LOTRO Legendarium: The pros and cons of Lord of the Rings Online’s four newbie zones

When you’re starting out in an MMO world, it’s nice to have choices — especially if you plan to roll up an army of alts one day and don’t want to keep doing the same content over and over again. As of 2025, Lord of the Rings Online offers four starting regions, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and flavor. While the game doesn’t stress that you can choose where you want to go for your first leveling zone, you definitely can hop onto a horse and book it to the place that fits your needs the best.

I’ve gone through all of these many, many, many times to date and have some thoughts about what each of them do best. So I thought it’d be a fun exercise to take these four zones — the Shire, Ered Luin, eastern Bree-land, and Swanfleet — and highlight their pros and cons.

The Shire

Pros: My favorite starting region (hey, we’re all biased!) is a comprehensive Hobbit immersion experience with all of the goofy antics and charming tales of the shortest of the Free Folk. You get beautiful pastoral scenery, some of the best music of the game, a ton of non-combat quests, and enough content to take you to level 18 easily. It’s also full of fan-favorite locales, such as Bag End and the Party Tree. If you love Hobbit culture and lush questing areas, then this is the perfect place to spend a week.

Cons: I won’t deny that the Shire is almost overloaded with quests. I’ve done a full 100% quest run in this region a couple times, and it keeps going and going. You don’t have to do all of them for the meta deed, but it will require 75, which is a good deal. Some people don’t like the silliness of the Hobbits, the pie/mail running quests, or that annoying slug slayer deed. And I should mention that one deed required for the meta, Shire Brewmaster, isn’t visible in your deed log until it’s done for some reason.

Ered Luin

Pros: This is easily the quickest of the starting regions, seeing as how the Dwarves and Elves split custody after the divorce and took half the zone each. You can fully meta deed out this zone in a day (or even an evening!) as a result. There’s some pretty snow stuff in the north, but everyone seems to like the pastels and cherry trees of the southern area. I like some of the slayer deeds here, like the goblins and brigands, as they’re kind of relaxing to do. Also, you get to befriend and tend to a lynx cub. Aww.

Cons: It’s probably annoying to both Dwarf and Elf fans that their starting region short-changes both of their races. There really isn’t a lot of Dwarf or Elf anything here, especially when compared to all of the Hobbit stuff in both Bree-land and the Shire. There also aren’t a lot of interesting stories happening or really cool lore IP places to geek out over.

Eastern Bree-land

Pros: This is another generally attractive region in which to adventure, with a cheery forest, some fields, and a kind of scenic marsh right in the middle. It’s chock-full of quests and interesting characters, and if you desire to keep the good times going, you can transition right into western Bree-land when you’re done to get to level 20 or beyond. I’m fond of the Chetwood, and Staddle’s quests are loaded with some great storytelling.

Cons: Like the humans themselves, this area is just plain-Jane fantasy — nothing special. I can imagine that some players will be irked to see that the Hobbits take up so much of the questing space here in the Man starting region, and don’t get me started about how annoying it is to grind bugs for slayer deeds in the marsh.

Swanfleet

Pros: The newest of the four starting regions, Swanfleet is the place that SSG really pushes you to do above the others. Unlike the previous three, here you can start at level 1 after a very short opening tutorial and power all the way to the mid-30s between this zone and the attached Cardolan. The gear is quite good, and the stories are well-done. We also get a good mix of human, Hobbit, and Elf exposure going through a pretty area.

Cons: Now that the honeymoon period is over for this place, maybe we can be honest and acknowledge that Swanfleet has a few significant flaws. It’s the most difficult to navigate — almost right away for some quests! — and includes a lot of vertical adventuring and backtracking. You’re forced to dip into crafting if you’re going through the storyline, which is annoying. And SSG absolutely skimped on the LOTRO Points and virtue XP here, which you can get in far greater amounts in the other three regions.

Which zone is right for you? That’s your call, but I encourage any new player to try them all at some point. Don’t forget that you can do all four zones on the same character to maximize virtue XP and LOTRO Points!