Ressing Roll100

Hiiii, anyone still here? I know it's been months and months since my last update, sorry about that! I've got plenty of things I'd like to rant and ragewrite about, but I think I'll have to take it easy and not scare away any remaining readers with my massive turbine hate and anti-f2p hatespeech well-formulated arguments against a certain game that has been frequently featured on this blog... but not anymore, mwa-HA!

Well, to cut the long story short, I got finally fed up with the sub-par performance that Turbine has been delivering with Lord of the Rings Online, the unimpressive and unfinished Rise of Isengard expansion, the horribad LotRO community site, lack of targeted advertising (newsletters and loading screens with US-only competitions and WalMart ads) and the greedy and intrusive cancer that is the LotRO Store. Oh, and all the people who continue to spend 20 money on fugly mount that's unlocked for one character only. And I don't mean you, dear reader, but all the other tools that support a game that isn't worthy of its IP :).

Ohhh, feels so good to get that off my chest. Here's hugs to everyone! Happy gaming!

MEANWHILE, IN RIFT:

massive dragon invasion is massive

So, yeah, Rift has been good, but more on that later. The new region, Ember Isle, is calling →

End of the Horizon

I'm slowly closing in on level 50 in Rift. It's certainly bringing me back memories from 2008 when I was leveling up my first character in Lord of the Rings Online - when each new level felt like an achievement and one step closer to the mythical max level. Coincidentally the cap was also "just" 50 in LotRO back then, so it really feels like an eerie déjà-vu.



Since ~45 or so I've tagged along with my guild, doing some lv50 invasions and crafting rifts - I could hardly hit anything and kept dying all the time, but at least I got to see places and have fun!



I'm sitting at 48 now, and really can't be bothered to quest anymore. There are tons of quests spread over several areas, so there's plenty to choose from, but now I think I'll just take it easy and grab a bit of exp from a craft quest here, an invasion there, and the occasional expert rift done with the guild.



At around lv30 I had to give up my beloved Stormcaller/Elementalist build, which had until that relied on the earth elemental pet to tank. Since I didnt' put many points into Ele the pet wouldn't have leveled up past that, so I changed my solo build to Necromancer/Warlock, which is an amazing soloing machine with decent damage and incredible survivability. I just miss the Stormcaller's skills since they have amazing sound effects - the zaps and roaring thunder from the lightning skills are just so immensely satisfying that the Necromancer's generic hissing sound effects are nothing in comparison.



Tonight we're going to try and create a guild in Rift with E Voronwë folks. No idea how I'll be able to juggle two guilds in Rift in addition to playing LotRO every now and then... but we'll see!

Oh yeah, and if you'd like to give Rift a try, please use this link to register: Rift Free Trial. I'm playing on PVE-RP Argent server, Defiant side, if you want to hook up.

Back to Rift

I was a bit pissed off at the start of the week because I hadn't got any response from the Rift customer service them to the ticket I sent on Saturday, until I got an email on Monday that my ticket had been closed because I hadn't replied in 48h... turns out there's a 3rd party customer service site where all the tickets are answered but I never got any email notification about it (and there was NO mention about the other site in the automated ticket response) so I couldn't have known. Meh. Oh well, I had to call their customer service in the US but luckily they could just remove the borked Mobile Authenticator from my account so everything's fine now. Yay!


I'm so going to need a beach holiday after these dark tunnels!

I continued working on my Mage, who is now 34 or so. I was also invited to a guild of old LotRO friends, so I hope to get my toon to 50 now and geared up so I could start running instances properly. I've only been to one instance so far (mostly I just overleveled them while questing), and it was fun to work in a group again - which reminds me that I'm constantly amazed at the level of maturity, politeness and friendliness on my server! Perhaps I've just been lucky, but pretty much everyone I've ran into or joined in a Public Group have been nice, helpful and, GASP, used proper punctuation and capitalisation! The make me feel like such a 1337 kiddie..

[me] yey thanks for the company :)
[random nice person] Likewise, safe travels.

Capital letters, baby. Capital letters.



Another thing I've enjoyed about Rift is the knowledge that with the monthly fee I get everything there is in the game. I think I'm pretty good at ignoring the tasteless Store advertisements in LotRO, but when playing another MMO the difference is pretty big — no tacky buttons, no annoying popups, no bypassing content by opening one's wallet. I'm happy to part with my money for another month's sub in Rift, and I'm even thinking of getting the Collector's Edition unlocked for my account for the lulz, because right now I'm having a good time and I want to see what's behind the next hill.

