bit more useful. The stash has 200 more silver pennies, bringing our total up to 735, and elfdraught is a kind of food, healing four. Since we now have 3 bottles however, we toss one away. Note, you can never recover a discarded item, so be careful what you throw out. This doesn't happen everywhere, mind you.

Curious, we test the effect again, throwing out some pipeweed, getting another weird hint. Sadly, we have no more total dead weight items, so we start throwing out the rations, getting This and that. Throwing out a fifth item loops the cycle over, so we're done with the stone circle, costing us 3 rations, some pipeweed, and a spare bottle.

Ranging to the west shows more ruins, but there's something different about these. The shovel comes out, and we seem to collapse the floor or something, falling into a cellar. Despite it saying that hurt, we take no damage. Not everyone seemed so lucky.  Perception reveals a scroll, which falls apart when we touch it, "but putting it together like a puzzle, you manage to read the following:

I have discovered more... stolen by the orcs from Moria. The orcs have reopened an ancient place called Gorthad, near the Downs. It would appear that..... of Moria that items crafted by our ancestors... by the orcs and their masters. Many of our treasures may be in this region......

It is said that the orcs have found the Golden Wheel, the most elusive of all the treasures of Durin. Its use is unclear, but it is said that words are recorded..... the Black Book of Gorthad. It is a foul name, hinting at great evils.

I will scour the Barrow Downs for more clues, then I will head for Bree. This is a dangerous place, even the Rangers avoid it. I know enough......"


It is signed by someone named Thuri.

This teaches us that the game developers couldn't write a candle next to Tolkien . More directly, there's something called the Golden Wheel in the area, which we Really Want Bad. Using climb gets us out of the basement, and we head further north, coming to our first barrow.

Another wight lurks inside. Fortunately, this one kind of sucks at fighting.. It seems to think for some arcane reason that our pack pony is the greatest threat. Notice the small difference in the health bar to the left. That's our entire party piling on the damn thing. Barrow Wights are annoyingly tough to hurt.

However, the battle yields some spoils, which is a rare thing. We get 2 daggers, a "leaf belt" (supposedly makes you harder to hit) another gem, and some money. If I had been paying closer attention, I'd have done this before the stone circle, since the extra daggers are kind of useless now. There are 150 silver pennies in the trove, bringing us to 885.


We head north and a bit to the west, finding a huge barrow. However, when we approach the entrance, a dark fogfalls over the party. While in the fog, the wights kidnap party members one by one. Fortunately, they'll bring us inside the great barrow, which is where we want to go anyway. So we just wander in circles occasionally losing people, until the inevitable happens.


Everyone but the leader is stunned in some kind of spell, and only the leader can act. Perception gives us *another* dagger, (that's 4, I think), and using it buys us a little time. This, I think constitutes an emergency, so we bring out the big gun. Using the word of power brings in the big guy. There's not even a fight, the wights just cease to exist. Sadly, his uberstats won't be with us for long, as Tom leaves the instant we step out of the barrow. However, this little episode dispels the fog outside, as well as canceling many of the random wight attacks in the area.

The wights do have a treasure chest, with another 200 silver pennies (1085) and a barrow dagger for each hobbit. The barrow daggers are significantly better than regular daggers, but they don't seem to be quite as powerful as a sword when used by Hawkeye. I'm still not certain whether or not they're as good as the spider sword, they seem about even. Sadly, the strongest character in the game declines to slum with us any longer, so we cheer ourselves up by raiding the last barrow in the area. Whoops, lost our footing there.

Looking about, we find a skeleton, with a gem clutched in its hand. Perception tells us that his skull has a hole in it, and his neck was broken. What could possibly have happened to him, I wonder? Well, that's not here or there, so we grab the gem. Oops. They're right on top of us too, so we switch from bows to barrow daggers for the hobbits. Frodo gets a punch to the gut for 6 on their first attack, but we take down one wight with our first round of attacks. With the barrow daggers, our hobbits can actually hurt the things, and the fight is much simpler, although now Athelwyn and the Pony are quite badly wounded, and Frodo is moderately wounded. The pony I don't hugely care about, but I make the hobbit and the sorceress take a snack break. We then leave the tomb.

We keep going further north, trying to make it back to at least near the road, but come across and odd barracks.(forgot to take a screenshot, sorry) Why they're asleep in the middle of the day, I'm not sure, but we decide that sneaking is best. The stack of papers has today's date with the words NAN CURUNIR (Which, if you're waaaaaaay to obsessed with LOTR, should already tell you whose men these are), along with a tally of pipeweed sold.

