LOTRO - Riders of Rohan

WOW!!! What else can I say about this expansion?

Turbine seems to have put everything together extremely well from a technical point. The patch loaded with few issues and the worlds stayed operational as they should have.

I know they had a few issues that they had to address, but such is the nature of the beast. I still see a few things like the screen going to 'loading' and the results being that you aren't where you thought you were but nothing serious.

I grabbed Tannras and headed for the bridge into Rohan. I was a little conceerned that I might have trouble with the new content, but the Boars and scruffy characters fell quickly to my quarrels.

I headed into Langhold to see what kind of quests were available. There were some opportunities to be had by the people of the town, but the real quests were located inside the Great Hall. The Thane and his wife had some activities for me to accomplish and off I went.

Between thinning out the population of Salamanders and Wolds, I was pretty busy. As I am more of a traveller by nature, I left some of the quests behind and headed down the road to see what the region had to offer. The road was fairly safe and I travelled as far south as I could. There were a few areas that were a bit dangerous but I was careful and did not have any trouble.

I stopped in at Mansig's Encampment and talked to several officers there and picked up a number of quests to complete. I then found myself at Parth Galen and also grabbed a bunch of quests from these soldiers.

One of the major enhancements to the game is the Temporary Loot Container. It allows me to acquire up to 50 different pieces of loot without filling my bags within an hour. As one tends to hunt similar enemies together, it is easy to acquire 10-20 of 1 item. Once you are done with hunting, the loot can be transferred into your bags and sold, crafted, or sent to your vault.

I would love to see this enhancement added to all players at all levels and not just restricted to Rohan.

The other major enhancement to the game is the War Horse. In order to acquire this horse, you need to run through an extensive set of quests in the correct order. It takes a little while but the result is well worth the effort.

Using the War Horse, on the other hand, is a bit complicated. It will take practice to get good riding him into battle. It is a different game. You can also pickup Legendary Bridles in Light, Medium and Heavy. They go into your Legendary Slots and will level independant of your weapons.

I am really looking forward to how these horses work in the future.

The next set of objectives is to follow the major quest line and that really starts in Harwick. You meet the Thane and are pretty much an outcast. You have to work hard to become welcome or you get kicked out of town.

Once you complete the need to become welcome, you start a huge chain that moves you through the Wold.