UPDATE: I've been advised that Minstrel may no longer be the go to class for deed farming, so keep that in mind. I recommend reading the comments at the end of the guide as that's where any conversations or updated information will be discussed.

This guide is intended for new players to Lord of the Rings Online, who, for whatever reason, are not in a position to subscribe to Turbine’s massive, digital Middle Earth adventure. While this guide is designed as a f2p guide, I am going to suggest at various moments that you spend a bit of cash. While the game is entirely playable as f2p, the benefits gained by strategic cash purchases are so high that it would be irresponsible to omit these suggestions. Note, however, that if you’re unable to spend any cash on this game, the TP running section in this guide will still be very helpful for you when it comes to buying new quest packs.

This guide contains a couple different strategies for maximizing the utility of the money you spend on the game, depending on your attitude and tendencies. One is geared towards the player who wants to try multiple classes, while the other is designed for the player who wishes to focus entirely on a single character until the end-game. This guide will not cover items or weapons outside of those needed to accomplish the goals described within.

Firstly, before you go any further into this guide, see if you can find a free key for the Sam Gamgee starter pack. As of the time of my writing this, several websites are giving away these keys. If, at the time of your reading this, those keys are no longer available, consider buying it. This starter pack is a MUST HAVE for f2p advancement. It gives the new player access to the riding skill (95 TP per character), a horse, an experience boost, and a 90 minute slayer/skill boost. This last item is absolutely necessary for attaining the TP rate I’ll discuss later in the ‘TP running’ section. Additionally, having the Starter Pack should (if everything works right) upgrade your account to Premium. Having Premium extends your currency cap from 2 gold to 5 gold, as well as giving you the ability to post up to 5 items on the Auction House.

There is more information here:

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Account_Types

I will hopefully be updating this guide in the future with some altered maps showing routes and locations of key elements noted in this guide. If you're using it now, I apologize for the lack of details in regards to directions. While your first TP run might be significantly less efficient that the numbers I claim at the bottom, practice will eventually close the gap as you get better at choosing your route, and as you become more experienced at quickly accomplishing the many minor actions that make up a successful run.

Questing through Ered Luin, Bree, the Shire (if you want to for the deeds), and the Lone-lands should easily get you to level 30+. At this point, it’s time to spend a little money. If you look around, there’s another starter pack called the Steely Dawn starter pack. This pack can sometimes be found cheaply in strange locations (G2A, Amazon, etc.), so shop around. When you buy this pack, you’ll get 500 TP, some assorted stuff, and most importantly, the Evendim quest pack. This quest pack will give you more TP opportunities in the form of more deeds, as well as quests and content to bring you to level 40 or so.

After Evendim, you’ll need to decide whether you want to buy Angmar (795 TP), or Forochel (595 TP). Angmar is generally considered to have a rather oppressive feel to it, while Forochel can get monotonous with all of the white. Since you can enter the zones regardless of account status, I recommend just visiting both and deciding from there which you’d prefer to spend 10 levels in. One other thing to note is that Angmar has a fair amount of Fellowship quests requiring more than one person (for ease and speed at the very least). If you’re not planning on joining a kin and don’t have any friends to quest with, Forochel might be a better choice.

Now, if you’re lucky, by time you’ve gotten to 50, there’s been a Steam sale on the LotRO Quad Pack, which gives you access to all four expansions. If there is, and you can get it for 20 bucks or less, it is recommended that you do. Getting all the expansions would otherwise cost you over 5000 TP, equivalent (if you follow the TP running guide below) to 20 hours of tedious TP grinding. Now, if you’re unemployed or lack access to money, 20 hours isn’t THAT long, but if you’re working, you’re probably making more than 1 dollar (euro/pound) per hour, so this is a useful time to buy the pack. Once you’ve gotten all the expansions, you have content sufficient to get you to the end-game.

This link details the various packs and their overlapping level ranges.

http://www.lotro.com/en/lotro-store-quest-packs

If your intention is to focus on a single character, I highly suggest that you spend some time on the forums, or in chat in-game, learning more about the classes. Since you only start with 2 character slots on a server (and you’ll want to keep one of these slots open for a TP runner), you’re going to want to know that you’ll enjoy a certain class before you invest the large amount of time and TP in it that it will take to build that character properly. It is also recommended that you play any given character to at least level 20. It doesn't take terribly long, and if you run the route below, you'll get a decent payout for your time regardless of whether you keep the character. Once you’ve chosen your race and class (neither of which will be covered by this guide), it’s recommended that you complete the intro and then travel to Celondim and follow the TP running guide below.

