Post Sections ⇅
- What Are the 2023 Yule Festival Dates?
- Where is Yule Festival Held?
- How do I get to Frostbluff?
- Gold and Silver Hobbit Gifts
- Earning Festival Tokens
- Yule Fest Wrappers
- Bringer of Good Cheer Deed
- Festival Quests In and Around Winter-Home
- → Stolen Sweets
- → Winter-Home’s Beggars
- → Moving them Off
- → A Charitable Spirit (Deducts 5 Tokens)
- → The Biggest Stomach of Them All
- → GLOBE Theatre of Winter-Home
- → GLOBE Theatre: As an Audience Member
- → Filling the Field
- → Cold As Ice
- → Empty Keg Emergency
- → Making Mischief
- → Unwilling Firewood
- → Tidying Up
- → The Abominable Snow-Beasts
- → Stuffing the Stuffed
- → Battle of the Snowballs
- Quests Outside of Frostbluff
- A Mission to Bring Good Cheer
- A Final Act
- Battle at Frostbluff
- Festivity Token Rewards
- Yule Festival Rewards
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Other Yule Fest Guides
It’s Yule-tide once more: Time to honour the past and look forward to the future in Middle-Earth! Let the LOTRO Yule Festival 2023 begin! Packed with quests from helping the poor, eating competitions, snowball fights and more. It’s time for all races and players to converge on Winter-Home in Frostbluff for some Yule celebrations.
As we gear up for Christmas and the Holiday Season, you can have fun with friends in-game and out-of-game too! An hour or two into this year’s event, I’ll have all the new rewards for 2023 right here!
What Are the 2023 Yule Festival Dates?
This year’s fest will run from 7th December 2023 (10am /servertime) – 3rd January 2024 (3am /servertime).
Active Figments Vendor
This year, the Rotating Figments of Splendour Vendor is Rowan Raspberry.
It’s also possible the Curator will be active, at some point before Christmas too.
Yule Festival is really easy to “grind” if you want Figments. So check out their stock and see what gifts you want to get yourself!
Where is Yule Festival Held?
Most of the quests are found at Winter-home in Frostbluff. Others can be found in Bree-land, the Shire and Ered Luin, at Duillond and Thorin’s Hall.
How do I get to Frostbluff?
- Use the map you are given in your auto-bestowed quest.
- Further maps can be purchased for 1 Token .
- Use the secondary Festival Stable-masters.
- Far-reaching Stable-masters have Winter-home as an option too.
Gold and Silver Hobbit Gifts
During the Yule Festival, LOTRO include extra goodies into the Gold and Silver Hobbit Gifts. For example, there are two mounts:
You can find some of the possible items in the links below.
- Decorations in Yule Presents (Déco du Milieu)
- Other Items (LOTRO-Wiki)
The Hobbit Gifts UI also becomes more festive:
Earning Festival Tokens
- Spirit of Yule Daily gives 2 × and some Essence Fragments
- Most Yule Festival Quests give 4 × Yule Festival Tokens.
- The staged Deed also grants tokens and/or Golden Festival Tokens.
There is a daily, cunningly called “Yule Festival” – that gives 2 × Tokens and a Sack Of Presents (when you hand the quest in to Mara Sandydowns) for completing any quest in Frost-Bluff.
The Sack of Presents can yield all sorts of things: Tokens, Marks, Medallions, decorations, cosmetics and the odd Essence Fragment. 4 × Fragments can be traded for an Essence Box in Winter-Home.
For a full list, including the percentage chance of receiving each item, head to the Wiki.
Yule Fest Wrappers
Yule Festival
- Sack of Presents
- ×2 Yule Tokens
In the Spirit of Yule
- Legendary Item XP
- ×5 Yule Tokens
A Fortune of Festive Spirit
- Legendary Item XP
- ×500 Figments of Splendour
- Scrap of an Essence Reclamation Scroll
- ×5 Yule Tokens
- ×1 Universal Optional Crafting Ingrediant
- Tracery Token, Incomparable
Bringer of Good Cheer Deed
There is an additional deed in this event: Bringer of Good Cheer. Here’s how you progress it:
Please Note: completing this is only possible if you have gained access to Missions. If you haven't, do not pick up the A Mission to Bring Good Cheer from Mara Sandydowns.
