LOTRO Game Diary 5 - Algarchen and Failed Elf Rescue

So I make my way up north of Gondamon and rightly so, I found an encampment of those damned Dourhand dwarves. They must’ve been in it all this time! Okay the main plotline for the elven folk in LOTRO is predictable by a mile. I mean they started the game with them attacking you.


Found a group of Dourhand dwarves in this narrow valley. Looks like I’m on the right trail. Dispatched all of them on my way. Came to an entrance of the dwarf encampment. I take out the few nearest to me. I spot a more ‘powerful’ variant of the dourhand dwarf, hammering away at the erm…crafting table?



Oh look, a dwarf which says bad puns. This camp is manageable as long as I don’t get swamp with more than two dourhand. I got some extra help as a player character wandered nearby and kited some of the dourhands towards him. Now’s my chance to look for this scout.



Algarchens hiding behind some bushes. What a pussy! He needs help to fend off the guards. He confirms that Avorthal has indeed been kidnapped by the dwarves and he runs off. Now I have to report this back to Gailthin and tell her the bad news. Dourhands! Can you believe these guys?!



Gailthin isn’t pleased. She thinks all the dwarves are in it and is beginning to distrust the dwarves. She asks me to confront Mathi Stouthand, must be the top dog in Gondamon. So I confront Mathi and he feels insulted because he thinks I said he and all the dwarves were plotting this? No! I’m pretty sure I know that the Dourhand clan are not every dwarf. After all this time the game hammering this to the elven character in the plotline, now this? Come on Turbine, those that play this game are more intelligent than your plotline. Especially after all this while, they’ve played up Dourhands to be this evil dwarf clan. Sigh anyway…

Mathi wants me to meet up with this human ranger named Langlas and rescue Avorthal from the Dourhands. At this point, I went out to do some side quests that involved killing foxes and bears. I swear the quota quests seem to be getting more numerous and annoying. They were so annoying I got impatient and I went to meet up with Langlas. He takes me to this Dourhand base and requests me to defend him. In we go to kick Dourhand butt.



There is a small disadvantage to this raid. Both me and Langlas are hunters(I thought Mathi said he was a Ranger) and use bows and are high DPS characters. Which means we are both weak close up in melee. Langlas dies when I was was too slow to defend him in one portion of the raid. I have to go back to Langlas camp and replay the entire raid again.



Round 2. We do much better, much, much better this time. We get to the final boss in this raid. Avorthal has already been sent to Khelledul. DRATS! Haxon Ironfist taunts both of us. He is just one guy! So Haxon starts out attacking Langlas, but when I start attacking him with my Quick Shots, he starts attacking me. This is not good, Haxon also summons a few Cliff Hendrovals(some sort of wild bird off this region) and now I’m hurting. I died! Damn it so close! I have to play this whole quest all over again!

Okay this is ridiculous but I think I need to level up quite a bit and perhaps get dual wielding skill to damage enemies even more when in melee(perhaps this is the key). I think I’ll level up to 14(very close to that now) and buy the dual wielding skill and buy a nice second sword/dagger.

Also, there is this fall/Halloween celebration thingie happening in the game world. It’s snowing but I can’t find anything related to this fall theme other than an email inviting me to join the celebration in some location and play a prank on towns folk(whatever that means). I think the starting area I’m in doesn’t have any of the fall content. Sigh…anyway, next time, I try the raid quest all over again with dual wielding skill and look at what comes next after this quest.   

LOTRO Game Diary
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Part 2
Part 3
Part 4