LOTRO Crafting Guilds Guide

A Crafting Guild is a group of NPCs that offer exclusive recipes and reputation items related to each of the crafting professions in The Lord of the Rings Online.

Reputation Ranks

A crafter’s guild is also a reputation faction. So, there are incentives for rising through the ranks of your chosen guild. There are also a lot of reputation ranks. While I offer suggestions for leveling up the ranks quicker later on, you should see this as a medium-term project.

The current nine ranks are:

1. Initiate
2. Apprentice
3. Journeyman
4. Expert
5. Artisan
6. Master
7. Eastemnet Master
8. Westemnet Master
9. Honoured Master

As you improve your reputation standing, you unlock higher-tier and more powerful guild recipes. We will investigate that together shortly.

Guilds are not Kinships

Some MMOs use the term “Guild” to mean a group of real players who form a sort of “club”. These are used for social reasons, or for crafting or for forming groups or raids.

For this Metalsmith Recipe, the Guild Item required is a large Eastemnet Crest.

In LOTRO, these player-groups are called Kinships or Kins.

So, when you hear or read about a crafting guild, it does not refer to real players directly. However, real players can use their guild access to help others.

Are There Gathering Guilds?

No. As these relate specifically to crafting there is no guild for the Forester, Prospector or Farmer gathering professions.

However, as Scholar is both a gatherer and a crafter, there is a Scholar’s Guild.

For VIPs

You are a “VIP” if you have a current subscription to LOTRO. For the purposes of this guide, I lump “Lifetime” accounts in with VIPs.

If you are a VIP, you have access to Crafting Guilds included in your subscription.

So, while you continue to subscribe you do not need to unlock crafting guilds.

For Everyone Else (Premium/F2P)

If you do not have a VIP account, then yours will be one of these two types:

• If you have never spent any real life money on LOTRO, then you’ll be classed as Free-to-Play (or F2P).
• If you have bought some LOTRO points, or used to be a VIP, then you will have a Premium Account.

As Guilds are not included in Premium and F2P account, you will need to manually unlock them.

VIP? Premium? F2P? What?

If you’re not familar with the various LOTRO accounts, then that’s okay! LOTRO-Wiki has a page that shows the benefits and drawbacks of each account type so you can make an informed choice.

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This is done through the LOTRO Store. Now, one does not simply unlock crafting guilds as a single feature.

Instead you have to use LOTRO Points for each crafting guild that you need. These cost 295, but the upside is that you only need to do this for guilds you want.

Real Money Value of a Crafting Guild

The real-money value of unlocking a guild depends on which LOTRO Points Bundles you choose. But here are the first few to help you.

• £4.99 Bundle: 4.99/600×295 = £2.45
• £14.99 Bundle: 14.99/1850×295 = £2.39
• £24.99 Bundle: 24.99/3350×295 = £2.20

If, after reading this guide to crafting guilds you still want to join one but don’t want to spend real money, don’t despair. Here are some ways to unlock access to them for free.

To skip this section, hit the button below:

How to Join a Crafting Guild ↓

1. Check Your LP Balance

Genuinely! When did you last check how many LOTRO Points you had on your account?

Questing and accidental deed completions still earn LP. And in many reputation factions within LOTRO, rising through those ranks grants you bonus LOTRO Points too.

So you may already have more LP than you realise.

Speaking of things you may not realise, have you checked your deed log recently? Sometimes even slayer deeds can be nearly complete even if you’re just doing regular questing that’s roughly on-level.

Slayer targets count if they’re trivial (grey), but if they within aggro range I am more likely to defeat more of them. That’s because they attack me, or I clear more out because they might attack me!

See Slayer Deed Guides and Maps →

Early Deed Guides

• Bree-land Slayer Deed
• Ered Luin Slayer Deed
• Evendim Slayer Deed
• Lone-lands Slayer Deed
• North Downs Slayer Deed
• Shire Slayer Deed Guide
• Trollshaws Slayer Deed

Did you purposefully clear the deeds in all starting LOTRO zones when your character set out on their adventures?

If not, then easy and quick deeds can be found in the other starter zones: Ered Luin, Bree-land, the Shire and even the Deeds of Swanfleet.

I just checked my L29 Lore-Master and still had Farms of the Shire and Sights of the Shire to do. Over-leveled and riding on a mount, those two won’t take long and are ×5LP each! Brigand-slayer of the Shire (Advanced) was also almost complete and is worth an additional ×10LP.

