A brief introduction to Hytbold

Hytbold is the new end-game experience. It’s not a raid or an instance; those, we’re told, will come later. Instead, Hytbold is a different sort of end-game in which players who have reached level 84 can spend time each day to rebuild a town ravaged by recent attacks. By helping the different factions of Eastemnet Rohirrim through daily quests, they will agree to help you rebuild the town. The main currency is the Token of Hytbold, a symbol of your services to the Rohirrim, which you use to direct the rebuilding effort. Throughout the process players unlock raid-level gear and housing decorations and follow a story that unfolds involving some of the more influential among the Rohirrim.

As a precautionary note, all the information here is from Bullroarer and may change before hitting the live servers.

Rebuilding the town

As soon as you reach the town, you’ll immediately notice that all the buildings are charred and black and there are but a few NPCs remaining. One of them will give you your first quest to familiarize yourself with the layout of the town. Be warned, this place is a labyrinth and this quest might take you some time if its your first time. Your quest tracker should be of some use here. One quick tip: the farms are outside the city palisade.

Complete that quest and he’ll give you 25 tokens of Hytbold. You can’t do anything with these tokens except give them right back in order to start reconstruction on the mead hall. Because this town heavily utilizes phasing, as soon as you hand over your tokens, the mead hall will change from charred to restored. If you look inside the mead hall, you’ll see that it still needs quite a bit of work.

Now the NPC you gave your tokens to will have many more quests, all of which will build some part of the town costing between 5 and 15 tokens each. As you gain more reputation with the factions of the Eastemnet, more NPCs will appear at the Ally and Kindred ranks for each group that will have additional building quests. Each of these quests unlock a specific piece of gear for a specific class, contribute to a deed which unlocks some decorations, and might unlock more building quests.

Daily quests

Right outside the mead hall is Rinwald who offers the daily wrapper quest, Aiding the Eastemnet, which allows you to complete five of the 16 different quests on offer that day, four in each of the major towns of Cliving, Eaworth, Harwick and Snowbourn. These quests rotate each day, and there are almost 50 unique quests in the pool. Each quest awards five tokens of Hytbold for a max of 25 daily tokens. There are also deeds for each town that award 25 tokens rewarded after you’ve completed each quest in that town once.

There are three different NPCs in each town that offer the daily quests. There will always be at least two quests involving public instances, one that stays the same daily, and one that involves a little more creativity. For example, in Snowbourn, you can get a quest to catch a specific type of fish that’s attracted to the scent of goat blood.

The public instances are quite interesting. Once you accept, you are sent to a specific location to accomplish a specific task whether that be paying your respects in a tomb or removing Cargûl runes from an Easterling camp. You can also get the tried-and-true kill a certain amount of a certain mob quest. What makes these quests interesting is that you won’t be alone. Other players who accept the same quests will join you in the instance and you can group up to fulfill your quest goals.

Resource instances

As you rebuild, you can unlock three different daily resource instances. Remember those from Moria? There’s one for ore, one for lumber and one for scholars (sorry, nothing yet for hides or farmers). These are unlocked by rebuilding the Superior Forge, Superior Workbench and Superior Study, respectively, but they require some reputation with the various factions to unlock their rebuilding NPCs.

The resource instances themselves are full of resource nodes and take place in a couple different locations. For the Forester instance, you are sent to explore an abandoned town across the Entwade overrun with enemies. Each time you run one of these, it’s populated by a different type of mob. One time there might be scavenging orcs and the next there might be wolves prowling about.

There are three quests (two will bestow upon entering the instance) for each instance that grant a Token of Effort which can be bartered for various rewards such as sealed relics. You’ll also get runes, relics or titles from the quests, and the ore instance quest also gives you the option to receive a Compendium of Middle-earth, Volume IV, an important ingredient in crafted relic guild crafting.

Gear and decorations

If it’s gear you’re looking for, then quickly locate your three class armour barterers lurking about the mead hall in Hytbold. There’s a set of incomparable-level armour for each trait line but each piece is gated by a specific rebuilding quest. To see which quest you have to complete in order to barter for the armour piece you want, click on the item at the barterer then hover over the greyed out Barter button. The game will tell you which quest you then need to finish to complete the transaction. It works the same way with the housing decorations from Rinwald except you must complete deeds instead of quests.

The grind

All in all, there are over 150 rebuilding quests to complete in Hytbold, which, at 25 daily tokens of Hytbold plus the five “Aiding the …” deeds which award 25 tokens each, it will take 44 days to finish the town. After that, you’ll be treated to a nice, little quest arc involving the future of the Eastemnet and the role you’ve played so far.

If you’re having panic attacks about grinding out tokens for each of your characters, you’re in luck. Once you manage to complete the rebuilding of Hytbold on one character, you’ll then have access to every other class barterer in Hytbold and can barter for the gear you want and pass it to your other characters.

So you’ve done your Hytbold dailies, now what? Don’t forget about daily warband quests and each faction has some repeatable quests. And don’t forget all those aging raids from past expansions. They should be a breeze in your shiny, new gear. Me? I’ll be working my way through the Rift on my Warden with the help of a few friends.

Links

For a comprehensive guide to Hytbold, see Fredalas’ guide.
For a list of the rebuilding quests and their gating, see Hytbold quests.
For a list of the deeds which unlock decoration items, see Rinwald.