2017 Marks 10 Years of LOTRO – so it’s time to celebrate the 10th LOTRO Anniversary Event! Quests and events are being held across Middle Earth with the Scavenger Hunt literally seeing people trekking across most map regions! However as some of these require a L60 character (or a very understanding Fellowship or Kin) how can solo- or low-level characters enjoy LOTRO’s Anniversary and reap tokens for the rewards? Here’s my handy guide to the many quests you can enjoy, as well as showing you the rewards you can earn!
Where Are LOTRO Anniversary Quests Found?
As the whole of Middle Earth is celebrating the anniversary, you will find yourself in three main map regions!
- Bree Town Centre and Bree Race Courses
- The Shire: the Methel-Stage and the Shire Racing Track
- Thorin’s Hall Ale House (also called Thorin’s Hall Inn in some quests.
Hunters with travel guides rejoice! The rest of you will need to use Quick Travel to ride around everywhere. There is no Quick Travel to Hobbitton – you will need to Quick Travel to Michel Delving and then take a normal horse taxi, or your own mount, to Hobbiton to reach the Methel-Stage.
Earning Essence Fragments
As with Yule Festival and Spring Festival, the LOTRO Anniversary Event allows you to earn Essence Fragments by completing 7 Anniversary Events in a day. Do this three times to earn an actual Essence ingrediant. The Quest-giver for this can be found at the Party Tree so go there before completing any Anniversary Quests if you want to earn this reward!
Earning Anniversary Tokens for Solo and Lowbie Players
Below is your guide to repeatable quests you can earn for tokens. I have put in the number of tokens and the approximate cooldown of these quest to help you know what can be repeated and when! OK let’s get to it!
Fireworks Show (Bree): 2 Tokens, Repeatable Every ½hr At Nighttime
In the North-West of Bree at night time you can participate in the fireworks show! This quest involves listening to the Fireworks Announcer and following the instructions to send up the correct firework. Or to not send up an incorrect firework! These can be worded “Time to send up a red firework” or “This is not the time for yellow, but any other colour will do”. So pay attention!
Fireworks in the Shire (Methel-Stage) – 1 Token, Repeatable Every ½hr at Nighttime
A really quick one this time – simply keep setting up fireworks for 3 minutes to keep those pesky local Hobbits from complaining to their neighbours! May as well do the Shire Horse Race while you’re in the area!
Important: the Quest text says you will need more than 1 or 2 people to impress the local Hobbits. So you’re best holding off accepting the Quest until a few people are at the Methel-Stage with you. Unless you want to disappoint a whole bunch of fickle Hobbits! You can decide!
Sparking an Interest (Bree): 2 Tokens, Repeatable Every 3hrs in the Daytime
Entrepreneurial Hobbits want you to go and find places in Bree to set off a random firework. Their hope is that by doing so it will encourage the locals to attend the show at nighttime! I highly recommend showing floaty names (N Key) as these can be tricksy to spot. They also despawn when a player puts a firework down, and they respawn later. Example locations are below, but there are others!
Lost Invitations (Bree): 2 Tokens, Repeatable every 9hrs
Clumsy folk have lost their invitations to the festivities! So you need to run around Bree (seriously on-foot is easier than mounted for this one) to find the lost invitations. You are looking for Envelopes – some are flying about in the breeze but many are located in fixed positions. Although you only need to find 7 lost invitations, not all envelopes contain invitations, so you’ll need to collect more than 7 (unless the dice are in your favour anyway).
Excuse all these being at night-time – it’s hard timing questing with blogging!
Horse Racing (Bree and Shire Horse Tracks) – 2 Tokens Each, Repeatable Every 12 hours
Or, if you’re bad at the Horse Racing as I am, you can re-try every hour! Take the challenge and navigate the course. You have to avoid the boggy bits and get through each gate before the timer runs out!
- If you navigate the wooden walk-ways without faling in the bog you get a speed boost!
- If you fall in the bog you get a speed reduction (and I always fail the race if I fall in!)
Note: the Horse Trials do NOT count towards your 7-Quest target for the Essence Fragment. I don’t know why, but they don’t.
Beer Brawling (Thorin’s Hall Ale House – below Ground Floor) – 1-3 Tokens Repeatable Every 9 minutes
Pick up a giant club and beat up other players! This is the best activity to “grind” for tokens and counts towards the 7-quest wrapper. But other players may not make it easy for you – so play nice. This Anniversary Event has 3 Difficulty Levels:
- Basic Level (1 token): successfully whack 8 players. If you’re knocked out the arena you don’t fail the round, but you do get a ‘fall limp debuff’.
