Falling apart

Lotro has returned to nice looking raid armour after the mehness of Ost Dunhoth armour.  There are some exceptions here and there but it was the first time I felt no need to win armour on multiple toons mostly because it looked pretty.  Of course stats are nice too. ;)  I quite like most of the Isenguard armour though I wish it would have had more variation between the classes like the Dar Narbugud or Barad Guldur armour did.  I've earned 5 pieces on loremaster and champ now, but I discovered a somewhat disturbing bug when my champ finally donned all of her armour.  It's literally turning her into pieces! :/

When I display the chest armour a large gash appears under her jaw:

Then when I display the trousers, a gap appears on her waist:

This is one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. :P  It's a pity as I was really looking forward to wearing this armour.

In regards to other things falling apart, the past weeks have been a bit tumultuous in Lotro for my boyfriend and I.  We've found ourselves in a new kin.  Whilst we didn't want to leave our old kin, we're grateful to be in our new one and surrounded by kind and fun people (who we were already raiding with anyway as our former kin went kaput in regards to raiding).  But a combination of Star Wars gutting the kin, a leader who values his ego more than the well being of the members and another officer that is just flat out mean... yeah things fell apart in regards to all that.  I think my biggest mistake was thinking the kin was a democracy and we could speak out when things were going wrong.  I see now I was very wrong. :P  I suppose not a lot is different for us as the kin was so dead and we were doing 95% of our grouping up with people outside of kin. But it's not easy to chat with some former kinnies anymore which is sad as I know we'll slowly lose touch without the ease of kin chat. But, to reference a quote I read a little while ago: "Destruction breeds creation. If something falls apart, that leaves room for a new beginning."  So this is my mindset.  :)  Instead of dwelling in anger and frustration, I'll focus on the new friends I've made and the fun we've had, like completing the server 1st kill of Shadow Wing t2 a few weeks ago! woot!

Latest Outfit

After the ugliness that was OD and Draigoch armour, Turbine has returned to the nice-looking raid sets. I think a lot of the Isenguard raid armour looks quite nice. I've yet to get the LM robe as it's the worst piece of the set and I'm working on getting my 5-set bonus for a 35s blinding flash. I'll grind out those seals to get the teal robe as I think it looks a lot better than the purple-set robe. And of course my champ would love the chest and leg armour pieces as well, but she'd need to complete Saruman and grind the seals as well. I'm sure she'll get it at some point.

I've started to incorporate some Isenguard raid pieces and I feel I've come up with a nice non-dress caster outfit! :)

All Black Dye aside from head which I've not dyed.
Head: Hat of Deep Lore
Shoulders: Shoulder Pads of the Iordur (Loremaster Tower of Orthanc teal set)
Chest: Breastplate of the Lady's Power (Champion DN set)
Gloves: Gloves of the Iordur (Loremaster ToO teal set)
Legs: Trousers of the Iordur (Loremaster ToO teal set)
Shoes: Memory of the West Shoes (Loremaster Ost Dunhoth t2 set)

I also have to share this screenie as I think it looks cool. I didn't end up using it for armour pictures as the arm does cover the chest armour.

Postcards from Middle Earth, 17 November

Autumn Festival

Well long time, no post. My life has been going through some pretty huge changes that left me little energy for blogging. I obtained British citizenship but have ended up moving to Amsterdam.

Anyway, I wasn't playing Lotro as much until the release of RoI as it seemed I need a break. I was playing Rift more. I really enjoyed the look of it and the classes, but in the end the game didn't grab me I think because the story was so incredibly generic fantasy. There just didn't seem to be much of a story. I might go back to the game now and again, but for now I've cancelled my sub since Lotro has been enjoyable again.

A lot has been going on in Lotro again but I thought I'd post about the latest festival. The main thing that happened for me is that I finally got lucky and got the skeleton horse. :) I won't use it outside of the Autumn festival time most likely, but during it I found it quite cute. I also enjoyed the quest text, as it explains why hobbits would paint up horses.



I also got the newest festival horse as I'm a horse collector. I'll never ever use it though. I suppose in a way it's nice, but the Halloween theme isn't quite for me. A kinnie joked about the moon being over the horse's rear end... that the horse is always mooning people. :P


Any of you who have read this blog know I'm big on getting deeds done as well. :P Festivals always bring those. So there is always a lot of grinding to get the consumable deeds done.

