Buried Treasure!
Lately there have been rumors of treasure buried in Ered Luin. Dwarves have been seen carrying pick-axes and trained cave-claws up into the hills in search of hidden riches. Now the rumors have been confirmed and it’s your turn to get a chance at the treasure!
What is the Treasure Hunt?
It is a new event that is not tied to a specific season or date like LOTRO’s existing festivals. It will be available periodically throughout the year, so if you miss the first appearance, you’re not out of luck until next year.
Where is the event?
The Treasure Field is in Ered Luin, northwest of Gondamon. You can ride there on your own, or you can take a swift travel route from special Festival Announcer stable masters in West Bree, Michel Delving, Thorin’s Hall and Celondim. There is also a mustering horn for fellowship members to summon each other there if they wish and a campsite for hunters to use.
How do I get started
The first thing you need to do is speak to the dwarf Aldúlf. He will start you on your introduction to the event. After a short quest showing you how various parts of the event work, you’ll be sent off on your own with your first set of Treasure-hunter’s Picks and some other helpful goodies.
Quests
Introduction: Treasure Hunt
Quest Giver: Aldúlf
Quest Level: 1+
Repeatable: No
Rewards: 10 Treasure-hunter picks, 1 Trained Cave-claw Cage, 1 Dowsing Gem
Objective 1: Speak with Halthor Goldeneye
Objective 2: Speak with Tor Wayseeker
Objective 3: Dig a site in the training grounds
Objective 4: Talk to Orn Gemfinder
Objective 5: Use a dowsing gem on a dig site
Objective 6: Talk to Segar
Objective 7: Use a trained cave claw
Objective 8: Talk to Halthor Goldeneye
Objective 9: Talk to Arngills
Completing the Introduction quest will allow open up a new deed (more on that later) and will allow you to pick up the two repeatable quests in the area.
Treasure Hunt
Quest giver: Aldúlf or Arngills
Quest level: 1+
Repeatable: Yes (Every 15 minutes)
Reward: 2 Treasure-hunter’s picks
Objective: Talk to Halthor Goldeneye
Berries
Quest giver: Trained Cave-claw
Quest level: 1+
Repeatable: Yes (Every 15 minutes)
Reward: 2 Treasure-hunter’s picks, 1 Trained Cave-claw Cage, 1 Dowsing Gem
Objective: Collect 5 Berries
Note: The berries will disappear when someone picks them up, so if the treasure field is very busy, it can take quite a while to find enough berries to finish this quest.
Dig-sites and Treasure-hunt Rounds
Treasure-hunter’s picks are used to excavate dig-sites in the treasure field. There are four sizes of dig-sites: Small, Medium, Large and Huge. The different sizes of dig-sites cannot be distinguished by looking at them, and their locations are random.
There is only one Huge dig-site active at any given time. A round ends when more than half the dig-sites have been excavated, the huge cache is discovered, or by an hour passing since the last round reset.
When a round is over, the message "The round has ended! The event will restart shortly" will appear on screen and in your chat window. Very shortly after (we are talking 10-25 seconds later), you will see the message "A new round has begun" and that means that the dig-sites have been randomized again. Because rounds are based on when the Huge site is found, they can vary greatly in length. When the treasure field is really busy, it’s not uncommon for rounds to end within seconds after they start.
Every dig-site contains at least 1 Buried Treasure Token, although usually you’ll get more tokens than that. They also have a chance to include any of the following: Treasure-hunter’s pick, Trained Cave-claw Cage, Dowsing Gem, and a cache that corresponds to the size of the dig-site. The Huge dig-site will always contain a Huge Treasure Cache consumable item. These treasure caches can contain any of the previously mentioned rewards (except for other caches) and they also have a chance to give an emote, housing decoration or cosmetic item. The Huge cache may also contain one of the three new mounts exclusive to this event.
Treasure Hunting Items
Treasure-hunter’s Pick
You absolutely must have these picks in order to participate in the event. As mentioned previously, there are three different quests (two of them repeatable every 15 minutes) that will give you these picks. They also have a chance to be found as rewards from dig-sites.
The third way to acquire these is through the LOTRO Store. In my opinion, it is not worth spending Turbine Points on these picks. They are 50 points each, or 5 for 200 points. Considering they are consumable items (they will disappear after you excavate a dig-site with them) and the fact that they don’t give you any advantage toward finding better dig-sites, it’s better to just wait out the quests and hope you get lucky when opening dig-sites.
