Turbine recently released Book Seven, a free expansion of their post-Moria content.  It’s wonderful.  The expansion area fleshes out the Lothlorien sections of the map.  Via rep quests, players can get access to the golden wood and eventually the elf city Galadriel calls home.  Let me just say that the Caras Galadhon itself is absolutely gorgeous.  It’s pretty much as I had envisioned it and is rather similar to the one in the movies as well: mallorn trees, flets and all.  The whole expansion area is very well done with a lot of notable landmarks, each with its own history and stories.

To gain access to central Lothlorien, players need to do some reputation quests to get to acquaintance with the Galadrim.  The quests involve killing orcs in the area, retrieving arrows, burning orc filth and burning down barricades.  I only had to run the quests three or four times each before I could get into the woods without being shot at by archers.  Note: once you get your rep to the required level, look for the Galadrim guard standing by the entrance.  Only after talking to him can you proceed into the woods safely.

After getting into the woods, I spent a good couple of hours just riding around and gawping.  The woodlands are beautiful.  The atmosphere has a bluish tint at night, which lends an ethereal air to the place, and shines golden in sunlight.  There are several glades and gardens to visit as well as various landmarks and flets (tree platforms of the Galadrim).  And the company is back!  I’ve found all that passed through Moria.  Some are outside Caras Galadhon in the woods and others are inside the city itself.  Being a total story nerd, I was overjoyed seeing Sam and Frodo again as well as the others.  Turbine knows its audience for LotRO well and makes good use of the elements of the LotR story to draw players into the lore.

In addition to the new zone and quests, there is a new, soloable epic book quest in the new content.  The epic book 7 quests are soloable and will result in both a neat story as well as a very nice cloak.  I went ahead and ran the book 7 quest even though I’m not that far in the story progression: players can opt to do the epic quest out of order with the others if they choose.  In addition to the final quest cloak, I also received a much-needed chest piece upgrade.

Lothlorien is an important part of the Lord of the Rings story and one which lore fans would scream bloody murder over if it were not exact (or at least pretty darn close) in its faithfulness to the books.  Lothlorien in the game is very well done and did not disappoint.  Turbine has continued doing an excellent job with its source material.