Finally!

I finally got to be part of a LT HM kill! \o/ It was great fun and I'm so glad I finally saw it. This is actually my first on level, end-game raid boss kill. I didn't start lotro until about 3 months before Mirkwood came out, so every other raid I've done has been overlevel.

A very kind friend has been helping me work through Dungeons in order to get my metadeed horse (only 2 more elves to go!). Given I'd gotten the LT deed done, I coerced him to go into Dungeons later that night and had more luck. Got my Ernil! *cheers*

All in all it was a very good night! :D

Jam session

I joined xhii from rollonehundred tonight for a small music session.

She introduced me to the Songbook plugin. (http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info380-0.61.html) It's really awesome! No more /playlist, trying to look at it whilst your chat continues or alt tabbing. Everything is in a nice list for you. All you have to do is select the song you want and hit play.

This little music session kinda awoke my rp tendencies again. I love participating in it, but right now there's just far too much to do ingame! Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze some in here and there. :)

What's that smell?

Got a new title last night on my LM:

And it came with an epic housing item:

The devs really have taken this boar thing to the extreme! :P

Angmar pretty?

I wouldn't have ever thought it could be. :P Angmar is definitely my least favourite part of the game. It's downright ugly and has horrible ambient sound. I begrudgingly do the Fem quest line on all my alts as it's decent xp that's much needed at that level, but always leave as soon as I can. I did most of the quests on my first toon and that was enough for me!

I've had to go back to grind out Rangers of Esteldin rep though, but was surprised to catch a part of it that actually looked pleasing to the eye! Well, I think it's mainly the colours. :P At dawn near some orc camps, Angmar can actually look pretty. Nice surprise. :)

Epic BG run

So last night I joined a Watcher raid with people in kins our kin is allied with, then did a SG race (two groups racing to see who could finish first). It was quite late and someone joked about us having enough people to do BG...converted to a raid and got together 12 people. But funnily enough, we ended up going in. We started the raid at 4:30am my time! ^^ (click for full picture)

We nearly wiped on the guantlet due to someone having pc issues, but managed to stay alive in order to get people rezzed! So on to Durchest we went!

Some of us wanted to do HM, but our leader wisely made us do EM due to lack of radiance...and well because it was damned late. To our suprise we got him down!

Now you'd think we'd stop there right? Because it was like 5:30am. But some of us jokingly ran on...and we continued! \o/ The bits with the sorcerers went surprisingly well. The leader even commented we were doing better than his own kin often does! :P This bit of the raid is always stressful and boring for me. Babysitting a sorcerer!:

And then it was on to the Twins which we also got done in EM. We finally concluded the raid at 7am! :D :P


All in all, it's pretty awesome a pug cleared through the Twins in the wee hours in the morning! :D

Creepy...

Mass graves in Lotro?

Poor hobbits!

New look!

I finally joined The Pretty Robe Club! I managed to win the BG chest last night and get my LM a shiny new robe! Love it! Now to go stick it on my hunter or champ as well. :P Wardrobe ftw!

LI rant

I cannot wait until they redo the LI system and I pray that the devs actually make good changes (though some changes, like changes to the vault don't give me much confidence! P:) I'm getting really sick of the lottery of it all. With symbols freely flowing, tons of 2nd agers are being made and I've seen kinnies go through lots of failtastic LIs whilst a few have gotten lucky. One friend is on his 9th LM book...it might be a keeper but it's still not quite what he wants. Or take me who made a 2nd age staff and it only got two!! legacies on ID, not to mention crap base stats. Failstick:

It seems the only time I do get nice LIs is with ones that are low level and I'm purely using for Moria ixp and relics. I'd love to use this book!:

I want more control over my LIs. I want them to actually feel legendary, to stay with me for a long time whilst I customise them. I'd trade slower leveling/building of LIs for a lot more control. And they could also go ahead and do away with all the crappy pool B legacies no one wants (Inner Flame healing? Srsly?) and stop stacking the odds against us getting the good pool A legacies that we pretty much MUST get on ID. I'm not holding my breath for the system to be made better, but one can always hope.

