Random Screenies

I got a stack of screenshots I've been holding onto, neglecting to post, so here is a random screenshot post for ya, in no particular order. The first two are from Jaxom, the others are my recent adventures with Kabbage.

Eregion at Night 1
Eregion at Night 2
A Tranquil Scene
Breeland Moon
Breeland Vista 1
Breeland Vista 2
Castle on a Hill
Fire! (Caught someone had lit a campfire on the West Bree Stables! Oh no!)

These last two are taken at the same time I made this video of the third jump. Unfortunately, that third jump was also the one where I went splat!

Don't Jump! 1
Don't Jump! 2

We Are Massive Hobbits!

The kinship is born, with a good number of Hobbits and a couple men, dwarves, and a lone elf. Or maybe it was two elves and a dwarf. I can't remember. In any case, here's the portrait (before the end of the night we had a few more join). Floaty names are on so you can see who's who. The only name not shown is mine. Just in case it's too hard to make out the overlaping text, the group is, left to right, starting with the big folk:

• Tarjareel - Man Loremaster
• Guarigione - Elf Runekeeper
• Binkylo - Hobbit Hunter
• Gibbi - Hobbit Warden and our Fearless Leader
• Bortho - Hobbit Hunter
• Kabbage - Hobbit Burglar (that's me!)
• Andyna - Hobbit Minstrel and apparently camera shy
  
• Capeo - Hobbit Minstrel

And you can find the full kinship roster on MyLOTRO as well. By the way, the name was suggested by a reader over at Massively. And a brilliant suggestion at that.

Thanks everybody for turning out, it was a blast. Look forward to playing with you all again. And hopefully I'll have the presence of mind to take more screenshots. When we do some of the more... interesting instance runs I'll probably pull out the video capture.

Our Merry Band of Unnamed Adventurers

Wow, I actually logged into LOTRO today. I have a good excuse though. I've joined up with Gibby the Hobbit played by Shawn from Massively. I figured it indeed was a good reason to get back into LOTRO for a while. Start fresh.

Getting involved in any activity in LOTRO is also a good excuse for blogging. I'll be chronicling my adventures with our merry band, hopefully to include screenshots, and depending on the situation, video. Furthermore, when I can, I'll be using Twitter to send out mini updates of what we're doing that very moment. Of course, be sure to follow the official updates over at Massively as your votes each week will shape the adventures.

Today saw the first day of the adventures, at least for me. I jumped in as a Hobbit Burglar named Kabbage. I've not played a Burglar before, beyond level 6 when I tried it out just in the starter instance last year. I've also not been into the Archet starting area since it was revamped and I must say, despite the previous polish, this area now gleams brilliantly. The flow is much better, with a series of minor tweaks making all the difference. The day brought us to the finishing solo instance and tomorrow will see the start of Shire adventures. I must say I'm looking forward to questing in the Shire once again. It's one of my favorite zones to simply look at, let alone play in.

Developer Clover was nice enough to stop by as we began our fun to take a screenshot of me and Gibbi. I'm on the far right, Gibbi's center and Clover is left. I believe she also gifted our fearless leader with a nice starter cloak similar to the one's Founders receive for new characters. Now he's all set to vanquish some boars (which is what we were doing when so kindly interrupted).

Joining us later was another Hobbit Burglar by the name of Rotolo (hope I got that right). Three hobbits venturing across the landscape had to inspire great feats of courage in all little folk. And indeed it inspired us to ponder "wouldn't it be great if everyone that joined us take a hobbit along?" Only the future shall see.

Happy adventuring!

EDIT: Add into the group a Hobbit Hunter by the name of Bortho played by @seanmc74 as well as Dwarven Champion played by @BlueKae of BlueKay.com.

Random Screenies

No need for much of a preamble here. Have some random shots from yesterday's (or maybe it was the day before) excursion into LOTRO.

Northern Lights
Evendim Landscape
Moon and Constellations

I particularly love the northern lights in Forochel. Such a wonderful sky in this game. All three screens feature it prominently.

Massively Book 8 Dev Tour

This is a dev tour of screenshots, and it's great to get a look at some of the stuff in Book 8. There's a couple interesting 3-man instances being added, which sound quite tough actually. Giant pistons you have to avoid or you'll end up a freep pancake. Wow... I like the puzzle element of these too. Not sure how much of this book I'll actually be participating in but we'll see. I think I might just be looking more forward to the continued balancing this book provides, moreso than the new content. I've said this before, but I have trouble sitting for hours on end completely ignoring the outside world when I'm so focused on an instance I'm running. Still, there are many players that run the instances and will enjoy the update. I don't think it'll last them as long as the next update will take, but that's to be expected. No game updates fast enough for some of the playerbase to continually find content. Nature of the beast.

