New to LOTRO and rolled a champ (fits my playstyle) with that being said I have no idea in terms of hobby I should choose? I am interested in one that will help me as I level as well as be moderately profitable.
The common picks I'd imagine would be armourer or armsman. But is there something else that could help me as well as be profitable?
the most proffitable is the Explorer profession which allows you collect wood and mine ores, selling untreated wood, ore and other resources youll gather like precious stones will usualy sell well if you sell them in bulk. the forrester profession will also allow you to boil hides into leathers
if your realy looking for a hobby then lotro only has one, fishing and from that youll only catch a few fish cooks can use.. they cant use them all
Last edited by Finglonger_UK; Jun 12 2012 at 04:31 PM.
Thank you for the response and sounds like I was looking for vocation not hobby.
With that being said I don't see mention of either Armourer nor Armsman I am imagining only because they aren't profitable? I don't mind being a resource mule to help buy the items I need but was wondering if either of the above mentioned vocations could benefit my journey through leveling?
If not than I will select the explorer and appreciate your advice.
both armourer and armsman can come in handy at the higher levels but early on you will be getting the best aromours and weapons from quest or faction rewards. but tbh at lower levels neither of these vocations will earn you much cash but youll be able to subsidise your income by prospecting
With that being said I don't see mention of either Armourer nor Armsman I am imagining only because they aren't profitable? I don't mind being a resource mule to help buy the items I need but was wondering if either of the above mentioned vocations could benefit my journey through leveling?
As a champion sooner or later you will be able to wear heavy armour and shields - I think from level 20 onward. That would make the Armourer an interesting vocation for you, better even if you choose to become member of the Metalsmith Guild. Armourers can also farm ore which they need for their crafting. I choose that vocation for my guardian, and am very happy with it.
Primo: There's only 1 hobby (yet still, after nearly 4 years...), and that is Fishing.
Secundo: Armsman, Armourer, etc... are the main titles for the vocations that includes crafts. There are 9 crafts in total grouped in trios that (usually), self-support at least 1 (ex: Armsman has the Prospector craft skill to get the ore U need to make (metal) weapons with Weaponsmith. The 3rd craft in Armsman is Woodworker: for wood weapons, instruments, fishing poles, etc...
But unless you have an alt or a friend that has the Forestry craft skill to gather wood and make planks out of it, you'll have to buy/trade with others or the Auction House to get it.
PS: The hobby Fishing has (beside the fun of it, trophies U can get to hang on UR wall or just sell or if U like a lot of seaweeds with UR sushis - do a bit of fishing & you'll see), it's only use is for getting some fishes that Cooks would need for crafting certain food (aka temp boosts).
As for the choice that depends on what you have as resources (friends, kinship, alternate characters). If you're alone you'll need to provide at least part of the gear you use and trade/buy the rest (AH, skirmish camp, other players, etc...).
Consider: A Champion uses heavy armor: 6 items per character (Metalsmith's department since medium and light is from a Tailor - including the cloak btw), and usually uses 2 melee weapons and a bow type starting at 20th level: 2-3 items per character (Weaponsmith's dept) but you must admit they are pretty important.
A third option could be Tinker (includes Jeweller - 7-8 items per character, Prospector - to supply the precious metals, and Cook - but you may need some items only Farmers can provide beside some 'fishes').
As for making gold, of course Explorer is the one that can gather the most resources but it includes only the Tailor craft that (beside the cloak) is not very useful for a Champion. Scholars also can make rare useful items (like crafting scrolls to get bonus for criticals results on crafting), and the Historian vocation also includes Weaponsmith but no ore gathering skill so again you'd have to scrounge to get the materials you need to make weapons.
You need 4 characters to cover all the crafts.
But you can make money by crafting a lot, but you gotta also realize that it takes time (specially gathering the materials), the best gear sells more (and at higher $), but the mats you'd need to make better gear are rarer, harder to get (and also cost more).
In any case that was my two cents on the subject. Hope it helps.
Each vocation has a pair of professions that are linked, a production craft and the associated gathering craft to provide resources for it, plus a third profession that's not linked to the other two but is instead supposed to encourage more interdependence between characters.
If you're only going to have one character and you aren't in a kinship that regularly trades materials back and forth, then it's best to ignore the extra profession if it's a production profession (or just sell excess resources if it's a gathering profession). The main focus of the vocation becomes the output of the production profession in the linked pair:
Armourer -> Metalsmith
Armsman -> Weaponsmith
Explorer -> Tailor
Historian -> Scholar
Tinker -> Jeweller
Woodsman -> Woodworker
Yeoman -> Cook
Out of those, the tailor profession isn't much use to heavy armour wearers like champions, but you're going to want a metalsmith's armour, a weaponsmith's (or possibly woodworker's) weapons, a jeweler's jewelry, and pots from a cook and scholar. So pretty much any vocation you pick other than Explorer would be useful directly, whereas Explorer would only be useful as a way to make money by selling resources.