- Make sure you’ve done the intro quest to Unlock Missions. Most characters will have had an auto-bestowed quest when they were first introduced. You can take the special stable-masters from various locations. The easiest one for most players is near the normal Stable-Master near Thorin’s Hall.
- Once that’s unlocked, pick up the new quest from Mara Sandydowns called A Mission to Bring Good Cheer.
- Go back to the Missions area.
- Complete a mission (and hand in the relevant quest). You only need one for the Yuletide quest.
- Hand in Mara’s quest at Winter-home.
How Quickly Can You Progress Bringer of Good Cheer?
The Bringer of Good Cheer deed can be incremented once a day and requires 40 Dailies.
Getting from Winter-home to Missions
- Non Further Adventures Missions
As far as I can tell, the quickest way is to take the Winter-home Stable to Thorin’s Gate. There you can reach the Dwarven Missions and Trestlebridge. - Further Adventures Missions
For The Further Adventures of Bilbo Baggins and The Further Adventures of Elladan and Elrohir, you can get to Rivendell from Bree among other places. But not from Thorin’s Gate.
Festival Quests In and Around Winter-Home
Stolen Sweets
This is available during the Vacation in Frostbluff event. It also appears during Yule Festival.
Sweets destined for the Poor Children of Winter-Home have been stolen by various snow-dwelling creatures and carried away across Eriador. You must retrieve them and then deliver them to the children to brighten up their Yule-tide!
Note: the creatures you need are in areas up to around L45, so if you want to do this quest under level, get the help of another player.
I’m not doing a guide to this quest as The Wiki has an excellent walk-through already!
But, once you complete it, you receive:
- Title: Bringer of Sweets
- Pet Tome: Yule Rabbit which has a snowflake animation.
Winter-Home’s Beggars
Winter time is not a season of celebration for everyone. The village houses some of the downtrodden members of society. This includes some who have lost their jobs, thanks to the Mayor. Initially there are two quests which involve these poor souls.
Note: you cannot have both Moving Them Off and A Charitable Spirit active at the same time.
Moving them Off
I stopped doing this quest a few years ago. It goes against the spirit of the season, and there are tons of other options for completing the daily.
According to the Mayor’s attitude, these beggars diminish people’s experience of the festivities (even though he caused the situation). So Guard Kember asks you to tell them to move away (there are 5). Not a joyous task!
Note: all the beggars of Winter-home are marked with quest rings on your map.
A Charitable Spirit (Deducts 5 Tokens)
The complete polar opposite of this is the quest A Charitable Spirit from Quest-Giver Daley Utteridge. This time you go to the same 5 Beggars in Winter-Home and donate a Yule Festival token to each of them, and maybe an apology for being forced to treat them harshly!
There is a Hidden Deed for this Quest. When you have completed A Charitable Spirit 10 times, it completes the deed Such Generosity. This deed awards you:
- × 50 Yule Fest Tokens
- Title: The Openhanded
The Biggest Stomach of Them All
I have finally, in 2023, completed The Biggest Stomach of Them All, after mostly avoiding it for years. But I have made it to – and finished – Table 5. And for those of you who use mounts between tables – I did it on foot, and so can you!
However, @Teriadwyn gave me these couple of tips:
- Swifty & Hammo have some ways to maximise your stomach’s capacity!
- As always LOTRO Wiki has an excellent guide
- Teriadwyn also pointed out: “there is no timer at the first table, so you can wait out the debuffs. You can also wait out your competition, since there is a limited amount of food available.”
GLOBE Theatre of Winter-Home
While the longest way to earn just 4× Yule Festival Tokens, you can go and watch a showing of “The Disapperance of Mad Baggins” at the GLOBE Theatre. There is also a random chance of you being selected to play a part in the production!
- As an actor/actress, you need to target the audience then perform an emote when told to (e.g. dance, belch…anything off the chat panel list!). If you are appreciated, the crowd may throw flower petals at you. If you act badly (or don’t perform an emote, or don’t have the audience targeted when you do), rotten fruit will come your way!