- Intermediate Level (2 tokens): successfully whack 8 players. If you’re knocked out the arena you fail the round and have to wait for restart.
- Expert Level (3 Tokens): successfully whack 8 players and stay inside the arena. Plus you must retrieve a Glorious Beer before the round ends.
A few times I was whacked out the arena at the start of the round! On the other hand I accidentally selected Expert once and won it! So there are a lot of tokens you can earn in an hour here, but other players may stand in your way!
Edit by @ModeratePeril who timed the delay between rounds, made it 9 minutes. This means you can earn 18 tokens/hour so long as you don’t fail a round (Good Luck!).
Anniversary Gifts Quest Chain – 7 Tokens, Repeatable Every 3 Days 6 Hours
Throughout the three Anniversary Regions are people sending gifts to each other! Although you can pick up the Gifts Quest Chain at any stage, there is a logical route you can take while you deliver the gifts:
- Bree to Combe: A Delicate Bracelet – Quest Giver: Roger Hazeltwig (Bree Centre)
- Combe (to Combe!): Delicious Pastries
- Combe to Michel Delving: Wooden Carving
- Michel Delving to Hobbiton: A New Hammer
- Hobbiton to Frérin’s Court: A Dwarf Shield
- Frérin’s Court to Thorin’s Hall Ale House: A Lucky Goat’s Horn
- Thorin’s Hall Ale House to Bree: A Pint of Ale
How Many LOTRO Anniversary Tokens Can You Earn?
On a calculation of the above, if you just did one or two Beer Brawls, you can earn 25-30 LOTRO Anniversary Tokens in the first 2 hours you play the Event!
LOTRO Anniversary Event Rewards
I won’t cover all the rewards but the main ones are as follows:
Anniversary Mounts
- Windfells Goat – 62% Mount Speed (20 Anniversary Tokens)
- Steed of the Unflagging Dragon – 68% Mount Speed (40 Anniversary Tokens)
Anniversary Cosmetic Outfits
There are a lot of cosmetic options at this year’s Anniversary Event but my take-aways from this years are (in the same order as the images below):
- Unflagging Dragon Armour Set (50 Anniversary Tokens for all 5 Pieces) – in the screenshot below mine is customised with a Black Dye
- Reveller’s Robe of the Odogil (7 Anniversary Tokens) + Reveller’s Cloak of the Odogil (7 Anniversary Tokens)
- Silken Gown of Golden Splendour (4 Anniversary Tokens) + Cloak of the Shining Star (4 Anniversary Tokens)
What are Anniversary Steel Tokens?
At the event vendors stall in Bree, you will find a barter vendor who sells various things in exchange for Steel Tokens. These are character-specific currency that drop from mobs. So far I’ve only seen them from from Signature (and above) enemies in Middle Earth (I was deeding in the Trollshaws when I noticed Steel Tokens drop). They may or may not drop from other mobs, but I’ll be testing that theory out later.
You can exchange Steel Tokens for a variety of cosmetic items, or a box of Festival Tokens allowing you to convert Steel Tokens into Anniversary Tokens – or any other Festival, if you wish!
LOTRO Anniversary Token Vendor After the Event
I am unsure whether this Vendor will stay in place permanently or just until the Scavenger Quests are removed, but there are Vendors still positioned in various places in Middle Earth. The easiest one for everyone can be found in Bree‘s main square (near the Tasks Bulletin Board). So if you have tokens left over you want to spend, you should be able to do so.
TL;DR Enjoy the 10th LOTRO Anniversary Event!
There is a lot going on even if you can’t, or don’t want to, do the Scavenger Hunts. I don’t have a character that’s even hit Level 50 yet and I’ve obtained nearly all of the rewards above (I would forget to use the kites, so I tend to forget to buy them
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Some of them require you to visit level 100+ zones, too! But the guide is great! Thanks! At least my low level alts will have something to do 😀
Thanks for commenting! And yes I’ve heard about the L100 Zones as well. I see the advantage in offering harder to content to players who have played more, but I wanted to offer something that helped everyone get some of the anniversary rewards at least. Sadly the really neat pets people were looking forward to require Scavenger Hunts. I still may try and group up for one or two, just so I’ve experienced it.
At The Shire Fireworks, Gandalf gives a quest to use fireworks at various locations, furthest away being the Last Lonely House. Does not appear renewable – rewards with a title as well as tokens.
Heya Ray, thanks for this. Is that a quest that all levels can do or is the travel hazardous?