LOTRO: The Battle Before the Rammas Deluon – A Winning Strategy for This Demanding Instance - How To Win The Battle Of Rammas Deluon
Upping the Ante from Aughaire
After completing the Ring-Lore of Eregion Quest, which became available with the launch of Book 14, the requisite 70 000 times, The Battle of Aughaire is the first Battle Quest Instance to open up in the latter part of Book 14, followed by the Battle Before the Rammas Deluon and the Battle of Rhunendin.
The Battle Before the Rammas Deluon is similar to but more involved than the Battle of Aughaire. You should at least read up on it via the links if you haven’t completed the quest yet.
Like in the Aughaire Quest, you will be helping NPC’s defend bulwarks against waves of opponents, and you will need a full, balanced, Fellowship for this Quest. Unlike Aughaire, you will also need to attack enemies at some points. This means splitting the Fellowship again: your tank and preferably a Lore-Master will be the defense group, with the other four being the attack group.
As in Aughaire, you can travel to the Instance and get the lay of the land before talking to the Ranger and starting the Quest. There are four bulwarks to defend, more or less in a line from north to south, called Northernmost, Northern, Faelbann’s (the Ranger NPC defends this bulwark), and Southern. Woe betides players confusing the Northern and Northernmost bulwark. You will also notice a big, red, shimmering, wall of Dread to the east.
Buff, start the Quest, and ride to Faelbann’s bulwark. A horn will sound followed by an onscreen message that the forces of Angmar are rallying around such and such a Sorceress. A purple dot will indicate the Sorceress’s location: the attack will be at one of the two bulwarks closest to her, so go wait between them. The horn sounds again, and the message will now indicate which bulwark is being attacked, ride on over.
Stun or mezz all the Elite Masters you can, and agro everything else. Here is the fun part: drag all of those mobs to the next closest bulwark. The NPC guards from the first bulwark will follow, and you will be able to burn through the attackers that much faster.
Depending on how fast, you may get them done before the next horn and the message that the Sorceress of this or that has weakened. This not only makes her vulnerable to attack, but drops the shimmering Dread wall from in front of her. If the bulwarks are clear, everyone charge the purple dot and pummel the Sorceress in question, if not, the defense team has to stay behind and help the NPCs finish up. Depending on how dire things are at the bulwarks, one or two attack group members may want to hang back, but at least two people need to go beat on the Sorceress right away, with the rest of the attack group en route as soon as the bulwarks are under some form of control. The defense group should come help as soon as they can if they are able to clear the bulwarks. If a mob agros a target that has gone to fight a Sorceress, send attackers back one at a time to unlock them. You don’t want them bringing a Nemesis Warlord of Angmar to help beat on you, which they will do if you don’t kill them fast enough.
The Sorceress kills are straightforward: she is helpless, but has a lot of Morale and calls adds. Just keep beating on her, you only have so long to take her out and the adds disappear as soon as she dies, so ignore them as best you can.
As the battle progresses, the order of events becomes less predictable, and the whole group might be fighting a Sorceress when there is a call to defend a bulwark. In this case, the defense team moves immediately towards the bulwarks and sets up. Mezz and stun what you can, and here is where the tank really has to shine. They need to get anything that isn’t mezzed off the NPCs and lead them to the next bulwark to get the double NPC effect. This is really critical as one wave is too much for two players and one group of NPCs to handle. The attack group mustn’t let up, they have to torch that Sorceress and get back to help. Even if the defense group and NPCs have the bulwarks under control, you don’t want to take too long and have that hidden timer for the Warlord go off.
Get the five Sorceresses killed, keep the Ranger alive, along with at least one NPC at each bulwark, for 45 minutes, and you’re done. Head out of the Instance, grab your reward, and get ready for the next Quest, the Battle of Rhunendin.
This post is part of the series: Lord of the Rings Online: Book 14 and Battle Quests
This series describes the changes that came with the Book 14 expansion, gives tips on the Epic quests and strategies on the new Battle Instance Quests.
