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Lord of the Rings Online: Making and Keeping Silver in your 20s
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Lord of the Rings Online Correspondent Jim Braner writes this article full of handy tips for making and holding onto money in Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online.
Middle Earth and all its amenities can very entertaining, but it can also be very expensive. It seems at about level 20 or so you get that "want to buy a horse/pony" panic; or maybe you just want to splurge on that item from the Auction House. Luckily, there are several very easy ways for a level 20ish character to save and make silver in the Lone Lands and North Downs.
The first and probably most obvious is to stop buying horses to take you between the various towns. It is nice and saves time, but the 20 silver to take you from Bree to Ost Guruth really adds up. Not only are you out the 40 silver on a round trip, but also anything you can pick up along the way. Depending on your level, there are plenty of wargs, boars, and goblins to slay while you walk. You get their xp and a decent amount of copper from the loot. If you are a prospector on a horse, you are passing up a lot of opportunity. There are something like 15 common spots that ore appears just a short distance off the road. Wood is a little less common, but gathered up near the spots with bunches of, you guessed it, trees. So walk around and gather it up! After all, nothing says walking from town to town has to be boring. With all your gathered items, hit up the /trade channel and sell it. With that said, please don't run from Bree back to Thorin's Gate for any reason. The 1 silver for a fast travel is a negligible expense when you look at the time saved.
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Read about Making and Keeping Silver in your 20s
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I don't really think making silver/gold is a huge issue in LOTRO.
It's one of the things I like about it. Sure, you might have to forgo some fast travel or take a play sessoin or two to do some mining but one should be good to go. Heck, there was a point that I just killed trolls for about 10 to 13 silver each during a play session. Going back to vendor the little stuff when the bags got full and then going back to the trolls.
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I really take issue with articles that are so generalized that they make the reader make assumptions that will make a player's gameplay a bad experience.
How do you intend on prepping hides and wood without the necessary profession and skills within? What professions/skills are required to prep hide/wood? What about the ore? Woodworkers can work with wood and hides, but not ore; swordsmiths can work with ore, but not leather; scholars can work with leather, but not ore (even though they get a swordsmith skill); prospectors can work with wood, leather, and ore, etc. etc. etc. Oh, prospectors can tailor. And how do you intend on making those staves and bows without the right profession? Oh and you said make some armor for yourself? How? Again, what profession? Does it make sense for a guardian or champion to take up tailoring when they can use heavier metal armors? BTW: You forgot to mention that you cannot achieve a critical success on a crafted item unless you have mastered that current tier. So if you are looking to crit items, I guess you won't be selling those required resources, right?
Your article infers that you don't have to repair unless you die. Not true. Regardless of what class you are, your armor and weapons take damage from a creature damaging you. You should repair every time you go back to town. This way you don't forget. Is there a cost, sure, but a broken piece of armor or weapons is a bad thing and much more expensive to repair later.
Farming for materials is a sure way to make money. Gather and sell on the Auction House. Sometimes you can get lucky on the /trade channel but Auction House is where you can make the most. Buy/Low sell high can be profitable for you, or you can just undercut current prices to sell your items quickly.
Best consistant money maker I know (other than working the auction house and crafting highly sought after items) is working deeds. The insane amount of items dropped by the creatures you find sell at vendors for some pretty good coin. Try to maintain a clean set of packs to minimize going back and forth to the vendors. BTW: Deeds are achieved by killing a set number of creatures. Each deed has two levels. The named portion or first part of the deed, and the actual reward achieved after killing the 2nd set of creatures. The reward is usually a trait you can slot with a Bard so that you can "beef/buff" your character up more. Look up deeds/buffs on http://www.lotro.turbine.com. Note that if you don't like grinding, this isn't for you because deeds are a real... grind.
Hunt humanoids (including undead) for usable items and recipes. Hunt animals/creatures for money (selling the animal parts they find). Note that items and recipes take up a lot of space in your backpacks. Items dropped by animals stack usually. Another note: Sometimes you will find parts and items you can also sell from Humanoids (i.e.-broken armor and weapons), but realize, and again, they do drop items and recipes that take up space. Not all recipes are popular so you will have to research the market to see if the recipe is highly sought after (i.e.-decent one shots) and worth putting on the Auction House.
BTW: You can find wood nodes AWAY from trees in various areas of the Lone Lands. It's not always near trees per se.
