We Build LEGO The Lord of the Rings: The Shire, the Beginning of an Epic Quest

The new 2,017-piece Shire is warmly detailed; every wall is rounded or curved, and every surface is laden with accessories. LEGO provided IGN with a copy of The Shire for a test build. It is charming, befitting its subject, but it is also disproportionately expensive for its piece count.

Set #10354 is a rendition of Bilbo Baggins' hobbit-hole, as seen on his “eleventy-first” birthday. The set includes nine minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Frodo, Mrs. Proudfoot, Farmer Proudfoot, Merry, Pippin, Rosie Cotton, Samwise Gamgee, and Gandalf the Grey. The home, built into a green-bricked hillside, is cut away at the back, allowing onlookers to peer into one of three rooms: the main foyer that you walk into through the round door, a study off to the left, and a dining and sitting area off to the right.

You build these rooms separately and then join them together via clamps, which creates a seamless hillside on the exterior and a common living space on the interior. The designers emphasized the coziness of Bilbo's home, with different patterned rugs covering the floor, letters (from "well-wishers," no doubt) stacked up on the ground, and food tucked into any remaining corners. There's a wedge of cheese above the fireplace, a loaf of bread and libations on the windowsill.

It’s also full of artifacts from Bilbo's travels as a young man. In the large chest by the door is the Mithril Coat, which Bilbo gifts to Frodo before his journey to Mordor. On the table near the teapot sits a well-worn map, which led Thorin and Company to the Lonely Mountain in their prior adventures. There's a sword, along with a parasol, in the umbrella stand by the door.

The house has a single mechanical element that uses LEGO Technic to achieve its desired effect. If you turn a knob, you can change the display in the fireplace to show either a charred envelope or the One Ring – a nod to the pivotal scene in Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf throws the envelope in the fire and Frodo sees the markings on the Ring for the first time.

The rooms are wider than they are tall, which canonically makes sense, but also creates the perception of wide, open space. The actual construction of the interiors is fairly straightforward – no advanced building techniques required. It's the exterior, with its flowing, less distinct curves, that requires a bit more attention to ensure accuracy and placement.

When I was a kid, I had an Earth globe on a stand, and if I ran my hand over it, I could feel exaggerated relief of the terrain. This was a tactile pleasure, and I experienced something similar while building The Shire. You use multiple, curved green pieces to create a natural ebb and flow to the hillside. It's shallower in one part and steeper in the next; it's unevenly eroded here and more uniformly sloping there.

It communicates – as the books and movies do – that hobbits are a natural part of their environment, and most would be resistant to leaving it or otherwise disrupting the order of things. Bag End is crowned with a tree, its gnarled branches extending and draping over the hilltop.

Several freestanding exterior elements don't specifically enhance the core set, but correlate to the films' events and are fantastic for staging scenes. There's a birthday cake; a Party Tree, with multi-colored lanterns hanging on its branches; a patterned tent, which gets blown sky-high in the movie, thanks to Merry and Pippin. There's a red dragon firework, which you fix to a clear attachment to create the impression that it's flying. There's Gandalf's horse-drawn carriage. You can switch Frodo and Gandalf's legs to 'standing' or 'sitting' to hitch a ride in the carriage.

Lastly, there is a group of barrels, rigged to interlocking gears. Turn a dial, and you can make Bilbo "disappear" just as he did at the end of his party.

By and large, LEGO Shire is a simple set – far simpler than LEGO Rivendell and far simpler than LEGO Barad-dûr. Nothing is ornate, but then again, why would it be? These are not elves' dwellings; these are hobbits', and hobbits live simple lives. It would follow that their corresponding set would not be technically fussy. There's something nice about LEGO making smaller, simpler sets; not every set has to be a 5,000 to 7,000-piece behemoth, with scores of patterned tiles or bricks.

But therein lies the problem. This is a simple build, yes. But it has a steep price tag that would connote something grander and more involved.

The traditional rule of thumb, to determine a set's reasonable pricing, is 10 cents per brick, give or take. Barad-dûr is 5,147 pieces and it currently costs $460, which is 16% below the reasonable price. Rivendell is 6,167 pieces and currently costs $500, 19% below the reasonable price Meanwhile, The Shire is 2,017 pieces, and it costs $270 – 34% above the standard metric. Despite this, it feels, in all honesty, like a $200 set.

LEGO Star Wars sets are notoriously marked up, owing to what fans refer to as the "Disney tax" since it is based on a licensed property. But even Jabba's Sail Barge, released in 2024, was not this disproportionate. That set was 3,943 pieces, for $500 – 27% above the metric.

Ironically, this set is still the most affordable option for Lord of the Rings fans who couldn't justify buying Rivendell or Barad-dûr. But those prior two sets are better deals on a per-brick scale compared to this one.

One could argue that piece count is a reductive way to evaluate price – that pricing is indicative of customer demand and what the consumer is willing to pay. Has LEGO built up enough goodwill – and is Lord of the Rings beloved enough – to make this pricing sustainable? I guess we're going to find out. But it is lovely to look at.

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Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He's also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.