Vendor Trash. Or Is It?

As you play along you'll find your bags filling up with all manner of things, Bent Claws, Dirty Filth, Broken Shortswords etc. and assume you've collected LotROs versions of vendor trash.  You'll pull up at a vendor, ready to have this cheery fellow purchase all this junk and free up your precious storage space.  Then as you mouse hover over an item, set to sell it, you'll notice red text near the bottom of the item tooltip "This item may be turned in for Tasks".  To your dismay (or delight), you'll find this text on every single snippet and part you've looted.

What are tasks?  Where are they obtained and turned in?  Do they really want all this stuff and how much of it?  What do I get out of it?  These, if you're like me, are the questions that will immediately come to mind.  So today we'll discuss Tasks and Vendor Trash.

Turbine Points and You - a Primer

So What the Heck are Turbine Points

Turbine Points (TP) are the currency used in the LotRO cash shop.  They can be used to purchase a variety of things from temporary character enhancements right up to expansion content and everything between.  The cash shop can be accessed either within or outside of the game and purchases are immediately applied to your account or your character depending on what you have purchased.

How Do I Get TP?

Turbine Points can be acquired in four ways:  they can be earned in game, they be can purchased as points cards from retailers, they can be purchase online, and a designated amount (500 TP) is granted every month to subscribers.

TP are earned on a per character basis, but are available account wide.  TP that you earn with Character A can be spent by Character B, and TP that you purchase or are granted is also account wide.

How Time Flies - Let's Get Started

Well, I got sucked back into WoW for quite some time, but I've decided to take a holiday from it, and a friend has decided to see what LotRO is all about, so I reckon it's high time to actually kick this off.

I've been toying with the idea of running two blogs, one specifically set up to diary a completely F2P experience and a 'normal' blog, but after some research and consideration I rejected the idea.  It's entirely possible to do darn near everything in the game without spending any cash, but it's a long and grindy road.  As a new player with a highly completionist bent I am facing quite a grind no matter how I play, but the surest way for me to get bored and quit is to take on two grindapaloozas at the same time, so I decline.  I salute anyone who does play sub-optimally and conquers hurdle after hurdle to emerge victorious, but since I have a paid account I shall just stick to that.  I still have multiple accounts for the purpose of keeping my vanity Kinship alive, and for reference purposes.

Since I take a ridiculous amount of notes while I play, and I love resources, I plan to compile as much as I can for the benefit of the new LotRO player (yes, they do indeed exist).  Resources are far and few between these days with more established bloggers leaving the game, and the excellent site MMorsel has finally come down.  It was a well crafted and thorough source of information, even though it had long since been abandoned, but the domain finally expired on the 23rd of August, and it is no more.  I could never hope to match it in breadth and ease of use, but I will give it a darned good try.  I'm going to play through the game and update as I go along, so please understand that lists I generate are a work in progress.

So, we'll start at the beginning.