Dungeons

Middle-earth: Starter Area, Lands, Regions, Areas, Settlements, Landmarks, Interiors, Dungeons, Instances, Maps

Dungeons are similar to instances in that they are a separate instance from the landscape. Unlike instances, dungeons are not accessible from the Instance Finder. Further comparisons can be drawn with interiors in that they are typically entered through a portal located somewhere in Middle-earth or in some cases by speaking to an NPC. What separates them from interiors is that they are typically populated by mobs and serve as locations involved in questing, crafting, or earning reputation.

Dungeons, in most cases, are the caves, tombs, fortresses, ruins, and hideouts occupied by the enemy and thus are usually not found near or within settlements as opposed to interiors.

For a complete list of dungeons throughout Middle-earth see Category:Dungeons

Dungeon Types

• Crafting Instances
• Public Dungeons or Public Instances
• Quest Instances

Crafting Instances

Introduced in the Mines of Moria 2009 expansion these special instances contain loads of crafting Resources and usually creatures that drop crafting resources. There are three instances for each higher crafting tiers (Forester, Scholar, Prospector). They are often simultaneously a public dungeon as well.

Public Dungeons or Public Instances

While they may at first appear to be world instances, this type of instanced location is open to anyone to enter. This means that the separate players and groups that enter will end up in the same instance. Due to the large amount of players that can enter, these are not scalable, mob respawn rates are exponentially faster than in other instance types. Additionally, bosses tend to respawn at a slow rate, and fighting them usually requires less coordination than a world instance boss.

Quest Instances

These instances are only accessible when one or more members of the Fellowship have the corresponding quest. Many may be accessible via a Reflecting Pool). They are usually short (5 minutes to 1 hour), very scripted and linear, typically have minimal random encounters, and the bosses that may be found there do not drop any loot above the uncommon quality (except at higher quest levels). Most are oriented to solo play, and in fact many are restricted to solo play and are indicated as "Solo Only". But many can be played with up to a full fellowship (six players). Some are scaled by level of the player, but not all. The real reward for completing these is from the quest.

For a list of instance quests, see Instance Quests.