After questing through East-Gondor on my alts I noticed lots of things that either went over my head the first time I played through the content or that did not make sense at the time.
But now, after finishing both Osgiliath and the Ashes and Stars quest series I do wonder if our characters are maybe just a little bit dumb.
I can dig the new instances and their features even though I dislike the amount of preparation you have to put up with before you can do them properly *cough* morale essences * cough*
But back to the topic:
While looking for Mablung's rangers in Osgiliath we meet one near the Palace of Eldacar. He tells us that he and a friend of his were scouting the area and that he lost track of his friends and is assuming him dead.
We are then tasked to take a look inside the Palace of Eldacar and can confirm the ranger's fears as we find his friend dead within the palace.
With a morgul blade beside him.
A broken morgul blade... next to a dead body.
So we, the master scholars and veteran adventurers we are, then decide to... leave the corpse alone and return to the ranger and outright tell him his friend died.
As we continue with our journey through Osgiliath, Mablung eventually tells us that his captain Faramir has disappeared and that someone or something with his cloak is running around the city, avoiding all rangers.
Our next stop, the Sunken Labyrinth, was chosen because the rangers of Osgiliath use the sewers to move around the city without getting caught by orcs. Inside said sewers we meet the shadowy person Mablung told us about but are unable to catch it.
Instead, we fight two bosses, Dagron und Muzgásh, who were both terrible disfigured after we kinda forced them to take a swim through the Morgulduin as we ran amok in Barad Nemorn. (Nicely done imo, I did not notice this on my first playthrough!)
After the Sunken Labyrinth we follow the shadowy person through the Ruined City, slaying orcs and haradrim left and right with the possible danger of being led into a trap and getting surrounded by superior numbers only to chase our new "friend" to the Palace of Eldacar...
AND SURPRISE!! The shadowy figure was actually Lumithil aka a newly created Cargûl from the corpse we just IGNORED earlier.
But we are not done, no! Lumithil just happens to tell us that his new Lords - the Nazgûl - have caught Faramir and that we will never retrieve him alive! He is also held hostage in the Dome of Stars and maybe bring a few friends so that we can strike all of you dow- you didn't listen to the last part, right?
So we go there, putting down a rampaging Mumák on the way, meeting Rook again and defeating the Black Blade of Lebennin (While the other Nazgûl are just to lazy to help their buddy) and, you know, find out that the Nazgûl got the wrong Ranger again.
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Look, I know that Wightification (Is that even a word?) is kinda rare in Middleearth but either my characters were stuck with sudden amnesia or our humans/beornings completely forgot about Amdir and the entirety of the prologue (Which, by the way the game handles the story, was literally just a year ago) our Dwarves and Elves never put any effort into their history classes and our Hobbits, well, never travelled farther than the edges of the Shire. Because I sure remember lots and lots of Wights and Cargûls on my way through Angmar and Mirkwood.
The corpse was right THERE! Our characters even recognized the morgul blade as one! All we had to do was to put a westernesse blade thought it, put down an elvenstone/beryl or, if we want to be more gruesome, burn him or cut him into tiny bits! The last one should not even be that big of a problem because by the point we reach the trollshaws our characters are supreme taxidermists with all the boars we tore apart.
Now, maybe those options were not possible in that moment but we could have TOLD Mablung, you know, that one of your rangers was turned into a Cargûl and that he might lure your brothers into hideous traps!
Point is, if we had just dealt with the corpse of Lumithil before he rose again or told Mablung about HOW Lumithil died we could have avoided the whole "chase not-Faramir through Osgiliath" thing.
I do like the skillpoint... :D
