Spirit Point Farming in LOTR: The Third Age

One of the most necessary things to do in almost all RPGs is to grind and Lord of the Rings the Third Age is no different! In this game there's two ways you can level up - the first is through gaining XP regularly which will increase your character's actual levels. The second way, which this guide covers is SP experience.

In Lord of the Rings the Third Age the more you use a certain category of abilities the more it'll level up that category of abilities. This holds true for every type of ability there is; the more you use sword skills the more sword skills you'll acquire and the stronger they'll be.

Using any ability in a specific category will unlock future abilities within that same category. For example, in the screen shot above you could continously use Company Might over and over and over to net yourself Leadership SP. This will unlock other skills in that same category.

It's pretty simple and straight forward and it works the same for all of the characters you have in your party.

 

Here is some general information about grinding SP you should know before I tell you one of the best and earliest methods.

- You will get SP for a skill even if the skill doesn't benefit you. Meaning you can heal a character at full HP and still get SP for the cast. Or buff someone while they are already buffed with that same buff for SP.

- You won't get SP when your ability Misses. All hits will reward you with SP but if you miss you get nothing

- While playing through the game, try to spam SP abilities at all times - use items if you need to restore your Action Points.

- Sometimes throughout the game purposefully carry out a fight and use more SP abilities. It will reduce the time you have to spend doing the method in this guide.

 

You can perform this trick in Moria as well on the Goblin Shadow Chieftans but the first and easiest is in in the first part of the game, Eregion. Fast travel to Eregion at any save station and head north towards the Eregion Fellowship Camp. You witnessed a cinematic here earlier of the Hobbits hiding from some crows.

Note: You'll have to put in Disc 1 when you fast travel to this location.

We don't need to go all the way to the Eregion Fellowship Camp. In fact once you pass the building you see in the screen shot above we'll have a chance to encounter the mob we need. The mob we're after is called a Lesser Orc Captain. They stand out like a sore thumb since they're the only enemy who holds a banner.

Once you encounter one of these guys dispatch of his friends and then use Idria's Drain Inspiration on him to deplete his AP. When you completely drain his AP he'll refuse to attack you at all and instead just Skip each of his turns.

This is basically what we're going to exploit.

You have a few options now depending on what you've like to accomplish. You can stay in battle on all 3 of your characters and use Berethor's Fellowship Grace Leadership ability to feed everyone infinite AP. This will allow you to spam SP moves indefinitely on your whole party as long as you don't kill the Orc.

Or you can flee the battle on everyone except one character and craft up a bunch of items using the Elfstone of Nimble Crafting. If you'd like to craft some items check out my Crafting Guide for more information about that.

If you have the Elfstone of Fell Shadow or the Elfstone of Pure Light and you'd like to level that up that's also an option while we're here. This is also a great spot to level up Morwen's Thief Skill tree once you get her as well as your future party member, Eaoden's Spirit Powers.

Really the only thing that you should keep in mind while grinding here is if someone is in your group that has nothing to grind/spam retreat on them so you don't waste turns.