Spent the last couple days working on deeds for virtues.  Been working on Valour (rank 10), Innocence (rank 9), Empathy (rank 10), and Zeal (rank 6).  I plan to work Loyalty as well.

Grinding mobs for virtues isn’t exactly “fun”, but it’s less grindy if you have at least one partner.   It would be nice if they changed virtues to be per account or per server instead of per-character.   I pretty much will never bring up an alt to 60 because I don’t think I could stand the deed grind a 2nd time.

Besides virtues, I tried Dark Delvings for the first time.   Yeah.  It didn’t go too well.   We couldn’t get past the 1st boss.  Oh well, another day.   I also did 2 of the 3 sub-quests for book 2.5.5.  Still got Drums of the Deep to go.

Other than that, just the daily quests from Esteldin and Lothlorien.

I’ll try some PvMP again soon, I need to mix things up.

Short update this time, so long for now.

Amason

Hey, I made the featured blogs list, neat!

Ran the daily bounty quests from Esteldin, of course.

Spent some time in Lothlorien, doing the repeatable quests and the few one-time quests I had left.   Still not up to Ally yet with the Galahdrim, but only a few k rep away.

Attended a turtle raid with my kinship.  Got two 1st age barter tokens, and two 2nd age weapons (one a gift from Turmegil).  Worked on my cooking during raid setup time (thanks Sharas), making some red tea.

Kinship membership underwent some kind of upheaval, some sort of dispute between the two top dogs.

/whatever

It’s not real guild drama unless officers are cheating their spouses IRL with other guild officers.  These guys are amateurs at guild drama. 

Oh, I completed my Trollshaws Valour deed, up to rank 8.  Two more til 10, Angmar worms and Moria spiders.

Also, having a conundrum about what weapon to use as a Warden.   Warden forum members favor axes and maces,  but I don’t have any 2nd ages of those yet (nor enough gold to buy one as an experiment).  Currently sporting:

2nd age spear (two), 2nd age sword (two), 3rd age javelin (gotta have conservation legacy), 3rd age axe (love the high base damage)

I swap between them as the mood strikes me.  My duplicate spear and sword are new acquisitions, gotta level up to 11 to judge if they are keepers.

Any wardens want to comment on what the best overall Warden weapons are?

Amason

Been continuing my travels in Moria and Lothlorien.    I secured two more pieces of my radiance set, from FG and Forges.  In both those cases, our groups ran the instances multiple times so that everyone who needed it could get their piece.   I was pretty impressed at the dedication of those groups.  One was a kin group, and one was a pug.

In addition to instance runs, I’ve been questing in Lothlorien.   It’s definitely a beautiful zone, tho the main city (CG) is a pain to navigate with all the flets.   Got to Friend status, halfway to ally.  I have exhausted most of the one-time quests, and have mainly repeatables left.  Still, there’s a ton of those for variety.

Been doing the new bounty quests everyday, and this has superceded the mirror quests for my repeatable IXP needs.   I still do the one in Shadowed Refuge, because 12k xp is still good, but the bounty quest IXP is WAY good!

My plans for now are to keep running the IXP bounties, try and get another piece or two of rad gear, and work on deeds (Valour first).  I might try and work on cooking skill, along with guild rep, but it’s costly, and I’ve only got around 6 gold.

Til next time,

Amason

The end-game, that is.

Hit 60 a few days ago, doing some entry quests in Lothlorien.   Whee!

Since hitting 60, have been wrapping up quests that have some benefit to me, and dropping others.   My play sessions now seem to mostly be:

Doing mirror quests and the occasionaly solo instance for item XP and scrolls.

Trying to get into instance runs (So far, done about 6 or 7 instance runs, gotten 2 rad pieces).

Working on deeds (omg I hate worms).

I imagine I should go to Lothlorien and try to up my rep with those elves, because I see some nice faction related gear from there.  But, what’s up with the crafted gear that you can’t wear unless you’ve got the faction?  I can see not being able to OBTAIN the gear before being a friend, but if you have the gear it says “Oh no, me no likey, you no wear me!”

Then again, I guess it’s just another weird game mechanic like soulbound which doesn’t make sense but is there for a metagame reason.

Anyway, that’s all for now.  Til next time.

Amason

Got to play again today after a week-long trip out of town.

Puttered around Moria, did a few quests, caught up on Vol 2, Book 4.  Teamed up with a 60 minstrel and got to chapter 7.   Then spent about and hour finding people do to chapter 7, including helping one of them catch up to us.  Eventually, we got a full group and knocked out the quest.  I was the tank, and used Conviction for the first time.  It worked fairly well!

Anyway, finished up book 4 and got through book 5 til chapter 5.  I hear people shouting for that a lot, so that will be next major task.   Levelled up to 59 in there somewhere.

Amason

I must be allergic to these goats.

I attempted to clean up some old book quests tonight.  I managed to solo my way thru vol 1, Book 2 (had some level 27 “help” on the last quest), and I got vol 1, book 7 to the last chapter (couldn’t find a group, tho).

Afterwards, I returned to Moria for more questing.  I completed a series of quests in Redhorn Lodes, and finished up vol 2, Book 3.  Very neat session play at the end of it, that champion was a bad-arse.

Started working on vol 2, Book 4, and attempted to find all the camps to drink to the memory of poor Nykr.  I still have a ton of quests in Moria tho, it seems like I didn’t even dent my quest log.

I made it about halfway through level 57.  I’m in no rush to hit 60.  The journey is fun for me.

Relaxing with a cantankerous old dwarf.

Fair winds,

Amason

(yes, the title is a reference to a Gygaxian RPG)

Continued my adventures in Moria last night.  Didn’t have a ton of time to play, but I knocked out a few more quests around 21st hall.  I teamed up with a fellow warden (whose name escapes me), and worked on some 2.3.6 quests.  Still have half of the third sub-quest to complete (the barrels).