Trained Cave-claw Cage
Release one of these trained cave-claws and it will lead you to the largest dig-site within 20 meters. It’s best to stand in the middle of an area with several dig-sites and then cross your fingers and hope for good luck. When you use the item, a cave-claw will appear and immediately start moving toward a dig-site. It will then pat the spot and a message will appear on your screen that says "The cave-claw has found a _____ dig-site". (The blank in that statement will be filled in with the size of the dig-site.) You can get these items from the Treasure Hunt introduction quest, from the repeatable Berries quest, as random rewards found in dig-sites, or from Sigtír, the barter vendor in the camp. You will need 5 Buried Treasure Tokens to barter for 1 Trained Cave-claw Cage.
Note: For a few moments at least, no one else will be able to use the dig-site that your cave-claw has pointed out to you. Presumably this is to keep other people from just following a person’s cave-claws and then "stealing" the dig-site. Because of this, it’s recommended that you don’t use a cave-claw if you don’t actually have a treasure-hunter’s pick so that you don’t find a really good dig-site and make it so no one can use it.
Dowsing Gem
To use a dowsing gem, you must select a dig-site (left click on it) and then use the gem. A message will pop up on your screen and in chat with a "reading" that tells you the size of the dig-site. You must keep the dig-site selected the whole time the dowsing gem is "reading" the site or else you will get an error message and have to start again. You can get these items from the Treasure Hunt introduction quest, from the repeatable Berries quest, as random rewards found in dig-sites, or from Sigtír, the barter vendor in the camp. You will need 1 Buried Treasure Token to barter for 1 Dowsing Gem.
The possible readings and their meanings are as follows:
- You are getting a Very Weak reading = small dig-site
- You are getting a Slight reading = medium dig-site
- You are getting a Strong reading = large dig-site
- You are getting a Very Strong reading = huge dig-site
Cave-claw Wrangler Deed
This deed requires you to hug 6 different types of cave-claws. The cave-claws used for this deed are not the trained Cave-claws that help you find buried treasure, but rather, a separate type that you barter for at the reward vendor. The Domesticated Cave-claw can be bartered for at a price of 30 Buried Treasure Tokens. It stays around for one minute and then it disappears for good. The cave-claw will be one of 6 random options for the deed. Anyone in the area can use the /hug emote on the cave-claw to get credit toward the deed.
Cave-claws you need to hug for this deed:
- Harnessed Cave-claw
- Tan-back Cave-claw
- Green-beak Cave-claw
- Pink-beak Cave-claw
- Black-beak Cave-claw
- Green-back Cave-claw
Note: The name of the cave-claw you must hug to get credit for the "Harnessed Cave-claw" is the "Domesticated Cave-claw".
Rewards
Some cosmetic items are exclusive to the treasure caches while others can only be found on the barter vendor.
Barter Vendor Rewards
Most of these items have a chance to drop from a dig-site or inside a treasure cache. I recommend not spending your tokens on these items until nearing the end of the event to see if you can find them with luck first.
Cosmetics
 Golden Cave- Claw 500 Buried Treasure Tokens |
 Wooden Cave-Claw Mask 90 Buried Treasure Tokens |
 Jeweller’s Helm 200 Buried Treasure Tokens |
 Treasure Hunter’s Pack 150 Buried Treasure Tokens |
Note: this looks like a RK satchel but will use the back slot on your character. |
Housing Items
 Trained Cave-Claw Large Yard Item400 Buried Treasure Tokens“A Trained Cave Claw” |
 Treasure Chest Small Furniture30 Buried Treasure Tokens“A chest filled with treasure” |
 Dig-Site Small Yard60 Buried Treasure Tokens“A dig-site from the Buried Treasure Event.” |
Emotes
- Gem Inspection – 250 Buried Treasure Tokens
- Dowsing – 30 Buried Treasury Tokens
- Gold Panning – 100 Buried Treasure Tokens
- Rich! – 300 Buried Treasure Tokens
Miscellaneous
Domesticated Cave Claw is purchasable for 30 Buried Treasure Tokens. We have no reports of these items ever appearing in dig-sites or treasure caches and appear to be vendor only. This item is associated with the deed listed above.
Treasure Cache Only Rewards
The following items are rewards that have been found as exclusive to dig-site drops or inside treasure caches. This is the only way to find these particular items.
Cosmetics  Treasure Hunters’ Rucksack Bound to Account |
Emotes
|
Mounts
Random drop from Huge Treasure-caches only. All mounts are 250 morale and +68% speed. If you win the horse will automatically be applied to your skills (nothing will appear in your inventory).
