O.K.  So I’ve been beating around Middle Earth for about a year and a half.  At level 45 I received the usual class quests and decided that the reward items were not worth the trouble.  On the forums I keep hearing about the importance of having Fellowships’ Heart as a legendary trait, so I look it up.  Turns out it is part of a quest chain beginning with the level 45 class quests.  Only a short time fellowship fear immunity with a BIG heal over time fellowship boost.

AAAARRRRRGH!!!!

Looks like it’s time for this 60 minstrel to go back and work on those class quests after all.

Sometimes I’m just so obtuse.

O.K.  As a preface I should make it clear I’m not complaining or blaming anyone here.

So last night my 55 Burglar Dori was down in the waterworks doing some solo quests.  Over near the orc camp he wandered into a named salamander.  Right away I’m thinking mithril flake!!  Woo Hoo.  Unfortunately the salamander had two others with him so moving right in for the kill was out of the question.  I watch a while and notice that all three are moving around and now and then one gets seperated from the others, so I wait patiently for this to happen and one at a time i take out the two regular salamanders.  Now I’m ready to rock so I eat my food, go into stealth and creep in for the kill.  Suddenly to my surprise, as I creep in for the kill a missle comes in from the side and another guy kills the named salamander as I sit and watch in dismay.  I must admit the other guy probably didn’t realize he had just ninja’d my kill because there was a pillar blocking he and I from seeing each other as the whole thing began.  Still it broke my heart.

O. K.  So I’ve been beating around Lorien for a couple of weeks and talking to the minstrel trainer I see some fine armour available for barter.  All I need is some greater elf coins.  Simple, right?  NOT.  It turns out those coins are only to be had in Dar Narbugud.  Let’s see.  Dar Narbugud is a 12 man radience gate area.  Experienced veterans from that area suggest minimum +70 radience in armour to have any hope of success.  SOOOOO, first I will need to do all six radience armour areas.  Of course those areas are 6 man quests and even being successful only one coin will be had so 5 members of the fellowship will not get the coin.  That means I might have to do each radience armour quest more than 6 times just to get the armour I would need to even attempt the Dar Narbugud quest for the greater elf coin.  I have read accounts of people doing the radiance armour quests more than 6 times and failing to get the token for the single piece of radience armour.  I’m thinking I should just forget about the Lorien armour.  And I thought grinding for Iron Garrison Guard reputation was a pain.

I am just amazed!  Last week towards the end of the week I made a post here suggesting that this Journal must be magic, because every time I write about something I need to get done here it happens really soon.  I wasn’t anything near confident, but I made an entry suggsting that I would really like to experience a Helegrod Raid.  The next time I was in Middle Earth was last night.  So there I was doing some quests in Eregion since I needed to reforge a LI, when to my utter amazement I received a tell asking if I would like to join a Helegrod Raid!!!!!  Something like 4 or 5 hours later, the raid came to an end with 4 sections complete.  There was a lot of waiting for people as adventurers left and joined the raid from time to time, but even with all the wait time the experience was just wonderful.  (with the possable exception of trying to complete quests.  With loot divided 20+ ways I don’t think anyone got enough signets or poison to finish even one quest)  It was also interesting to notice experience gains.  Most of the mobs there were light blue for me, though I didn’t notice that detail til near the end of the raid.  During the raid one raider asked if anyone was getting any experience.  I replied no, but was probably incorrect on that issue.  When you take experience from light blue mobs and divide it 20+ ways, no individual gets much of anything. (just as was true of the quest required loot)  Now that I have a Helegrod Riad under my belt, I’m thinking I may begin looking for a Rift Raid to join.   I don’t want to press my luck though, so I won’t make that request here just now.

I would like to express my thanks to all who participated in the raid last night.  It was great fun for this noob raider.

O.K.  I’m going to temp the fates once again.  I have posted a few times about content I wanted to run through, and each time I found myself in groups for that content within a few days.  So now I’m going to go for the gold and try to scare up a Helegrod raid!!  This time I suspect I will not be as lucky as before, but I really want to see what raiding quests are all about.  I already dropped the several Helegrod quests I had stored in my quest log, but that doesn’t really matter.  At this level I doubt I would get much experience any way.  I just want to see what is in there.  I will make a forum post about this in the Meneldor forums and see what happens.  The first opportunity for me to run this would be this coming Sunday and it won’t help that I almost never get on for Friday or Saturday play.  So is life.  I’m going to give it a try any way.

Well I’m beginning to think there is some magic to this journal.  Last entry I wrote about finding fellowships for Carn Dum and Urugarth right after posting about looking for them.  I went on to note that I hoped to find a fellowship for book 5 chapter 8 “Fire and Ice.”  Wouldn’t you know it, the very next time i logged on I got into a super fellowship and we did “Fire and Ice!”   I don’t want to jinx the whole thing, so I think I will hold off on making any more requests until my need is great.

