I've learned something valuable from this past month's MMO respite. Right before I took a break from LotRO, I had been grinding Lukenbach's traits. Early in my minstrel's career, I had done a remarkable job of keeping his traits up to date. I had a zone-clear policy whereby Lukenbach wasn't allowed to exit a zone until he had completed every trait that region offered. With that policy in place, Lukenbach's traits scaled right along with his leveling.
Now, that plan is all well and good for those early zones; entry level traits have modest grinding requirements, 60 mobs for the title, another 60 for the trait. But later zones grow just shy of exponentially, 150 for the title and
That catches up with you at higher levels. And after the recent expansion, along with new content, Turbine applied some different mathematics to Mines of Moria. It's beyond the scope of this entry to outline the changes. Suffice to say, every class got a dose of nerf, made even more painful by those players who had neglected their traits.
So in the late days of December 2008, Lukenbach reluctantly turned his attention back to trait grinding only after getting his ass kicked over and over again in the Mines. The problem is that trait grinding always precipitates me dropping the game for extended periods of times. Which is too bad because when I played again last Saturday, I marveled anew at the scale, detail, and fun inside Moria.
I have more trait work to do (like the slaying of 200 more hillman in Angmar). But that will have to wait else I stop playing again. I'm not sure how or when I'm going to get those 200 savaged killed. Maybe when minstrel's get the new skill, Nuclear Chord.