 Treasure Laden Goat Note when received the item is called [Jackpot Goat] but it will be in your mount list as Treasure Laden Goat. |
Treasure Laden Steed Note when received the item is called [Jackpot Horse] but it will be in your mount list as Treasure Laden Horse / Pony. |
 Cave-claw Masked Steed Special thank you Barosa of Landroval! |
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February 14, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Several people on my server were also saying that there’s only one Huge dig site per round and that the round should immediately reset once it’s found. Yet more than once, multiple people uncovered Huge caches in the same round, and it didn’t reset immediately. Are you sure there’s only one Huge each round?
February 14, 2012 at 10:06 pm
Were they in different layers perhaps? There is only one Huge cache per round, per layer.
February 14, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Yep, you’re right, we figured out it was due to layer differences. Thanks for the guide!
February 15, 2012 at 1:35 pm
I noticed it actually resets when the huge cache is open from your inventory, not when you dig the huge site ..
February 14, 2012 at 10:01 pm
Thanks for the guide! I was wondering if there was anything else available. it appears I’ve got everything I really want, except the coin flip emote, trained cave-claw decoration, treasure-laden horse, and cave-claw horse. I’m still working on getting enough tokens for the decoration, so maybe a horse or emote will drop again.
February 14, 2012 at 10:02 pm
I think the appearance of the cave-claw horse has changed. The ones I’ve seen have been grey dapple horses.
February 14, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Some of these pictures were from a beta test a while back, and it does seem that the appearance has changed since then. I haven’t been able to find any mounts other than the Treasure-Laden Horse, so I don’t have any more recent pictures of the other mounts.
February 14, 2012 at 10:17 pm
I could have swore I got a mount from a large dig.. but I can not be sure.
February 14, 2012 at 10:19 pm
I think they were dropping from large dig-sites in the 2-hour preview they did a few months ago. Wasn’t able to confirm if it’s still possible this time around. you might not have imagined things.
February 14, 2012 at 10:57 pm
I have yet to hear a single report of a large dropping a mount in 5.2. Huges have a 10% mount drop rate.
/coinflip is at the medium+ level
/counterfeit is at the large level
February 15, 2012 at 1:39 am
one important fact related to strategy or whatever:
at the beginning of the event (not applicable anymore since it’s over i think), for the love of god, don’t waste those 10 picks!
plus, i wish i knew about the domesticated cave claw being the ahrnessed one. more people on my server have failed the deed because of that. usually someone would buy a cave claw and announce in OOC the release at camp, so everyone can come and hug it
good, good people!
i have heard rumors that the golden cave claw mask is huge drop only.
also i have a suspicion that the cave claw mount dropped from a large, not a huge – in my case. i could be wrong about this, but that’s what i remember.
can’t wait for next event of this type
February 15, 2012 at 5:12 am
That makes sense on the golden mask; it’s listed as a “huge cache” item in the vendor’s sort menu. Same thing with the Rich! emote and I’ve only seen it in huge caches.
February 15, 2012 at 6:58 am
yes, i can confirm that the “rich” emote is only a huge drop. everyone that got it (myself included) said it was so.
pretty nice emote though
February 15, 2012 at 3:23 am
Thanks for the guide! Was a good round for me, one horse, couple of emotes (incl. Rich
, which I found) and a stack of tokens for a next event. Friend of mine bought the trained cave-claw and that looks awesome in front of his house. Especially when it curls up to sleep 
Tokens stack to over one hundred btw, dunno exactly to how much, but they’ll only take up 1 spot in the vault.
February 15, 2012 at 5:51 pm
My wife currently has a stack of 655 tokens and I am pretty sure they will stack up even higher.
February 15, 2012 at 9:49 am
Supposedly there’s a caged shrew yard item too… although maybe the person meant caged cave-claw, I don’t know lol
I really like the golden cave claw mask, I’m definitely going to try for that next time.
February 15, 2012 at 10:29 am
They most likely meant a cave-claw. There is no caged shrew that I’ve heard or seen.
February 15, 2012 at 10:30 am
Does the Trained Cave Claw Housing Item (Large Yard) have any animation? Like does the cave claw roam around outside of the cage?
Thanks!
February 15, 2012 at 11:01 am
Yes, the Trained Cave-claw does move around. If I remember correctly, it’ll curl up like it’s taking a nap, then walk around a bit and stretch out.
February 15, 2012 at 11:44 am
Something interesting to note. If you are digging at a site (I usually just burn my picks randomly after I used all my cave claws and gems) and someone comes by with a cave claw. It can lock you out of digging at the site. EVEN if you started digging before they used the cave claw.
I had someone do this to me and I got the “don’t have permission” error mere moments before I completed digging because their cave claw selected the site I was digging at.
February 15, 2012 at 11:50 am
I’ve had that happen to me, too. Also, even if you’ve just used a dowsing gem on a site, a cave-claw can lock you out of a site. Very frustrating if you’re digging or getting ready to dig and someone 20 meters away ends up claiming the site for themself.