I also tried once again to reach Balin’s camp at the end of that long tunnel, and complete the quests there.   I got to the bug cave, and was in the process of getting all the items on the ground (as well as killing bugs).  However, the respawn rate in the cave was faster than my kill speed, and I was eventually overwhelmed before I could complete.

I updated my auction house postings, and did a bit of legendary items maintenance.  Mainly, this was deconstructing some weapons, and adding in some new ones.  I got to 57, and am in the process of cycling thru level 57 legendary spears and looking for good traits.  However, I only have 6 of the tablets that the traders want, so I can’t cycle TOO many times (as opposed to the 20+ dwarf tools that I have).

I tried the other 55 repeatable item xp quest from Dolving View, the one with the ghosts.  It was rough!  I got thru it, but I had to burn a fair number of potions in the process.  Is there some trick to the ghosts?  I found them tough when they start chaining that heal/lifedrain thing that they do, and it doesn’t seem to be interruptable.   For now, I guess I’ll stick to the two lower level dailys, and the morroval treasure hunters.

Til next time,

Amason

Ok, I’m done with Eregion.  All I had left was small fellowship quests.  I tried a few (Library and Flight of Drakes), and they were stupid-hard (and yes I had a small fellowship).  So, they got deleted, and I switched to Moria.

Moria still continues to amaze me with its scale.  My favorite scenic area was a glowing mushroom cave full of nasty bugs.  Quested around Crossroads, 21st Hall, Waterworks, and even ran thru (literally) the Flaming Deeps and the area east of Orc-watch.  Saw the west half of the broken span, did a dungeon crawl through the tunnels of Waterworks (shoulda taken the front door…), and in general had a lot of fun.

Teamed with some new people, include Jahar and some champion who’s name escapes me (K-something?), and a runekeeper who I worked on traits with (Menelir?).  Caught up on my 45 class quests (except for one), worked on my Valour trait, did some PvMP (rank Footman), got two 55 third age weapons that I’m happy with, worked on my epic quest (up to 2.3.6), worked on that riddle quest (up to the penultimate riddle), and looked in vain for the bat-cave.

Hit 56 on Sunday.

In general, just been having a good time, questing and exploring.  And there are a bazillion quests in Moria.   Which I like.

Amason

Eregion.  I *thought* I was almost finished with the solo quests here, but then I got a quest to visit some dude at an elf camp west of the hub near Moria.

So, I get out there…another hub!  This makes 4.  I’m not quite as done as I thought I was.

Only played about 2 hours last night, but I did a fair number of quests in Eregion.  Hit 53, and some of my quests even went light blue.  I visited a camp in the frozen pass, burned down some tents, helped clean up the trail of The Fellowship, and killed some vermin in the southern hills.

Managed to NOT quest in Moria at all, but soon, precious, soon.

Did some legendary item management.  Deconstructed two level 11 weapons, added two new ones to the mix.   Turned some tier 1 relics into tier 2.

Started the session with a bit of crafting.  Mastered the, er, Master tier the night before, so I made a batch of 60 rack of lamb with mint sauce.  Oof, that hurts the pocketbook!  Now down to under 1 gold, after training when I hit 53, was down to about 500s.  Oh well, I can make more money.  Put some Lembas and legendary weapons on the AH.  Looted a hunter book that I posted as well.

That’s it for now, til next time…

Amason

Last night I wrapped up some more quests in Eregion.  I have maybe 4-5 more solo quests there.

However, Moria sucked me in again.  I had one of my legendary weapons hit 10 (I am now levelling six of them), so I mapped back to Moria to use the forgemaster.   While I was dinking around the central camp in the main hall, I heard this guy in LFF asking for a group to do the broken mirrors quest.   My first thought was “Isn’t that a solo quest?”.

I messed around for a few minutes, and he repeat the broadcast 1 or 2 more times.  Finally I thought, “What the heck, I have the quest, I might as well team up and knock it.”  Also, going through my head was “Moria is scary and I might need backup, so this is a safety net for my first major foray.”

So, I join up with the fellow (Buci, no relation to Gary).  He’s a 47 Runekeeper!  Ok, now I can understand why he might want backup for a 50+ quest.  So, off we go into the caverns, searching for mirrors.  Ok, not really “searching” for the mirrors themselves, but for the PATHS to the mirrors (since the mirrors are rings on my map).

We did get slightly lost a few times, but in the end we found all the mirrors.  We even went on to do the next few quests in the chain, and one rescue quest in the mines to the south.    Buci performed well for himself.  Even on the mobs that he couldn’t easily hit (crawlers in the mines were 6-7 levels above him), his healing worked really well at keeping me alive.

I must say, I was pretty impressed with the runekeeper class.  My last two pairings have been with RKs (Buci and Dwahlin), and they seem to perform really well.  It gives me some hope that my own RK alt will be a real solid class even in the upper levels.

I’m further impressed with how huge Moria is.  The caverns seem endless, and the various chasms still scare me.  There were a few occasions while hunting for mirrors, that we had (well, chose) to make short hops over a chasm as the shortest routes, and both times were a little nerve-wracking.  Thankfully, no one fell in.  Although, we did miss a jump in the mines that sent us a little lower than we expected.

After maybe 90 minutes of questing, he had to go, and we bid our farewells.  It was about bedtime for me as well, so I zipped out to the Shire to finish out the Master tier of my cooking skill (mmm, lembas!).

Anyway, gonna try hard to finish up my Eregion quests in the next session, and finally make the switch to Moria, full-time.  I may also try and track down some mint, so I can start making some Supreme cooking recipes.

Fair winds,

Amason