If you REALLY want to make some money in today's environment, farm Dwarf Iron (Trollshaws). It's required for Artisan and Master level metal crafting and in high demand today. Especially for guild crafting fanatics.
Farming is no where near as profitable as it once was. Personally, it's a waste of time and resources.
I think that's enough for now.
I really wish MMORPG would get authors that know what they are talking about in regards to gaming (same problem with WoW writers) and would be a lot more informative in their posts.
Hasta,
Nieves
Former owner of UOPowergamers.com
Gotta agree with Nieves.
This article was 99% useless, even to a beginner player.
To anyone who's played LotRO for a while, the article contained nothing we didn't already know. To a beginner, it contained advice too general, or misleading (Nieves point about the article's failure to take into account what is required to do all the different crafting the article recommends).
MMORPG's articles tend to be pretty useless, and I mostly void wasting my time on them. On this one occasion, I thought there might be a clever tidbit about high-demand items.
Instead, the recommendation was to avoid speedy horse-travel, and spend my time grinding animals and gathering. Blech. That's obvious. And not fun.
I WANT to read an article about how to make the most money for my time and have the most fun. I'm NOT interested in reading an article that tells me the more I grind the more money I'll have. duh.
I'll be making it a point to continue avoiding MMORPG articles, particularly those by this author.
One of the fastest ways to make money that I've found is to only repair items that have a remaining durability under 30. This reduces the need to to waste money repairing items that may not wear down enough before you've replaced them with upgrades and found items. When the one item turns yellow on a quest run, that's your signal to check all our items durabiltiy. For example, as a Loremaster I almost never used my staff in combat and rarely would get into melee thanks to good pet management. So rarely need to blow cash on repairing my staff because I tend to replace it with a quest reward, crafted item, or a deal I picked up in the AH.
Of course this changes as you reach higher and higher levels and you tend to keep your items for longer periods before replacing them. But by then, cash shouldn't be a problem.
In my experience ive found that hunting trolls is good silver (and XP) while most of the stuff here is crap! And is there a list of items that help you critical? I'm a Armor smith with Iron tools wich give a base 5% tohit but if their are items that up even that a resorce link would have been nice.
Another thing ive found useful is just to be a nice player. I know 2 jewlers and a forester. They need medium sturdy and prestine hides or bloodstones and rubies for skill advancment. I need polished rubies and boiled leather for my skill. By giving them any rubies saphires, wood, leather etc i find and only ask back for boiled and polished rubies they get skill ups, pocket money from polished rubies/light hides andi get what i need to skill up.
And now that i have masterd expert i make them armor for free. Networking is the key to success. Make friend. Trust me friendship pays off
Eh, I thought this was all good advice. Though, my highest level character is 14.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
Ive been in the game since the very first day of the Beta and I have to say so long as you "pay attention" making money is just not difficult at all and waiting until things are down to durability 30 or less is just silly frankly always keep your gear repaired whenever you visist a vendor is my rule personally speaking.
The key to making money is harvesting (i.e killing creatures) is to know what to keep and what to leave on the floor.. most people are under the impression that picking everything up is the best way to maximise money, but it isnt, certains item stacks have far greater value than others.. by all means pick up everything if you must, but lose lesser value stacks in favour of greater value ones.
As for making money with Resource Gathering and Crafting, although it is true some crafted items are definite money spinners due to popularity (certain jewellery items and specific cloads etc.. spring to mind) its by far less hassle and far easier and quicker to make substantially more money selling stacks of unrefinied resources or crafting components.
another sure fire money spinner is taking down certain elites in order to farm shards of various types as they are ALWAYS in demand (especially Ruby Shards).
On the whole though it depends what you want to do with your evenings play.. personally id sooner be questing and doing instances than spending the whole night farming for cash.. fortunately when you want to buy a mount and in order to pay housing/kin house upkeeps tends to be the only times you really need to farm for cash. although sometimes you'll find yourself farming cash crops (metaphor, not literally farming is in agriculture) in order to buy certain items or crafting recipes especially if you are one of those people who only likes to play one character as opposed to alts who support each other with differing crqafting/harvesting skills.
It is good advice, I had money troubles in my L20's too, and it wasn't until reading a forum post similar to the OP that I started being able to save. I play a Guardian, and the reward for keeping agro is high repair bills. And when I hit L35, I had enough for a horse and a bit left over. But it sure would have been nice to have had a house too!