February 15, 2012 at 12:43 pm
It’s too bad that Treasure Hunter’s satchel is in the cloak slot. I’d love my Burglar to sport that along with his backpack. Didn’t they say they were going to give everyone a cosmetic satchel slot, not just RKs? Whatever happened to that?
February 15, 2012 at 12:47 pm
It is weird that they put it in the cloak slot. However, it makes it useable for everyone, so short of giving all toons a satchel slot, it’s not too bad. Fortunately, it will cosmetically cover a real RK satchel, so you don’t have to worry about having two satchels competing for the same spot on your hip.
February 15, 2012 at 6:22 pm
Covering the RK Satchel is nice. I never liked that we have no way to customize how that looks.
February 16, 2012 at 2:50 am
You can dye the RK satchels. I dye mine a neutral leathery color so it will go with all my outfits; even the LI satchels are dyeable.
February 16, 2012 at 5:39 am
and dont forget that the first LI you get at level 45 is still invisible for those who dont want any stachel
February 24, 2012 at 10:59 pm
They are? Total news to me. Thank you!
February 16, 2012 at 8:01 am
… and you can equip ANY runesatchel of any level through the wardrobe. Even unidentified legendary ones.
February 15, 2012 at 1:13 pm
I did this several times in the last 24 hours and I have these strategies to share:
1) When its really really busy, form a fellowship and “camp” on a number of edge spawn points. Then have everyone use dowsing gems on them when the new round starts. Most people will avoid nodes that are already occupied in this method, assuming (correctly) that those players are checking them and leave them only if they are worthless.
2) If its not crowded, use caveclaws to find the best spots. Make sure that you are in a spot with at least 5 dig sites in range.
3) Use your caveclaws only at the beginning of a round. Later on, there are fewer good spots.
4) Don’t dig the small stuff. Save your precious pick-axes for large and huge sites. (Though I did end up doing a bunch of small ones when it was super crowded)
–Harper
February 15, 2012 at 8:42 pm
i don’t understand your 4th point. How am i supposed to “save my pick-axes” when i can only get a single cave claw every 15 minutes *IF* there aren’t a bazillion people hunting for berries without using tokens… which i can’t get unless i’m using pick-axes.
last night i couldn’t finish the berries quest in the two hours i was there before giving up, and i didn’t want to burn my precious tokens on dowsing gems or cave claws in the barter store (and in that time, i only managed to get to about 50 tokens)… soooo… it was “luck of the draw” for me twice every 15 minutes. i’m not sure i see how that can be avoided unless you somehow have the zone to yourself.
February 16, 2012 at 8:04 am
You can buy more cave-claws from the Barter, they cost 5 tokens. You can buy more dowsing gems for 1 token each. After you have all items and emotes that you desire, using your (bound) tokens for cave-claws and dowsing gems is the way to optimize the use of your precious pick axes.
February 15, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Have you noticed that NPC dwarf saying something like “Don’t forget to have a lucky horseshoe in your pocket when you go hunting for treasure’ or something like that …
Remember the Elebrandir’s Horseshoe pocket item mystery …
…
February 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Did that really say that? I missed it!
February 15, 2012 at 5:09 pm
I missed it too. I only found 4 Huge out of about 150 picks from 10 characters. Maybe that was my problem.
February 15, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Ha, I wonder if it has any effect or if they’re STILL playing with us with that lol
February 15, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Another great job folk. Love the site. This is one of the most useful Lotro sites out there.
February 15, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Great guide. Next time I’ll know how to better conserve those picks and launch my cave claws. For now, I can flip and pan for gold. Not bad for a few minutes of fun.
I like these short and sweet special events.
February 16, 2012 at 9:40 am
cant tell you how much I love my yard cave claw, he is so so adorable. scratching him is a bit risky cuz of the prickles but hey….love is blind
February 24, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Event restarted.
Got piles of fluffy snow emote from a dig site
February 24, 2012 at 3:51 pm
sorry i completed deed and still had a few left thought emote came from dig
February 26, 2012 at 11:53 am
What does the wording on the back of the rucksack translate to (if anything)?
February 26, 2012 at 12:04 pm
I think that someone said it translated to “gold”. Now if only I could remember where I’d seen that and that I’m not just imagining it…
February 26, 2012 at 1:52 pm
I believe Pineleaf had done so.
February 26, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Anyone confirm that the Treasure-Laden goat works in Moria?
February 26, 2012 at 11:08 pm
It does. My burglar has been greatly appreciating having a 68% speed goat in Moria.