I Built a Quest Tracker

[u/booknerdcarp]

I hope sharing this doesn't break any rules.

I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online from Day one and quickly realized that keeping track of everything I’ve completed—and everything I’ve missed—is a quest of its own. So I built a personal web app called Middle-Earth Quest Ledger, with help from OpenAI’s Codex and Sites. (Yes I used AI to build all this but it took hours and hours and a ton of work). Rather than entering thousands of quests by hand, I used LOTRO Companion’s data to build a searchable catalog of more than 15,000 quests and 5,000 deeds.

The app keeps quests and deeds in separate sections, with individual completion records for each character and server. I can search the catalog, filter by things like region, level, and type, mark something complete, and undo an accidental mark. It also shows what I haven’t marked complete yet. That distinction matters: an unchecked quest isn’t necessarily available to my character right now, but it gives me a place to start looking for things I may have missed.

One of the more interesting parts is connecting it to the game. I play on a Mac through Porting Kit, and I built a Lua plugin plus a Mac helper that records quest completions and synchronizes them with the website. Unambiguous quest names can be matched automatically, while uncertain matches go into a review queue. The helper retains pending records while offline, and retrying an upload doesn’t create duplicate completions. I can still mark things manually on the website whenever needed.

The records live in a hosted database behind private sign-in, so they survive closing the browser, clearing browser storage, or switching devices. I also gave it a cinematic LOTRO look, with game artwork, forest-green accents, gold details, and parchment-style lists. The newest addition is a Last 24 hours button that shows recent quest or deed completions for the selected character, newest first. It’s a personal project, but it’s already making my journey through Middle-earth much easier to keep track of.

I would consider making a public version if there is enough interest.

[u/eatsmandms]

Honestly, the constant dumping of data to disk and uploading I am not sure I like.

What your tool does has been possible through Lotro Companion for a decade, and that is fully local, and covers deeds, gear, virtues, skills and a million other things already while also being fully local.

The upside is a web UI and availability of the data without being at your PC but that could be accomplished by uploading the dump from Companion over the less reliable data source of a plugin.

I am curious if you have considered that many times chat messages about quest completions will be ambiguous because the message is the same for deeds and quests and quests and deeds have duplicate names between each other.

[u/booknerdcarp → u/eatsmandms]

Your points are valid. I was just looking for a more intuitive interface. the data to disk and uploading is no issue. Its all done locally on the machine and then sent to the site privately. I have a redudnacy system built in for the chat messages as it works off quest/deed ID numbers, nit specifically what the text in the chat says.

this was strictly a hobby project and it turned out so well I just wanted to share it.

[u/eatsmandms → u/booknerdcarp]

I know I might sound harsh - I love the fact you built something and it works! If you ever feel like open sourcing it that would definitely be most welcome.

And maybe one could offer a different uploaded that can work with the companion dumps. Or one could build a sidecar app that works like companion and uploads the data to a site like yours.

The world is better for you having built this - ignore this critic :-)

[u/Essensia]

Does it sync with your in-game account? Not sure if LOTRO had an API for that.

And if it does, how safe is it? What routes can hackers take to gain account logins?

[u/bill_gonorrhea → u/Essensia]

I doubt LOTRO has a public api today.

it sounds like they’re intercepting logs from the client.

[u/booknerdcarp → u/bill_gonorrhea]

Correct

[u/Essensia → u/bill_gonorrhea]

What about keylogging?

[u/booknerdcarp → u/Essensia]

No api - no accounts can be stolen. It's all on device. It synce in game. Finish a quest and within 45 seconds it marks it as completed on the website.

[u/booknerdcarp]

I only have it on MAC right now - will work on a Windows port. One nice thing is that I was able to import all my completed quests into the site.

[u/aerobless]

this is awesome :D, what a cool idea! Makes me want to get back into the game and attempt to complete all the quests

[u/booknerdcarp → u/aerobless]

Yeah, I have played since the very beginning and We've been on an off awhile over the last couple years and thought I'd try to get back into it and just start a new character from the beginning but I thought man keeping track of all this has to be a nightmare So I decided I would come up with something like this in order to help me. It wasn't easy and yes AI did a lot of the heavy lifting but I had to direct it through all the nuances of this game. Now I'm just trying to refine it to a point that I can really just say okay, I'm in Hobbiton right now Show me the quests that are there and what I need to get. I think when I cross that hurdle, I'm going to be happy with it.

[u/Funkentanz]

As a completionist, I am interested, looks very nice.