- Flower Petals and Rotten Fruit are available at the Concessions stand, tendered by the ingeniously named ‘Hobbit’.
- There are Deeds (and therefore Tokens) available for throwing the petals/rotten fruit. And for receiving a certain number of those.
- So long as you arrive in the Theatre before the production ends, you’ll be credited at having ‘Attended a Performance’ and get your 4 Festival Tokens
GLOBE Theatre: As an Audience Member
As the show progresses, actors/actresses are required to perform emotes. You should quick-slot your petals and rotten fruit to make this easier.
- If they perform an appropriate one, then you can throw Petals at them.
- If you hear a ‘boo’ then the bad actor/actress is indicated. Select them and throw the rotten fruit!
Both throwing Flower-Petals and rotten fruits have deeds, and from Tier 2, Titles!
- Fruit Hucker title
- Petal-Pusher title
There are also a few LOTRO Points up for grabs as well!
Titles from GLOBE Theatre
If you don’t like the prospect of a career in acting, then you can buy the titles for 10 Yule Festival Tokens.
You can earn these titles by playing different roles on-stage and performing well (or badly!). Click/Tap the image to see the available titles for purchase!
Filling the Field
Building Snowmen Galore
What Yule-Tide Celebration would be complete without building a snowman or…five? To build your snowman, you’ll have to gather materials from Winter-Home and also around the Frostbluff region as a whole. Only when you have all the components can you build and dress-up your Snowman!
Tips
- Turn on Floaty Names to see snowman-building materials easier
- There is a cluster of acorns nearby the Quest-Giver, so you don’t need to roam far. Other components are in the screenshots below!
There is a Cool Reception Deed, which grants two things:
- Broken Snowman Decoration for your Homestead. Other snowman types (e.g. Mitten-Wearing Snowman) are available from the Barter Vendor.
- Title: Gatherer of Cool Company
To get the title, you must build the 5 Different Types of Snowmen available.
Where the Different Items Are
The cap is in the workers corner of Winter-home.
This Hobbit doesn’t need his pipe anymore, right?
The Scarf is on the lowest level near the keg with a Dwarf laid on it.
The Top Hat is on this lamppost, not far from Guard Kember.
These are right near the entrance to the GLOBE Theatre.
You can find acorns under the trees near Winter-home.
In the huge bag next to the oven.
Look for the flashing bushes. You can take more than one stick from the same bush.
Carrots are in Cluckland, which is not far from the Snowball area. There are at least 3 carrots here.
Cold As Ice
You have a quest to go and defeat the cold. These are grims that are called Wintry Weather and you’ll need to defeat four to complete the quest.
Ranged users will have no problem here. Melée Classes may get blinded! If your melée class has a ranged attack (Guardians and Champs have bow-use after a certain level), then use those instead.
Empty Keg Emergency
Empty Keg Emergency requires you to steal a full keg of ale and get it to the patrons before the guards (Watchers) spot you.
Having watched other player (in a non-creepy way), the quickest way is per the video (left/above). The Keg itself was redesigned a few years back, but the quest and route have stayed the same since it was first built.
Turn on floaty names to help you avoid the Watchers!
Making Mischief
The workers of Winter-Home are not happy with the way they are being treated, and how little food they get during the “festive” period. So it’s time to get one over the on Mayor and set off his fireworks early!
While wealthier patrons are distracted by the impromptu firework display, you need to pick their pockets and return some coin to the poor folk of Winter-Home.
Unwilling Firewood
Apparently, the firewood the Mayor demands has to be the ‘best’. However the best wood comes from Angry Trees.
Well, given you are about to turn them into kindling I think they have a right to be angry! And the Mayor won’t go and face these trees, so you have to! Here’s one of these beauties – click/tap if you really want a close-up!
Venture out into Frostbluff and defeat nine to keep Winter-Home warm!
Tidying Up
Festivals in Middle-Earth attract a lot of party-goers. And where there are people and food, mess is made!
It’s time to do your bit in keeping Winter-Home tidy, and clear up all those unsightly messes left around the village! You can find spills and dirty plates throughout Winter-Home (click/tap image for larger one).
