Been ages since I was last posting with any regularity about what I’m up to in Lord of the Rings Online. To the point I’ve fallen out of the habit of taking lots of screenshots. So, skimming lightly what I’ve been doing since, oh, roughly back around the spring...
Somany was still slogging through Mordor. She reached Talath Urui, just south of Orodruin, some time months and months back and OMFG I LOATHE THIS ZONE. It makes Angmar seem like a bright and cheerful location. It was only after a lot of playing around with my graphics settings that I could see the ground with any certainly, as more than just formless dark masses that frequently lacked enough perspective for me to make out when I was approaching a drop. Unless the drop was backlit by a lava pool.
It’s also a pretty huge zone, and the difficulty rating of the landscape mobs could go from “pull tons, I’m a warden!” to “where the fuck has all my morale gone... I only pulled three!” with no real warning. Also, since LIs are capped out at 100 but the player is not, I more than once maxed out my melters just while trying to travel from the outpost at the start of the zone to where I was actually questing in the zone, or after barely starting questing. A lot of the time I couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to load the zone, much less actually play there for more than an hour or two. I have, thankfully, managed to finally get over the hump and finish out the damned place (except for some remaining slayer deeds, /cries), and have moved on to the comparatively cheerful Agarnaith swamps. Somany will hopefully finish off Mordor and be able to move on to northern Mirkwood and beyond by New Year.
While avoiding playing Somany, I worked on Leafwyn a bit; she’s currently grinding her way through Rohan. I also decided to get at least one of my High Elves out of the lower levels, and picked out Ceil, the hunter, as the character it would be most enjoyable to play. Plus my highest level hunter, Iztariani, is all the way into Gondor and level 100, so there’s plenty of elbow room to raise up another hunter or two.
As December approached I found myself thinking about how warsteed dyes usually get put on at a really low price this month, and decided I should get another character up to their warsteed to take advantage of the sale. I considered making it Ceil, but really I’m not that likely to want to play him through Rohan for quite some time, since I already have a high level hunter plus a pile of other characters already into Rohan and beyond. So I settled on my minstrel Nowt, who had finished Moria and was working on the Lothlorien based epic books (which, yes, bring you right back into Moria). Decided to power him along the epic book line, putting off finishing the Moria and southern Mirkwood books for now and instead plunged him into Enedwaith and beyond. That was entertaining, though him being so squishy was aggravating at times. Once he’d obtained his warsteed I returned to work on Iztariani, Somany, and Ceil, and also gritted my teeth and started working again on Magpye. she’s currently powering through the Minas Tirith questing; she’d reached the city months ago but I’ve been putting off the infinite running up and down the cake tiers ever since.
One nice thing about having Somany moving again; she got far enough along in the Mordor-based elven reputation tiers to go off questing with Glorfindel, to assist in the take-down of a Balrog. Yes, I was screaming mentally the entire fight and grinning widely for a good hour or more afterwards. I killed a motherfucking Balrog!
P.S. - I don’t know if Gord Dunley, member of the Cloudyheads, was meant to actually represent anyone at all, but to me he will always represent a tribute to Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip. RIP.