Why is it so difficult to Craft after Anorien?

[Woodlink54]

One of the things I really enjoyed about LOTRO is the diversity of activities you can do besides just Questing. As I leveled up my characters I really enjoyed making new jewelry, weapons, armor, and other things. I also found it rewarding to craft things for my kinship members and other players that I would team up with; however, after I reached Anorien and moved into the Doomfold areas and above, all of that came to a screeching halt; because it became nearly impossible to acquire new recipes for any level above Anorien.

To start with, you can not acquire upper-level recipes from drops like you used to. They can only be obtained by Bartering from a Quartermaster, and usually, they require that you have required the appropriate reputation such as Friend or Kindred, which can take quite a while to achieve. In addition ,to that you need to purchase the recipes using "Marks" from that area and they may charge anywhere from 20 to 250 Marks. Now if you do the math to acquire a full set of jewelry (7 items) and armor (7 items) that would require 280 Marks at 20 Marks each or 1400 marks at 100 marks each or 3500 Marks at 250 each. That is a totally unreasonable and probably unachievable cost to pay to acquire the recipes.

In addition to that, many of the recipes have at least one very rare or extremely rare item required to craft the recipe that you rarely receive by questing in the area where you are questing, and if you do you may acquire 1 of the items, but the recipe requires 2 of the extremely rare item. I have spent over an hour in an area harvesting lumber to acquire a Shard of Splendor and only found one when I needed two. This is not a very enjoyable or productive use of my very valuable game time. I don't mind spending time harvesting for crafting items, I often spend time gathering items so that I can craft Items, but usually spend an hour or so harvesting an area and come up with 50 or 100 hides or ore that I can use to make many items. But to spend over an hour harvesting only to come up with half of what I need to make ONE item is totally ridiculous and a waste of my time.

To add insult to injury, some of the items you need to make an item that you spent many hours questing to be able to purchase require items that you can not get by landscape questing. For example, the Hunter Set Helms Recipe requires 1 Fragment of the Abyss that can only be obtained from the 12-person Raid "The Abyss of Mordath". I find it very insulting that the LOTRO developers continue to try to force me into doing things that I don't want to do. I love landscape questing and am NOT INTERESTED in doing RAIDS!!!! Especially since I do mainly solo questing and belong to a very small fellowship of two other players. I do not and will not participate in Raids, so to make it a requirement that you participate in a 12-person raid in order to acquire the necessary ingredients that you need to make an item that you have worked hard to purchase is extremely rude, arrogant, and just plain bollix.

To summarize my thoughts, I think it is high time that the LOTRO developers revisit the Crafting requirements for the upper levels of the game. The thing I love about LOTRO and I am sure there are many people who feel the same way I do is the diversity of activities. I like being able to choose how I want to play each time I launch the game. Do I feel like landscape questing today? Spending my time in the Crafting Hall making things? Going out and harvesting Ore, Wood, or other materials. Do I want to do some Skirmishes and if I wanted to do some Raids that is an option. But what I don't like is the developers putting what I consider totally unreasonable barriers on your ability to continue Crafting in the upper levels. I find it extremely annoying and frustrating that I have lost the ability to craft items for myself, my kinship, and others.

I don't know what the developers were thinking when they set up all of what I consider unreasonable requirements to acquire recipes and material for the upper-level Crafting, but I think it is a big mistake and that it should be rectified.

[WeirdJedi]

This has been mentioned quite a bit. You can check out this one a couple months ago: https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...ng-Meaningless or this one just a month ago: https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...mor-past-lv100

To reprise my comments in those threads, they did not want people trying to skip pass the content without buying and playing through the content. Gundabad is a completely different story in which the non-bound recipes can be easily bartered for and crafted with shards that can be obtained from the rare chests in the regions. They are now adding the means to craft traceries through the Reward Track and the Delving System.

[The_Worst_Player]

One thing to keep in mind is that some of these time consuming rabbit-holes are old endgame content. Designed to keep people busy in between expansions. A long time player would have to say for certain but they may have tried to fold crafting into the endgame. I enjoyed crafting also but you're right, it's pretty bad after level 90 or so. The good news is that bartered gear, starting in Mordor, is pretty good.

[TobiasEstForte]

When the cap was 115, people had to finish landscape to do the raid.

Why do you need raid pieces to do the landscape?

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

Because SSG wants you to use the store.