WANTED: A UNIVERSAL BARTER CURRENCY

The barter economy of Middle-Earth is becoming extremely complex. Barter items now include Battered Arnorian Armour (BAA), Vile Bronze and Silver Coins, Rift Coins, Marks of Triumph (MoT) from the repeatable epic instances, Marks of Victory (MoV) from the battleground instances, and of course Luminous Stones from the Delvings of Fror in the Ettenmoors.

All of these can only be bartered for specific items as follows:

BAA = Annuminas armour
Vile Coins = Angmar armour
Rift-iron Coins = second-rank Rift armour
Fror stones = Ettens armour
MoV = teal jewellery or a gamble on the chests
MoT = various

The interesting items here are the MoT, which are the closest thing LOTRO has to a universal barter “currency”; they can be used to acquire any of either Helegrod, Annuminas or Angmar armour (respectively priced at 30, 16 and 8 MoT per item). However, they can also be exchanged for Annuminas or Angmar barter items at a rate of 2 MoT for one Vile Silver Coin or one BAA; unfortunately, the reverse isn’t true – you can’t hand over a Vile Silver Coin and receive two MoT.

It’s hard to say why, and it’s a pity the developers didn’t take the plunge and make MoT a true universal barter item. If they had, players would be able to consolidate all the barter items acquired from various quests and instances (including perhaps even Helegrod barter items) and convert them into whichever barter currency they prefered. Instead, many players are lumbered with a variety of barter items which take up precious storage slots, none of them in sufficient quantities to trade in.