To complete the quest you will need to clear:
- Dirty Dishes × 10
- Reeking Garbage × 10 (nice!)
- Liquid Spills × 10
There are slightly more dishes than you need for the quest. And don’t get annoyed when the ones you just cleaned come back dirty. As the one who washes the dishes in our family, that’s a bit too close to reality for me!
The Abominable Snow-Beasts
Frostbluff is home to more than just people and snowmen! Out in the countryside around Winter-Home live Abominable Snow-Beasts. You are tasked with trying to cheer them up in the spirit of Yule!
To do this simply head up to the Snow-Beasts and hit the “Cheer” emote button in the Quest Tracker.
- Technically you need to try to cheer up 3 Snow-Beasts.
- Buuuut if it’s busy, and to reduce annoying other players if you hit the button quickly 3 times you can complete the quest.
Stuffing the Stuffed
As if people didn’t eat enough during the Winter festivities! Now you need to help make even more food (so that the Patrons can make more mess for you to clean up!).
But the expectations of the Mayor and his wife are sky-high so you have to deliver only the best!
This involves:
Bake some delicious food for anyone other than yourself.
Raid chicken nests for eggs. Easiest. Raid. Ever.
Mushrooms can be pampered? I hope they appreciate it, then.
And thank you to one of my LOTRO River Hobbits for being a willing volunteer in this!
Battle of the Snowballs
South of Winter-home is a snowball-fighting field. There you can amass snowballs from the snow piles and throw them at other players.
The event only runs for a few minutes each time, so make sure that you have at least one other player in the field before it starts!
You may need to recruit people to take part in this. I don't very often see people playing it.
Snow-Beast Title Deed
If you complete the Raining Snowballs deed, you will be awarded them Snow-Beast Title.
Quests Outside of Frostbluff
As with other Festivals in the LOTRO Events Calendar, there are other quests dotted around Middle-Earth that grant tokens.
The main locations for this are: Bree-land Festival Grounds, the Party Tree, Thorin’s Hall Inn and Duillond.
These quests are repeatable daily, which grant an additional 16× Tokens a Day if you complete them all.
Important Note
These quests do not appear to count towards the daily wrapper, nor The More the Merrier Deeds
Quests in Bree-land
There are a couple of quests in Bree-land which grant Festival Tokens, as well as the Horse Race. But be warned if you are under Level 15, there are some mobs of L18 in the area.
The Quest-Givers are in the Bree Festival Grounds and are Wim Wheatsheaf and Sally Threshing.
How Many Tokens?
If you do both, then you will earn:
- 4 ×
- Legendary Item XP (if applicable)
Note: for some reason these do not count towards In the Spirit of Yule wrapper, nor The More the Merrier deed.
An Ailing Tradition of Ale
I’ll let the quest-giver do the talking here, so click/tap the screenshots below for more details! In short you need to head to the water near Thornley’s Work Site (approximately 26.8S, 54W) and grab an Ale-Cask to take back with you.
You don’t have to run back to the Festival Grounds with it. It just fits into your enormous pocketses!
More Boar for Bree
Festivals can never have too much food which means you need to go pick up Boar meat. Thankfully you don’t have to kill boars, however there are some roughly L18 Wolves and Boars en route to the area marked on the map.
You need to pick your way around those (if you’re below level) and retrieve 5 slabs of ex-Boar. They look like this:
Quests in Duillond
Near the Duillond Elf-Dance NPC, are two Elves with repeatable, daily quests.
How Many Tokens?
As with the other regional quests, if you do both, then you will earn:
- 4 ×
- Legendary Item XP (if applicable)
The Season of Merry-Making
If you’re an Elf or High Elf, ignore Saervereth’s poorly-veiled insult to you being a “child”! She wants you to go find mistletoe as part of the traditional reminder of Spring’s rebirth.
You’ll find trees bearing Mistletoe North of Duillond, towards Thrasi’s Lodge. You need to collect Mistletoe from 5 Trees. Hendrovail and Bears wander around here, so if you’re a low-ish level, just be aware you may need to fight for your mistletoe!
Wreathed in Fir
The Elf Anglalaith wants help to make wreaths of fir to give as gifts to others. You can find Fir bushes near to Tham Gelair.
