With just nine days left for the Kickstarter, Shape of the World definitely needs your help. Especially if you’re the kind of person who is drawn to games based solely on their color schemes, like I usually am. This is an exploration game that grows, shifts, and changes as you move through it.
Everyone who makes outfits has a specific style. Just like everyone has their own style of handwriting and each author has a specific voice in their writing, so too do LOTRO outfitters. Mine has always been a more realistic and RP oriented style. I use a lot of earth tones. You will never see me rocking a purple outfit, except maybe with one of my elves’ party outfits. Another LOTRO outfitter who has a pretty similar style to mine is Devonna over at LOTRO Stylist.
I’ve posted about it before, and I’m feeling it again: I’m in an outfit rut. I still feel like I tend to use the same cosmetic and armour pieces again and again, the same two or three colors over and over. So this time I decided to take a look at some fellow outfit bloggers who have a different style from my own. Two bloggers with a more adventurous use of color and armor pieces than me are Hymne at Cosmetic LOTRO and The Starry Mantle. The Starry Mantle especially uses a really wide variety of armour pieces and isn’t afraid to try out head pieces I don’t even bother to keep. Hymne uses a lot of fantastic color combinations in her work that makes her outfits very dynamic.
I decided I’d start by trying to find a new outfit for Sagewood. I had posted a new outfit for her a few weeks ago but I still wasn’t that pleased with it. Sure I used some new pieces but they just weren’t clicking. I figured a scout/hunter outfit shouldn’t be too hard to find amongst the outfit blogosphere. Eventually what caught my eye was The Starry Mantle’s Outlaw Wolf-keeper outfit. It’s still within my range of comfortable earth-tones and realism, yet it uses pieces I’ve never used (some of which because I don’t own them!). Not wanting to copy it straight off, I decided I’d get some of the pieces together and tweak it a bit. I ended up using some of the ideas from Hymne’s Beta Sneak Peek outfit as well(the third outfit in that post, specifically). Here’s what I ended up with:
Pathfinder’s Jacket – black
Ceremonial Thrill-seeker’s Leggings
Steadfast Skirmish Gauntlets of the Mark – umber
Vital Eastemnet Combat Boots – black
Resilient Skirmish Pauldrons of the Mark – umber
So far I quite like it. The only thing I’m not 100% with is the shoulders. I am very picky about shoulder guards and I don’t like many of the shoulder pieces in game. I’d love if anyone has some suggestions on what they think might look good though! I tried the shoulder guards the Starry Mantle used in her post, but without the Hunter’s helm from that outfit, it just doesn’t work as well I don’t think.
I tried soloing Northcotton Farms on Cithryth today (so she was 20 levels over). I got past the first boss then got bored. It was just taking too long and my patience has a tendency of waning quite quickly anymore. Gone are the times I would gladly sit through an on-level 6-man like Lost Temple, taking the time to learn every battle and the nuances. I just get bored with it too quickly. My attention drifts and I end up alt-tabbing to the internet. So I probably won’t be earning the last 45 Medallions of the Northmen that I need for that Hunter helm. Oh well. Still lots of other armor pieces available in the game.
This American holiday weekend through tomorrow, there has been a Double Bonus Points sale in the store for Turbine Points. This is pretty great because depending on how many points you buy at once, you can nearly double the amount of points you get (if you buy $200 worth of TP at once you definitely get more than twice what you normally would). On top of that good news, there was an unannounced sale on warsteed color packs (presumably running the same sale length). So 295TP for all warsteed hide color packs and equipment packs! Tons of people are taking advantage of this wonderful sale (and you should too while it lasts!). I know I did and bought two more hide color packs and all of the remaining equipment packs on Cithryth. Unfortunately Sagewood and Herefara were not high enough level to purchase anything in advance.
With everyone buying up new colors I fully expect a new glut of wonderful warsteed outfit posts spreading around in the next week or so. Me, of course included. I made a new warsteed to match my Helmingas/Westfold Captain outfit. His name is Helmwine (translates to Friend of Helm):
Solid Hide – black
Simple Tail – charcoal
Captain’s Halter – crimson
Light Caparison of the Norcrofts – red
Light Leggings of the Entwash – crimson
Guardian’s Saddle
Accessory Bins
And here is the gear used in my Helmingas Captain outfit:
Hauberk of the Helmingas
Potent Calenard Pauldrons – burgundy
Heavy Plated Dunlending Gauntlets – black
Dreng-gesc – black
Cloak of the Grey Company – black
I really like the Guardian’s saddle because it’s the only one that seems to fit my character correctly. She sits right in the middle of it (not so far forward she might as well be sitting directly on the horse, like with many saddles) and the front of it hits right where her hands sit so it actually looks like she’s holding onto the saddle, not just invisible reins or something.
In other LOTRO news, I’ve gotten Sagewood to 53 and I managed to level Herefara two levels to 70. I think she’s caught up to Navthalion in the Wailing Hills area of questing, even though he’s level 73. What can I say, I’m impatient to get MOAR warsteeds! On Sagewood I quested with my dad a bit in Moria. He has a level 51 Champion. He is a casual player to the extreme and only levels every couple of weeks. He’s been playing for about three years now I think? It’s fun to spend time with him in game even if I can’t in-person.
