#iztariani

[msbarrows]

Dawn at Skald’s Drop

Also known as “almost 10 minutes of taking a screenshot every 10 seconds”.

My highest level hunter, Iztariani, looking out over the lands of the Easterlings, facing south from the Iron Hills - one of a number of visible but not yet reachable ‘over yonder’ locations in the game that I hope we eventually get to go explore.

[msbarrows]

Killed some time this evening taking some screenshots of some of my favourite characters that I've actually played at some point in the last few months, in some of their outfits I like most, with the pet(s) they most commonly use.

These are ordered by level of character, and are, respectively:

Somany the elf warden, with her turtle pet and turtle-shell spear, javelin, and shield, lurking on a hill top near Minas Ithil, and a metalsmith.

Iztariani the human hunter, looking very non-hunterish in heavy armour before the gates or Erebor, also a metalsmith (yes I’m amused that both my main metalsmiths are leather classes).

Magpye the hobbit burglar, dressed like a magpie, and just as inclined to collecting shinies, in the lowest circle of Minas Tirith, and my primary tailor. She was may original main, pre-Moria and the introduction of wardens.

Miffy the human captain, my original scholar, hanging out in Ringlo Vale.

Orri the dwarf champion; he’s very much a troll, and renames his stag at intervals with different anagrams of “Thranduil”, and is currently questing in Morlad, after making a mad dash to Dol Amroth for his embued LIs. He’s also my weaponsmith.

Leafwyn the human lore-master, and my first cook; she still does most of the food supply for my ever-growing horde of characters, and has been strolling her way in fits and starts through Rohan for several years now

Knarlie the stout-axe hunter, dressed in what I think of as his biker dude outfit, and almost done with Enedwaith. He’s taken up tailoring (of which I have many).

Gnormen the hobbit warden; he wanted to be a guardian, but I don’t enjoy the class enough to play another very much, so instead he’s a warden who uses swords and cosmetically equipped heavy shields, mostly, and has been working on the Wildwood quests and missions. He’s another of my scholars, specializing in dye-making

Yorista the high elf lore-master (included more for her Angmarin-inspired outfit that I adore than anything else), currently lingering in the Lone-lands. She’s an explorer by craft but solely for gathering, not tailoring.

[msbarrows]

Jan 26 - gamed a lot today. As previously mentioned I'm currently on a Lord of the Rings Online kick again. I've been running a character around the Minas Morgul expansion to collect crafting stuff so she (and another character) can level up their resource gathering skills past that particular tier. Basically ended up blowing through the entire EP plus the Mordor Besieged content in a few days of playing. Somewhere in there I was looking at the reputation-locked crafting recipes, which I didn't bother grinding for on my one other character that's done the zone already (because it's a huge time sink) and decided I should have this character grind for at least one set of each kind of them. Which meant also grinding enough reputation to unlock the recipes. That took a big chunk of those few days, chipping away at it daily. This morning she reached the point that at last unlocked a pile of additional reputation-gaining quests, and then she managed to blow through what was left of the reputation level she was on, plus the entire next level, which finally unlocked the recipes for her to buy.

After using up most of the barterable clickies for the rep they can give you, she had just enough remaining to trade for a single recipe today. So I bought a cloak recipe, which I promptly mailed to my tailoring character, who then made and mailed back the cloak.

It's so pretty!

She's going to be there probably a few weeks to get all the different recipes (and it's now down to boring repetitive run-the-same-handful-of-instances-daily grinding). But once I have at least one set of each type of recipe, I'm not going to need to have any of my other characters ever grind this again. And any of my future characters who ding to 130, I'll be able to craft spiffy gear for immediately.

Also at least a lot of the initial grinding has been entertaining for one reason or another. Like Mordor Besieged is you 'listening to' (ie playing through) stories people are telling you about when the Great Alliance invaded Mordor and eventually went up against Sauron himself. That's a fun conceit used a lot in LotRO so they can drop you into situations you otherwise wouldn't be able to experience, such as... confronting Sauron in Barad-Dur, where Glorfindel distracts him while another elf sabotages his giant doohickey of doom:

And of course the Minas Morgul expension involves a good bit of running around inside the city of that name, which is this creepy-looking place:

(Yes the glowy city the black riders ride out of in the movies.)

Anyway I'm very happy to have finally unlocked the recipes. At this point I'll just be loading her to run dailies and trade for recipes, and then swapping to other characters to actually play for fun on.

For supper I dug a container of BBQ pulled pork out of the freezer and we used it in wraps.

[msbarrows]

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.