I'm also a bit lonely at times, so now that there's a Free Trial of seven days, you can join me in Rift for free!!1 And do note that this "free" doesn't come with the burden of fugly BUY NOW buttons...

Click here for a free 7-day Rift trial

↑ that link is my "refer a friend" link, so if you register from that page and decide to buy the game later (you can get it online for as little as 25€) we both can get some nice benefits in the game :)

Outfit #2: That Girl in Green

I guess I could call this my first 'signature' outfit, and probably one I've worn the most. I've still got all the original pieces, which I earned back in SoA times, stored in my vault. I like this outfit so much because it reminds me of places I've been to - the original Annúminas and Rift, my favourite places in the game.

.. that is also the reason I hardly ever make outfits from "mundane" items, because I want to show off that I've been there and done that! /vanity


Head: n/a
Back: Cloak of the West-Tower (Annúminas cloak), dyed green
Shoulders: Shoulders of Seven Stars (Annúminas light set), default dye
Chest: Robe of the Elder Days (LM Rift set), dyed green
Hands: Gloves of the Lady's Wisdom (LM DN set), dyed green
Legs: n/a
Feet: Boots of the Elder Days (LM Rift set), dyed green


Accessory: original Harvestmath steed (matches the character's name)

I'd love to make a real-life costume of this outfit, but it'd be pretty hard to make the robe NOT look like a bathrobe!

Rift: derp

← my face today Haha I fail so much. I had some troubles logging in to Rift (again!), so in my frustration I thought the mobile authenticator was borked (again!) and I uninstalled it from my Galaxy Tab. Which anyone who, uh, actually ever read what it says on the authenticator wouldn't do, since it basically locks your account and you have to contact their customer service for help. *twiddling thumbs* Let's see how long this takes...

Outfit Madness

Did I miss a memo or where did the sudden LotRO outfit boom come from? Lately there's been a ton of interest in the cosmetic system on both forums and among bloggers. In addition to the classic forum threads (such as Wardrobe outfits, which even got mentioned on Twitter by @lotro_europe) there's at least three new blogs dedicated just to making and sharing outfit ideas:

• Lotro Fashion, by Freyjuska of Snowbourn
• Cosmetic Lotro, by Hymne of Snowbourn
• Lotro Stylist, by Devonna of Landroval (also has a blog for guest submissions, Friends of the Lotro Stylist)

(I don't know if it's a common wordpress.com feature, but it's a bit annoying though that some of those blogs only show excerpts of posts in my RSS reader, meaning if I wanted to see the actual outfits I'd have to click and visit the blog proper — that's of course good for getting more page hits and views, but it's annoying as hell if you're someone like me who hates passionately all extra clicking :D)

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To go with the new fad I'll try and showcase some of my favourite outfits using the same format as those blogs. I've never been interested in keeping my outfits "secret" (or stats/gear, for that matter), since I can usually tell with one look what someone else is wearing anyway.

Outfit #1: Raiding Hunter

Head: Traveller's Hood (store item), dyed black
Back: Fine Quiver (festival recipe), dyed white
Shoulders: Shoulders of the Mighty Verse (minstrel Moria set), dyed black
Chest: Jacket of the Lady's Secrecy (burglar DN set), dyed white
Hands: Gauntlet's of the Swift Arrow (lvl 60 crafted/purple Moria set), default dye
Legs: Leggings of the Elder Days (LM Rift set), dyed black
Feet: Stone-Reader's Shoes (LM Moria set), dyed black


Accessory: Skeleton Painted Horse (2010 fall festival)

That's my most used outfit out of the way! More to come~

Bonsai Huorn

Rare housing item drop from the Tree bosses in Ost Dunhoth. So cuuuute!

The Grindaversary

As most who've been reading the LotRO community forums and blogs know, the current Anniversary Event, also known as The Grindaversary, has been quite unanimously declared a complete fiasco. The token costs for the few new cosmetic items and the garish festival horse are way too high and they're only available, one at a time, from two minigames, one of which can only be completed twice a day. The other option, the Thorin's Hall bar fight, is fun but gets tedious very quickly — mostly because of the long waiting times between rounds.