Well, I must say things have picked up as far as Carn Dum and Urugarth go, now if I could just get some people together for V1 B5 C8 I would be a happy camper.  I’ve done this, the fire and ice quest, a few times for other people before I was up to that point myself, but now I find no one willing to do it.  It is a really tough Nazgul battle at the end, with little or no reward to draw people back once they finish it for themselves.   I’ve been watching for groups doing it for about 4 weeks now, and have not seen even one lff post for it.  It bothers me some because I have finished all the rest of the first 8 volune 1 books and now I have this one gaping hole in my epic story progression.  I’m hoping this post will turn my luck.  It seems once I sit and post something like this (I posted before about Carn Dum and Urugarth) I find a fellowship for it some time in the next week.  We’ll see if the Valar smile on me once again.

I made a somewhat flaming topic entry on the Meneldor Kinships forum lists today.  I must say I have been impressed with the gracious, constructive nature of the responses to that topic.  It strikes me that well established kinships are the heart of our membership here at lotro, and devoted kinship members are some of the finest players of the game.

Well sure enough, all you have to do is say something isn’t happening and it happens right away.  (did I mention I’m not receiving contributions of gold…lol).  Just yesterday I posted a journal note about doing some Carn Dum runs, but not seeing any significant Urugarth action.  So I log in last night and there is only one other kinnie on but when I mentioned Carn Dum and Urugarth he responded right away.  (I recently did a Helchgam run with him successfully)  So I call on a couple of other people I have worked the area with and before you know it we had a group together for Urugarth.  I’ve been in there twice before, but this one was really different.  The first time I went in there it was with a group of 5 60’s who only did the troll cave. (over and over for the troll deeds)  The second time it was a regular run but we avoided the dragon area and the group had a lot of conflict so not much got accomplished, and I didn’t have any of the Urugarth quests so I didn’t do much other than getting a superficial feel for the area.  This time our group had a really fine leader, my kinnie Lord Beregrim of the Bastion of Hope, and we had a really great run.  We finished most of the area.  I finished 6 quests, including the dragon boss, and a few deeds and made some great coin and other loot.  It was a well organized patient run, so I also had time to get a really good feel for the layout at long last.  Four trips through parts of Carn Dum were all too rushed and I still have almost no feel for the layout of the area (other than how to deal with the Helchgam fight having done it successfully three times now) .  This trip alone gave me a good feel for the layout of Urugarth and as an extra special bonus I picked up the goblin badge of command completing a L45 minstral quest.  Another kinnie I have been running the area with, Cerenduil, mentioned that he is getting burned out on Carn Dum and Urugarth in general, and I must admit I am beginning to feel a little bit the same way about it.  Then again I really want that fine grey Council of the North rep horse and I need a lot of rep to get it, so I will surely be back there soon (not to mention the host of unfinished deeds in the area for virtues I use).  In the meantime maybe I can get some relief for a while with some of the other Council rep quests in the nearby area, though there seems to be even less interest in them community wise than in Carn Dum and Urugarth.  So as usual I will be the opportunist and go along with anyone working anything in the area.  That’s one of the greatest benefits of being a minstral.  People are generally ready to accept a minstral to fill group openings.

Al right, I did a Helchgam run last night for the second time in a week. I did one other but it was more of an entire Carn Dum run.  Any way we were successful all three times but in very different ways.  This time was most interesting for two reasons.  First it was a four man run, 2 hunters 1 champ and me the minstral.  Now I’ll admit that with me at 53 and the other 3 all at 60 it wasn’t an onlevel 4 man, but still it was pretty amazing (and only successful cause I burned a ton of power pots!!)  The second thing about this run was not so exciting.  There are about 4 noteworthy pieces of loot with Helchgam, mainly the slime that is the prime motivator of most runs, and also the tentacle, and beak.  For this first time in three successful runs I actually got one of the items ( I have to learn to roll better…lol).  I got the beak!?  So off I ran to Gath Forthnir to turn in for what I hear is a special helmit.  Boy was I disappointed.  It turns out the helm would be a small armour buff, and a buff of +15 to a couple of abilities, but it would also be no will buff and my current helm has a +30 will buff that I just won’t give up as a minstral.  So much for special.  :( 

I still have a bunch of Carn Dum deeds open and I really want the Council of the North reputation grey steed so I will be returning to Carn Dum as often as possable for a while, but I may not go for any more Helchgam runs unless people agree to get the remaining second group boss I still need for a deed, too.  I don’t need the slime and going there is repair and supplies use costly.