Herefara and Milkthistle

I haven’t posted in almost a month! Sorry! It’s not for lack of time, just lack of anything to post about really. I’ve mostly been working on deed with Sagewood, and so haven’t had much excitement in the land of LOTRO. Also been playing quite a bit of SimCity (60+ hours logged at this point). That game is pretty fun but the way the AI behaves and deals with problems gets annoying after awhile. But generally I think I got my money’s worth out of it.

Anyway, yesterday I had been deeding on Sagewood and dropped by Bree to process ore and hides I had picked up along the way. While exiting the vault I stopped by the mannequins and notices the Minstrel and Captain sets “of the West” were available so I decided to see how much they were. To my surprise, you can now buy them with Mithril Coins! And not just that, but 20 coins gets you the whole set. I have no idea if this is actually a good deal (I didn’t check to see the price of coins in the store nor the price of the outfits with TP, if that’s even a viable option now). I decided to buy both sets since I have a whole ton of coins from all of my characters that I don’t see using much…. except for outfits now I guess! So the outfits gave me an inspiration for a new outfit for Herefara. I also decided to use the TP I won from the LOTRO Fashion Contest to buy her some warsteed colors to match the new outfit:

Herefara:

Spear-shaker’s Jacket – white

Sturdy Westernesse Leggings – white

Ceremonial Cry of the West Shoulderguards – white

Ceremonial Secret of the West Gauntlets – umber

Threadbare Boots of the Dunland Healer – umber

Milkthistle:

Blond Hide

Tan Mane/Tail

Hunter’s Caparison – umber

Hunter’s Saddle

Most of the inspiration for the outfit came from the look of the captain “of the West” set, although I ended up only using the shoulders. I thought about using the chest piece as well, but it seemed more appropriate to use a leather jacket for a warden. I might switch them back again, but for now I really like this outfit. And Milkthistle matches splendidly!

Knight in Shining Armour

The past week I’ve been tinkering a lot with the White Captain outfit for Cithryth. It always feels like it’s never quite right or perfect or good. And then everytime I make a new one I announce how it’s the perfect White Captain outfit and inevitably I change my mind again. However this time I’m sure this is the perfect White Captain outfit!

I had always tried to stay away from the Rift captain set. It is gorgeous, however there is a very famous captain on Windfola named Annoula whose female captain is always dressed in the full Rift set with the Cloudbane cloak. Annoula has been wearing that since basically forever and I believe has achieved the Fashionable title for it. Finally yesterday I decided to just not worry about that and decided I would make it unique looking somehow.

I ended up using the champion Rift shoulders (partly because I think the captain Rift shoulders look freaking ridiculous and WoW-like). I also used my absolute favorite boots: the Potent Battles Boots of the Mark. I’m only disappointed that they have a warm undertone to them compared to the pale blue undertone of the Rift set. So I had to dye them a blueish color to keep the color scheme cohesive. I also opted for no cloak and instead went with the signature Winged Circlet.

Ceremonial Breastplate of the North Star – white

Ceremonial Leggings of the North Star – white

Ceremonial Shoulders of the Gloom-bane – white

Ceremonial Gloves of the North Star – white

Potent Battle Boots of the Mark – Evendim blue

Winged Circlet

And of course I had to make a warsteed that matches. This took quite a lot of tinkering to find a warsteed look I liked. Honestly it was quite frustrating because some pieces don’t dye quite the way you’d expect or want them to dye. Last night I eventually settled on using an all black steed with black barding. But then today while doing my daily warband runs I switched to all white with navy and it turned out really well!

Solid Hide and Simple Tail – white

Light Caparison of the Norcrofts – navy

Captain’s Halter – white

Captain’s Leggings

Burglar’s Saddle

Burglar’s Gear

At the point the only change I think I would make for the warsteed is to put the Champion’s Gear on instead. That is definitely going to be the next steed I purchase because I have been coveting the Champion’s Gear for too long! It’s the most fitting Gear accessory I’ve seen, or at least one of the least ridiculous. Some of the gear in the Store is quite lovely, however I feel a lot of it is made useless by its coloring and the lack of the ability to dye it. For example the gear that comes with the Heavy Norcrofts set bundle is cool… but it’s also a heinous yellow color that wouldn’t match any kind of character or warsteed outfit I would ever put together.

 

In other news, my hunter Sagewood made it to level 60! Woo! I actually stayed in Moria until level 61, which is absolutely unheard of for me. I’ve taken 4 other characters through there and I’ve always left around level 58 or 59. The Moria revamps were amazing and made me like questing there! I love the quest auto-bestowal system. I enjoy exploring and that system definitely works with an exploration based playstyle like that.

Norcrofts Captain

Happy Yule everyone! Sorry I didn’t make a blog post this past weekend. I finally graduate from University and have moved back home for the holidays. I am super full already and have only eaten the first course of our Christmas dinner. At least there will be lots of leftovers!

Although I haven’t been posting, I have been playing. Sagewood is level 56 now, Herefara is 74 and Cithryth is getting closer and closer to completing Hytbold. Speaking of Hytbold though – what’s the deal with the Captain’s Hands of Healing Hytbold set? It makes no sense. Tons and tons of might but hardly any vitality? Quite a few of the captain’s healing skills requires a sacrifice of the captain’s own morale, or at least the main single-target heal. Very strange! So I’ve gone with a combination of Hands of Healing and Leader of Men pieces from the Hytbold sets.

