Chicken Play In ‘Lord Of The Rings Online’: A Wonderfully Absurd Good Time

Video Games

May 20

Have you ever had a hard day where, in the end, you just wanted to play your MMO for a while- not for any serious gameplay, say, but more for the enjoyment of the in-game universe? If you play Lord Of The Rings Online, there is a solution to this problem, and it’s been longer than Goat Simulator. I think. Chicken Play in LOTRO is a fun experience in and of itself. It is exactly what it sounds like- you play through quests in the game world as a chicken. Simple enough, right?

The beginning of Chicken Play is straightforward- you access it via a series of quests from Farmer Wald Sandson, located at Sandson’s Farm outside of Michel Delving in the Shire. Once you’ve gone into Chicken Play via George the Rooster, you can only use features like the in-game chat as a chicken. Whatever chicken quest you happen to be running, you will be given a good amount of time to complete it. This ensures you can familiarize yourself with the Middle Earth landscape while still having time to complete the quest.

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Once you get through the pre-requisite, “The Sky Is Falling” group of quests; you get into the “Flying the Coop” exploration quests. You can complete these quests in any order. They enable you to explore everything from Ered Luin to Rivendell while fulfilling your objectives. These objectives mostly entail speaking to animals scattered throughout Middle Earth to request their assistance in protecting the chicken’s home farm from predators.

Now, this is not without risk. You do have predators; fortunately, you can see them on the radar in the top right corner of the screen. It’s best to try and avoid them as much as possible, as chickens do not possess any combat abilities. Chickens can speed up, dodge, play dead, and enhance their detection ability. This last skill comes in handy around the Trollshaws in the final approach to Rivendell. It allows you to see the hidden predators that stalk the zone known as High Moor. If you aren’t careful in this area, you can get ambushed and quickly defeated when you’re only ten minutes from the finish line.

Once you have completed the "Flying the Coop” quests and the follow-up quest “Returning to Wald", you can access the Great Wide Open, There and Bawk Again, and Free Range quests. One of these is a wider combined exploration of the areas covered in the “Flying the Coop” quests, while the other two allow you to explore the areas east of the Misty Mountains, like the Rhovanion and Gondor. You have eight hours to complete each of these quests, and they allow you to explore well-known locations like The Lonely Mountain, Lake-town, and Minas Tirith. The dangers are the same- you must dodge predators as much as you can, making regular use of the Paranoia skill to see any that are hidden. In any quest, you can speed up your travel by using the Speed skill on a loop. Finally, in keeping with the inherent absurdity of running around a fantasy world as a chicken, the “Free Range“ quest has a ridiculous objective: you must launch yourself off the prow of Minas Tirith, aka the thing that a flaming Denethor ran off of in Return of the King.

There’s not much else to say: Chicken Play is a wonderfully ridiculous way to indulge your love of fantasy while killing time and relaxing all at once. Granted, sometimes it requires much patience, but the result is always worth it.

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