Further north is another Sharkey's shipping shop. It has some items We stop to grab a prybar, and talk to the proprietor, Mr Oldenad. I do wonder exactly how much business they can be doing out here so close to the barrow downs, but we actually are pretty near the road now, maybe they get business off of travelers or something. Talking to Oldenad reveals that Sharkey is from somewhere down south, heading north to avoid the troubles at home, and the Rangers don't like these outposts. Actually, he's not very good at keeping secrets. Exactly how this works is not clear, given that any idiot can buy one for 35 silver.... But I refuse to finance any more of the traitor wizard's endeavors.

Oldenad will cry if we try to go down the stairs, (and refuse to sell us items), but fortunately, there's another way in. We head west to the cliff-face, and follow the cliff north, until we come to the secret door. Pippin makes the door not quite so locked anymore, and we head on in. This is not a place with nice people, but fortunately, Saruman's forces seem not to have learned the "Don't fall asleep on guard duty" rule. We sneak up to him, use perception, and nab a "rusty key". Heading south from the guardpost, we find a chest and some crates. We pick the lock, and inside is some money and food. (Only about 30 silver pennies this time, we hit all the huge treasure troves.) Athelwyn and Frodo gobble down the rations for 2 more health each. If we head east from the chest, we find stairs up, which lead to Oldenad's shop, so we go to the west instead, taking a different set of stairs down.

Following the passage about, we run into three guards. We didn't buy the VIP pass, so we show them our "get in free" daggers. Athelwyn and Pippin each get hit for four in the tussle. A later round sees druin hit for 6 *winces*, but we put all three of the guards down. We head north, into a cave like complex, where there are some exhausted slave orcs. We relieve them of their digging tools (2 shovels and a pick). Wondering what they might be digging up, we use a pick ourselves, and because we are the awesome PCs, we find in 5 seconds what the orcs were probably digging for for months without success, the Golden Wheel. However, digging it up has some unintended consequences. Some opaque green gas shoots out, and a cold malevolant voice says it is now free to do its master's bidding. Oops. But trust me, the wheel is worth it later.

We go back to the guardpost, and go south this time, coming across the book mentioned in the dead dwarf's note. We have a palpable sense of evil coming from it, so rather than reading from the book, (which tells us some useful stuff but messes up our characters, we have Athelwyn use her torch and burn the book. I wish ordinary things did this when you set them on fire. On the way back, we notice a little outlet to the east, which turns out to be a woman's dressing room, (revealed in paragraph 59, which is too long to bother transcribing.) We read the diary, saying that "Rumor holds that Baggins is moving to Buckland. I shall arrange to meet him there."

Crap.

Actually though, she's not really that tough, especially since she's at like half health from before. Even if she's not, the AI doesn't use her spells for whatever reason, instead just attacking with whatever weapon you had her equipped with.

She doesn't even get a chance to attack before we off her, and we redistribute her stuff. That's it for the lower floor, so we head back to the crate room, and take the south exit this time. More guards. If you haven't alerted the place by fighting the guards in the other floor, they're not immediately hostile, and will ask for the password (Nan Curunir), however, we're here to free a prisoner, and if they see him, they'll attack anyway, so sooner or later a fight with these thugs is unavoidable. We take some more hits, fighting them. Pippin is now in seriously bad shape, but we win the fight and get some food into him, bringing his health back up to 8.

The aforementioned cells hold a prisoner, one Nob Appledore, who we spring, using the rusty key to unlock his cell. Interestingly, there is a "nob" working at the prancing pony in the books, as the stablekeeper, and when Frodo is talking to the people in the common room, he notes that Appledore is a name of one of the hobbit families in the town. It seems to be the same guy, since when you bring him to the pony, he'll rush off in tears, glad to be home.

His stats are abysmally low, and he's there mostly as the escort guy. I'm not even bothering to give him a weapon. Exploring further, we find another staircase down, which leads to the room of a giant orc named Grimbosh. He demands that we surrender, but doing so loses the game, and besides, there are 8 of us and only one of him. If Athelwyn was still in our party, she'd join him. It takes a while to round that corner when the fight starts, so he's able to hit Merry and Druin before going down, but we kill the uruk. Picking open his chest might have been a mistake, especially since all we get is a lousy letter, detailing some of Saruman's plans in the region, the stone circles and his hunt for the golden wheel.


