One of the things I like about LotRO is that things are more accessible for casual players.  Having better armor helps, but if you’ve been keeping up with your quest rewards and have a friend craft a couple pieces, you should be good for most of the content.  With a relatively small amount of organization, most instances and book quests can be conquered easily.

But there are still some challenges that are really quite difficult.  This past weekend, a group of kinship mates and I decided that we’d wrap up book 1.15.12.  The final instance of the book is hard.  Very hard.  Players have to fight their way through tunnels of orcs, defeat a boss with debuffs (and massive damage if you have one of the debuffs on you) and fight through a multiple wave fight at the end.  Even with most of our group at level sixty, it was a tricky run.  We had three wipes before getting through the first boss.  Also, this was my second attempt at the instance; my first was in a group of all-fifties and we didn’t make it past the first boss.

In spite of how annoying the fight was, the relief when it was all over was really something.  I ended the day sitting outside the Last Homely House on my new white pony.

While most challenges in LotRO are accessible for most players, finishing the 15.12 instance felt more like an accomplishment to me than the typical Rift run.  It was a tough fight and made players work for it.  I had to run the instance twice before getting though it.  One of my kinship mates had tried five times to get it.  Yet, when it was all over, we finally prevailed.  I’m still of the opinion that the fight should be easier (mainly because it’s a book quest and not a raid) but finishing it while it was that tough definitely felt epic.

*Spoiler alert – strategy and spoilers below the fold*

For those that don’t know, 1.15.12 is the final book in the epic book series for the Shadows of Angmar part of LotRO (the next part being the Mines of Moria).  The book picks up the story of Narmaleth (Amarthiel) and her attempt at redemption.

I’ll also say that the advice below is only from my experience.  LotRO-wiki or some other strategy site may have more complete / useful information than I can provide.

 

Tunnel:
- Stay on the path.  The little blotches of purple off to the side spawn fire elementals if you step on them.  They don’t hit that hard but if you’re already fighting a bunch of stuff, they can add up.

- Mez their healers (I believe they’re called defilers).

- Have burgs mez the archers or use the trait-slotted enrage to stop them from using their bows.

- Run in front of Narmaleth.  In the tunnel, it’s like she’s trying to get herself killed.  Don’t let her go first if you can avoid it.

- If she’s moving too fast, you can jump on one of the purple splotches deliberately.  She stops wherever there’s a fight, so if you’re waiting for rezzed / released members to catch up, spawn an elemental and just make sure she’s getting enough heals to stay alive.

First Boss:
- The worst part of the fight.

- If you have a debuff on you, run to Narmaleth.  If she buffs you and you get the white mark on you, go hit the boss (you should be able to do extra damage).

- Have ranged fighters stand beside the pillars on either side out of line of sight of the boss.  He won’t move and if he can’t see you he can’t hit you.  The same people hiding by the pillars also need to take out the elementals attacking Narmaleth.

- Narmaleth’s power is the key to the fight.  She can buff you and remove debuffs if she has power.  Keeping the elementals off her is important.  If she’s burning power to fight them, she’s not using it to keep your group alive.

- The first group I was with had a guardian tanking the boss while the hunters hid by the pillars.  Melee classes like me (burglar) were pretty useless.  I fought the elementals until I died – pretty much par for the course for burgs.  Even conjunctions didn’t seem to drop him fast enough.

- One possibility is to wait until partway through the fight and then have a burg trigger a conjunction.  Go greens and blues (GGBBBB or similar).

After the first boss:
- Pat yourself on the back, the worst of it is over; just don’t get careless: failure anywhere in the instance resets the whole thing.

- Head across the column over the lava to the next area.

- You’ll enter a library filled bad-guys.  She’ll also have a ring appear and wait before you click it until she moves.

- Ignore the ring over her head and kill everything in the library.  When it’s clear, then go back and get her.

Final fight:
- Mordrith appears on his shiny new flying mount.  Some neat cinematic stuff ensues where they basically trade insults.

- Mordrith then starts sending in illusions to fight.  It’s basically a tank and spank.  Target-marking will help a lot.  You can also go into the keypad options and set a target-marking key.  I have mine assigned to my “G” key.  If I’m marking targets, I can select one and hit “G.”  The skull marker will appear over my target (you can use any of the available icons, I use the skull because it’s straightforward – skull means this one dies next).

- The illusions are in groups.  There are some elites and some signature mobs.  As mentioned above, tank / crowd-control and focus-