LOTRO Goblin Quests in The Shire

The goblin quests in The Shire are more difficult than they first seem, so I've had to work out a "Strategy for the Goblins in the Shire". In fact, it's basically a way of dealing with groups of enemies that are individually fine for you to deal with, but which can overwhelm you if they attack in numbers, and the goblin camps in the Shire quests in LOTRO are very well populated.

There are two main ways to tackle these goblins, and the first will be very familiar to anyone who has played enough RPGs. You get within ranged weapon range of the nearest of the group, and you wait until anyone around them has moved to the furthest point away within their pre-determined path. Like any game, NPC characters or enemies in LOTRO don't just wander around the whole map; they have a pre-defined area that they will walk around in. Scout this out, and then pick you moment. Attack the one you want and if you get it right, that goblin and that one alone will run to attack you, and you should be able to deal with it.

Rinse and repeat. You should be able to work your way through packs of them in this way, and in fact, if you need to, you can take advantage of the respawning feature that LOTRO uses. Pick off the enemies you want to kill - for example, I had one quest which needed goblin spear hurlers, so I simply went out hunting them - and then wait until they re-spawn and kill them again, rather than scouring deeper into the camp to find new hurlers. The reason being that while you might have killed them on the way in, it is likely that the groups of goblins will respawn while you are further in and then you will need to fight your way out again. If instead, you stick to hunting one cluster and use re-spawning, you can remain in relative safety.

The other reason to be careful of going too far into a camp by yourself became apparent to me as I followed a group whom I wasn't with into a camp. Sure, I managed to find some of the goblins I was looking for, but the group ahead had mown a path ahead of me, and when i turned around to go back, a huge group of goblins had respawned and I was out of my depth.

One other point on hunting re-spawn points, is to be careful where you wait. Pull back to wait, or you could find goblins re-spawning right in front of or behind you.

Lastly, don't be afraid to run away. If you pull too many goblins onto you to handle, run for it, until they give up and return to their pre-determined area. Enemies won't chase you forever, and it's better to lose face than to get finished off by the badger attacking you from behind while you're trying to deal with two goblins - true story.

The other way of dealing with the goblin quests in the Shire in LOTRO is to take note that one of the quests is actually a fellowship quest. Yes, for some reason, one of the quests that sends you into the goblin camp specifically tells you that you'll need others to help you, and yet two other quests are happy to send you in alone. It's much easier to form a temporary fellowship and head into the camps. In my experience there are always several people trying to battle it through the camp by themselves and it's easy to just team up into a fellowship for a few minutes to complete the goblin quests.

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