And the icing on the cake is, of course, that after the whine escalated Turbine went and added a third option to the token grind, and it's only available on the US servers since our EU provider still doesn't have the system in place that would allow lotteries on our servers.


Damn carebears, whining about pvp.

So I went and did a few rounds of Beer Brawl to get the horse and a couple maps for the new Cartographile deed. And by a few rounds I mean around 80 rounds. I managed to get myself quite addicted to the minigame, and the waiting wasn't so bad after I dug up an ebook to read between rounds. What really really pissed me off (and still does) were some lame table campers — but at least they were easy targets to knock out of the fighting area, ha-HA! After the umpteenth fight I had absolutely no qualms about knocking people away from the beer jug and grabbing it for myself. Give no mercy and expect none!

Luckily I also had several friends helping with the maps so we each ground one or two and then shared them between us so everyone got all the maps counted for the deed.



After Lothi got her horse as well we went to take some screenies together but it was too dark and they didn't turn out quite well. Suffice to say the horse looks very silly and hastily made.



I also got a /salute from somewhere during the Beer Brawl and it finally completed the /swordsalute deed for me. Yay!

Rift: FOR SCIENCE!

"damn, I broke a nail ~"

A week ago there was an open free trial in Rift, so I thought I'd give it a shot (esp. since I had just turned into a D&D widow for the weekend). I had tried the game briefly during beta, but didn't think I'd want to play it after launch since I was busy with work, travel and the new LotRO update. Luckily Rift was so easy to get into that I finished the trial (the cap was level 15) very quickly and wanted more, so after hunting around on the interwebz a little I found a site that sold the retail code for 25€. I grabbed the offer so I could continue leveling my little mage.



Yup, I rolled a Defiant mage. Usually in these types of games with two factions one of them is the "goodie type" and the other is "baddie/emo", and although the Kelari (Defiant elves) have quite convinving emo looks I think Trion did quite a good job making them more interesting than "hurrdurr we're just misunderstood". I actually tried rolling a couple Guardian characters (the "goodie" side) but my inner antitheist just couldn't tolerate any of that godtalk (and the angel-like npcs gave me bad memories from Aion). So I chose to support the Defiant cause and created a character called... Science. Because I'm cool and edgy like that.



So far Rift has been fun. I like playing it, although I'm not yet sure if I like the game itself and its world - it's as generic as you can get and doesn't seem to have the epic art direction of Guild Wars to make it stand out from the other generic fantasy mmos. The soul system is great fun though and I can't wait to try out all the different roles and combos I can come up with - I like the idea that I'm not locked into a single role (great cure for altitis!) and that I can swap complete builds anytime I want.

Tl;dr: playing a defiant mage called Tiede (Finnish for science) on Argent PVE-RP. Looking for friends and guilds and fun.

Ost DundundunDUUM

Previously, on Raid Channel: Balrogs have wings now lol

Our kin has been plowing slowly but steadily through the newest raid in LotRO; Ost Dunhoth. It's been a nice raid so far, although it does feel like a theme park ride with a ton of reused encounter concepts. In that sense though the whole LotRO game is starting to get old; after the latest update landed I found myself wondering "is that it?". Run new instances, get new barter stuff, get the couple new shinies in those instances with stats a point or two higher on our previous gear, grind all those until you have everything. Oh, a new Legendary Item, must grind! Oh, I need 2000 instance medallions for this armour set which will be obsolete in a few months anyway! HMMMMM.


Yay, back to hunter tanking! I totally have never done this before in a boss fight!

That line of thought got me wondering if I'd even have the energy to grind through the next update, or the Isengard expansion after that, if it's just the same stuff in a new (but deviously recycled) package. I do think LotRO is going to need some seriously new mechanics, be it mounted combat, dynamic events, enhanced pvp or even just a character model update to stay fresh.


Golden showerpoison wing boss. Fun fight, even more so on T2.

Anyway, back to OD. So far I've seen and beaten the first four bosses, two of them on T2. The boss fights themselves are a good challenge and the hard modes will definitely be a tough nut to crack (we've only got one T2 challenge done so far).