And thanks to some very generous friends on Windfola, Giggles and Sparthir, I was able to get the boots I’ve been trying to get for ages to complete my new outfit! I don’t have a metalsmith and I’ve only ever seen the teal critted versions of the boots on the AH (selling for 20g!). So I tried getting people in GLFF to make me some with payment, however they were less than helpful (only response I got was someone telling me to get armour from the Classic skirmish vendor, even though I specifically said I wanted these boots for their looks, not their level or stats). Giggles and Spar saw my pleas on twitter and Spar logged in and made me some free of charge! That’s why friends are awesome! So thanks to Sparthir and his metalworker Spardor, here is my newest outfit, the Captain of the Norcrofts:

Character Outfit:

Helm of the Eastemnet

Commanding Battle Pauldrons of the Mark – green

Elfmar’s Cloak

Combative Eastemnet War Armour – olive

Vigilant Eastemnet War Gauntlets

Potent Battle Boots of the Mark – olive

Warsteed Outfit:

Tobiano Warsteed – black chestnut (with black chestnut Simple Tail)

Captain’s Halter – olive

Light Caparison of the Norcrofts – Rivendell green

Burglar’s Leggings

Guardian’s Saddle

Burglar’s Gear

The White Captain Rides Again

Really glad I found that post I mentioned in the update to my last post. So here are some pics of my new White Captain outfit using the armor from the Steely Dawn:

Armour of the Steely Dawn

Dreng-gesc – black

Barnavon Hunter’s Cured Gauntlets – white

Commanding Battle Pauldrons of the Mark – black

Cloak of the Dreamflower – white

Winged Circlet

I’m not sure if I like the choice of gauntlets and boots right now. I’ve always expressed a dislike for wearing the same boots and gauntlets from the same set as the chestpiece, but I think I might be able to get away with it in this instance, mostly because I think the set will be fairly rare anyway. It’s also hard to find boots and gloves that don’t clip this chest piece. The wrists and ankles are quite bulky and clip through a fair number of gloves and boots that I would otherwise think look fine.

As for the steed in these pics, it does not have a name at this point. I used the extra 500 TP I got from the Steely Dawn pack to buy the Shaggy Roan hide, because I really like the black legs on it.

Shaggy Roan hide – white

Simple Tail – black

Plain Black Saddle

Guardian’s Caparison – sea blue

 

Rider’s Armour

I haven’t been playing much LOTRO the past week. Like I said in my last post, my old Minecraft had a grand re-opening and so I’ve been playing a lot of that lately. However today I have been spending quite a bit of time on LOTRO – enough to put together a new outfit! I decided to go through the Starry Mantle again to get some inspiration and came across the Sons of Elrond outfit. I liked the combination of the gloves and chest piece – when Cithryth was in her 40’s she used to wear that chest piece all the time and I loved it. The gloves of course are part of the set that goes with my favorite Rohan chest piece. I decided to make the outfit less Elvish and turn it into some light riding armour. Here is the result:

Thick Elven Steel Armour – olive

Tactical Eastemnet Assault Leggings – umber

Vigilant Eastemnet War Boots – rivendell green

Vigilant Eastemnet War Gauntlets

Shoulders of the Eorlingas

Mantle of Framness

To get these pieces I had to go make a trip to the Auction House. I spent quite a bit of gold, but also picked up a few other items that I may use for outfits on other characters. I got my hands on a Tattered Hat that I am definitely going to make use of on Sagewood. I’ll probably put together an outfit for her and post it tomorrow.

Otherwise in LOTRO I’ve pretty much just been doing my Hytbold dailies and trying to get the deeds of each town done. So far I’ve gotten Eaworth and Harwick’s deeds done. I’ve been lazy about remembering to get my fishing rod out of my vault and thus haven’t done any of the fishing quests in Snowbourn. But in general I quite like the dailies. Some of the instances and locations are actually quite beautiful.

Helmwine

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.

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.

Quick Sunday Photo Op!

Unfortunately I don’t have as much time to play this weekend as I would like. My first draft of my big important senior paper is due this week, so I should probably work on that. So my Sunday is going to be full of writing and reading about 17th century pirate scientists. I suppose it could be worse!

Anyway, I got a lot of positive feedback from my picture of Widfara so I decided to do a similar kind of collage for Fram:

I also made another outfit for Sagewood. This one is more of an everyday questing/adventuring type outfit that is a bit more armored than her Cowboy outfit, but still uses the same color scheme:

Ceremonial Townsaver’s Jacket – burgundy

Walnoth’s Leather Leggings – sienna

Vital Eastemnet Combat Boots – sienna

Strong Eastemnet Skirmish Gauntlets – sienna

Shoulders of the Helmingas

Cloak of the Grey Company – crimson

Fine Grey Company Hood – crimson

Widfara

While my goal the past few months has been to post at least two blog posts every weekend, I was not able to do so this weekend. All last week I was sick with a gastrointestinal infection (exactly as fun as it sounds) and didn’t play at all until yesterday – although I did manage to get Cithryth to 84 and start in on the Hytbold quests. So only one very brief post this weekend unfortunately.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, my big beautiful black-chestnut tobiano warsteed’s name is Fram, which means valiant or stout or strong, etc in Old English (which is basically what the Rohirric language is). Well yesterday using my monthly VIP points I got the white/lighter shades of gray horse colors to make a white horse with. It just doesn’t feel right calling them the same horse… I mean they look totally different! So I named my second warsteed cosmetic slot “Widfara” which means wide farer. And here she is:

Body/tail: white

Guardian’s Caparison (indigo)

Light Leggings of the Sutcrofts (indigo)

Light Saddle of the Sutcrofts

I also worked on some new outfits for my warden, Herefara, however I figured I’d wait until next weekend to post about them when I have more time to get the proper screenshots, etc. This weekend I’m too busy catching up on schoolwork and readings that I missed last week while I was sick.