1 to 20 in 15 Hours (Part 1)

Guide to Power Leveling

By Darkgolem



Power leveling is a great way to get to the levels you wish to play,
passing by areas and quests that you have done several times before,
that you wish to avoid.  You still have to do these quests to gain
the experience, but by power leveling past them, you can get to the
parts of Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) you want to play quickly.



This guide is best used by experienced players of LOTRO.  I
believe that newer players should enjoy the rich low level content
found in LOTRO, rather than quickly leveling past those quests.  I
also do not in any way support power leveling for money, something that
will result in being permanently being banned in MMOGs (Massive
Multiplayer Online Game), a policy I agree with.



Power leveling successfully involves using strategy, planning and
having knowledge of the areas you will be leveling in and the quests in
these areas.  There are basically 4 different strategies to power
leveling which should be used.

Quest Synergy

href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?full=1&set_albumName=album17&id=Soloing&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="Soloing"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album17/Soloing.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 250px; height: 173px;" align="right">Synergy
(as it relates to quests in LOTRO) involves multiplying the
effectiveness of your time spent questing to increase the amount of
experience gained during that time.  Basically, you complete
multiple quests at the same while questing.  To do this, you need
to find an area which has several quests, and make sure these quests
all are related.  



A great example of an area like this is Annunlos in the Lone
Lands.  There are several quests involving killing goblins,
getting items from goblins, killing wolves, getting items from orcs,
and so on.  You can easily complete all these quests in an area
very close to the Forsaken Inn in the Lone Lands.  Doing this you
can earn almost a level and a half in a short time.



The Barrow Downs, the Eastern Bree-Fields, and Combe (the Chetwood) all
have groups of quests with good synergy.

Runner Quests

Runner quests have you going to a place to speak to someone, or in the
Shire, delivering pies or mail.  The thing about runner quests
that make them good for power leveling is the lack of fighting
involved, and how quest experience is derived.  Quests grant
experience based upon the location that you travel to when doing them,
with the exception of the href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=308">Chicken
Quests, which are a bird of a
different color.  Because you can often get these quests several
levels below the level of the quest, and because the experience is
based upon the place you are being asked to travel to, you can get a
fair amount of experience doing these quests.



Some good examples of runner quests are “Bree-Town to Trestlebridge”
and “Trestlebridge to Ost Guruth”  Both of these quests are level
20, and can be received at level 16.  You can easily get a few
thousand experience points just by running to these two areas. 
Certainly the Lone Lands and Northern Bree-Fields are dangerous areas
to travel through, but just a little caution can make these quests
easily doable, since no fighting is necessary.

Effective Fellowships

href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?full=1&set_albumName=album17&id=Othrongroth&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="Grouping Effectively"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album17/Othrongroth.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 250px; height: 173px;" align="left">Certain
quests are difficult when done by a solo adventurer, but are
easy in a well balanced and effective fellowship.  However,
fellowships can be a mixed bag of benefits and detractions, and to
power level with a fellowship, you need to understand these issues and
judge when to join a fellowship to gain experience quickly.



First and foremost, fellowships travel more slowly than solo
players.  There are necessary delays that come with large groups
of people working together.  The only time you should join a
fellowship (assuming the goal is power leveling, there are many other
benefits that otherwise you might consider), you should make sure that
you will benefit enough from the experience you will gain to make it
worth it.



The size of a fellowship is important as a factor when you are
considering whether to create or join one.  Many quests just don’t
need a large group to be completed, and are better completed with a duo
or trio of adventurers.  For example, the “Rangers and Rogues”
quests received from Saeradan (north of Bree) and the “Sword for Life”
quests (from Bree-Town), both bring you in conflict with groups of 3 to
5 brigands at a time.  This requires only a single companion (and
is another example of quest synergy by the way).  A smaller
fellowship is faster traveling than a large fellowship, simply because
there are less people who might cause delays while doing things.



Fellowships have a value for power leveling when you are doing several
quests in a row.  This is because part of the delays that
fellowships cause are found when forming fellowships.  There are
still delays as you play in a fellowship, but less so once you start
adventuring.  Since you are not dissolving and reforming a
fellowship when you do a chain of quests, you end up spending less time
for the experience you would otherwise get.  Book 1 (the later
chapters) and several of the href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=443">Great
Barrow and Barrow Downs quests are
chains of quests which (if done properly) can lead to a rapid gain of
experience, because of having a fellowship.  Note that a
fellowship needs to be effective, and well balanced.  A fellowship
whose members do not work well together, are too low a level for a
quest chain, are an albatross that no power leveler will want to deal
with.

Grinding

A word with negative connotations, grinding refers to repeatedly
killing the same enemies over and over for experience.  Normally,
I do not like grinding for experience.  It provides little
benefit, but most importantly, is boring.



However, there are circumstances where grinding can be
worthwhile.  When grinding, you need to consider your
survivability in the area you are grinding in, the level of the enemies
you are fighting, and the difficulty of the enemies you are
fighting.  If all these three factors are favorable, you can grind
and quickly gain experience.



The survivability you have in an area is based upon the monsters
there.  Some areas have enemies more closely packed than others,
and if enemies are too closely packed, you will suffer constant attack
by enemies while you try to grind.  Minas Eriol, located in the
Lone Lands, contains many groups of goblins, who are relatively close
together.  You wouldn’t want to grind there, because the many
respawning goblins would mob you often.



The level of the enemies you fight is important too.  Your ideal
area will have enemies who are 2 to 4 levels higher than you.  Any
higher will be too dangerous, because your ability to damage your
enemies will decrease so much that you will quickly die.  Any
lower, and you will gain so little experience per enemy defeated that
you end up gaining little benefit from your time spent.



Finally, the difficulty of the enemies you fight is a factor, and a
very important one.  This differs from the level of enemies,
because in this case you are speaking about the actually ability you
have to defeat an opponent quickly as opposed to the level of the
opponent you are fighting.  Certain creatures have a low number of
hit points relative to their level, and when fighting opponents of
lower level, die fairly quickly.  Bats, Crebain and especially
swarms of flies will go down quickly when fighting a character of a few
levels lower.  However, because of the bonus experience you get
from fighting someone of a higher level, you can end up with a fair
amount of experience.



If you wish to see this in action, go to the href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=272">Lone
Lands at level 15 or
16 and head to the Weather Hills.  The Crebain there are easy to
kill, but will grant about 100 or more experience per kill.  10
Crabain will give you as many experience as a level 20 quest, and there
are tons there.  The same applies for the flies of Nen Harn (in
the north east Bree-Land area).  Grinding isn’t always a bad idea.

Welcome to the World of Power Leveling

Power leveling isn’t always a good idea, it can detract from your
enjoyment of a game, making your games almost tedious.  However,
used to get past content you are well familiar with, and done with
planning and good strategy, you can find that power leveling is a fun
thing to do, as you watch yourself zoom past multiple levels to your
level goal.



Tomorrow, look for href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=551">
Part 2 of One to 20 in 15 Hours, where I will be
showing you the exact steps I took to bring a lore master to level 20
in (you guessed it) 15 hours!



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