Hello, I wanted to start this thread to discuss details about the Week 4 in-game assignment.
According to the Syllabus, the in-game activity for week 4 (Aug. 4 to Aug. 10) is to reach the top of Weathertop – there are two basic options for doing this.
First, the most challenging: If you do the epic quest line, which starts with a level 15 quest “An Unwanted Guest” given by Barliman Butterbur, the bartender at the Prancing Pony, you will eventually get to the Book 2, Chapter 5 epic quest “Retake Weathertop”, which you can do as either a fellowship (6-person) or solo quest, your choice.
As alternative, you can just get up to the top of Weathertop any way you can. If your character is too low in level to handle the level 20-ish enemies in the Lone Lands (where Weathertop is located), you can get an escort from some higher level characters – just ask on the coursera chat channel and you will likely find plenty of people happy to help.
The reason I want to bring this up now is so that, if you WANT to do the “Retake Weathertop” quest, you might want to start doing the epic quest line soon, since there are twelve chapters (quests) in book 1, and four more in Book 2, which precede the “Retake Weathertop” quest.
I thought that you could start book 2 without having completed book 1, but I just tried that with a level 26 character of mine (who is about half way through the book 1 quests), and she was not able to get the book 2 prologue quest from Gandalf, who is the bestower of the book 2 prologue quest .. so maybe you do have to finish book 1 before you can start book 2.
The epic quest line is actually kind of fun, and some people have said that they are the best written quests in the game.
Submitting a record of your journey
The syllabus says that one option will be to submit "a YouTube video of your assent to Weathertop with a voiceover narration comparing the game's remediation to the film and the novel's versions." In the previous session of the course, you could also just submit a screenshot of yourself once you made it to the top. (Please check the peer reviewed assignment for Week 4 when it becomes available on the course website for details.)
EDIT: the assignment for week 4 has now been posted, with additional details, so please see this website news article for the official details for that assignment.