The White Captain of Rohan

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This is probably the longest I have ever taken to work my way through an expansion’s content (expansions that came out during my hiatus not included of course). I am only just now getting Cithryth to level 95 and completing the corresponding Epic Story. And what a spectacularly epic story it is too! While I really appreciate the story and character crafting that goes into the Epic Story in general, I’ve never been quite as avid of a fan of it as some people. But as a Captain of Rohan, the Helm’s Deep Epic Story was truly moving.

 

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Widfara, the Warsteed

I was pretty eager to post about the Steed of the Captain this morning, so I did so having not done a whole lot of playing around with color combinations or combinations with different gear sets and warsteed hides and on and on and on. Since the day has gone on however I’ve done a lot more tweaking and playing with the color sets and cosmetics I’ve got available to me in my current warsteed repertoire. I’ll lead you through a couple of the iterations I came to before finally settling on Widfara, the Warsteed which I will show last.

First there was this olive and white steed:

Solid hide – light grey with white tail

Burglar’s Caparison – olive

Light Leggings of the Entwash – olive

Captain’s Halter – olive

Captain’s Saddle

I like the simplicity of the Burglar’s caparison and I also like that it covers more than the Guardian’s caparison. However it ultimately felt too dark for this set up. So I moved on, decided to try a different warsteed hide in the process:

Tobiano hide – black chestnut with black chestnut tail

Guardian’s Caparison

Captain’s Leggings

Captain’s Halter – black

Plain Black Saddle

Captain’s Gear

With this one I decided to add in the Captain’s gear despite my professed frustration regarding the egg helm. I felt the horse needed that plate on the rear to balance out the front and the legs. The balance was important enough that I was willing to overlook the egg helm. But it overall didn’t feel quit right. Finally I settled on, what I now believe to be, the finished product that uses the Steed of the Captain items:

Solid hide – light grey with white tail

Guardian’s Caparison – navy

Captain’s Leggings

Captain’s Halter – white

Captain’s Saddle

Captain’s Gear

This is kind of a combination of the two previous iterations. I like it because it harkens back to the original Widfara set up I posted, and thus has a much more “White Captain” feel to it than the “Steed of the White Captain” I posted earlier today. It also is fully armored and ready for battle! Which is important, being a warsteed and all.

I also started work on a new, third steed utilizing the Captain’s Caparison and the Spotted hide. It’s not quite finished because I don’t have enough TP to get the accessory I need to complete the look. I’ll wait until the beginning of December, when I get my 500 VIP TP. It has more of a merchant/festival feel to it. Not sure what the name will be yet.

Steed of the White Captain

Today marked the release and announcement of the Steed of the Captain. Although it should be a generally happy announcement, it has been soured by quite a few factors, most of them stemming from the picture linked to my “Steed of the Captain” text, just previously. A few things to note about the picture. Most prominently, the steed is a dark brown, perhaps a black chestnut. The next thing I’ll point out is just a silly thing but I mean come on! The character riding the steed is an elf! Why would you advertise the Steed of the Captain using a character that is most definitely not a captain?!

They also apparently decided to advertise the Steed of the Captain using a horse color that it wasn’t as well. So we have a theme of fakeness going on here it seems. Once purchased, you would discover that the Steed of the Captain is not the black chestnut displayed in the promo pick but is in fact the default, boring blonde sorrel. Turbine seems to love this stupid blonde sorrel steed so much they have been using it as skin for nearly ever new regular mount that has come out recently. It’s annoying and boring. Terribly boring. Many people are upset about this and have made their voices heard in this thread in the Store Feedback forums (and I suggest you go over there and give them a piece of your mind too).

Update as of 2:11 PM EST: QuarterMasterU has come into the thread and said that the blonde sorrel skin appearance is a bug – the hide of the regular Steed of the Captain is supposed to be the dark brown pictured in the ad. The bug should be rectified by Update 9. No word on egg helmets though.

I still bought the damn thing anyway because it’s the steed of the captain and I am the White Captain. So I kind of had to. Also the cosmetics of it are generally quite nice (except for one quip I’ll get to momentarily). Since I’m using it pretty much solely for warsteed cosmetic purposes, the color of the regular steed does not effect me quite as much.

So without further ado, here is my Steed of the White Captain:

The only two things I changed: dyed the caparison olive and left the gear off. “Why would you leave the gear off?” you might be asking. I’ll tell you why: it’s because the stupid helmet looks like an egg on the warsteed version! On the regular mount, it is obvious from pretty much all angles that it is a helm. However, go to equip the gear on your warsteed and it looks like you’re carrying a giant runestone or some kind of rock that you found in Moria. Here is a side by side comparison of the warsteed gear and the regular steed gear:

Why would they change it so much from version to version? Another good question is, why is a helmet the signifying mark of a captain? As many have brought up in the Captain forums, why wasn’t a banner used instead? Clearly a banner is the logical choice for a captain. I mean… part of our whole schtick is banners and heralds carrying banners and whatnot. Guardians got a shield, hunters got a quiver of arrows, minstrels got instruments, champions got a slew of weapons, burglars got tricks and daggers, lore-masters got scrolls, rune-keepers got runestones and books… and we got a helmet?!

Sorry if this post is more negative than my typical posts. However it just sucks when your class steed finally comes along only to be riddled with unexplainable marketing and cosmetic decisions attached. Overall I like the cosmetics of the horse and am pleased with my purchase. I suppose it is just that there’s the ever growing feeling that Store is trying to take advantage of us cosmetic lovers more and more. They realized we were willing to spend TP on cosmetics and over time they have pushed and pushed and pushed how much they can get away with. I think it won’t be too long until they have pushed too far and many of their most long time, TP spending fans will stop spending like they used to.