If you don’t fancy diverting your adventures then check the deed log of your current zone. I found one where I just needed to discover one more location to clear an exploration deed.

Consider using Waypoint for certain higher-level exploration deeds to save you some time.

Take a look, you may be surprised. You might not be, of course, but it’s always possible!

If you need quick LOTRO points from deeds, don’t spend two hours finding treasure caches!

However, some slayer deeds only have a small number to defeat if there aren’t many in a given region. And traditional exploration deeds are usually much quicker.

These are sometimes called “throwaways”. The idea is that you create a character, run the main deeds in one or two starter regions, delete it and repeat the process. This can be a refreshing change from your usual questing while boosting your LOTRO points. And in doing that, you can earn a crafting guild within a day or two.

Deed Guides

You can find all my LOTRO Deed Guides here.

If you take this approach, then one of the many LOTRO Plugins is Deed Tracker.

I recommend you install this by default on new characters. It can take a lot of setup on existing ones is all.

Whichever profession’s guild you’re choosing to join, you must reach proficiency in the Expert Tier first. That means filling up the “bronze” Crafting XP bar. See What is Proficiency? for more details.

Do I Need to Be a Certain Level?

No, the beauty of the LOTRO crafting system is that your character level has no bearing on which tier of crafting you can do. Once you unlock a crafting tier then, so long a you have the materials, you can begin making items from the next tier.

This applies to guild recipes also.

Find a Master of Crafting Guilds

There are many of these around Middle-Earth and most of them are in the earlier regions.

You can find the full list on LOTRO-Wiki.

Choose Guild & Get the Quest

If you are eligible to join more than one guild, the NPC will ask you which one you wish to join.

Make your selection and then take the quest they give you. This should also include directions to the relevant headquarters.

All the quests are named
Introduction: <Guild Name>

Take Yourself to their Leader

Once you have your introduction from the previous NPC, you have to journey to your new Guild-hall.

See: Where are the Crafting Guilds?

For the Scholar’s Guild, make sure you speak to a Master of Crafting Guilds before travelling to Rivendell.

There is no Master of Crafting Guilds in Rivendell. There’s not even one in the Trollshaws.

I made this mistake so had to make the journey twice!

Meet and Read

Once there, speak to the Guild Leader and follow their introductory quests.

If this is your first guild, take your time to actually read those dialogues. You will save yourself some hassle further down the line.

Follow-on Quests

They will introduce you to other key NPCs. These are the important ones to bear in mind any time you want to do guild crafting.

You can find the LOTRO crafting guilds in the following locations:

• Cook’s Guild: The Hobbit Hole at the Michel Delving crafting area.
• Jeweller’s Guild: Craft Hall of Estdeldín.
• Metalsmith’s Guild: Thorin’s Hall (near the forges).
• Scholar’s Guild: Rivendell, Last Homely House (second floor).
• Tailor’s Guild: Craft Hall of Estdeldín.
• Weaponsmith’s Guild: Thorin’s Hall (near the forges).
• Woodworker’s Guild: Craft Hall of Estdeldín.

Cook’s Guild

Fast Travel to Michel Delving.

Hobbits may earn Return to the Shire, non-Hobbits can purchase Return to Michel Delving.

Metalsmith’s/Weaponsmith’s Guild

Fast Travel to Thorin’s Gate.

You can fast travel here from many other fast travel stables, including Michel Delving and Bree.

Return to Thorin’s Gate can be purchased in various ways and acquired for free by Dwarves (not Stout-Axe).

Scholars Guild

Stablemaster: Rivendell.

Route: South Bree → Rivendell

Instant Travel
(Non-High) Elves can learn the Return to Rivendell racial trait. Other races can purchase this from the LOTRO store for 295 LOTRO Points.

Tailor’s/Jeweller’s/Woodworker’s Guild

Stablemaster: Esteldín.

Route: West Bree → Esteldín

Instant travel options are available for: Hunter, Warden and Mariner.

When you visit your guild’s headquarters, you’ll find a number of facilities and NPCs available.

• Guild NPCs
  • Specialist Guild crafting recipe vendor.
  • Guild “item” recipe trader.
  • Guild Master (we will get to them shortly)
• Crafting Facilities: in the very least the ones you need for your specific crafting guild. But often you can find all the facilities – if not right there, then not far away.
• NPC Material Vendors: e.g. Suppliers, Expert Recipe Traders.
• Town Services: e.g. Vault, Wardrobe, Shared Storage.
• Mailbox

Instead you have to craft reputation items. These are

1. Usable: right-clicking and consuming them grants reputation. This is the same as other rep items elsewhere in the game.
2. Ingredients: when you want to craft guild gear, these “items” are also a required component, or an ingredient for those guild recipes.

