Help i’m 120 – A guide to gearing and dailies at levelcap

Two areas, 4 instances and a long backlog of options to gear up as you come back to the game. This guide will help you find the best way to build up your character when you hit 120 by showing you the options, where to find gear and activities.

This article will get clarifications as they become available or needed.

Special note

This guide will assume you got a geared character of level 110+ and a decent amount of trait points etc. And some sort of legendary weapon. This won’t work for a power leveled character or a freshly Valared character.

Defining the quality of gear

I’ve ranked the available options and gear according to how well they will suite the activities where to find an upgrade. This is off course just an indicator. For a detailed description check below

Description	Gear code	Item level	Legendary weapons
Level 115	Mordor	330
Sub 120	Leveling	330 – 355
Quest gear 120	Questing	355 -369	Imbued
Glimmerdeep + daily	Starter	370 – 376	Imbued
Small group + T1	370 (average)	370 + essences	Imbued (300+)
Farm + T2	Good (376)	376 + essences	Imbued (500+)
Further	Max (376+)	Teal 376 and assorted essences	Maxed

What you’re meant to do (gear sweet spot)

The regular way to get gear at this time is to follow the Black book of Mordor further into the Ironfold, followed by Ered mithrin and then the Vales of the Anduin. Along the way you’ll get all the reputation, decent gear and unlocks you’ll need. The journey across 115 to 120 doesn’t allow for many skips ahead for a 1st time character. There are options available for alts and gold-rich players, but you’ll all end up on the same page.

As you quest along you’ll acquire quest tokens and reputation to Average and Good gearwise atm. Then you can decide from which to go further.

Gear sources (drops)

Gearcode	Starter	Average	Good
Skarhald quests	Purple	Teal
Vales quests	Purple	Teal (bad ones)	Teal (Good ones)
Epic story	Teal (bad ones)	Teal (Good ones)
Big battles	Purple	Teal	Teal/gold
Scaled instance	Ilvl 355
U23 Tier 1		Purple	Teal
U23 Tier 2			Purple

Essences

There is no escape from essences, but you will only need 0 (starter), 1 (average) or 2 (good and above) depending on the gear. Any lower gear with lower essences will be better then an empty one. So don’t fuzz too much about them. You can now even overwrite bad essences. You will need to craft most essences from Tier 2 and beyond. But for just questing you won’t need to do that.

Essences	Starter	Average	Good	Max
Landscape	x	x
Tier 2 crafted		x	x
Tier 3 crafted			x	x
Tier 4 crafted				x
Gold (event related)				x

Intermezzo conclusion

Unless you have a specific goal in mind or several alts that have already gone through the area. Continue the black book and quest until you run out of content. Continue to run big battles, dailies and trait points to improve your character and just enjoy the game till you feel comfortable grouping up for instances. Once done with all the quests you;ll have a good set of gear which will allow you to skip ahead on the upgrades.

How to improve your gear

You’ve gotten to the stage where you’re ready to improve your gear. At this time lotros main option to improve your gear is focused in the Ered Mithrin or Vales of Anduin updates. Either through bartering gear or drops from the latest instance cluster.

Barter options		Starter	Average	Good	Max
Crafted – skarhald	370/374 purple	–
Skarhald – Qtoken	370 purple /select teal	Bound to acount	x
Ember – purple	376 purple	Bind to character	x	x
Vales – Qtoken	376 purple	Bound to acount	x	x
Vales – Daily token	376 teal			x	x
Ember – teal	380 teal	Bind to character	x	x	x
Crafted – Vales	376+				x

Pretty much any avenue you’d want to go will be time-gated at this point. Farming 1 specific category till you drop is capped. Vale dailies are daily, instances (with boosted lootdrops) are limited on a weekly basis. Other instances aren’t locked, but only go up to ilevel 360 and have no essences slots.

Most likely you won’t notice these caps with a limited playtime available to you. Or you;d like some variation in your activities

Available dailies and weeklies

Below are the most run and relevant dailies available or locked activities to do at level 120. Several of these have extra bonuses if done x time per week.

• Skarhald resource instance – 4 variations
  • Unlocked by https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Quest:The_State_of_the_Expedition
• Vale daily quests (landscape instance) – 3 variations
  • Unlocked by https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Quests_of_the_Wilderfolk 3
  • 3rd daily unlocked by 8 quest in the Gladdenmere (Group area not required
• Minas Tirith empowerment scrolls – 3 variations
  • Unlocked by either Friend or Kindred reputation
• Pelagrir big battle – 2 or 6 man
  • Each Main or sidequest has a daily lock
• Glimmerdeep, Caverns, Thikil-Gundu and Depths of Kidzul instances
  • See favored loot below
• Featured instance/box run (few good atm)
  • See notes below

Weekly bonusses available

All weekly bonusses at this center around virtue xp or embers. These will be your main source of embers besides 100 embers from the instances or disenchanting gear.

