While down in the barrow of Haudh Iarchith, slashing and harping* my way through the undead, I occasionally come across an ancient vase. Whereas miners take their pick-axes to nodes of ore and farmers plant seeds to harvest crops, scholars like my minstrel study vases, urns, and lecterns in ancient ruins to get the scraps of lore we need. Unfortunately, these particular vases are beyond my level of scholarship. I aim to do something about that.

Read how after the jump.

* One of the recent additions to LOTRO are animations specific to whatever instrument a minstrel is carrying. Since Middle Earth is light on the blatant magic -- our Gandalfs are few and far between -- minstrels use music to "cast spells". Before this update, the "spell casting" animation for minstrels was whipping out a lute and strumming a few chords. But different instruments work better with different songs. So even if you had a harp equipped, as does my minstrel, you would mysteriously pull out a lute. No longer. I'm harping my way through the undead these days.

Crafting is a common pursuit in MMOs. In Lord of the Rings Online, you pick a "vocation" consisting of three "professions". It's a bit confusing at first, but the point is that crafting is cleverly arranged so that players can work one production chain self-sufficiently, but they'll have a leftover profession that feeds into another production chain. For instance, a tinker can prospect ore and craft it into jewelry, but his cooking profession requires goods from one of the vocations that allows farming.

The scholar is an entirely self-sufficient exception to this rule. Scholars have no crafting overlap with anyone else, which makes it easier for us to live in ivory towers (a.k.a. solo). But offsetting this is the fact that our raw goods are exclusively found in ruins populated by goblins, orcs, Dourhand dwarves, the undead, and other things that don't take kindly to us studying their urns. We have to go into harm's way to get what we need.

Each profession is arranged in tiers, from apprentice, to journeyman, to expert, to artisan. At each tier, you have to earn experience by crafting before you can progress to the next one. Each tier lets you gather, refine, or build increasingly better stuff.

As an artisan scholar, I've got plenty of Fragments of Dunedain Script. I'm rolling in these things. My bottleneck is Relics of Lothlorien. A few hundred silver at the Auction House fixes that. Then I spend a bit of time in Elrond's Library back in Rivendell crafting Scholar's Writs to gain scholar experience and to earn reputation with the elves of Rivendell. It only takes about twenty before I've maxed out my Artisan experience.

But wait, I haven't moved to mastery, which I need to gain full advantage of the artisan tier. What gives?

Ah, right, there's a ring over the scholar's head here in the library. I have to do a quest for her to progress from proficiency to mastery. She gives me Part IV of the "Path the Learning" quest, which means going out to see Idhremmin an Mincham's camp, a tiny Ranger outpost overlooking the Fields of Fornost.

When I get there, Idhremmin asks me to craft the Chant of the Stalwart. No problem. I've been a scholar long enough that I have everything it needs. Well, almost everything. I'm missing a Ruined Dwarf-manuscipt. Idhremmin's notes point me to Angmar. The notes say I can find such a manuscript on a hilltop cairn. I actually remember that cairn. In an earlier quest, I had to get some doo-dad off the top of it, and it required some tricky jumps to get to the top. It was pretty annoying. It's called the Cairn of Honor on the map. An autohorse trip to Aughaire, then a short ride and a few dispatched Duvedain hillmen gets me there easily. The manuscript is easy to find under a rock behind one of the dread statues.

Then an autohorse tip back, from Aughaire to Esteldin to Amon Raith. I figure I'll craft the Chant of the Stalwart when I get back to Idrehmmin. Standing in front of him with all the necessary components, I open the crafting panel. "Hey, Idhremmin, watch this!"

Oops, this is one of those crafting recipes where you have to be at a certain place. For instance, some smithing recipes require a special forge, some crops require special farmlands, some dishes require a special kitchen, and some scholar's items require a special study like Elrond's Library. This Chant of the Stalwart is one such item.

"Hold on a sec, Idhremmin. BRB." I invoke Return to Rivendell, a racial trait that lets elves fast-transport to Rivendell. Then I ride to the Last Homely House, go up to Elrond's Library on the third floor, craft the Chant, ride back across Rivendell to the stables, autohorse to Esteldin, autohorse to Amon Raith, and then gallop back up to Mincham's camp.

"Hey, Idhremmin, you looking for this?" I give it to him and finish the quest. I am now at the top of the scholar heap! I am as smart and learned as you can be in Middle Earth. As I'm reading all those recipes I was unable to learn before, I open the crafting panel to admire my new list. And I discover that, oh my, there's a whole other tier above artisan! I had no idea that was going to be there.

I guess that's the point of an MMO. You're never done.

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(After the holiday weekend: No more goofing around! On to level 50!)