Sunday Progress Report

So I made Friend status with the Galadrim and gained entry to Caras Galadhron. There's are some really fun quests in this area. They're not necessarily innovative in terms of design, but the writers for LOTRO really shine here. I mean, I'm chasing a shrew all over the place trying to get Pippin's pipeweed back! That's just funny!

Okay, I finished all the non-repeatable quests in Lothlorien as far as I can tell. I'm going to finish the deeds up in the next few days since there are so few. The last bit would be to gain kindred status with these elves, which will be a bit of a pain since the quests are pretty spread out. Speaking of kindred, I made kindred with the Moria Guards today, and bought my epic book for the legendary trait. I don't know why. I'm probably never going to use that one. As a captain, though I love to have as many options as I can - I am a utility class after all. Should there ever be a situation where there are more than one captain in a group it's good to be able to trait for something else and give the fellowship an even greater advantage.

Now, onto some screenshots. Probably the last ones from Lothlorien. Hard to trump Caras Galadhon and the Lord and Lady of the Golden Woods no?

Covered Walk
Fellowship Pavilion with Aragorn
Flets at Night
Galadriel's Garden
Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn
The Mirror of Galadriel

The Golden Woods

I have a few more screenshots for you all today. I spent some time yesterday afternoon in Lothlorien, taking more shots of the beautiful scenery. And questing of course. Can't wait till I can actually get into Caras Galadhon, instead of just being able to look at it from the outside. And then seeing The Great River (Anduin) for the first time was a moment for me. Oh to actually see those waters flow through Osgiliath and into the harbor...

Caras Galadhon
Covered Bridge
Golden Woods 1
Golden Woods 2
Shores of the Anduin

Loth Shot

I've been doing some quests in Lothlorien recently. Taking it slow, enjoying the scenery. It's supposed to be a relaxing location, so why try and hurry and do all the quests? No, I'll bide my time and savor the moment. And there are some great moments in Lothlorien. Yeah, the distance impostors are borked, but it's still beautiful. Such as this night-time shot of the sky and the trees, one with a flet where Legolas and Gimli wait. And a short distance from where I was standing, so did Frodo and Sam. Good to see the gang have made it through Moria (like I didn't already know). These are the moments in the game I treasure the most, where suddenly Middle-Earth the world comes rushing back into overwhelm Middle-Earth the game. I live for these, when I can forget about grinding IXP or deeds, or even quests. The more I think about it, the more I believe I would have enjoyed a less structured Middle-Earth. But enough lamenting what did not happen. Celebrate the quality of what we do!

Carn Dûm Run

Did part of a Carn Dûm run today. It was a spur of the moment thing. I logged in, thought about what I wanted to do, looked on the global looking for fellowship channel (glff) and saw that one of my friends, and reader of this blog, had one more space for a CD run. Okay, sure, why not. I have some deeds out there, I still have quests to do in CD, let's go. I knew I wouldn't be able to do the whole run, but I could get some done.

Turns out nobody had done the run before, so it was going to be a bit of an adventure. That's pefectly alright since an adventure will always make things more interesting. First pull was a bad pull and most of us bit the dust. Luckily we retreated right next to the battle and could keep on fighting. After that we got the hang of it. A few of us died again from some lose aggro or stepping into the killer water. We had three under 50's and as such were squishy.

I was the tank, as the highest heavy armor wearer. I think I could have done better as a tank had I had more practice with my aggro skills. Unfortunately I was also watching healing on our lower level fellows in case our minstrel couldn't keep up. That didn't always work either and my attention was divided. I think if I was traited better for a tanking role and we had higher levels I could have managed it fine.

It was fun experiencing some new content. Well, new for me at any rate. Two quests done, a couple deeds finished, good times. And I even managed to get a nice screenshot as well.

LOTRO's Graphical Effects

There are a few times in LOTRO where I'm just amazed by the visuals. Most of the time that's the landscape but every once and a while there's some effects that really get my blood pumping. One of them is the Grims, first seen in Forochel and now later fire versions in Moria. The latter has a really cool looking special attack.

Sorry about the UI showing up in this pic. I didn't have time to shut it off and hit the screenshot button in the middle of my combat skill rotation. Not that it would matter much if I did miss my timing, but the effect is fairly quick and I needed to be fast on the print screen key.

EDIT: After posting this I decided a visual demonstration of fighting the Fire Grims would be cool so I went a head and captured a bit of combat and put it up on YouTube. You also get a bit of what it's like with a captain in combat - solo of course is different than group play.

Photobucket Reup

Genius that I am I didn't realize I could have uploaded all my screenshots to their original dimensions on Photobucket. So, I'm reupping all the shots to the album. As such all the links from previous screenshot posts will probably be broken. Fixing every one of those is time intensive and not worth it so this post has links to every sub-album in my LOTRO album in order for you to access the "new and improved" screenshots.