I must say though I've been very disappointed in the loot so far, at least for hunters. The regular, non-raid instances don't really seem to have any must-haves for hunters so I've been more tempted to run them on my alts. I haven't yet seen all the OD loot and the hunter armour set sure is sweet, but I'm really put off by the medallion grind, especially since I just burned my meagre collection on Empowerment scrolls to upgrade the godawful first-ager LI you see here on the left. I was seriously considering just throwing it into the bin and grinding a few weeks for a new one!

Oh well, I thought I'll just grit my teeth and do it — replacing every single legacy on the bow and then upgrading them to t5+. If only it had 4 or 5 major legacies! But no, NO I can't have nice things.

Well, the grind is over, now I'll just have to complete the raids and I'll be happy - for now.

Meanwhile, cooling my toes in a place that starts with R and ends with T. More on that later.

Sup

Hi, long time no blog! I've been fairly busy with work as well as... traveling! I spent a week in Hong Kong with excellent company, eating and shopping and having a good time. It was my first trip outside Europe and wow it was so different from anything I've seen so far! Makes Finland seem so small and dull in comparison.


Evening view from the walking path high up on Victoria Peak, Hong Kong.

I had hoped to buy some cheap'ish electronics there but in the end I mostly shopped for clothes and noms. I did score a Samsung Galaxy Tab on the way back from the airport though, yay! And also bought a huge crate of stroopwafels in Amsterdam during our flight transfer there.


Sunny Nathan Road, one of the busiest shopping areas. And on our flight back to Helsinki my heart sank seeing all the ice and snow still everywhere...

Hotness

Hot Balrog Butt™


Hot Burglar Butt™


♥♥♥ Geren, the Gay Prince of Middle-Earth ♥♥♥

OH HAI

Y hallo thar, big guy.

The New Fab Five

Drugoth totally doesn't look like a bald anorectic myspace teenager wearing chains and some kinda s&m mask.



If THIS is what one of the five gaunt-lords is wearing these days, I can't wait to see the other four!

And don't get me started on the ~rainbow beams~ in that boss fight.

The Final Ding

A view over dark Sad Doldur, in Mirkwood.

Sooo, my second minstrel finally hit 65 last weekend. I must say it was a fun ride, and I really miss getting XP now - questing just feels so much more rewarding when you know there's always a new skill or trait or piece of equipment just after the next milestone.

I'm also surprised how easy it was to solo as a minstrel, the original healing class. It was pretty easy all the way to 50+, and once I got the red-line trait capstone at 58 (I don't know how I did it, but I got Kindred with the Guards just a moment before hitting 58!) my puny bard turned into an insane weapon of mass destruction, critting 2500+ on on-level mobs and hardly losing any morale herself while tackling 2-4 mobs.

Short guide to minstrel awesomeness:

• Acquire and trait Unrelenting before lv20 and oneshot on-level mobs.
• Trait Battle-Hymn as soon as you can (awesome combat-regen for solo).
• Use Cry of the Valar (fear) if you pull too much.
• Kite using the run-speed buff of Call of the Second Age and nuke while running.
• When facing a difficult pull (skirmish lieutenants with adds, etc), use Song of Distraction to break the group.

Basic Warspeech damage rotation:

1. Ballad of Resonance (raises all your tactical damage by 10-20%)
2. Echoes of Battle (lowers mob's resistances -> bigger chance your next skills will land
3. Call of Oromë (lower's mobs Light resistance -> your ballads and cries will do more damage)
4. Spam Call to Fate, Call of the Second Age (if melee), open ballad tiers for Anthem of the Valar (with Battle-hymn trait this gives as much combat-regen as Anthem of the Free Peoples)
5. Apply Call of Oromë once it's off cooldown and keep Ballad of Resonance up at all times

I even got to dps a couple times in instances where the group already had a healer, but sadly power is a big issue for minstrels still. After one or two skill rotations my power pool would be empty. While solo I usually just ate some regen food and bought the 50dp regen buff for 30 minutes (I definitely recommend that for anyone on a questing spree!), but without a meek LM feeding me power I wouldn't be able to keep the mincer-machine going in group instances.

Now I'm sort of wondering what to do with my new healer, since my runekeeper is already giving me angry looks and my first minstrel refuses to talk to me.

Bookworm!

