We are fortunate enough to have Patience and Sapience from Turbine joining us for an interview this Wednesday (as in tomorrow!). I know we just had a Dev Chat last week where we got some questions answered but if you have any questions you would like for us to ask, please let us know!

You can post your questions in the comments, email us, or send them via twitter. We are very excited for this opportunity!

In this episode of CStM we have a chat with Galenswerd (aka John) from the Celtic-Rock band, Fathom. John was the first Featured Player on the Turbine Community blog. He is a musician in real life working on a Tolkien inspired project entitled “The Lonely Mountain Band”. He is also a kinship leader of the same name on Landroval. We discuss music, LOTRO and kinships!

Festival in the Shire was mentioned in the interview which is a big celebration of all things Tolkien that is taking place next summer in Wales. Fathom is trying to get a group trip organized to attend this festival. So if you’re interested in traveling to the UK with Fathom, keep an eye on their website for updates on that!

Make sure you check out http://fathom.bandcamp.com/ for free downloads of Fathom rehearsal music!

Town Crier:

• Warcry Dev Chat
• Welcome Back Week
• Dev Diary: Dol Guldur
• LOTRO Legendary Lottery
• LOTRO Charity Auctions
• Europe Experience Bonus until Launch
• Mailbox Auto-Fill
• Main Menu Overhaul
• Preview Siege of Mirkwood

Player News:

• Submit an Audio Clip to Us!
• Howard of LOTROHerald is the new Featured Player!

Raise Your Glass:

Listener Mail:

Email from Jason:

hey i love the podcast listen to it every week i dont play the game do to me using a laptop that doesnt have enough space but the podcast is good enough for me.    found a book that is a guide to middle earth from a to z its called the complete guide to middle earth from the hobbit to the silmarillion by Robert Foster  keep on podcastin merry christmas

Follow up Email from Dannae:

Hi Merric and Goldenstar, just to confirm what you thought already that ridiculous was meant in the very good sense and not the “getting shot in the head” sense as you put it in your recent excellent show Keep up the good work and absurdity (another good thing). The format and fun of the show is such that I could probably listen to you guys talk about walnuts for an hour.

Dannae (HoNKs)

Commenters:

iTunes 5 Star Reviews:

• wrongdownload

Contact Us:

We encourage you to participate in our show. Email us your questions, comments or suggestions! Let us know what you’d like to hear! Follow us on twitter and you can become a fan on our Facebook page.

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In episode 11 we have a special guest host, Azz from Wizzard of Azz!

Azz was nice enough to come on to help explain the Legendary Item system and answer your questions! We also make sure to discuss what changes we know to be coming with the upcoming expansion. From crafting to drops in Dar Nurgerablakalasfd (as Azz would say) we discuss the various ways to obtain items and how you use them.

We hope that the discussion is informative and helps clear at least some of the confusion that Legendary Items invoke. If you have further questions please feel free to send them in as we’d be happy to answer them for you.

Town Crier:

• Siege of Mirkwood Pre-Launch Offers Extended
• More Mount Information
• Orion’s Problems and Solutions
• Pumpkin Contest Winners
• My.LOTRO Class Lotteries
• New Siege of Mirkwood Trailer
• Dev Diary: Skirmishes Accessibility
• UI Layout Save Command Getting an Update

Player News:

• Middle Earth Adventurer Retires from Blogger

Legendary Items Link

• Legendary Items Guide in the Lorebook
• Legendary Items changes Dev Diary
• Existing Legacies will not be removed with Siege of Mirkwood

Raise Your Glass:

Listener Mail:

From Dannae on Gilrain Server UK:

Hi to you both, Just a quick note to say how entertaining, amusing, informative and ridiculous your podcast is and hope that you both continue to enjoy making them as much as I enjoy listening to them. Dannae from the UK on Gilrain server. Shout out to my Kin ‘Heroes of the North Kingdom’ (HONKS) who have been babysitting me through my first MMO.

Commenters:

iTunes 5 Star Reviews:

• Morzadan
• Almazar
• Doug200463

Contact Us!

We encourage you to participate in our show. Email us your questions, comments or suggestions! Let us know what you’d like to hear! Follow us on twitter and you can become a fan on our Facebook page.

Azz can be found on his blog http://wizzardofazz.blogspot.com/. He is on twitter as @wizzardofazz!

