Monday 29 June 2009

Social climbing

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Lhasbelin got voted&promoted to officer duty last weekend. All these new buttons make a me a bit uneasy, being a clumsy person and all. At least I can go and rearrange the kinhouse now kekekekeke (I may have been partially responsible for this). It definitely needs more pink. And those dwarven statues out in the yard, they'll have to go.

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Have you ever been to Far Chetwood? It's a gorgeous place, and completely devoid of any quests or players running about.

Another character of mine did some rising in the food chain; my "little" champion finally hit 60 on Sunday. Now she's got to do all those awfully tedious deed grinds. DO NOT WANT.

Feels funny having five characters at max level. Only two or three of them are decently kitted though. And of course I went and rolled a new Warden already, just in time for the Bree-land revamp of Book8 tomorrow.

Wednesday 24 June 2009

Lore-Masters and Lurkers

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Yeah, time for more Lore-master awesomeness. I managed to join another of Belegadan's LM-only runs, this time to the Grand Stair in Hard Mode. Sadly it's only a 6-man instance so I had to actually do something this time (in Hele I was mostly just taking pictures and looking pretty - don't tell anyone).

This post is dedicated to the high-level Lore-master pet: the insanely cute bog-lurker.

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The bog-lurker is basically a mossy hill on legs.

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So cuuuuuuute!
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There are actually cute little BEES living inside the lurkers. There's a skill that calls them forth to defend their "home".

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"oh hai"

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They also get along well with other pets.

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Lhas found a creepy stalker orc too. I guess stalkers must be drawn to lurkers.

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Alas, someone's Sticky Gourd aoe ruined the Hard Mode option, but we still got the final boss down - with six Lore-masters ;).

Bonus picture:
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Sunday 21 June 2009

Shiny new toys

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My guardian just got a new 1st Age Poker. It looks so good it's almost really good.

I'm scared of all the work required to make it really, really good.

I dislike soloing. Especially as a guardian.

GIVF 5MIL IXP RUNE NAO, PLS

Thursday 18 June 2009

Durrr

Kin dramu, unproductive week at work, massive PMS..

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I kinda feel like this. Except even the weather outside is laughing at me - it's sunny and warm when I'd rather have rain and hailstones so I'd feel better about feeling bad.

Sunday 14 June 2009

Sweet berries in the sky

Some say there's a flying bush of berries that only appears on dark, rainy days, but it's just a rumour and I've never seen it. Who'd believe anything like that, anyway?

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..I do feel like I'm being followed, though. Damn hobbits.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Let there be light

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My goodness, I'd totally forgotten the 'torch' function (alt+f10) when it comes to taking screenshots in bad light conditions. It does look very unnatural when you're out riding in the woods at night, but indoors it's great.

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I really, really NEED a reputation or festival horse. This one's so mundane.

Monday 8 June 2009

Eye candy



A really stunning LotRO landscape'gasm, feels like a real game trailer :).

On another note, I finally remembered to enable anonymous commenting, meaning you don't have to have any fancy blogger accounts to leave a comment :). I also had to do a bit of rough editing to get the missing 'read more' tag (without it, the Helegrod post below would inflate my blog's main page with another 40+ images - a bit too heavy), but now it seems there's a 'read more' in EVERY post on this blog, even tho I have only cut one post. Gahh, in this aspect I really miss the cut function on LJ.

EDIT. Lulz. Got my first spam comment already. Let's see how this works out, if it even does.
EDIT2. Changed the 'read more' code. It's some Javascript thing now, not sure how many people actually have it blocked - if it doesn't work now, please come and complain. The advantage of the current code is that it only applies to the posts I want it to.

Them trees

I'm eternally allergic to purple magical forests. I've rolled a Night Elf in WoW a couple times (I've used at least 3 trial accounts, I think), but the starter area always makes me feel ill.

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One of the things I fell in love with LotRO at first sight were the trees. After playing several MMOs where forests mostly look like sticks with a ball of green/yellow/purple cotton wool on the top, the trees in LotRO actually look very credible. Note that this comes from a former girl guide who has camped in Scandinavian coniferous forests, and thus feels completely at home in the snowy hills of virtual Ered Luin.

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I also like the way distant landscape is rendered in LotRO - it looks okay even though it's not very detail-rich. Much better than AoC, where the world just ends after a certain distance.

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Hm, I think I'll have to do a photo tour in Ered Luin soon, and try to capture the spots where I first got that "ooooooh" feeling back in 2007. Meanwhile, have some Lone-Land sunset.

Sunday 7 June 2009

What 24 Lore-Masters do when they're bored

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This is what a raid of 24 Lore-Masters looks like. Eye-blinding whiteness. A raid of 12 LMs had tackled The Rift earlier yesterday, and I was lucky to get into the second, larger raid to Helegrod. 24 LMs, 24 pets = 48 players. This story is very image heavy, so be prepared.

Saturday 6 June 2009

Old harp?

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I've got an on-off relationship with this old man. Over a year ago, when I started playing LotRO, I thought "hey I'll make this old grey guy who runs around the world, killing things with a banjo". I wasn't thinking "hey I'll make a healer because I want to help people/get into groups easily/get tells asking for rez plz", because that would have just been boring. Come on, the minstrel is a healer class that can kill things with a banjo!

He was my first proper 'main' (which didn't, of course, stop me from playing a horde of alts - more on that later), and playing the game a squishie (also known as the hard way) for the very first time really taught me a lot. Well, at least about dying. But once he hit the old level cap I just switched to leveling my alts, and when Moria launched last November I took my Lore-master to see the mines. Poor Wakey was left home to tend the garden.

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Look at me, coming back to res a nearly-wiped raid!

Recently, however, I've started to bring him to Turtle raids because we always seem to lack a minstrel - and when not running with the kin it's easy to fit into a pug. And when I do raid as a minstrel I start to miss the class and especially the character. I love him and playing the class, but somehow I always tend to forget that when I go back to playing alts.

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And yes, the character is called Wakefield, and no, I don't live there (or anywhere in the UK, for that matter), and no, it's not my last name either :D.

Home sweet home

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I went to Goblin-Town on my hunter last week (mostly just to look around), and found this cute little goblin-home. The door is very small, maybe up to her chest at most. I just love finding these little details in games.