FundinStrongarm

Yeah, you have to do some of the initial quests before that chain opens. I think it is the ones that start at Beorninghus.

What the heck did I do?

Yeah, I understand. It's amazing how much traffic has decreased.

You save 3 star-lit crystals by using a 1st age instead of a 3rd. That's if you care about maxing the main legacy, which you want for weapons but not always for class items. But, yeah, that's the only difference. Also, I thought you can only imbue level 100 LIs?

There isn't one, afaik. Most have drifted away, even from here.

The deadliest difficulty is indeed deadly. My duo was slaughtered by a shrew just outside Michel Delving. We swapped to merely Deadly which works better for us. I think Deadly+6 can work as a fellowship thing but at lowest levels it is difficult to control aggro well. Treebeard server gives only 40% XP but Deadly adds 20%. Kinda defeats the purpose. Still, as solo in Ered Luin, I had to do both Elf and Dwarf starter areas to be able to do even some of the level 10-12 quests. As for Shadowfax, there's no appeal there for me. You can already zoom level and skip whole areas. I'd rather do most of the content to level, somewhat like back in the day

Besides the LIs, you also get a number of trait points that take you over the max you can spend. Plus some virtue tomes, allowing you to get cap in half a dozen or so. The virtue tomes are account bound so can top up other toons as well. It not just for the weapons. The Valar accelerators were 75% off in November (Black Friday?) sometime and I got a couple for levels 105 and 86 toons.

There is a Valar boost you can buy that levels you to 120 and gives you 2 LI tokens that can be exchanged for 2 7-legacy LIs. Those have close to max main DPS/healing legacies, though the other legacies are about 30 tiers below current max. That's about as close as there is.

Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing that would be attractive for people with money and no time to gather. I'm surprised they don't sell it more often. My apologies if this is what was meant.

New patch this Monday raises the max tier for (almost?) all the barter scrolls, plus adds more for certain weekly quests. The number of non-tiered scrolls will be less but overall sources increase and are easily attainable, though bound to account. I'm fine with 6 year old level 100 content from over 3 expansions ago not giving endgame scrolls. YMMV.

I'm honestly surprised Gondor content, which is, what, 6-7 years old now? - still gave endgame scrolls for that long. While they are soloable, I never really collected them from Gondor. I always use Motes/Embers to trade for max 74 scrolls then relied on Box runs, Marks/Medallions and instance drops for the last 9 tiers. Not sure the point of the Dol Amroth scrolls though. They max out at tier 44, which is pretty much the default tier when you imbue an LI. That part of the changes is dumb for sure. So, the grind remains unchanged for me. Maybe not for others. But this doesn't lead to endgame weapons necessarily at all. So that part is typical hyperbole, imo.

I'm curious what hope crafting item was abandoned?

We'll see if they change the barter cost for Ancient Ithil Coins from Throne T2, Roving Threats or straight Marks/Medallions. I've found Gondor dailies not worth the time/effort and haven't done them in months. I haven't heard (yet) of any changes there on Bullroarer. Currently, you need about 35ish scrolls per legacy you want to max. All but the last 9, so 3/4 overall, can be bartered with Embers/Motes. The SoE thing, while theoretically bad, will have small impact, imo. The change did get me to cash in lots of coins I had sitting on several toons, netting me about 60 scrolls.

Congress needs to take back its authority. Way too much power has been ceded to the executive branch. And, it WAS wrong when Obama did it. Rule by decree is not good, no matter the party. One needs to win the political argument and gather the votes required to enact policy. If you can't, then tough. Senate control has nothing to do with the Electoral College (not to mention that under Obama, the House was also Republican for 6 of his 8 years). Pinning that on McConnell ain't gonna wash, sorry.

Ugh. Congress has ceded so much power to the executive branch already. That's why the president can issue executive orders and change things all over the place. It wasn't right when Obama did it, nor Trump, nor Biden. Congress needs to take back its authority.