At various points on my journey through Evendim I had to remind myself that I was not here for a completionist run.  I didn’t need to do every single quest and finish every last deed.  And I did eschew chunks of the content, opting not to get drawn into the whole drama at the north end of the zone.

I did have a moment of wondering why I enjoy this zone… I mean sure, it is a quest and deed rich environment and the rep grind for the Wardens is pretty easy, but it isn’t like other zones lack at least some of that.  And then I end up looking down over Annuminas and I am reminded of the payoff for this zone.

To go to Evendim and leave before Annuminas… unthinkable.  I skipped a number of locations, but not this.  In a landscape covered by the crumbling ruins of Numenor, Annuminas is one place that still gives you a glimpse into the splendor of Tolkien’s vision.

It is still run down, dirty, and populated by baddies, but it has a sense of scale to it, a feeling of past grandeur that undeniable.

Of course, it is also a little strange.  There are huge buildings that are under water down near the lake… but also, the huge stone piers are still totally at the right level relative to the water and completely flat and aligned, like they are ready for boats to start docking tomorrow.

Buildings, with one of the piers in the distance

At first I thought maybe the water rose and engulfed the buildings… but the piers weren’t built way over the water line, that would be silly.  So was this a Swamp Castle situation, where things just sank into the soggy ground around the water’s edge… except for the piers?  I mean the map is no help either… though it is kind of cool that it gets its own map.

The local map of Annuminas

Again, was it supposed to be like this?  Did buildings selectively sink?  Or did they slide down the hill into the harbor… completely intact?  Or mostly intact?

Swimming in Annuminas… some wreckage, but a lot of just buildings in water…

This starts to feel like a Michael Bay movie in that it looks really cool but you shouldn’t think too hard about it because that way madness lies.  I’ll let that go for now, unless somebody has a theory to suggest.

So I didn’t want to leave Evendim before I got to Annuminas… and then I went kind of overboard on quests elsewhere in the zone, especially along the Way of the Kings, which is another pretty interesting bit of real estate in my book, so I was just inches from level 40 and had already achieved kindred status with the wardens… the rep in this zone overflows, I have so many rep drops left unused… before I finally roared into the wardens camp.

Under the watchful eye of the Dunadan

There is a camp there with a stable master and a task board and all the usual quest hub vendors and the like.  What the camp lacks, relative to some other locations is that pile of quests that the zone is known for handing out.

There are a couple of quests to get you going, but there is one primary one, Orchalwe’s mission, which teams you up from the ranger last seen in Tinnudir.

Orc-hall-veh? Orc-hall-way?

You get out in the field and summon him.  He has a couple of starter quests that will send you around the area.  But as he follows you around… and assists you in combat… he also doles out fresh quests as you arrive in new locations.

The Orchalwe quest signal is lit

This is kind of a neat mechanic and, since the larger of his quests take you all over, you end up getting a whole chain of quests as you move from location to location.  Also, you are bound to the the exploration deed done if you go where you need to in order to wrap up his tasks, so there is an extra bonus.

Some of the situations are more than a bit twisted, like when you need to slay groups of Angmar servants who are trying to drown people along the city piers.

Pulling somebody out of the water…

It does end up being one of those “Sixth Slave” situations where you only need to rescue three for the quest, but there are more than three groups drowning people.  A good person would save them all I suppose, but the moral compass of somebody who murders for hire on a regular basis can’t be counted on.

That quest also happened to put me over the top and into level 40.

Level 40 on Glamdring

On the one hand, I am still a long, long way from Mordor.  On the other, I am kind of moving right along… though, on the gripping hand, this is also the easy part.  I doubt if I am even 10% of the way to the current level cap of 150.  But I am not shooting for the level cap, just to get into Mordor.

I didn’t do ALL of Orchalwe’s quests.  There are a few I decided to skip.  But I got most of them done and I made my way around to defeat the so-called Titan of Tyl Annun.

He’s a big fellow, but we had him out numbered

After that I was feeling I had seen Annumanis again and experienced enough of it to feel I could move on to the next thing.

The next thing was to return to the epic quest line, which had been waiting for me for about ten levels.  Once a blaring red to me, the start of Book IV was a nice aqua blue.  Time to head to the Trollshaws and get on with the tale.