New Thorog

My kin went to the new Thorog for the first time this past Tuesday. I think we were all a bit disappointed with it because it turned out to be easy. We wiped once due to a change (one-shotting spirits or something like that), but we downed him the second try. A bit anticlimatic and right now I'm not sure what reason there is to go back to him. :P All in all the revamped instances and Helegrod have been pretty easy. It's only been a week and my LM was able to buy 4 Helegrod pieces. I was expecting a bit more hard work needed, but oh well...it's been a fun week. :)

Action shots!

Reading whilst fighting! That's some talent!

I have the power!! [/He-Man]

Chillin' in Annuminas:

Caras Galadhon

This still continues to be one of my most favourite places in the game. The chapters set there in LotR are always a highlight for me and I think the devs did a fantastic job bringing it to life. I especially love being there just as dusk hits and the lights come on. I doubt I'll ever get tired of its beauty.


It occurred to me that we really don't have anymore lovely elfy areas to be added to the game, just the Woodland Relm (home of Thranduil in Mirkwood) and The Grey Havens. I don't expect the Woodland Relm to have the majesty Caras has, but I could be wrong. I also wonder if we'll ever get to see The Grey Havens.

Scenes from Endewaith

I hadn't expected to be doing anything in Endewaith as my experiences in the Mirkwood launch weren't positive. It was so crowded and far too much competition over mobs. So I figured I'd stay away from Endewaith in hopes it wouldn't be quite so crowded later. But I did start the epic book which of course takes me there and to my surprise, it was actually okay. I don't know if this is due to people being occupied with the revamped instances (which I've thoroughly enjoyed) or the new layering system. I noticed late at night there was still a layer and the region seemed relatively sparse of players.

I had wanted to duo Endewaith as I find exploring a new region to be more fun with another person. I really like duoing with another LM and luckily I just made a new, good friend who happens to play one. *cheers* I've had a great time running around with him. :)


I did ride around Endewaith on the test server because I just couldn't resist taking a peek. At first look, I didn't really like it. It didn't feel like Middle Earth. It felt more like AoC. It's starting to grow on me. A lot of it looks nice except for one area...the graphics are crap for me...not sure why. There's some really nice colour in some areas and certain points of the day:


I'm most in awe with the night sky. They've done a much better job with the clouds and stars. Stars used to show through the clouds for me all the time, but now thicker clouds blot them out as they should!


I've only finished two of the quest hubs and look forward to the rest of the quests and areas!

TMNT

So last night whilst waiting for Laurelin server to come up (and of course it was the last one!), I rolled some toons on the new Withywindle server for the hell of it. It was an enjoyable time though! Plenty busy and I ran into the funniest group of hobbits.

How awesome is that?? :D Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! They were wearing the new Turtle Shell Backpacks, running around fighting the training dummies, handing out pizza and shouting 'Cowabunga dude!' <3


Later an April showed up, but I never saw a Splint or a Shredder. :P

Patch Day!

Right now my game is patching and I'm patiently waiting to log on. New content has been a loooong time coming!

For a few months I had been feeling that there wasn't much to do besides endless LI/relic grinding. It's stuff like that where I start to fall short. I want good LIs and good relics, but I have such a hard time forcing myself to work on them. But lately, I've found myself thinking I actually have too much I'd like to do ingame. It's been a welcome change. Though it mainly involves the fluff. :P ...basically working on rep and collecting horses as well as festival stuff and still working on the LI grind in between.

Lotro is introducing new rep and meta deed horses and it's very much spurred people into rep grinding. The one people are working hard towards is the World Renowned meta deed horse which you get for completing kindred with all Eriador factions.


For every faction but Forochel, this would be a relatively quick and easy deed to accomplish. But, unsurprisingly there's now competition for rep items. Every time I've gone to farm rep, there have been others there and some have been quite aggressive about tagging mobs...blatantly grabbing mobs directly in front of you. Maybe once people have new content to explore, the competition will cool a bit!

All in all I'm looking forward to having lots to do! I'm going to hold off Endewaith for a bit as I don't like fighting over mobs and instead will check out the Haunted Burrow, play with the wardrobe and vault and continue to work on rep for my Loremaster.

Hot Potato...

Lhas from roll100 challenged me to post something to break the laziness. :P So, shiny trees!!



This is the new level up animation as seen in the Eyes and Guard Tavern on the EU Test Server. We were able to do immediate leveling up of toons, so trees were sprouting all over the place