LOTRO Legendarium: LOTRO’s higher difficulties are a breath of fresh air

A while back, the Treebeard server in Lord of the Rings Online experimented with the first iteration of the new landscape difficulty system. I tinkered around with it briefly before deciding that this server was slow enough as it was without this mechanic holding me back and abandoning it.

It was only very recently that I decided to give the landscape difficulty slider another go, mostly after hearing some rave reviews about it and desiring a new challenge in the game. Like probably many of you, I’ve rolled countless alts in LOTRO. Yet I’ve played them all more or less the same way, and that was starting to get stale. So believe me when I tell you that by taking advantage of this unassuming but game-transforming system, LOTRO became fresh and new to me all over again.

But let’s back up and talk about what this system is and how it works, first. Arriving earlier this year with Update 36, the landscape difficulty system allows all players to set their challenge level for the game by speaking to a special NPC called “Hardened Traveller.” By increasing the difficulty level, you effectively assume an ongoing debuff that makes you weaker to the mobs in the game.

There are 10 levels of difficulty in LOTRO. Level 0, Normal, is the face-rolling easy mode we’ve all been playing for years now. Levels 1 and 2 (Adventurous and Daring) are a bit tougher but not overly so. The fun really begins with Level 3 (Fearless) and the four levels past it (Fearless +1, +2, and +3) that starts to crank up the obstacles to progression. If you start going into Level 7 and beyond (the Heroic modes), you’ll almost certainly need to be grouped up at all times to survive.

I haven’t been able to find specifics on how much the game debuffs you, apart from a general statement that it decreases the damage you do, increases the damage done to you, and (at Level 3 and beyond) periodically activates “enraged” enemy effects on random mobs. Level 3 is also where we get the infamous Eye of Sauron, another periodic effect that either nukes the area where you’re fighting or starts healing mobs in that area if you don’t move out quickly enough.

It’s not all hardship, however. Aside from the fun of this challenge (more on that in a bit), you set yourself up for some rewards taking these higher difficulty levels. You’ll be triggering a buff to earn more XP and (even better) virtue XP, garnering a couple of hard-to-get titles (provided that you do this from level 10 onward), and getting token drops that can be bartered for special emotes.

It should be noted that Fearless (Level 3) is the lowest you can set your character to get the maximum amount of buffs (+20% XP and +5% VXP), which is why a lot of people — including me — find themselves gravitating to this setting. It’s also a pretty decent challenge without being rip-your-hair-out frustrating.

Difficulty balance is a tricky thing to get right in an MMO because it can really turn people off if it goes too far in either direction. If the game is way too easy — say, Elder Scrolls Online easy — then boredom quickly sets in. When you can’t really die and every mob is more or less easy to defeat with basic attacks, combat ceases to be a part of why you come to the game. Yet if it’s far too difficult, then you risk alienating players and holding them back from progressing.

A landscape difficulty slider like this is an elegant solution, as it simply lets the player decide for him or herself what is best. It’s far more in line with, say, CRPGs, where you usually get the option to set your overall game difficulty level based on how experienced you are and how much of a struggle you enjoy.

As an admitted carebear, I agree that MMORPGs in general have become a little too easy after the much more rough and cutthroat early days of the genre. The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, so to speak. Higher difficulty is a way to establish a better equilibrium.

So I’ve spent a couple of weeks now on a higher difficulty level in LOTRO, and right away, I noticed how much it changed the whole game experience from top-down. I was laughing my head off when I went to the Shire at level 1 and attempted to burn down some of those annoying gnats in the bog — only to have these level 7 gnats thoroughly thrash me into defeat. I may be the first player in LOTRO to ever be killed by these things, I don’t know, but it was a big wake-up call in any case.

I couldn’t play as I normally did. Early on, quests that threw more than one scripted mob at a time presented a serious threat. Bleed and poison effects could well prove to be mortally deadly if not expunged. And my heart would sink a little when I saw an enraged effect or Eye of Sauron trigger during an encounter because I knew I’d have to work even harder to emerge victorious.

Yet none of this was disheartening; on the contrary, it was incredibly fun. I think I’d gotten so used to how ridiculously easy LOTRO was that I never looked at anything short of an enemy camp full of elite mobs as something to be worried about. But now… now everything is a potential death sentence if I misstep.

It honestly reminds me a lot of the same feel when I got into WoW Classic (and Hardcore Classic) because that didn’t coddle the player either. Progress was slow, deliberate, and earned. And like WoW Classic, LOTRO’s higher difficulty levels put a premium on really good gear, consumables, and skills. Your whole toolkit becomes vital to making it through these quests, and so you have to know it better than just slamming your hand down on the number pad to ensure victory.

So mark me as one of the converts because I don’t think I’ll ever roll a new character in this game again without jacking up the difficulty level. I find my enthusiasm to engage with this MMO much higher than it has been in a while, and I look forward to the days when I get to zones where I’m really going to have to pull out all the stops to make it.