We make our way out, limping from our wounds, and get ready to head to Bree for the next session.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

We keep going further north, trying to make it back to at least near the road, but come across and odd barracks.(forgot to take a screenshot, sorry) Why they're asleep in the middle of the day, I'm not sure, but we decide that sneaking is best. The stack of papers has today's date with the words NAN CURUNIR (Which, if you're waaaaaaay to obsessed with LOTR, should already tell you whose men these are), along with a tally of pipeweed sold.

So, for those of us who are not quite that obsessed, what's the significance? Other than being familiar with the story and hence expecting orcs and bad guys and ghost and ghoulies to leap out of the woodwork at a moment's notice in all but the ultra-secure places, and even half the time then, the name escapes me...

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

We keep going further north, trying to make it back to at least near the road, but come across and odd barracks.(forgot to take a screenshot, sorry) Why they're asleep in the middle of the day, I'm not sure, but we decide that sneaking is best. The stack of papers has today's date with the words NAN CURUNIR (Which, if you're waaaaaaay to obsessed with LOTR, should already tell you whose men these are), along with a tally of pipeweed sold.

So, for those of us who are not quite that obsessed, what's the significance? Other than being familiar with the story and hence expecting orcs and bad guys and ghost and ghoulies to leap out of the woodwork at a moment's notice in all but the ultra-secure places, and even half the time then, the name escapes me...

SMITE THE NON OBSESSED! PERSECUTE! SMITE!


err, sorry. Lots of languages bounce around in Middle Earth. If you recall, Gandalf is called Mithrandir in Gondor and there's one reference to him as Olorin. Most of what we read is in the language roots of the people of Dale and Rohan, who spoke similar tongues.  Saruman is in the same boat, with the name printed being the rohirric name. He's also Sharku/Sharkey, which is orcish. (Old man). Curunir is his Sindarin name, and the area that Isengard is in is called Nan Curunir, eg. "The valley of Saruman."


It's only a tolkien wiki, but this is some evidence.


So when it shows up as a password, in an area near Sharkey's Shipping..........


Sorry about not making things clear, that was a monstrously long post, and I didn't go back to dot every i and cross every t, as it were.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Oh, heck no. No apologies needed.

I did know the Gandalf the Grey / Gandalf the White / Mithrandir / Olorin sequence, and I was aware of Saruman / Sharkey/Sharku, but I get lost int he particular semantics of each part of the history, and I haven't read the books in ten years because the major part of my collection is in NZ, waiting for me to find bookshelf space to put it on...

I'd missed Curinir, though it makes sense now that you mention that.


Tolkien was a fiend for generating new languages. :-/ I, sadly, lack his gift for picking them up, and only have fragments of two or three in use, and a couple other semi-fictional ones, above my own mother tongue, as it were. English, on the other hand, does have roots all over the place...

Thanks for clarifying.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

(Sorry about the delay, I've been busy with schoolwork recently; and then on spring break just had a total breakdown of motivation.)

So we head out from Saruman's little hideout., and make for the road. Along the way, we're ambushed by a trio of bandits. I'm not really sure how many travelers they catch hiding out in the woods like that, but maybe they range out onto the roads. There's a fight, and the Pony is knocked down to 6 hp, and Sam gets tagged for another 3. We're getting irritatingly ragged here. Except Sam and Hawkeye, everyone's down to half hp or less, but Bree is just about the corner.

On the road we encounter a nameless dwarf, who asks if we've been to the Forsaken inn. It actually is mentioned in the book, Aragorn notes that it's a day's ride east of Bree. So since we're on the wrong side of the town, it's a rather odd query. (Maybe he thought we were coming from Bree? I dunno) He doesn't have any particularly useful news, just something about strange lights about the last bridge.

We follow the road down, heading generally southeast, until we reach the gate. We're told that we can't enter Bree at night, although there's a clever (cheap) little way around it. I'll show it at the end of the update. For now though, we just camp right outside until day breaks.


I've been stalling  on how to handle Bree. It's *huge* next to the shire. (which is backwards from the books standard, but hey.) Thing is, there's a ton of conversation paths, and most of them are bouncy. A tells you that Gandalf passed by last spring, spoke to several people, B says that Gandalf is friends with the blacksmith. You go to the blacksmith, ask about Gandalf, and he'll tell you he left a magic shield for Baggins, which you can then claim. Etc.