As a single character, spending TP on character upgrades is a generally good idea. The cost of opening class and virtue trait slots isn’t too expensive for a single character, especially if you’re keeping up on deeds, and running TP runs on the side. Also, it’s worth purchasing the currency cap removal as soon as you can. If you want to really focus on one character, you probably want to do less TP runs, which means you’ll need to do deeds on your main character in order to get the TP to unlock expansions and new quest packs. A good general rule for working on deeds (which I call deeding from this point forward) is to wait until you can one or two-shot the mobs you need to kill for the slayer deeds. Ideally, if you’re being a completionist (which you should if you’re focusing on a single character), you’ll be getting the TP for quest completions as you quest your way through the zones. Deeding is important both for the TP gains, and for the virtue trait increases it gives you.

Other sources for TP that make sense for the single character focus are reputation and skirmish deeds. Reputation will increase fairly naturally if you’re taking a completionist approach to each zone. Once you’ve finished questing a particular zone and doing the various deeds that grant reputation increases, if you’re still not kindred, consider spending some of your marks or gold buying reputation items from the skirmish vendors or auction house respectively. You'll need marks to buy them from the skirmish vendors, which you can get from running skirmishes, or by doing TP runs (at 1080 marks per 2.5 hours). Alternately, you can farm them by killing mobs, but again, don’t bother until you’re in a position to one or two-shot the mobs in question.

Now, at some point you’ll have reached the end-game and bought the content you needed to get there. You now have the choice to continue developing in the end-game or to start an alt. Hopefully you’ve had fun and enjoyed the world of Middle Earth.

If you decide to do a one month subscription to unlock the various permanent benefits that doing so grants you, I recommend reading the next section and that you consider creating some extra characters on various servers in order to get more bang for your buck.

If your intention is to try everything that Middle Earth has to offer, including the various races and classes, the path to glory is a bit longer and a bit more complex, and really depends on having a strategic month of subscription to shine. First of all, the question is whether you want to have all or some of the classes, and whether you want them all on the same server. If you want all your characters on the same server, then keep an eye out for any sales on character slots. In order to have one of each class on any given server plus an extra slot for a TP runner (the benefits of having one on the same server as your main are listed in the TP running section), you’ll need 11 slots. Considering you start with only two slots, that means buying nine slots with TP. One of these you can buy bundled with the Beorning class at a discount. The others are 595 TP each. That’s 4760 TP for the 8 slots, plus 1295 TP for the class/slot bundle. That’s more than 6000 TP, enough to get all of the expansions and Angmar. Sales will dramatically ease the burden of accomplishing this.

The only reason for this kind of expenditure would be that you have friends or a kin on a particular server and would rather focus all your energy on that server. The primary benefit of having all of these character slots is that you have tremendous flexibility when it comes to utilizing the strategic VIP month.

There are other benefits to the Many Alts Focus, but also many other expenditures. If you’re leveling the various characters concurrently, you’ll always have plenty of crafting items from each characters’ loot to send to whichever characters you have crafting. If you wish to be efficient, you can set up one character to be the main crafter for one particular type of craft, and making all your other alts into explorers or scholars in order to be able to supply the main crafters with ores/lumber/trinkets/etc. Running this many characters comes with some additional expenses, such as shared storage, which is incredibly useful when you have 10 toons on a server. This is the route I’ve taken, and I don’t regret it. You have to do a lot of TP runs (most of which I did before developing the efficient route I describe below), but if you end up joining a kin that’s active and which you enjoy, you’ll be in a position to hang out with them regardless of which alt you are playing.

Alternatively, you could just have two characters on each of many different servers, allowing you to play all 10 classes (assuming you purchase the Beorning) without having to drop 6000 TP. This would make shared storage considerably less desirable, limit the benefits of crafting (as two characters can’t create a fully self-sufficient crafting unit which encompasses all crafts), but would allow you to interact with a wider range of people.