Note, Wolves and Boars roam in this area. You need to collect branches from 5 different Fir bushes. You cannot collect branches from a bush you’ve looted already, even after it respawns.
Quests at Thorin’s Hall
Inside the Thorin’s Hall Inn are two Dwarves ready for you to show Festive cheer and run errands for them!
These also grant 2× and Legendary Item XP where applicable to your character(s).
Snow for a White Yule
Glói, the poor Dwarf, has decided Bree-land deserve some snow sent from the Blue Mountains. All so they can truely embrace Yule. Bless him.
You need to pick up 8 × Snow Piles for him to load on his cart! Oh and these seem to fit in your pockets too!
Dwarf-Ice
Imi wants help to make a special dessert! All he needs are 3 × special berries and for some ice chipped from the nearby frozen waterfall. The berries are easy to spot:
Using this waterfall is a little tricky, so I suggest putting floaty names on (N-key is the default) and right-clicking that instead of trying to find the clickable bits.
Quests in The Shire
There are two Quest-givers at the Party Tree.
There’s also a separate Yuletide Woes story where Lobelia Sackville-Baggins has decided she is the Yule Party planner! This does not grant tokens but does give a Yule Tree decoration reward. See the Wiki for full details.
Ribbons and Bows
All the gifts are ready, but in true Hobbit style if the bows and ribbons aren’t done the festivities will be a total disaster! Your task is to find the shipment of ribbon due from Overhill and collect flowers to dye them with!
5 × Boxes of Ribbon
These are by the road on the way to Overhill.
5 × Blue Flowers
In the bit of Bindbole Wood near the Party Tree.
5 × Red Berries
In the same area as the Blue Flowers (see your map).
Use Floaty Names
With quests like this, it’s better to have Floaty Names on (Default Keybind: N), especially when some items may be in the long grass.
Combine that with “select nearest item” and it becomes much quicker to clear.
Good Cheer and Warm Cider
Samfast Longburrow, clearly distracted at the Party Tree, has run out of apples to make his annual special cider. You need to simply hop over to Appledores and pick up 5 × Apples.
Yes, they’re in piles of 3 or 4 but you have to loot 5 piles of apples!
A Mission to Bring Good Cheer
Pick this quest up from Mara Sandydowns. Go complete a Mission. Earn Yule Fest tokens! Doing this also progresses the Bringer of Good Cheer Deed.
And, if you like a challenge, doing this progresses the daily and weekly Missions wrappers too.
A Final Act
Once you’ve played a certain number of event quests, you can opt to run A Final Act. This once-a-year quest lets you choose whether to ally with the Rich or with the Poor in Winter-home.
I have a separate run-down of that story and how it works, along with the cosmetics you can earn here:
Battle at Frostbluff
Battle at Frostbluff is a Seasonal Instance (Skirmish-like) only available during Yule Festival.
The children of Winter-home have built snow forts but these have been overrun by winter spirits and vicious creatures. Your job is to clear the forts and reclaim Frostbluff for them!
Although you can only complete the deed (for the Encounters during the Skirmish) if mobs are not grey/trivial, you can still earn 5× Festivity Tokens and 6× Yule tokens if you run the Seasonal Instance at Level 10.
Note: the 6 Yule tokens can only be earned once a day per character (it’s a daily quest from inside the instance.
Frostbluff’s Frosty Beasts Deed
Once you have defeated each of the (randomly chosen) beasts you can earn The Frosted title. Two Encounters spawn on each run.
Note: mobs need to be at least green strength to count (i.e. 8 levels or less below you when you set the instance level).
Battle at Frostbluff Video
Festivity Token Rewards
Festivity Tokens can be earned during any Festival where Seasonal Instances are available. You can then barter these at the Festivity Tokens vendor for special rewards.
Last Year’s Festivity Token Cosmetics
Previous Festivity Token Cosmetics
To see earlier Festivity Token cosmetic rewards, please see my Yule Festival Cosmetics page.