On the other hand, if you're going to have multiple alts or if you play regularly with a friend, that changes things a bit, since by trading between characters you can make the third professions of each vocation useful. If you're going to have two characters for instance, you want to find a pair of vocations that complement each other like Historian and Tinker. (Historian's farmer provides for tinker's cook while tinker's prospector provides for historian's weaponsmith.) If you have four characters, then you can cover all the professions with an Armourer, Historian, Tinker, and Woodsman.
both armourer and armsman can come in handy at the higher levels but early on you will be getting the best aromours and weapons from quest or faction rewards...
Sorry, but I have to disagree with this.
Until about Level 40+, the best armour & weapons are crit-crafted ones, hands down. There may be some (rare!) drops that are equivalent, but one here and one there does not make a suit of 7 pieces of armour, + shield & weapons, and certainly not a new optimal custom suite every few levels, which is what only Crafting can provide.
Originally Posted by Finglonger_UK
...the most proffitable is the Explorer profession which allows you collect wood and mine ores...
This is only true if you enjoy farming resources, or are at least willing to do so for coin, AND you have access to the Auction House OR are willing to work the /Trade channel, which can be a spotty prospect at best. You run around, gather ore & wood, process it (or not), and then sell that to Players who are willing to spend Gold so they don't have to do what you just did. (Usually these are new(er) alts of much higher-level Characters, for Players who are grinding up their Crafts. Buy the stack of materials, grind the Craft up to the next tier, rinse/repeat). You are doing the grunt-work, they are paying for it.
The other approach (which again relies on the AH or /Trade channel to both get rare "recipes" and then sell the finished product), is to make elite crit-crafted gear and sell it for big bucks. If you go with a Scholar (for rare dyes) or Tailor (for cosmetic items) or Jeweller (for certain Lore-Master scrolls), you can make several Gold per item - and that only takes a couple minutes to make. Can't flood the market, can't rely on it every time (and some require rare once-only scrolls), but if you do it right you can make bookoo bucks.
(Every Craft has something that it can sell - and I'm sure others will chime in with what their Crafter finds a market for - but armour, weapons - these don't seem to be the big price ticket items and guaranteed sellers that some other items are.)
Meanwhile, you definitely want some Craft that is directly useful for your Character. Tailor... not so much - Cloaks is about it. Armourer can make both heavy armour and also bonus Crafting Tools, which can sell for a nice price (again, requires AH to really make it work). If you go Armourer, I think you'll be happy with the result.
And, as pointed out above, having 2 characters working in synergy can open 3 (or even 4!) self-supported Crafts, while one character can at most self-support 1 Craft, with either some slop materials to sell or an unsupported 2nd production Craft. (Crafting is not level-dependent - you can have 1 primary character (who also crafts) and 1 pure crafting mule who never adventures, and it will work out fine.)
I forget exactly how many Turbine Points the AH costs (95? somewhere in there), but it covers all your characters - totally worth it if money-making or Crafting is a priority.
(Crafting is not level-dependent - you can have 1 primary character (who also crafts) and 1 pure crafting mule who never adventures, and it will work out fine.)
While true for the production crafts, you should keep in mind that, with the exception of farming, gathering resources is level dependent. Resources for lower tiers of crafting are available in low-level regions, but the resources for the higher tiers of crafting are in high level regions where only high level characters can survive long enough to gather them. For a player who is going to have one main character who they level up and multiple low-level alts just for crafting, it can be useful to have the main character be an explorer who can gather the ore to pass to his metalsmith, weaponsmith and jeweler alts, and the wood to pass to his woodworker alt. If you try to go the other way around and have a crafting alt responsible for gathering the materials your main needs for a production craft, it won't work so well unless you're leveling up the crafting alt as well as your main character.
While true for the production crafts, you should keep in mind that, with the exception of farming, gathering resources is level dependent. Resources for lower tiers of crafting are available in low-level regions, but the resources for the higher tiers of crafting are in high level regions where only high level characters can survive long enough to gather them.
???
Sorry, not true. With the exception of Hides (for Tailor*), this is simply wrong, at least not up until Master (Tier 5). I've taken a new Level 7 character and casually harvested up to Tier 4 materials in the (southern) Barrows, (east) North Downs, Lonelands, and (western) Trollshaws - without any problem at all. (Admittedly, the character certainly had to run for their life every now and then, but never came close to dying.) Keep your eyes open, don't do anything stupid, and you'll be fine. Stay on/near the roads at first, until you get a feel for it (and so you don't get lost and know which way to run if things go south).
(* To gather hides, you have to actually kill monsters - even with the least aggressive ones, lowbies simply cannot achieve this feat with mobs well above their level. Purple is not your favorite color here.
But since any higher-level Character will kill animals and gather hides as they adventure, they can pass those down to a lowbie Forester for the leather - that works just fine.)
Once you need to go into higher level areas for Master materials (High Moor, Angmar, Misty Mountains, etc.), Stealth can hide the mobs from you, the aggro can have a longer trigger range, and bad guys hit like a ton of bricks without warning, you can't run without triggering more, and it's game over all too easily.
Note that starting just above that same Level (~45-50+), loot drops and epic weapons/etc. start to approach Crafted items - I myself would rather keep Crafting custom items rather than wait for those drops, but it's not a dealbreaker, strictly speaking.
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Originally Posted by xDragonsBlood
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