The fall festival has quite a few consumables. I will only end up completing three. It bugs me that I have to wait until next year to get them all done. I didn't grind all the quests every day as I just couldn't face it. I calculated you needed over 1200 tokens just to get the consumables. This doesn't count the tokens needed for the horse, let alone if you wanted to get anything else (luckily I didn't as the dress and cloak were the same theme as the new horse). You normally got around 50ish tokens a day so really, it does not seem possible to get everything done. It's a bit frustrating to have to wait until next year. Also, I feel slightly guilty using these on random strangers all the time. Some aren't bad like the bugs or coveritol, but the black silk gloves that slap people could be seen as rude. I try to target people on horses as the effect doesn't show or afk people in order to cause the least amount of annoyance. I've only had one person show disdain, but generally people pretend to cry or laugh it off. I always apologise then cheer for their good nature.

I very much like that Turbine has given us the opportunity to get consumables as permanent skills, but I wish they'd execute it a bit better. I'd rather still have to pay the same amount of tokens, but just automatically get the skill. Or make the consumables more expensive and require you to use fewer. Given there's a thread that's currently 43 pages long about this, it's definitely a source of annoyance for some people....hence me targeting mounted or afk people now! Though anyone who was hanging around outside the Haunted Burrow was fair game!

It's a dangerous business...

"...going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

During the downtime due to the server migration from Codemasters to Turbine, I redownloaded the Rift client and gave the game another shot. I wasn't in the mood for single player games and Rift was running a week-long free trial, so I thought, what the hell, why not? I'd played Rift a bit when it was in Beta and I really hadn't liked it at the time. The skills were fairly cool, but I couldn't make the graphics nice, the story didn't interest me at all...it just seemed like generic fantasy crap.

But for some reason, this next try at it was different. I dunno why. :P I'm sure being able to make the game look pretty really helped. ;) I still think the story is quite meh and to be honest, I'm really not reading the quests all that closely. :P But I am having a great time exploring a new world. :) I think that's what really does it with a game for me: awesome surroundings.

I had started a mage on the Guardian side and I very much prefer the scenery of Silverwood and the kinds of mobs there. Though the whole religious thing isn't me at all. :P


Any kinnies that have been playing have chose the Defiant side, so I begrudgingly moved over and started a mage there. Whilst the whole atheist thing is much more appealing, I don't like style of the Defiants as much nor like the amount of undead mobs there are around. But it's okay. Whilst I'm sure I could eventually make friends on another server, right now I just wanted to settle down with friends and have fun. Plus, it's no big deal if I look like a complete uber nub around them. :D :P

There's still plenty of pretty stuff to be seen on the Defiant side. Some revolving thing in the main city:

I was near a border so ventured into a new area. I didn't go very far as the mobs were a fair bit above my level it seemed.

When I first wandered into Stonefield(?), I was really blown away by the scenery. What an incredible first view!! The area reminds me somewhat of Wales. I'm really looking forward to venturing into this area. :)


This is the one thing Rift has over Lotro: new scenery. As much as I love Lotro, I always know what's coming next. So having a new world to explore has been really fun. :)

Heeey, batter batter batter!

Found a baseball bat when questing on my guardian. Well, technically it's a club, but I found it amusing. ;)

Back again...

Long time, no write. Lots going on in life that has left me with not a lot of extra energy, so some things slip. I've still been playing Lotro (escapism, woo!) though not as much. It's been nearly two years of playing quite a lot, so it's not surprising I've been feeling like cutting down a bit. I'm not quite in the mood to level up yet another character to 65 (even though the little bit I've done on guardian has been fun), all my LM has to do is deeds and I was able to quickly uber up my champ with the new stuff that came out with the update. I've started to play Rift as well and it's been highly enjoyable exploring a new world. I don't think it's as good as Lotro, but something new and different and having a bit of a break helps me enjoy Lotro when I come back to it.

So, the last time I wrote, I was ranting about the Anniversary GrindFest. Well, the collector in me won out. *sighs and rolls eyes* I got the Stevie Wonder horse. And all the maps. But! People were able to work together to get the maps so I only ground out a few on my own. I got reeeeeeeeeeally sick of running those damned horse races on several toons. :P

A fellow kinnie and me with Stevie Wonder horses:


Since my last entry, the European servers have been transferred over to Turbine. No more Codemasters for us. Latency has gone up but for the most part, I don't think it's been affecting my game. I have had some periods with lots of loss, but I think that was random internet troubles and nothing to do with connecting to the game. On the final day, people gathered in Bree before the plug was pulled.


We also are now getting American adverts. Whenever I see this, for a split second, I think I'm back home. :P

The migration went smoothly and quickly for most people and it took no longer than what Turbine said, so all in all, things are as normal. We've also had the new expansion date released, so now the latest raid gear and first agers seem like something to not bother with anymore. :P Whilst new content is always really appreciated, our kin still has quite a bit of work left on the OD raid. It's looking like we won't get that done, and most certainly not all the deeds which is going to disappoint the few deed completionist we have in kin.