Thread: Speed leveling a Runekeeper Scholar to 40 to match my Warden?

Hi folks,

My main is a level 41 Warden woodworker, and it's my third warden overall. It's also the first character I've had in LOTRO to break past level 38.

Now, this isn't so much about the Warden as it is about the Runekeeper alt I made today for my birthday. I want to get it to 40 as quickly as possible, but more specifically, I want to level the Scholar tradeskill quickly without burning money on auctions (which appear to be nonexistent or prohibitive, scholar wise, on Landroval) so I can make potions and Woodworking crit stuff for my Warden. Also, I'd like to see if I can make a profit by buying materials for dye and paint and then selling them on the auction house at higher levels. I own the Isengard XPack (and the horse) and bought the riding skill to help me get around faster as necessary.

Knowing these facts, what's a useful leveling zone or ruin farming progression that can help me get my tradeskill level and my fighting level up to 40 within a week or two?

The Historian profession (the only one that includes Scholar) does not do woodworking. It is Scholar/Farmer/Weaponsmith.

If you are unable or unwilling to go the Auction House route for materials then you'll have to farm nodes. Having a horse is helpful when it comes to getting around, but you can do it just fine without. If you look around you can usually find areas where several scholar nodes spawn fairly close together. You simply farm the nodes and then circle back to the start to farm some more. It's not difficult, merely time consuming. The horse may not help as much in this case as the nodes are on a respawn timer, so you will be waiting for them to respawn regardless.

Alternatively, you can craft dyes to level your scholar. If you look at the recipes listed here http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Dyes you can see that the first two levels have dye components that are made from items that come from Prospecting nodes (Copper Salts, Sienna, Umber). If you have Prospector on another alt, these should be fairly plentiful. I've also found that these items are much cheaper on the AH than the components used to make scrolls and potions. Anyway, once you get to the third tier, the dyes can be made from items that come from Farming, so you should be able to be self-sufficient there.

As far as zones go, I like the eastern half of Ered Luin to work through the first tier of scholar, then Bree-Land, Lone-Lands, North Downs, etc. Basically follow your character leveling. I don't think that leveling a Rune-Keeper is particularly hard. Despite being somewhat squishy, they are also fairly powerful and self-sufficient. Between Ered Luin, the Barrow-Downs, and the western half of the Lone Lands I took an RK to level 24 in about 20 hours.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply.

My warden is a woodworker, and my RK is the Scholar (Historian, right?). I was hoping to use my RK to augment the crafting of my Warden through those Lore thingies.

In general is harder to have your alts help level your scholar's crafting because the best source of mats is crafting nodes, and only scholars can harvest those. Dyes are great to level with and can be profitable, but the main ingredients are usually random drops from farming or ore/wood nodes and some of them seem to be very hard to find. Most humanoid mobs drob scholar materials, though, so another possibility is to have your warden go slaughter humanoid mobs of the appropriate level, then give the scholar mats to your RK.

I have two westfold master scholars, I have never purchased a single scrap of scholar materials, and the only time I specifically farmed nodes was for tier 1, the rest I got from general leveling and questing, scholar stuff drops of most sentient mobs, so just kill, kill, kill, which you will be doing to level anyway.

Also, I found the best thing to level scholar on was the fire and light oils. Those are always sellable and good for hunter alts or hunter kinsman, wardens can use them too.

Originally Posted by Waxe

I have two westfold master scholars, I have never purchased a single scrap of scholar materials, and the only time I specifically farmed nodes was for tier 1, the rest I got from general leveling and questing, scholar stuff drops of most sentient mobs, so just kill, kill, kill, which you will be doing to level anyway.

Also, I found the best thing to level scholar on was the fire and light oils. Those are always sellable and good for hunter alts or hunter kinsman, wardens can use them too.

Morale and Power pots yield the most points per materials. Aside from what you buy from the vendor, I'm talking node/mob drop items. They are also bought frequently by all classes, not just Wardens and Hunters.

Thanks for the input folks.

Aside from farming and cooking, which is on a Hunter Alt, I do have a Metalsmith Guardian. I'll try to make them work together with my existing materials to give the scholar a leg up.

Potentially, I want the RK to be my main alt now, since I'm liking the playstyle change between it and the warden.

Originally Posted by iamstillwater

Thanks for the input folks.

Aside from farming and cooking, which is on a Hunter Alt, I do have a Metalsmith Guardian. I'll try to make them work together with my existing materials to give the scholar a leg up.

Potentially, I want the RK to be my main alt now, since I'm liking the playstyle change between it and the warden.

You may want to check out this lotro-wiki article on crafter interdependence. I did that for a time, but you can only cover four of the crafting guilds that way; I now have one character for each crafting guild.

Most professions requires materials from nodes in level-dependent areas. The only exception to this is cook who can easily level from farmer which "gathers" seeds from vendors rather than mob-infested zones. It's theoretically possible to farm flowers and level a scholar via dye-making, but the drop rate is very low and I don't think it's practical.

The thing about scholar materials is that they come from level appropriate mobs as well as nodes, particularly from the undead and some of the humanoids, goblins for sure. A high-dps class could gather a significant number of artifacts by burning through the right mobs. I think that is practical.

Rune-keepers, champions, and hunters are very good at burning through mobs--and now minstrels too. Make one of those an Explorer, especially a hunter with all those lovely travel skills, and they can get all three level-dependent crafting materials: wood and metal from gathering skills, artifacts from killing undead and humanoids.

Many suggest making your main an Explorer: You want your highest-level character to be able to gather materials for all of your crafting alts. Your maximum crafting skill for all characters is capped by either the gold in your coin purse or the highest level character you have who can gather the appropriate resources. Therefore, your highest-level character should be the one with Explorer who can gather materials for all professions (except cook who don't have character level dependencies on their craft profession.)

Also remember you can change vocations; you lose experience in any profession that doesn't carry over, but you could for instance change your warden to an explorer and create a woodworker alt. I hear wardens can burn through mobs nicely, and they also have some lovely travel skills and a fast run for gathering clustered nodes quickly without having to mount/unmount horses between each node.

Barring RP considerations, you should consider decoupling the class you love to play from the profession you love to profit from. The class you play more will level faster, and that will feed the crafting alts with the highest-level materials you can get as soon as possible.

Originally Posted by deeman25845601

Morale and Power pots yield the most points per materials. Aside from what you buy from the vendor, I'm talking node/mob drop items. They are also bought frequently by all classes, not just Wardens and Hunters.

Really, I always found low level potions to not sell worth a damn... Whereas a fire oil you make at the journeyman level can be used by a level 75. I didn't mean it was the most efficient way of doing it, just that its always worked the best for me.