Samath Gull farming for radiance

The kinship still has a number of players who are at or near l.65 but are still short of the +120 radiance necessary to be effective in the Barad Guldur 12-man raid. This is now relatively easy to achieve by accumulating all three +15 and all three +25 armour items, all of which can be exchanged for Mirkwood tokens. The fastest way to gather the tokens is by farming Samath Gull, which gives 10 tokens for the daily HM run, and 7 tokens for repeats. We will be farming SG on Wednesday and Sunday evenings, with the priority going top those who still need the tokens (and not just the symbol); leader variable, depending on availability - could be Mac, Belegwe, Thor, myself or indeed anybody who would like to volunteer, it's a good instance to practice leading on. Other ad-hoc runs are obviously encouraged!

And ofcourse if you aren't interested in joining the Barad Guldur raid, it's still fun and the the radiance armour is still among the best available .

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Ingaras, Hunter (75)
Indo, Minstrel (81)
Celefindel, Loremaster (115)
Magolisto, Champion (75)

and some others...

I actually found the Warg-pens is the faster instance (about half the time it takes to do SG), giving you 9 medallions in total with the daily. Sword-hall is also very fast, if you can handle the challenge mode (time limit of ten minutes, so it won't take longer than that), and it gives you 7 medallions if I remember correctly. Dungeons is horribly time-consuming, however. Probably longer than SG, and only gives 11 medallions... My point is, SG isn't the best instance for farming medallions, but it doesn't require as much from your group as the 3-man instances do, so it might still be the 'safest' bet (aside from SH easy mode). It's also more attractive because of the Symbol and the rare jewellery, so finding a group for SG would probably be the easier task. Even so, I don't think you should ignore the other instances, if it's medallions you're after.


Dungeons
11 medallions
~60 minutes

Sword-hall
7 medallions
<10 minutes

Warg-pens
9 medallions
~20-30 minutes

Sammath Gúl
10 medallions
~45 minutes


(Go ahead and correct me if I've gotten the figures wrong somewhere.)

Dungeons is a high-risk instance. For all the time you spend getting everything right, if you get unlucky at the end, you can still fail the entire instance and be forced to start over if you want the reward for challenge mode. Sword-hall is also challenging, but doesn't take long to do, and there are a several people in the kinship who have managed the challenge mode with no problem. Warg-pens might seem tricky at first, but is really quite straight-forward and easy to understand once you get into it. You can press forward rather rapidly, while still watching your step, and the instance shouldn't offer much of a challenge, and be over with sooner than you expect it to be. Sammath Gúl is about the length of previous grind-fest Hall of Crafting, but less trash, and frequent boss encounters. Since it's being run so regularly by now, most people have mastered it, and can handle challenge mode quite readily. It's also hard to 'fail', and allows you to simply restart the fight with the related boss(es), if your group dies. The ratio for the time you spend in there and the reward you get is not as good as the Warg-pens or the Sword-hall instances, but could be considered the safest choice for most, since so many people in the kinship can go through the instance in their sleep. Plus, the other rewards in the instance are very sought for, with nice jewellery, and the coveted Symbol of Cerebrimbor. This means it should be easier to get a full group for SG, even if it's 6 and not 3 people you need (the 3-man instances are somewhat more reliant on group build-up). Anyway... just ranting away here.

And ofcourse if you aren't interested in joining the Barad Guldur raid, it's still fun and the the radiance armour is still among the best available .

Oh, indeed. The goal is not to have everyone partake in the raid, if they don't want to. The gear you can collect by doing these instances is quite good, and more importantly, these encounters are all very well-designed, and offers fun for the whole group!

Even so, I don't think you should ignore the other instances, if it's medallions you're after.

Agreed, keeping in mind that Sword Hall HM is quite difficult and can only be done with specific fellowships. The nice thing about SG, apart from the symbol and the other desirable loot, is that it drops medallions for six rather than three people!

Agreed, keeping in mind that Sword Hall HM is quite difficult and can only be done with specific fellowships.

That isn't true. Well, it's difficult but only in comparison to the easy mode. But the specific fellowship thing isn't true at all, unless you're talking about fellowship combinations like three hunters or three runekeepers, but then what 3 man instances can those combinations complete? There's a list over on the US forums of all the fellowship combinations that have completed SH HM. I've done it with a Cap/Burg/LM, Cap/Burg/Grd, Cap/LM/Champ and Cap/MNS/Hunt so far. If you have a tank, which includes Champ, Captain, Warden and Guardian (4 classes), a healer (4 classes including Loremasters, though you'll need a half decent tank for that one) and a DPSer (quite literally any class) then you can complete SH HM. But then, isn't the tank/DPS/healer trinity what anybody wants for any instance? It's mainly about using your fellowships skills where they'll be most useful. I'm not saying it's not difficult -- Cap/Burg/LM took 4 or 5 attempts in total (though it was also our first time seeing the instance) but all other combinations one-shotted them. In fact, after the first kill I was actually pretty happy that there was some difficult stuff in the game, but then after seeing the same instance with an actual, real tank (MacoNABo) be a total breeze, I felt deflated.

You should get more people to run SH HM rather than dissuade them, if they can perform in a 3 man group where everybody is required to play their best then they'll complement any raid far more than somebody who sticks to larger fellowships where their shortcomings can be compensated for by others.

I agree with Teolwyn on the other instances though, Dungeons is too long to farm anything except the deed, and Warg Pens challenge mode is just easy medallions for three people, and pretty fun too.

Dunno why people feel the need to farm the instances for the radiance gear, though. I had a full set after doing each hard mode once, plus the book. I did already have the original +15 set from Lorien though, is it really expensive or something?

The +15 set is 5 medallions less than the +25 set, so it's quite a bit, and I've experienced that getting a proper group to do the 3-mans on-the-fly isn't as easy as it looks, especially if you don't know the instance yet. With the number of people hunting for symbols, it's usually just as easy to join a couple of SG runs.

_________________________________________
Ingaras, Hunter (75)
Indo, Minstrel (81)
Celefindel, Loremaster (115)
Magolisto, Champion (75)

and some others...

You should get more people to run SH HM rather than dissuade them, if they can perform in a 3 man group where everybody is required to play their best then they'll complement any raid far more than somebody who sticks to larger fellowships where their shortcomings can be compensated for by others.

That's not the way we do things around these 'ere parts.

I is in ur Fellowships, stealing ur threats.