• Run each of the Skarhald instances 1x for 750 ember
• Complete the vale daily quests 2 times for 750 embers and 3000 virute xp (3 different available)
• Complete 20, 40 or 60 quests inside the skarhald resource isntances
• Exchange 20 questtokn in skarhald for 500 embers
• Exchange 75 questtoken in Hultvis for xxx embers
• Shard droppers in the anvil of winterstith raid (376+ gear required often)

I’d focus on completing the Vales dailies first, skarhald instances second and the resources 3rd. Trying to complete a 6-man pelagrir every few days adds up quite nicely. If you need to improve your legendary weapons Minas Tirith and pelagrir go up by alot.

Tips and tricks for each activity

As with everything some part can be done faster or are worth your time a bit more then the others. Below you’ll find tips and tricks to get the most out your playtime (efficiency wise).

Skarhald resource instance

The main reward you’re looking for ar the dwarrowgleam shard you get from doing the 20 and 40 quests weekly (reclaiming the grey). 60 requires a near daily run of every quest (and still has no dwarrowshard?).

The first x/20 never resets if you dont do it. You can save them and do them on another character. 20 +10 will waste those 10 quests done if not finished.

Glimmerdeep and Oins bridge are really quick compared to Thikul Gundu. Withered heath is often skipped in favor of another days Glimmer/oins. Each instance has 3+1 quest so depending if you do 20 or 40, just skip the slower quests.

Vale dailies

After finishing the quests in the Vales 2 out 3 will unlock. For the 3rd you’ll have to finish 8 quests in the Gladdenmeres.

Team up with anyone inside. On a busy evening it will be hard to kill enough mobs before finishing the other quests.

Complete the set 2 of 4 quests per week. 750 embers, 376 gear and 3000 virtue xp is the best bang for your buck atm.

Favored loot

Each of the new instances uses the favored loot system. For the first 5, 2, 2 or 1 times per week you loot a chest you’ll get vastly improved drop chances. after those its hardly worth running the instances. Above tier 2 there is a chance to get Gold jewelry and armour of a higher item level.

Glimmerdeep, Caverns of Thrumfall and Thikil Gundu

The main 3 instances in these updates, they all use the favored loot, and running them 1 time at any tier or level will update the weekly quest for 750 embers (it won’t reset if not completed).

Each instance will drop 2 pieces of armour. If you got the helmet glimmerdeep gets a bit worse. Tier 1 drops mostly purple, but occasionally teal versions.

Glimmerdeep is real easy, Thikil gundu T1 is not that hard. Caverns is a pain. Most often run for the weekly. Each favored can also drop empowerment scrolls and 100 embers. Not a reason on itself, but adds up.

Need a quick weekly run? The first instance to get the quest needs to be run at 120. If you got the quest, any other can be run at level 118. Same embers/scrolls, but lower level gear. Glimmerdeep 120 followed by a 118 caverns and thikil gundu are about 2 hours.

Minas tirith daily (empowerment scrolls)

Either continue upgrading your existing LI, start saving for an alt or sell them to grab some gold. The Minas tirith dailies are still the quickest and easiest way to grab them. The southgate dailies will give you Smith tokens which you can barter straight for scrolls. Both other dailies can be converted into Smith tokens, but you will lose some in the progress. North gate is quite nice, the cisterns is the last one you should consider. For more sources check out https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?644427-Anfalas-Scrolls-of-Empowerment-Your-Guide-to-Hoarding

Pelagrir/Stars of merit for Anfalas crystals or essence removal scrolls

The only non-raid option to get crystals all year long is Stars of merits from the big battles. Of which the 6-man pelagrir is preferred. The most sidequests , rank is not the most important option and the quickest. While you can do the duos or other 6-mans they award half of the merits that pelagrir does.

Featured instance or box run

Before these would rank near the top, but have largely fallen out of favour. While both the 3 and 6-mans are fun instances they lack the speed or rewards at tier 1 to really farm them a lot. They have a 5% chance to reward the 4-slot armour which can be sought after in the end. But the average 1 scroll per run is rather lackluster.

School of tham midrain is the exception. Super quick and really easy. About 10 minutes for both runs with some scrolls in both easily beats out even Minas tirith dailies.

Overall conclusion

Know where you will want to go with a character. And run the activities best suited for that. Doubt you will do the Anvil raid or T5 instances before december. Take it easy and don’t sweat T4 essences. The game remains a game and most likely with the new expansion coming later this year you wont need them.

Looking for quickest gear to the max? Focus on embers for 380 gear and grab dwarrowshards with the dailies and gold.

Looking for the cheapest gear? Focus on the questlines and quest tokens. Save up embers to fill in any holes you have by the end of questing.

Fresh first character? Slowly quest while grabbing as many minas tirith dailies and big battles along the way. Your LI will be worth more then an extra round of Vale dailies.