Thanks for the feedback, all. It seems I did assume readers that weren't experienced with LotRO as that is the audience I was looking to address. The article was also aimed at things to do while going about questing or what rather than making a special point of doing something else.
Good call on Deeds, SNieves. They are an excellent use of time that will greatly influence your latter game play.
Your idea that 'not spending money to travel' seems to be the whole central focus of your 'guide' which is both simple common sense and somewhat flawed.
In my view the quicker you get to a place, the quicker you do quests and the quicker you level up to those levels where money isnt as much a problem (not to mention the gear you get for those quest rewards)
Money is not really an issue (your first and only real big expense concern is at 35), speed is the issue! folks should concentrate on leveling from 20 - 25 even 30 as quick as damn possible. While I agree that chosing your horse travels wisley is important, its by no means "the ultimate way to save money"
You would have been better off advising people to NOT spend their money on the auction as quests give you item rewards that often means you dont need to buy at auction. Ineed - selling items at the auction is a much better way of making money for those horse rides - Often a crafting item (drop) only sells at the vendor for 1silver - so why not put it on the auction for 5 silver? - a bargain guaranteeing it will be sold and paying for your luxurious travel arrangments.
The only thing in your article I found of any use was about the hillmen, also the fact that orc's and goblins in certain area's do indeed drop money. But you could have also mentioned that humanoid mobs drop recipes, weapons, gear and gems - also worth regular trips to the auction.
Of course farming resources can be worth money, but you fail to realise that these resources take valuble inventory space - so the more farming you do the more you MUST travel to Bree! which, btw is the only place you can auction - Esteldin doesnt have an AH, so your suggestion that getting to Esteldin is the end of all your worries - its not. Regular trips to Bree's AH is vital to your personal economy, the cost for a horse ride back to est is peanuts.
Sade, it seems to me like you skimmed the article more than read it. Some of the points you mentioned were in the article. I know it's "fun" to pick apart somebody else's work over the internet but, ease up.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
hmm, well, I've re-read the article, and re-read my response, (as I always do before hitting reply)
I've been quite thorough and specific, unlike yourself, so, If you'd be more specific I'd address what on earth it is your talking about - otherwise it seems to me like your the one who has 'skimmed'
As for you "finding it fun" comment, well, not really I think the "guide" is misleading and over generalised (as others have pointed out) so the motivation for my response was not for "fun" but rather in hope that the auther would improve it, or that any one reading who is looking for a guide might get more valid and appropriate imformation.
Good point on picking up those things that stack. I didn' t mention it, my bad. I tend to throw out things that I know won't sell for much versus those that will. Over time, a player will realize that in LOTRO, yellow items are many times not worth as much as a stack of dropped animal parts. I tend to throw away useless yellows for a another space to store stacks of parts. Resource gathering can be done in conjunction of the other activities (killing/questing) and increase money intake or at least make your crafting mastery easier to complete.
These days, my activities include: logging on to Guild Craft, doing quests or deeds with my characters, selling/repairing, rinse repeat. I will say this, once you get to Eregion, the money intake is insane. One of my kinshipmates made 10GP in a few days of questing and deed working. I don't play nearly as much as he does and was able to bring in 6GP over the same time period. Not bad from just general gameplay IMO. BTW: Having a main character that can feed a new character is some good.
Here is another way to decrease expenses: get with a good guild that can supply you with decent beginning equipment. The better gear you have, the better able you are to complete quests and what not.
If you want to make good money, get one of two classes: Hunters for Solo play, Minstrels for group play. Hunters are pound for pound the best killers in the game. Fighting against their own levelspread (no more than 3 above your current level), there isn't anything they can't kill 1 v 1 and sometimes 2 or 3 v1 (assuming it's not a named signature elite at the end of an instance!). A Hunter can also port to all the major cities and be close to ideal farming spots (Hunter with professions that can work Ore, Wood/Hides are ideal). A minstrel is required for all of the good instances. This provides you with opportunities to get the best loot/gear/items/whatever. BTW: I am told Rogues that can resource gather are pretty good. I hear they are great at going after shard and item droppers in various dungeons.
Play the class you like, but if you want to make money, you can't do wrong with Hunters and/or Minstrels IMO.
Hasta.