If you are levelling your character and gear at the same time as the guild, this causes a tension. You have to choose whether to use the items for gear or reputation.

What are the Guild Items?

Each guild has its own, and these are:

• Cooks: Repasts
• Jewellers: Symbols
• Metalsmiths: Crests
• Scholars: Scrolls
• Tailors: Patterns
• Weaponsmiths: Emblems
• Woodworkers: Carvings

Example Guild Item

Recipe Cooldowns

Unlike most other crafting recipes, you cannot simply churn out guild items. Instead they have cooldowns.

How long those are depends on the tier of crafting and the size (or quality) of the item.

The total cooldown and the cooldown remaining are both shown in the crafting panel. This can be reset using Mithril Coins if you’re impatient or need to front load your crafting.

If you’ve joined one, I would think you want to get something out of it, too. Thankfully, you do!

• Higher reputation unlocks more powerful recipes higher-quality rep items.
• More recipes means more improvements to your own gear or provisions.
• And the more recipes you know, the greater chance you have of finding valuable items to sell to other players.
• Oh, and because leaving items undone is annoying to us completionists!

Tracking Your Reputation

You can track you progress, through the in-game reputations panel (Character Sheet → Reputation).

Whichever tier of crafting you are at, craft all reputation items for that tier and those below it. There are no reputation items for your guild below Expert level, though.

Filter your crafting log by the guild item to find all recipes you’ve unlocked. This may not help Scholars who have the decidedly non-unique name of “Scroll”!

Have you definitely purchased all rep item recipes up to your current tier? If not, you could be missing out on rep.

The crafting guilds are a more complicated version of the LOTRO reputation factions you’re already familiar with. Use Large or Small Reputation Acceleration Tomes before consuming your crafted guild rep items.

You can get large ones from various places including certain expansions and directly from the LOTRO Store.

For details on where you can get Small tomes, see the Wiki.

Use a physical diary, or your phone’s calendar, or a LOTRO addon such as Reminders. Set the days/times the recipes cooldown by. Then craft them on those days.

Note: Some have part-days in their cooldowns, such as “18 hours”. You may need to note down the time to make sure you login at that time or after it.

Top Up Crafting Materials

As soon as you craft a reputation item, check whether you have enough materials to make the next one. If not, go and gather, acquire, buy or beg for them. That way you will have what you need once the recipe is off cooldown.

Crafting Guild Tokens of Esteem are LOTRO-store only but each grants 20,000 reputation to your guild.

You can buy these:

• Individually: 295
• Pack of 5: 995 ( 199 each)

Warning: the individual option lets you decide how many to buy up to a maximum of 5. At the 295LP/each cost you’re at 885LP total. You may as well get the 995LP stack of 5 once you get that high.

1. Get the Recipes

Firstly, make sure you have the reputation item recipes from the relevant trader. For the Tailor’s Guild this is the “Pattern Trader”.

Then, head to the Improved Recipes Trader for your actual crafting recipes. What is available will depend on your reputation standing.

2. Check Which Guild Items Are Needed

The number and type of guild items required are listed alongside the other crafting materials.

You will need to make sure you have sufficient materials for both the reputation item(s) and the final product.

3. Gather Materials Needed

Of course, “gather” could mean “acquire” as there are various ways to obtain the relevant materials.

Before you go and gather, or spend gold or silver, do make sure you do not already have those materials. LOTRO’s API does not let plugins read the contents of carry-alls. So you may need to check your other character’s bags, or other storage.

4. Craft Guild Items

It’s finally time! Begin first with your guild reputation items. Most professions will need to find their relevant crafting facilities. Scholars can make these without a Study.

5. Craft Final Product

Once you have made the reputation-item “ingredients”, resist the urge to consume them to increase your rep! Make sure you have all the other ingredients and craft the intended final product.

If you think about, crafting involves taking raw materials and making something useful and/or beautiful from them. It requires time and concentration. So, having plenty of light to see what you’re doing makes sense, doesn’t it?

Yet Guild-halls are among the darkest rooms in LOTRO! The ones at Esteldín are particularly bad.