Mostly New to LotROFollow

Heya Tovin, welcome to these parts.

First, it's 5 chars per server not 4

Next, yep even the Minst class (healer) is able to solo up to the cap. Although you should still do some groups, especially for the epic quest line (books), since some are very fun.

As for farming... nope, that is about it. Other tradeskills are a bit more involved with making sub combines and such, but in general it's easy enough to just go and hit make all. Of course, farming is a lot more self-sufficient then other skills due to making seeds... So it's a lot more back and forth.

Finally, I think there is an RP channel, although not sure. There is also Advice and LFF which could be used for that some I bet. Along with possibly finding a chat channel for your server hehe.

Probably the most difficult class to play solo at low levels is the Lore-master. The first few levels for all classes are fairly homogenous because there just isn't that much differentiation in the gear until about level 6 or so, but after that, the disparity between light armor and med/heavy armors begins to show. I mainly leveled my lore-master by doing quests and killing mobs two levels below my character's level. By contrast, leveling my Guardian was like playing the game in Easy Mode -- he could regularly kill mobs two to three levels higher than himself until his low DPS began catching up to him at higher levels. And that's a deficiency that's gradually improving now as he gains better and better gear at level-50.

Lore-masters really start to bloom around level-22. That's the level where we gain our second major damage-dealing spell: Cracked Earth; the other being Light of the Rising Dawn (quickly dubbed "the orbital laser strike" by every guildie who ever played Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge) a couple levels earlier. And with the fleshing-out of the high-level Lore-master skills with Book 11, my guildies now tell me my Lore-master is downright spectacular to watch in action.

For my money, the combination of stern challenge at low levels and wide-ranging all-around gameplay capabilities requiring careful tactical thinking at high levels makes the Lore-master the most satisfying character class to master.

Welcome to the game.

I’ve now done some farming so I can give a little more info on this. Farming also allows you to harvest random crops you see growing out in the wild. I’ve been collecting for about 6 levels now and I don’t see that there is a certain region that you can just collect the same type of plants, increasing the supply on that particular one. Eg I have about 5-6 different plants on me atm but none are in great supply to where I could say, my character that does cooking can use it effectively to skill up. Unfortunately, picking up crops does not increase the farming skill, even by 1 point.

So I won’t depend on random gathering as much. However, where you can get more supply is from actually farming. And what you describe is pretty much what you do to raise the farming skill. Eg I saw the recipe for carrots and cabbage, which are 2 items you need for some beginning cooking recipes. You can get those veggies in greater supply by doing farming than by hoping to stumble upon those plants growing in the wild.