I decided to document my outfits as I update them on various characters. With only two cosmetic slots and limitted vault space, some beloved outfits inevitably end up by the wayside. I really like the new taller format I’ve chosen here, even if it ends up putting a bunch of crotch shots in the gallery previews. I think I also like having a gallery per character. What do you think?

Some very brief thoughts on Book 8 from my playing around the last couple nights:

The Good

The increased stack sizes for crafting didn’t impact me very much. I tend to only keep a stack or two of materials around, anyways…though now, I suppose that the stack I keep can be larger. It did let me stack up a whole bunch of rough gems that Montbretia has yet to polish, and Hethred just felt guilty about simply vendoring scholar mats in Moria, so he had two stacks of each in his vault. Better than the stacking, though, is the crit component change. I love the new critical chance components. First, they make sense without having to grasp at straws. Second, it’s immediately clear what component is for which profession. Third, there’s only one per tier. That last one didn’t affect my scholar much, but on my other characters, I never kept the crit mats around for ‘component’ recipes, because it wasn’t worth the vault space. It might be worth making those recipes now.

The festival is a ton of fun. I bet on a hobbit race that was a real hoot - very fun, very social. Everyone was running with the racers, yelling at them, encouraging them, and scolding them when things went poorly. All the spectators were really into it.

The Bad

We tried the new three-man in the waterworks. I like it, but the final boss has all sorts of line of sight issues that make ranged combat and healing seemingly impossible. We spent two-thirds of the fight being told we couldn’t see the enormous beastie that was right in front of us, because water drops apparently block line of sight. It’s a great, creative encounter, but it should not have been put in an engine with LOTRO’s LOS issues.

Having gotten the boss down to about 90% health before dying, we called it quits. We were going to try again, but the boss never reset, and the door to his chamber was still locked. It’s a good thing I was on my hunter, because there’s no path out from his lair, and we had to port.

So we broke up, and I started on Book 8. On the first chapter, I’m not sure whether I like the storytelling technique, going back in time to handle Mazgog…seems like it would have been unnecessary if B6 and B7 were reversed, but maybe their order is important for reasons I can’t yet see. Anyways, I’d know more if I liked how the story was being told if I could’ve gotten past the first chapter. I got as far as mobs coming from the front and back (just past the first troll), when one of the dwarves yelled that another group was coming from behind…but the group never arrived. None did, and the NPCs wouldn’t move any more, so I just logged out.

I have too much to do. I’m actually feeling a little overwhelmed right now, with my characters having more demands than I have time to fill.

My younger alts have their epic stories largely stalled at quests that need a fellowship to complete. I’ve been doing a lot of crafting, and trying to keep up with my daily guild recipes so as to keep my guild progression ahead of my character progression. This is hard when I’m also trying to set aside enough barter items to give each of my upcoming alts a complete ’set’ of equipment before using the excess tokens to gain guild reputation. Although you get a lot of training for the materials required, if you’re only playing the alt to craft, they don’t get to replenish their material stocks while questing, and mats disappear at a sometimes alarming rate. On my main, Hethred, I really want to help everyone with radiance runs…heck, I enjoy a good instance run no matter the purpose of it.

For now, I’ve found a tenuous balance. I’ve had to be pretty efficient with my in-game time, however. It’s a good pace for now, but I think I’ll need to back it off after a little while.

So, my alts’ crafting has, to this point, languished. I’m trying to get them up to where they should be for their level (or, hopefully, a bit higher, so they can start making gear for each other), and the worst part of it all is the waiting.

Waiting for logout timers. Waiting for travel cooldown timers. Waiting for crafting progress bars. There has to be a better way to do the levelling portion of crafting. I don’t mind hunting for materials, or tracking down shard droppers. I don’t mind grinding for critical components, either. It’s the waiting.

In fact, I would even prefer that crafting training took 10x as long as it does (in terms of time to craft, not necessarily material use), so long as I could do something else on the current or other characters while the crafting happened. I could craft in smaller batches, but then I’m losing more time to the logout and login fiasco. Lose/lose.

The other option is to go the crafting- and material-efficient route and just use guild recipes, which are highly efficient. Their cooldowns, though, mean I’d have to back off on my characters’ levelling. It just seems like, one way or the other, if I’m working on crafting, I’m not actually playing the characters involved. Crafting - at least while you’re working on mastery - is a lot like ProgressQuest.

It’s useful, so I’ll do it, but I really wish I could be more constructive and come up with some alternative that doesn’t involve session after session of aurochs slaughter and progress bars.

Do you have a method that works for you?

It stinks looking for a sixth. There’s very little for an endgame character to do when you only have a group of five. You can run partial instances, though, which is one thing we did this weekend. We ran partway through the Grand Stair, and aside from one spectacularly awful pull and my rustiness in dealing with it, I think we would have been able to get at least to, and probably through Igash. Since none of us actually needed the challenge mode coin, however (we were there to help one of our number finish up a deed), we left after our wipe and went to Fil Gashan.

I think FG gets more of a bad name than it should. I actually really enjoy the instance, and doubly so if you’re not trying complete the challenge mode. I like that the instance can either be a nail-biting stealth run or a really fun wave-after-wave-of-badguys killfest. We ran it the latter way, since we were only there to do the Captain quest in the mess hall. Mobs everywhere, but not huge ones, and everyone knew their role and took the targets they needed to without surrendering to the chaos. Just a great time. We completed the captain quest with no difficulty, then ran around the ground floor collecting battle plans while ocassionally breaking cover and slaughtering guards, with nothing but an “Oops!” over voice chat to summon backup.

Last night, I managed to craft an entire set of travelling gear for Alternating Current. He couldn’t wait for the best of the best - I had the ruby shards I’d need to make it, but not the recipes. Still, everything I made came out to the best of my ability.

While I was in a crafting mood, I made a fine traveller’s cloak for Montbretia, as well as a new shield.  The shield turned out well, too, though the guild will miss the emblem that I used to make it.

Exhausted from the run home, to the crafting hall, to the bank, to the mailbox, to the crafting hall, I called it a night!

Just a test - does it have to be posted in “Uncategorized?”

This blog post is made by a specific character. This is to test where it is visible: on the character page only, or on both character and account page.

I’m just being a good little tester and posting a “Hello, world!” post. Also, I’ve never used wordpress before, so I’m kind of curious to see what it’s like.