Once you’ve gotten all your characters created, its time to subscribe for a month. This is pretty much necessary if you’re going the Many Alts path, because the TP costs of unlocking what a one month sub unlocks for all of your characters would be prohibitively expensive. Once you go VIP, make sure you log onto every character you’ve created at least once, and if you plan to create new characters, do them while VIP. Doing so gives every character you have a LOT of bonuses. Virtue and class trait slots are all unlocked. The currency cap is removed. The previously locked quick travel routes are unlocked. This is a huge value, made more valuable for every character you have. If you’ve gotten 10 or 11 character slots per server, you can even create 10 toons on a variety of servers and log them in once, guaranteeing that should you ever wish to start over on that server, you’ll still have unlocked all of these wonderful features.

Also, when you go VIP, that is the opportune time to go and get quests and start deeds in zones that you don’t already own. Anything that’s in progress will remain accessible when your subscription lapses. If you have a high level kin-mate willing to run you through, you can unlock a tremendous amount of content to complete later.

When I first starting playing LotRO, I had an extremely tight budget. During this time, I did a lot of extremely inefficient TP runs. I would make around 300 TP, but it would take me about 6 hours. That comes to about 50 TP an hour. It might sound like a reasonable amount, but with the starter pack listed above, I did some experimentation and devised a TP run that consistently nets me around 250 TP in about 2 hours and 30 minutes. Note that these numbers can be impacted if there’s other people in the same area as you while you are killing mobs for the various deeds. In such a case, invite them into a fellowship so that you’re not in competition for mobs.

The most important thing when running this route is your class. Minstrel is the class of choice, as your ability to do ranged damage while still moving is invaluable. Make sure you go with the red trait line for the additional cry (which will almost always one-shot mobs that you’re fighting). Always keep moving towards your destination, even as you decimate enemies. Race should either be Hobbit or Dwarf. You could also go with Man or Elf, but that would cost you 5 TP without any appreciable benefit. Hobbits and Dwarves both have Racial Enmity deeds that correspond to the mobs that you’ll be killing for the various slayer deeds, whereas the racial deeds for Men and Elves include mobs that you won't be encountering or killing in quantity during this run.

The next choice is whether you’ll be running on your primary server (if you have one), or on a low-population server. Running on your own server has several benefits. In the process of completing this route, you will get a Sturdy Steel Key and a lootbox. On a throw-away server, you can just offer these for free, but on your main server, you can send these by mail to one of your toons. Also, in the course of the run you’ll be awarded 1080 skirmish marks, and make around 700 silver, not to mention a variety of critical success crafting items. Thus, TP runs on your main server provides additional benefits to your main characters.

Get through the intro as quickly as possible. As a minstrel, you’re ability to kite as you run towards the next quest objective should mean that the Hobbit intro can be done in under 20 minutes and the Dwarf intro in about 25 minutes, with practice (and you’ll get practice). Once you’re out, get your Novice rating, open your Starter Pack gift and slot your Chestnut Pony onto your hotbar. Check your mail, open the gift and start the quest that leads to you getting your novice mark. Equip it. Save the slayer/skill boost for now, as well as the experience boost. Saving the boost gives you a decent chance of getting an extra 5 points from completing the class deed ‘Powerful Voice’. If you’re a dwarf, head down the stairs and then back up until you get the Place of the Dwarves deed. Then head towards the Silver Mine entrance, and then through Frerin’s Court to the stable-master. Catch a quick ride to Celondim.

We start in Celondim because the Prologue quest line is very much in line with the other quests being offered, and eventually leads to quick access to an area in Rath Teraig which would otherwise require battling through elite goblins. Bind at the waystone here. In Celondim, get the quest ‘At the Behest of Cardavor’ from the female elf behind the water-side building. Then grab ‘In Defense of the Forest’ and ‘Unlike Avorthal’. Mount up and head south-west towards Nen Hilith, killing the necessary vale flies on the way. As you approach, you’ll begin the Places of the Elves deed. Turn in and get all the quests here. Once you kill one wolf, get your loot and then turn in the ‘Collared’ quest. Otherwise your loot bag will be filled with Iron Collars, which is annoying. The impulse might be to use the slayer deed boost now, but save it. The wolves are so densely packed here that the time saved by using the boost now isn’t worth the earlier use. Once you’ve killed 90 wolves, gotten the elf-satchel, and found all the good pieces of wood, pop the XP boost from the starter pack and turn everything in. Now you’re on the clock.

