I’ve always had a large inter­est in enemy types in LotRO. There are quite a bit of them and grab­bing decent shots of them has been a bit of fun for me. I don’t get any­thing for it, but it adds a bit of a Poke­mon flair to the title. It’s just yet another thing you can do with MMORPGs that isn’t really part of the actual game.

I fig­ured I’d write a bit about my expe­ri­ences with var­i­ous enemy types. Don’t expect an insanely in-depth analy­sis, but if you have any­thing to add feel free.

If you’ve been play­ing LotRO for even a short time, sickle-flies are famil­iar to you. There is usu­ally some vari­a­tion fly­ing around no mat­ter what your level might be. I always thought it was inter­est­ing that MMORPGs reuse enemy types to this degree. I don’t want to say that it’s an annoy­ance (it’s not), but it is funny to be fight­ing a rel­a­tively small, fly­ing insect that is stronger than a bear.

Sickle-flies tend to live near water. They’re present in the revamp of the Elven starter zone, but most peo­ple will likely have their first big encounter with the insects in the Midge­wa­ter Marsh. This area is on the East­ern side of Bree-town proper and stands between you and your first excur­sions into the Lone Lands. You can avoid it entirely by fol­low­ing the main road, but what fun is that?

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