Actually tracking through the entire town and bringing out every conversation chain in the order that I'd be able to find out if I was playing for the first time is more effort than I have motivation for.


We head into the Prancing Pony inn, and some stuff happens. Nob leaves the fellowship, and heads home (He'll have a reward for us there), and everyone heals 3 hp. A guide I once read said that they're supposed to take any ponies you might have, and that seems supported by a string here, but it doesn't seem to hold out. We check in and give the name Underhill.  (If you're dumb enough to give the name Baggins, you get attacked by 3 goons outside. Easily within our capabilities, but why get into a fight that isn't going to get us anything for winning it?


Anyway, we head into the common room, and chat with a mysterious, weather beaten ranger. It's a shame, you know, here's a game that had the infrastructure to make possibly fake Aragorns. (Gandalf's letter in the books, which has an annoying, stupid quest attached to it here, makes mention to make sure it's the real Aragorn.) Anyway, as per the books, after talking to Strider, Pippin acts like a tard, and Frodo can try to sing to distract the crowd. He manages to accidentally put the ring on, and even more attention is drawn to them. Good going guys!

The upshot of this is that Aragorn goes to the Parlor, which in addition to having six helpings of hot food, (some of which is eaten to erase lingering HP deficiencies.) we find the king of Arnor and Gondor, and all that claptrap. More important to us, he can kick serious ass, even though he has the "default man" portrait. 70 Dex means he's as fast as a Nazgul. Furthermore, he has herb lore, which means that all that athelas we've been lugging around, we don't need to take it to a healer anymore to use it. Aragorn is the best guy for that in the game, getting 12 HP per hit of the leaves.


Anyway, I'll think I'll wrap it up here, being late and wanting to get some kind of update in.










CHEATER'S CORNER.
All the game's triggers work in the following manner. If the party leader steps on area X, effect Y happens. A lot of these areas are thin ribbons, but strung across some kind of barrier. The entrance to Bree is a solid little line along the opening in the wall. The trick is that it doesn't trigger when your followers, who kind of aimlessly shuffle about, cross the line. So you can "hop" over unpleasant triggers, but walking up to them and running around until one of your guys stumbles over the line, and then quickly switching them to the leader, proceeding on your merry way.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Sorry guys, RL has been a pain, and Bree....... kind of sucks in this game, been hard to continue. I'm just going to do a bit of highlighting some of the features of the town, before I can make my escape.


To the west of the Prancing Pony, we have a blacksmith's shop. As a note here, all stores are closed at night in Bree, making this game more realistic than about 75% of RPGs when it comes to scheduling. We dawdle around till daytime and opening, partly because it's not all that safe to walk the streets of Bree at night, as  Nazgul patrol the streets.  By mentioning "Baggins" he gives us a magic shield. Shields aren't technically armor, and as far as I can tell, they reduce your chances of being hit, although by how much I'm not sure. Presumably the magic shield makes you even less hittable than a regular shield.

Heading to the Northeast, we enter Nob Appledore's house, and he gives us something quite nice for saving him. It's another tool, and this one has some specialized use. We give it to the dwarf.

In addition, living in a hobbit hole nearby is one Rayf Brogan, a (small) human and leader of the local brigands/mafia. He stole the other half of Gandalf's letter, and what I think is *supposed* to happen, is you go hunting for the second half, he demands this otherwise useless item called the Torc of Maladan, you go find it, give it to him, he gives you the other chunk of paper, and you use the info to go get Aragorn. But since the whole thing starts in the Prancing Pony, you might as well pick up the ranger right away. Despite the warning, I've been unable to find "fake" Aragorns, and Rayf won't even talk to you when the ranger is in the company, as his people have had numerous clashes with the last Dunedain in Arnor.


There are some other stores, but aside from the blacksmith they mostly duplicate items we could have gotten, (and did acquire) earlier, and there are two other potential companionsyou can pick up. One is a hobbit named Ned Bushdock. If you want him in the party, you first have to break into his home, where he greets you with a rather odd lack of fear, or surprise. However, despite being supposedly the sturdiest hobbit in Bree, his stats are somewhat underwhelming and he has no gear, magic, or skills. His only real virtue is that he's expendable, but I'm not going to bother with him.  Hell, even the pony is better.