Head back to Celondim, turning in all the quests and getting all the new quests. You’ll be sent hoofing it to Limael’s Vineyard. Make a pit-stop at Tham Gelair to the west to complete ‘Hallowed Ground’, then head north, ford the stream, and make for Limael's Vineyard. Your quest guide will help you find your way. Turn in and get all quests. Make sure when getting quests that you’ve gotten them all, as NPCs will often only one of the available quests automatically. Now, you might think this is a good place to do Goblin-slayer, but hold back. Keep that slayer boost for now. You’ll be killing more than enough goblins in Rath Teraig to complete the deed, so here just focus on completing the quests efficiently. Once you’ve gotten the grapes, the flasks, killed the requisite goblins, and murdered Pamprush, head back to Limael and turn in quests, then hoof it to Celondim. Turn in and get all quests here, then either ride or grab a ride from the stable-master to Duillond.

In Duillond, head to Calengil and turn in your quest and grab his quest. Turn in and grab the other quests from the various NPCs in the area. Then head down the hill towards the river and grab the damp herbs and bring them back to Calengil. Grab two more quests from him and head to Dol Ringwest. Complete all the quests here and head back to Duillond. Turn in quests and then ride back to Celondim. Make sure you’re bound in Celondim and then get a quick travel ride to Thorin’s Gate. If you’re a Dwarf and did as I said earlier, once there, just catch a ride to Noglond, and then from there straight to Gondamon. This will complete your Places of the Dwarves deed. If you’re a Hobbit, once in Thorin’s Gate, make sure to visit the top of the stairs, and the Silver Mine entrance before heading off to Noglond.

Once in Gondamon, grab ‘Protecting the Hunt’ from Orlygr, turn in and get all new quests from Gailthin, and get ‘The Sundered Shield’ from Askell. All of these quests will send you north to Ringdale, the first of the Places of the Dourhands. Here, pop the slayer boost. You are probably about 1 hour in, meaning that the boost should last you for the rest of your run. Head straight through to the various quest objectives, murdering Dourhands as able. Once you’ve completed the quests, head back to Gondamon and turn in all quests, and get the new quests from Gailthin, Askell, and Mathi. Head northeast to the ruins where Glamir holds watch and turn in quests with him, and then head north and defeat Skithi Blackhand. Head back to Gondamon.

Turn in quests and get the new quests from Askell, then catch a ride to Thrasi’s lodge. Before the horse turns to actually approach to the lodge, dismount and head away from the lodge to where the hendroval gather. Murder one full round of hendroval, then head to the lodge and turn in quests to Langlas. Do the instance, moving as quickly as you can (use food if you need some extra morale regen). Once out, grab the quest from Langlas and Celairant and head back to do another round of the respawned hendroval. Head down towards Kheledul, turning in and grabbing the quest from Sigurdor. Don’t do the instance yet. Instead, head towards the city and kill Starkath for the Remarkable Bow, then head into the city and murder the Dourhands around the spire just inside on your left, grabbing the chests as you go. This will get you a Place of the Dourhands as well as complete another quest. Head back out and do the instance quest given by Svanr. Avoid the Dourhand here as much as possible, relying on Call to Fate to one-shot any Dourhands so that they don’t call reinforcements. Check your Brigand-Slayer, and if you’re not almost done, you can kill a few extra here, but you should be already or very close to done. Finish the instance, finishing the Places of the Dourhands deed at the same time. Warp back to the lodge and then go do one more round of hendroval. This ideally will finish that slayer deed, but if not, stay as needed to finish it.

Turn in the quest to Langlas and Celairant and then head to Rath Teraig. As you approach you’ll start the Rath Teraig exploration deed. Turn in and get all quests here, and then head in to the left. Follow the left wall, killing milk-eyes, spiders and goblins until you get to Tum Agor, then turn around and head southish until you get to the Southern Barricade. Head into the spiders’ den and head to the center. If you’re lucky and no one has come before you, this will start a cycle of spiders spawning which will bring you almost to the completion of the spider slayer deed. Once the spawning cycle has stopped (it should be two cycles of spiders running from the outside towards the center, and two cycles of spiders descending on silk), kill the rest of the spiders in the area and head out, aiming towards the tall hill. Kill any spiders you need to finish the deed on the way, and climb the hill to get Amon Thanc. From there, either drop down or head down the hill, and head to the small little enclave of goblins, killing the named goblin and a few ranged goblins until your quests are finished. Head back to the entrance and turn in quests. If you’ve done everything I’ve said, you will now have completed Hero of Erid Luin. Ride back to Langlas and do the instance, during which it will take you Crickhollow, completing Rath Teraig Exploration.