Download || iTunes || Zune

We made it to double digits with the podcast! Go us!

In episode 10 we talk about our first trip inside Carn Dûm with the friendly folks from Council of the Secret Fire.  What I (Goldenstar) learned from the instance is that Champions need a lot of healing. Our trip was not successful in getting the Minstrel Quest item I was looking for but those guys are so helpful they went into the dungeon later without me, collected the item I needed and mailed it to me! I was able to complete my quest and earn another Minstrel Legendary Trait! We had a great time and thank them kindly for including us.

Both of us are now level 55 and well on our way to 56. Perhaps we can make it to 60 before Siege of Mirkwood launches!

Merric has bought a house a small dwarven house. His address is 1 Crappin Dwarf Hole or something. He’s very happy with his little haystack to sleep in and the bucket for his clothing. I wouldn’t visit if I was you. Merric has also finished the first leg of his Project Altoholism getting all his alts to level 20. We talk about it briefly with promises of a post with more detail this week.

Town Crier:

• Dev Diary: Mirkwood
• Dev Diary: Skirmishes Rewards
• Siege of Mirkwood Tour by Massively and Ten Ton Hammer
• New Fall Festival Lotteries

Player News:

• Bad “LOTRO News” iPhone Application
• The LOTRO Blog Reader Bundle
• Congratulations to Kiele for her Scribe of the Ages title for her work posting real world recipes for LOTRO dishes! Check out her blog for the recipes!
• We have revamped the look of the web site. Let us know what you think!

Raise Your Glass

Listener Mail:

From Angus on Snowbourn:

This is just a wee note to thank you both for your great podcasts.

I’m a mature level 44 Minstrel from Scotland playing on the Snowbourn server in Europe. For the past month I’ve been without a Lotro able computer.No Lotro for a month it’s been hell.

In desparation  I turned to the forums and the world of podcasts to get my fix.

Charles Thomson, Lady Sinaea and the team at Lotro reporter have all, in different ways, provided informative and entertaining succour to those of us who are Lotro deficient.

My new super computer is due this week and I cant wait to jump back into Middle Earth.

I also cant wait for your next podcast.

You provide all of the above plus the rapport you have with each other is wonderful (your patter’s brilliant) The only thing worse than being unable to play Lotro would not being to take the weekly stroll with you two.

Keep up the good work
Wonderful show.
Many thanks
Awrabest and lang may yer lum reek.

Wee Angus

ps big shout out to The Blades of Arnor the best most relaxed and easy going Kinship on Snowbourn

From Workenbald on Brandywine:

Just returned to LOTRO during the recent Welcome Back weekend and was wondering if you guys (as the casual play guru’s) knew of a way a person could find a list of casual kins available to join.

Thanks

Workenbald (Brandywine Server)

Our recommendation is to try the Lorebook Kinship Listing. Check the subcategory listing to try to find a type that would fit you. Also try Looking for Kinship web site at http://lfkin.net

Commentors:

iTunes 5 Star Reviews:

• Jaxom92

Contact Us!

We encourage you to participate in our show. Email us your questions, comments or suggestions! Let us know what you’d like to hear! Follow us on twitter and you can become a fan on our Facebook page.

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Inspired by Merric’s post yesterday about the horrible “LOTRO News” iPhone app, we decided it may be useful if we created an RSS bundle of LOTRO blogs for people. We even went a step further to create a separate bundle for LOTRO podcasts as well.

We built it in Google Reader and if you already use Google Reader you can easily add these blogs to your feed with one click. You can also import this feed into the feed reader of your choice if you prefer.

Take a look at our shared page with links to both bundles. It includes a list of what feeds are included in each bundle.

If you want to subscribe in a different feed reader, import the links below into your RSS program of choice:

• LOTRO Blog Bundle
• LOTRO Podcast Bundle

This list is primarily built out of what we are reading. If you have a LOTRO blog or podcast that isn’t listed here, please let us know and we’d be happy to add you! We are looking to keep it LOTRO only (or at least mostly LOTRO) and hopefully the blog is fairly active. I most likely won’t include a blog that hasn’t posted in a couple months.

We hope you find this useful!

Today I want to get some discussion going around great screenshots and give you a chance to show yours off.

• What is the best screenshot you’ve ever taken?
• Why do you consider it to be your best or favorite?
• Tell us about the screenshot. Where were you? What were you doing? Were you trying to find this particular item to take a snapshot of or did you just stumble across it?