Speaking of ponies, Bill Ferny offers to sell us one Somewhat oddly, he refers to it as a nag, whereas in the book the pony was also named "Bill". He charges 12 silver pennies (About 3 times what it was worth, according to Tolkien), but you can cheat him by using the talk-recruit path instead of the get path to add the beast to the party. Another meatshield acquired.

There's also a healer, if we needed healing, and a library, which contains a few tidbits about Weathertop, but I am *sick* of this town, and we're heading for the gate. If anyone wants to see anything else about Bree, I'll go hunting, but if nobody has any objections, I'll take a look at Staddle and Coombe, the neighboring villages next update.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I believe you might have those image links slightly wrong. But other than that, yeah, go ahead.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Thanks for the heads up. Also fixed some spelling and phrasing errors. However, I simply cannot get the link to the screenshot of Bill Ferny selling the pony to work, so I'm uploading it here. (I hope)



http://s75.photobucket.com/albums/i297/Ur_Vile_Wedge/LOTR%20screenshots/?action=view&current=lord_193.png


argh!@@E#!@$!


Here's the link, I can't get anything more clever to work.


And I need a less pretentious title for the OP.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

So we head north to Archet, seeing no evidence of the hill that was so prominent in the books. Archet has two major pieces of interest. The inn sells mushrooms extremely cheaply. It's the best deal on food in the game, with 3 hp for every silver. Furthermore, the healer likes mushrooms and gives us some nice stuff for some.


We then run on south to Staddle. If I had been bothering to record the conversations throughout Bree, I'd have about a dozen people telling us to go to the Curio Shoppe down there, (although mostly that's a politeish way of saying "Get lost") Once there, I look at the inventory, and wonder how he stays in business. Still, the green skull is useful, so I grab one.

Back up to the main road, and head east. In the books,the Forsaken inn is about a day's ride from Bree, here,it's a ten minute walk. Maybe that's why the Nazgul can track us so easily. Not really having any particular reason to stand there and duke it out with a ringwraith, we take to the cellars and hide.

Oh look, the item I got a minute ago is conveniently used here. Using the skull gives us some directions, to where a "treasure" lies in the cellar. You don't actually need to be told to dig it up, and even if you don't get it here, there's another copy in Moria, but I feel a little skeezy just grabbing it.  Anyway, at the proper spot, you can dig with a shovel to get a Lady Token. It's not clear from the game, but these are from Galadriel, in the days when Moria and Lorien were friendly trading partners. How it wound up in a basement in Arnor is beyond me.

Anyway, we pocket our prize, and find a bush of athelas outside.




We have a choice now, which I'll leave up to reader vote. We could head directly for Rivendell, and progress with the game. Alternatively, we could go explore Weathertop. The thing is, aside from Book immersion, there's actually nothing *at* Weathertop. There's some odd dungeons to explore and creatures to fight (including a possible encounter with FIVE nazgul, which will certainly massacre the entire party), but there is not a single piece of useful treasure in there. We can get a duplicate of the !Luthien Word of power, and we can get another piece of Anduril, but you only need 2 of the three to reforge the sword (No, I don't get it either); so the area is useful if you've missed something, but we haven't so far. Anyway, up to you guys.


Title suggestions are also welcome

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

So... if you get the piece of Anduril from up on weathertop, can you forge the sword early? Or are we just stuck as it is?

As for encounters, is it likely to help level anyone, or are there better ways to do that?

Less pretentious titles: "What I did on my vacation" by Frodo Baggins?

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Going to shoot for the update later, and since voting has been slow........


Basically, to reforge Anduril, you need 2 of the 3 pieces. We've got two, one in the ghost's cave, and a second in Hawkeye's cave, both in the Shire. Since we have them, we don't really need the third, which can be found on weathertop.


As for encounters, no, they don't really help. In some ways, this is almost more like a hybrid of an adventure game and an RPG than a straight up RPG. You don't gain levels or statistic points through fighting; only through accomplishing certain quests, which might entail fighting to get through,  but usually aren't what pushes your stats up. So far, we haven't gained *ANY* statistic points, our only improvement being acquiring better gear. (Although if you recall,  doing Goldberry's quest improves all your stats except Strength. I've been holding off on completing that in order to get all the fellowship members on board before triggering it)


As for Weathertop, there are to my knowlege zero stat boosts, and aside from the Anduril piece, nothing really valuable gear-wise.