After this weeks jaunt we've made a bit more progress on the Lord of the Rings Online Epic, fetching up in Book 5, Chapter 8, for those following along at home. The previous big punch up, at Chapter 5 was quite hard work, not least of all hampered by the fact that although I was having a blast, my little hobbit on the other hand, was quite terrified throughout the final boss fight of the instance.

I'm sure I'd gushed before about how interesting and novel the Dread/Hope mechanic in LotRO is, with different places, people and situations causing increases in, er, your characters optimism and pessimism levels. This largely manifests in altered colour palettes, fog and glow effect intensities and so on, but it isn't all superficial effects and the encounter with the main villain of Chapter 5 took two goes to get right in the end. It features a protagonist so terrifying that merely being with five feet of him results in a massive Morale debuff.

This is a big deal since LotRO deals in not health points, but general bonhomie instead, and on the first run I was labouring under a WTF?-Inducing 60% green-bar reduction, which didn't help much. Reminded me of Guild Wars in fact! Worse still, beyond that much armour-soiling terror, and the minimap turns into a sodding great flaming Eye of Sauron, just to drive the point home, and poor lil hobbit just cowers on the spot, which doesn't help when you're primary tank, I can tell you!

A bit of clever footwork and a stackload of Destiny Point buffs seemed to do the trick on our second attempt, seeing us deal with a recurring menace that had been bugging some of us since the Prologue. I always forget that the Destiny Points buffs are there and am not sure I'd ever used them but they seem ideal for this kind of thing, those rare one-off nightmarish (literally!) fights you just have to win.

All very chuffed at the win though, against a L45 Nemesis grade boss with a group of five, ranging from L41-43. Still, despite hitting somewhat above our weight, theres only so-much you can realistically achieve without the levels to back you up and after a bit of backwarding and forwarding with fed-ex quests, the last stage of Book 5; Chapter 8, brought us to a halt again. The end boss of that really is hard work and not only will we need a few more levels each, but also, apparently, a vast number of Edhelharn Tokens, party-wide Hope buffs made by Jewelers.

I'm not sure I entirely approve of whole encounters being designed around the necessity for one very specific stat buff, and I hear it only gets worse into Moria, with entire instances being unviable without full sets of special +Radiance armour. I'm sure I was somewhat more vehement and succinct about it at the time, on Teamspeak. Still, can't argue with the sense of achievement from getting as far as we did, with what we had. Bit more prep and we'll have Book 5 in the bag!