Alright folks, apologies on the time gap between articles. The holiday season and restarting school takes a lot of time. This is going to be a multi-part series because of the magnitude of Bree-land.
This area is kinda the big party zone for every one. It is the largest quest area for free to play characters and is the zone where you take off the training wheels and go at it. Any previously unmentioned game mechanics get managed here (skirmishes, repeatable instances, and Epic Battles)
As a result of being the universal access area, you can place pretty decent gold on an event of almost any size being held here (with the exception of Winterstock and Weatherstock). Also this is a fertile area for Kinship recruitment so Beorning up and be ready to bear with several requests.
South Bree
Aesthetics: For anyone who has read the books or watched the Tolkien Professors streams, this area will be a set of “Oh wow! Look at that! Wait why am I dead?” This is because of the presence of many enemies. So personal recommendation: kill everything in a ten meter radius before sight-seeing. That should help you getting the undefeated title. The majority of South Bree is fields, Bree-Town and old forts. It has a very hobbit/man feel. In Bree you can see the accuracy of the details. The attention given to The Prancing Pony is delightful. It looks almost as if Barleyman himself moved to the game and built it. The other forts around the area resemble older sections of Bree.
Quest Quality: The Epic really picks up here. If you play multiple races you will get the various parts of the story that all combine here. You immediately get dropped into the story and introduced to a bunch of big characters. While it does feel like a “here is what happened last episode” recap, it is one of the most pleasant iterations of any game I have played. The quests scale fairly well both in challenge and reward and the banter is quite witty.
The story quests drag you all over the south of Bree. The town tour has become significantly less painful but it is still a necessary evil. The rest of the quests have been extremely streamlined as of late and flow much better. The stories are more enjoyable then previously and while you still may be a wood gathering, boar killing, bandit slaying hero. You are a hero none the less.
Enemies: You will encounter about every enemy type the game can throw at you. Brigands are a constant nuisance as well as goblins and half orcs. There is many of the general landscape animals. There is a jump in the curve around level 16ish or so where the enemies get a decent bit stronger. So long as you pay attention you should be just fine. You will battle some wights and other assorted undead during some of the instances but later on that is par for the course.
Easy to miss locations: The area around the scholars stair is very confusing but generally navigation in Bree is manageable. Andrath is a major pain because the quest hub there is really out of the way.You have to climb up a hill and along a ledge to get to the quest givers.
Personal Story: I had begun to adventure in Bree and I was more exploring then questing. I managed to stumble into a high density mob area around the same time my wifi began to go crazy. The end result was that I (A lower level guardian without a clue what I was doing) engaged a full camp of orcs, with lag, and won despite the fact that ever fifth frame would freeze for a minute solid.
Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for the next part.
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