When you finish with the instance, jump on your horse and head to the north-east corner of the map where you’ll find the Wardspire. This will complete the Places of the Elves, thus completing the Deeds of Erid Luin. You are done with Erid Luin. Use your port to head back to Celondim and then catch a quick ride to Michel Delving.

At this point, you’ll have limited time remaining on your slayer/skill boost. If you’ve been relying on your cries as much as possible, you should be well on your way to finishing the class deed. You probably have also completed one or two of the Enmity racial deeds. In the Shire, the quest deeds require significantly more time than they are worth in terms of TP, so we focus entirely on slayer and exploration deeds. Jump on your horse and head south until you get South Fields, the first of the six farms you will be visiting. Then head east towards Tuckburough. Head straight to the Old Willow then detour northeast to the Methel Stage. Proceed east-southeast to Old Odo’s Leaf-farm, and continue east until you see a waterfall with a crossing. Here there are brigands. Murder brigands until you’ve finished the relevant deed, and then head east again until you see the large hill known as the Yale Heights. Here you will murder flies. When you run out of flies on the hill, do a quick circle around the hill, killing any flies and wolves you find (and anything else really...chances are that they share spawn locations with shrews, so you might as well). Keep at it until the harvest-fly deed is done. Head southeast until you get to Bamfurlong, and then bee-line to the Stocktower.

From there head north and use the broken stonework to cross the river. Here you’ll find Puddifoot’s Fields and lots of soon-to-dead wolves. Once the farm is clear, head north to the wall and finish the wolf deed. Jump on your horse and head towards the quarry. Once you arrive, kill every spider that you see until the quarry is clear. It shouldn’t take long. You won’t finish the slayer deed yet, but that doesn’t matter. Jump on your horse and head northwest until you get to a little goblin encampment. You know what to do. Show no mercy. Once Goblin-slayer is complete, mount up and head west to the Bindbole woods. Here you will find a heavily webbed area where you can complete the slaying of spiders.

From here head due south until you reach Appledores and the Party Tree, then turn due west and look for a little area where you can easily cross the river. Once across, head south until you get to Dora Brownlock’s. Congratulations, you’ve completed all of the exploration deeds. If you’ve still got time on your slayer boost, you can head northwest to the swamp and try your hand at killing slugs before it wears off.

If you’ve done as listed above, you should have 130 TP from Erid Luin, 10 TP in racial deeds, 5 TP in class deeds, 10 TP from reputation deeds, and 100 TP from the Shire exploration and slayer deeds (assuming you finished slugs). That will leave you with 255 TP in 2.5 hours, more or less. If you didn’t finish the slugs, you’ll only have 240 TP. In either case, that’s approaching 2 TP a minute, not to mention the 1040 skirmish marks, a variety of crafting loot, some silver, and a Sturdy Steel Key.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide. If you’ve any suggestions for me to improve it, let me know in the comments, and I’ll do what I can. Enjoy LotRO and the wonderful world that Turbine has built for us to play around in.

Lastly, if your economic situation ever improves, consider subscribing to the game. Especially if you play a lot, the value of time entertained for money spent is quite good, and it gives the devs the ability to fix bugs and create new content for all of us to enjoy.

1. The gift box you are given after completing the intro contains a 30 minute slayer boost at level 10. If you don't use it, it's among the great loot you can send to your main. If you're on a throw-away server, however, this extra boost can make all the difference in trying to clear out the slugs in the Shire for the extra 15 TP and 100 marks.

2. If you're TP running on your main server and don't mind spending a bit of time, you can generate around 20 Universal Ingredient Packs, which are shared server-wide. To do this, find the NPC which trains you into the various vocations, and train as an explorer. Do the quests that you are given and complete them for 3 UIPs. Then change to an Armsman and repeat, then an Armorsmith, then a Woodsman, then a Yeoman, then a Tinker, and finally a Historian. The trick is to make sure that each switch has at least one profession in it that you haven't already finished the quest, so you can complete the quest which gives UIPs each time. Keep in mind that items made using the UIPs are bound-to-account. Still, having UIPs can enable your crafter to make items that would otherwise require farming. This is especially useful if you're playing a scholar.

More tips will be added as they occur to me.