I got this pretty drawing from my dear friend Pery as an early birthday gift <3! Thank you so much! Go check out her art/game blog here: Colour Soufflé

LotRO Community Awards

~ such irresistible charms ~

Oh my, it seems me and a thread I made have been nominated in two categories in the European LotRO Community Awards! The personal nomination is for best creative work and the other is for best all-time thread. If you have an account on the LotRO-EU forums (you can log in with your game account as well), go and have a look at all the Community Awards threads here and cast your vote.

Other categories I'd recommend checking out are best guide-writer (kinnie of mine has also been nominated for his outstanding LM guide) and best fansite, which sadly has only two nominees but both are definitely worth the title.

Tower of the Bracelet of the Tower

After running Durchest HM over and over again for a year, finally the elusive Bracelet of the Tower dropped. I went all in with BKP and got it. Now my hunter is complete!



With the new Legendary Item changes coming in the next book I'm going to swap out some stats and normal legacies on my weapons to lower my Agility in favour of more Will. I should already probably swap out Treasury Stone for the Phial, but it's just such a nice shiny item that I want to keep it. I'm fairly happy with my build right now, most of my equipment is very balanced so I have maxed Ranged Offence (ie. as high as you can get it solo), near-cap Ranged Crit, good ICPR and my morale and power stay over 6k/3k no matter what traits and gear I swap back and forth.

Now I'm ready for the new content, which will surely make all my previous efforts and shinies completely obsolete within hours!

Lothi

It's Lothirieth :)

Fixing that distant shadows bug

In DX10/DX11 mode, there's a big ugly shadow covering most of the distant landscape.

Since the F2P update and the additiong of DX11 support, there's been a very ugly graphics bug in LotRO when using DX10 or DX11. Turns out it's a problem with the "distant lighting" setting.

Here's the fix:

1. Go to Options → Advanced Grahics and turn off DX10 Distant Landscape Lighting (use the search box at the top if you can't find it)
2. "Refresh" the graphics by changing to some other Landscape Lighting Quality setting (ie. from high to low)
3.  Change the quality setting back to what you had before, but leave the DX10 Distant Landscape Lighting checkbox unchecked

Here I was thinking that my landscape screenshots would be forever ruined, so I'm very happy about finding that fix!

You nube

[Kinship] xxxxx: One of the best roleplaying moments I saw in pony was few days back...some knights were fighting over a woman and after a sophisticated discussion the other said: "Who are you, you nube to question me" xD

(picture unrelated)

Not sure what happened, but... yay!

The winners for the Yule Fashion Contest and their winning screenshots were announced a week ago, but I don't know what happened since then because yesterday I received an email saying I had won something in the contest! So I went to look at the original thread and saw that it said "12 winners" but the list held only 11... so I wonder if they couldn't contact one of the original winners or if someone stepped down. Well, I'm not going to look a gift too closely, so.. yay, 1000 store points!

I love my new forum title!

Duillond from Dusk till Dawn

Isilmewen, Lhas and Duissane playing trio songs.

Last week the regular Hall of Fire RP event was held in Duillond, near the starter areas for elf characters. I've been very quiet on the RP front (and, well, the whole game front tbh) because all the events start around the time when I'm already ready half asleep, so when I've had enough energy to join an event I've mostly just stood to the side, played a song or two and then logged out before my forehead makes acquaintance with the keyboard. The HoF-in-Duillond event was a refreshing change though, and I managed to produce a bit of RP of my own as well, instead of my usual Lhas-is-a-brainless-teenager routine (which is immensely fun at times, but not very satisfying in the long run).



Lhas is totally not flirting with Lord Anglachelm.



As elvish events go, it was the standard 'music, dance, gossip' fare, and at some points there was just too much stuff going on in the chats that I completely lost the thread of the conversations I was having. Note for the future: scatter around a bit when it gets hard to follow even a single conversation. No point in trying to endure it if you don't have to!



Naruvir sings a song written by professor Tolkien himself.

The event was concluded by an amazing sunrise, which the gathered players greeted in proper elvish fashion with song and warm words. Screenies don't quite do it justice, but the moment was very beautiful and I certainly felt 'in-character' there. I wish I knew any songs or poems so I could someday contribute the way the best role-players on Laurelin do.

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And of course, afterwards there was AGAIN a massive shitstorm in the HoF thread on the Laurelin forums, because baaaaaaaaaawwwwww some kin has more members than others and it's overcrowding the elven events and baaaaaawwwwwwwhatisthisIdon'teven--