Angmar
Breeland
Ered Luin
Eregion
Evendim
Lone Lands
Moria
Shire
Trollshaws

Random Screenies

I've been collecting some screenshots over the past couple of days so I thought I'd share some. I've been taking the shots mainly to entice a friend of mine to play the game with me so some of these shots are of iconic places or early areas of the game. Others are shots of convenience, such as being in Angmar a couple days ago.

Angmar Night Sky
Dread Statue Guards
Drake Fight

Breeland at Night
The Prancing Pony
Inside the Prancing Pony
The Midgewater Marsh

Hobbiton Hill
Hobbiton View
Bag End

Forsaken Inn and Weathertop

New Moria Shots

Today I have a small screenshot post of a few shots in Moria. Yes, yes, you all probably want Lothlorien shots. They'll come, don't worry. Check out the other LOTRO blogs and Massively for some good Lothlorien shots.

Entrance to the First Hall
Jaxom at the Great Abyss
The Pit of Khazad-Dum
The Chamber of Mazarbul - before the battle

More Book 7 Screenshots

Massively has added to their Book 7 screenshot collection. Still images give this game little justice but they're still worth the look, in my opinion.

Massively Tour of Book 7

Massively has a developer guided tour of the Book 7 content on their site. None of the information presented here is necessarily new, however I've found each site tends to offer a unique perspective on the content. In this case, their screen shots are unique to them, not any publicity package handed out to the press.

Lothlorien Concept Art

There's a beautiful piece of concept art that's been put up on the official site. It's of Galadriel's court. If this bit of art is any indication of how the court will look in game, I can't wait to see it.

Lothlorien Screenshots

The folks over at Massively have posted some screenshots of Lothlorien. This is one of the most iconic places in Middle-Earth so, in my opinion, it should be one of the most meticulously designed. Much like the Shire and Rivendell. Still images are a far cry from what the place actually feels like, but I think I like what I see so far. It's drastically different from the movies, so if you're coming to this game from only those, be in for a surprise.

More Moria Screenies

As I like to do, I have screenshots for you all of my recent explorations in Moria. I've recently managed to get to the southern part of Zem-Melek as well as briefly into the Redhorn Lodes and Nun-Melek. Like all the screenshots on this blog, they are scaled down for upload into photobucket, but if you'd like to get any of them in full resolution, please e-mail me (you can find my e-mail on my profile page) with the subject line "Screenshot Request" and please type the names of the screenshots you want and I will send them to you as attachments. My photobucket is public so if you'd like any of the other screenshots I have stored there that might not be in this post, you can find those names there as well. And without further delay, here are the screens.

The Second Hall
The Great Hall of Durin
A Hallway
Redhorn Lodes Vista 1
Redhorn Lodes Vista 2
Gabil-Mamach
Zem-Melek 1
Zem-Melek 2
Zem-Melek 3
Zem-Melek 4

Meeting Celebrities

Of the Middle-Earth variety. Some of the coolest moments in the game have been interacting with the Fellowship itself, or other iconic characters (such as Butterbur or Radaghast). The Common Sense gamer has a few screenshots up (in their full size glory unlike my own) brushing shoulders with celebs.

I Made Level 60!

This is it. It's the post I've been looking forward to since the Mines of Moria came out. That and the screenshot posts, which I love doing. I made 60 at exactly midnight on Saturday/Sunday. What really makes this ding exciting is that I had bought one of the level 60 Captain class armor sets beforehand so I had a great gear incentive to get to 60. The actual event happened while trying out one of the level 60 solo item xp quests out of the Dolven View. The one with the fire elementals trying to destroy the library. That quest is a bit of a challenge actually and I ran out when I hit 60 because (1) it was late and (2) I was too excited to concentrate. Well, not that bad, but I was stoked. Unfortunately for my enthusiasm, nobody from the kin was on that late. I'm located on the west coast of the US and everybody else in the kin is at least one timezone east of me.

Now it's time for a little bit of gear gushing. I'm so happy I now have a gear upgrade. I've been sitting in a majority of the level 47 critted crafted gear which at 60 put me 13 levels behind on my gear. That's a big hit to the stats and armor. Here is the level 60 armor I'm now wearing: Stoutheart's Armor and Armor of the Rallying Shout. And now for what I look like. I decided to change my second outfit slot to this new armor and after messing with the dressing room for a few minutes, I decided on red as the overall best look for the set.

Jaxom Looks Epic

The new armor is a bit weak on Will so I changed up one of my traits that gave me Agility (which was my highest stat) for one with a Will bonus. That should help out on the power total a little bit. I also put in a bid for a Sublime Dawn-Rose Bracelet with a good Will bonus. I'll sacrifice more Agility, but in the end, when I get a full set of Sublime jewelry (after a considerable sum of coin leaves my hands) I should make up the losses in other stats.

Current Total Buffed Stats:

Might: 466
Agility: 467
Vitality: 338
Will: 313
Fate: 421

Morale: 5,001
Power: 2,270
Armor: 4,133