If it’s hosted somewhere online please share a link to it or feel free to post it in our forums! There’s a new topic called “Your Best Screenshot Ever” set up for you to post your favorites. I can’t wait to see your best screenshots and stories!

In this episode of CStM we talk about our guided tour through Moria plus the Tham Mirdain dungeons. We also talk a bit about the Minstrel Mash player event we attended. Goldenstar’s burglar is still 39 and Merric’s champion alt is up to 18!

In huge news, Goldenstar finally has purchased a home! She’s officially poor but she has a big empty house to play with.

Our main topic this week is “End Game”. We discuss all the different types of end games people play in game and the different end games we’ve enjoyed in other games. Not all end game content is raiding!

Town Crier:

• LOTRO Lottery
• Dev Diary 4 about Soldiers
• Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood Tour
• Windows 7 is not officially supported
• Monster Play in Siege of Mirkwood Information

Player News:

• Spooky Scary Stakeout on Arkenstone. Prancing Pony, Oct 30 9-10pm (or dusk, in game)
  Bring your favorite scary story to tell around the campfire during this graveyard stakeout!
• Not a Dev Diary about reputation changes

Raise Your Glass:

Commentors:

iTunes 5 Star Reviews:

Contact Us!

We encourage you to participate in our show. Email us your questions, comments or suggestions! Let us know what you’d like to hear! Follow us on twitter and you can become a fan on our Facebook page.

Download || iTunes || Zune

In this episode of CStM, we discuss what we’ve been up to in game. Goldenstar still hasn’t purchased a house but has a vault full of decorations. You know; just in case. Merric gives an update with his Project Altoholic progress.

We take some time to talk about the Fall Festival and all the things to do during this in game event. We have guides on our blog for Fall Festival Quests as well as General Festival Quests to help you navigate your way through this in-game holiday.

Town Crier:

• Second Dev Team Q&A
• LOTRO Named #1 “MMO since WoW” from MMORPG.com
• Welcome Back Week – People having problems getting into their old account should follow this link.
• Pumpkin Carving Contest
• Goat is Pre-Order Only
• Dev Diary about Skirmishes Part 3
• European Pre-Order Pricing Available
• SoM Beta Invites will be random
• Siege of Mirkwood Trailer Released

Upcoming Player Events

• The Minstrel Mash on Landroval, Oct 23rd 10pm EST
• The Heroes Ball on Landroval, Nov 14th 7:30pm CST

Raise Your Glass:

Listener Mail from Azz:

I’m listening to the interview with the LOTROHerald creator and you need to tell Merric he NEEDS to READ the books, not listen to them. In fact, you should put up a poll on the blog about it

We have done just that! Poll: Is listening to an audio book the same as “reading”?

Commenters:

Contact:

We encourage you to participate in our show. Email us your questions, comments or suggestions! Let us know what you’d like to hear! Follow us on twitter and you can become a fan on our Facebook page.

So the fall festival is here and you’re wondering what it’s all about. What is there to do? What items are available? Well fear not because this is your definitive place for answers for all things Fall Festival!

If this isn’t your first Fall Festival there really isn’t much new for you this year. The main difference is that the race for the Harvestmath mount is no longer operational. The mount is now purchased through barter items. We’ll go through all that in the rewards section.

The main barter item for this event are Fall Festival Tokens. The important thing to realize here is that the quests to earn these items are repeatable.

The quests are mostly broken up into four major regions in Middle Earth.

• Bree Festival Grounds (24.7S, 51.6W Breeland)
• Thorin’s Hall (13.48S, 103.2W Thorin’s Gate) – in the underground Tavern
• Duillond (24.6S, 93.1W Ered Luin)
• Shire Party Tree (29.85S, 71.48W Shire)

First I will go over the little things to do in each of these four areas. The second section of this guide will go over the Troves and Trickery quests for each of the races. These quests are also repeatable and the first time you go through them, they may seem a bit tricky and confusing so I think they warrant their own section. Finally I will list out the rewards available and where to get them so you can turn in all your hard earned tokens here.

What’s not included in this guide

The festivals of Middle Earth include quests that appear with each and every festival. I plan to make a separate guide for these items since they are generic for all festivals. This would include the dance quests and the Inn League quests and the Traveling Farmer quest.

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