North Downs for high level charcaters in LOTRO

I made the fatal error of venturing into the North Downs, north of Bree, today in LOTRO. My level 18 Hunter had been around - he can handle himself, I thought. Oh no, he can't. The North Downs are supposed to be a good place to mine for gold ore, although in two hours (real time) up in the North Downs, I managed to get more silver and Barrow Iron than gold ore (2 pieces). However, I won't bore you with more ore mapping for LOTRO quite yet. No, the actual point is that this area is designed for much higher level characters - even the birds were more than a match for me and I had to make my escape more than once by jumping into a river.{xtypo_quote_left}Beware the Downs in LOTRO, especially at night.{/xtypo_quote_left} The North Downs are full of level 23+ birds, wolves and orcs and they are very aggressive. If you are a lower level, you'll find it actually hard to hit them, and when you do, you'll do much less damage than on lower level creatures, which is a double whammy that normally sees you deceased.So, my advice would be to stay out of the North Downs until your probably about level 21, unless of course you're trying to power level in LOTRO, in which case, get yourself a fellowship with a tank and head up there. The XP, when I occasionally did manage to get a kill in, was up to 150XP/kill and these were just wolves.