A Refined Process for Refinement

Here's a useful bit of information (unlike what normally goes into this blog. -- Mrs. Pad): Crafted LI Relics are an excellent way to collect LI shards.

Every now and then you may find yourself shard-less, or at least shard-deprived. You identify the perfect set of stats for you in the form of a lovely Tier 10 LI relic, but then -- Alas! Alack! Forsooth! Meat Sauce! (wait... what?) You are short the requisite number of shards to execute the Meld! Oh, the ignominy! Oh, the humanity! Oh, the ... Elf-manity? Never mind.

Uthi Gemcutter, hard at work in the Blue Stone Garrison.

Anyway, if you or an alt happen to be at least level 72, here's a way to circumvent that little problem: head to Galtrev and talk to Bron (I recommend holding your nose in the process as Bron is locally famous for her belief that bathing causes scurvy). She's smack in the center of town, near the LI masters. Accept the quest "Forges of Isengard," run the instance (it's a solo), and select the Compendium of Middle-earth, Vol. III as your quest completion reward. Then go craft yourself a nice Westfold-level relic, trade it in at your appropriate guild-leader, and head back to the relic-master to Refine the resultant relic. You'll find yourself with 784 more shards than you had previously. Rinse and repeat daily with each character who has access to the quest. Furthermore, if you've been a really really good little Hero of the Third Age, you might even snag a nice LI rune in the process. It's a great way to game the system by using a system that's in the game. Or something.

The reasons this is an efficient process are legion, not unlike the reasons this blog is super-awesome. The Westfold crafted relic yields significantly more shards than the Vols. I or II versions while the Vol. IV version is only accessible to characters who are level 84 or higher via the Hytbold daily in the forge area. Vol. Vs, meanwhile, are still fairly difficult to acquire and involve running quite a few quests or hunting down numerous warbands in the Western Gondor regions to acquire a single one. Certainly the daily quest to acquire Vol. IVs is not a difficult one to run, but you need an extra 12 levels on you versus the Galtrev daily, plus you will have to have gone through all that silly nonsense about rebuilding the town to unlock the daily for each character you want to be able to access the quest. I have six characters with this capability, but I don't know how many other people out there are as big a loser as I am. And let's not even talk about the Fangorn dailies (shudders). It's more likely you will be able to farm the Galtrev daily on multiple toons sooner and with greater frequency, since the only barrier to entry is reaching level 72. It also yields 1,200 reputation with the Riders of Theodred, who have some very nice jewelry for folks in the level 75 range.

There, that's my good deed for the year. Now where are my cookies?

Padhric
Master of Toons