I have a ten­dancy to walk off cliffs in LotRO. Most of this time this on acci­dent, like when I don’t real­ize the ground is sud­denly going to give out under me and turn into a 90 degree drop. Angmar!!!

I’m very famil­iar with the nasty “snap!” sound and walk­ing debuff, unfortunately.

Every so often, though, it’s on pur­pose. There are rea­sons. A hand­ful of them are arguably good. There’s that gold node you just need to get to before you sign off. Or maybe it’s a gigan­tic time saver com­pared to run­ning down the side of a moun­tain and enrag­ing four hun­dred wargs.

If you’ve done this, you’re likely also aware that there’s a point where you’re just going to die instead of just mess­ing up your leg. Dying in this case is still not so great; you get Dread just like you would if an enemy kills you.

I’ve slowly devel­oped ways to min­i­mize this.

1. Avoid charg­ing a drop head-on at full speed. I tend to take a few smaller steps. It makes it eas­ier to see what you should do next.
2. Avoid slightly angled drops. These tend to be impos­si­ble to get any foot­ing on. Your momen­tum will send you slid­ing and you’ll be launched off an edge, send­ing you too far from any plat­forms. You’re screwed in this case.
3. Run par­al­lel to the cliff once you start falling. More than likely if you hug a cliff side, you’ll slide down it. Walk­ing par­al­lel to the cliff at this point seems to heighten the chance that you’ll actu­ally get some foot­ing on a plat­form on the way.
4. Do your best to hit smaller plat­forms on the way down. Even if you don’t stop on these entirely, they can slow you down and decrease the chance that you’ll die.

Is this help­ful or sad? I report, you decide.