Festivity Token Pets
All pets from this vendor cost 20 × Festivity Tokens
Yule Festival Rewards
2023 Yule Festival Mounts
This Year’s Mount
Last Year’s Mount
War-Steed Cosmetics
The prices for each piece are:
Last Year’s War-Steed Cosmetics
Earlier Ones
Previous years’ War-Steed Cosmetics are also available from the Steeds Vendor just outside Winter-home. Please note, there are two steed vendors. If you’re looking for things from three or more festivals ago, you’ll need the vendor who is surrounded by legacy mounts. I am in the process of cataloguing and listing all War-Steed items.
Outfit Cosmetic Rewards
As part of my simplification work to make this Yuletide Guide easier and quicker for everyone, here are just this year’s and last year’s cosmetics. If this year has nothing under it, it will have within an hour of the event going live!
2023 Cosmetics
2022 Cosmetics
Browse All Yule Cosmetics
If you want to see all Wintertide outfits in one place, then see my Yule Festival Cosmetics page! You can browse by outfit/gear slot, by the type of event currency, or simply a gallery of everything in alphabetical order. Check it out!
Buying for Another Player?
Tis the season for giving! Normally festival rewards – certainly those released in the last few years – are Bound to Account.
If you want to purchase outfit cosmetics for another player, then look for the Gift-wrapped Selection Boxes.
These cost 35× and the player can choose which item from that set they receive.
Cosmetic Pets
At this event there are a number of creatures you can obtain as pets. Some are for Yule Tokens and others for Festivity Tokens.
2023 Pet
2022 Pet
Previous Pets
To simplify this guide, you can see the current year and last year’s pets here. The rest can be found on the Yule tab of my LOTRO Pets from Festivals page.
This page includes “Kite Pets”.
Dyes
Token Dyes
You can obtain the following dyes for 30 Yule Fest Tokens per stack:
- Dark Mossy Green Dyes × 6
- Lórien Gold Dyes × 6
MC Dyes
The folowing dyes can be purchased for 10 Mithril Coins per stack:
- Moria Silver Dyes × 6
- Belegaer Blue Dyes × 6
Decorations
Déco du Milieu features the decorations available at this event on their website!
As such, I don’t put them here. So browse their site before choosing your festive décor! Keep an eye on their Twitter Feed for when they update the rewards.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are Golden Festival Tokens?
Yule Festival has a unique barter currency: Golden Festival Tokens. These can be used, alongside normal tokens, to buy certain cosmetics – namely the Horned Snow-Beast Cloak and the accompanying Snow-beast boots.
You can obtain Golden Festival Tokens either by exchanging 75× Yule Fest Tokens or by completing various stages of The More the Merrier deed.
No other event has this currency, and you can’t use them to buy boxes of tokens for future festivals. So ensure any unused ones are converted back to Yule ones before the event ends!
Why Can’t I Buy The Latest Mount? Why Is It Greyed Out?
For characters that are new to the event, having enough Yule Fest tokens is not enough to buy the latest mount. You have to have completed Tier 1 of The More The Merrier deed.
All you have to do is complete 20 Yule Quests. For that you get
- × 1 Golden Festival Token (which normally costs 75 × standard tokens).
NB: If you wish to exchange for , you will only get 25×, not 75. (Thank you to RH on Facebook for this amendment). - Ability to barter tokens for mounts.
- Extra cosmetics from the barter vendor under “The More the Merrier Rewards”.
How Do I Get Back to Winter-home Without a Map?
Fear not, said he! At some Stable Masters is a second Festival travel Stable-Master. For example at Bree West Gate. If you have a homestead, or a Premium House, the Far-Reaching Stable-Masters also have “Winter-Home” in their travel destination list.
Other Yule Fest Guides
There is a lot to this event, so here are other components you may (or may not!) be interested in!
TL;DR Enjoy your Winter Holiday at the LOTRO Yule Festival 2023
Fun, slightly addictive and with some attractive cosmetic gear from the Barter Vendors the LOTRO Yule Festival 2023 is great to attend, even if you just go a couple of times. Have fun and have a happy Christmas/Holiday/season/December!
- LOTRO have an official overview for you, too. That includes previews of items inside the special Silver and Gold Hobbit presents this year. So it’s worth checking out, as well.