The Tinnu Take on the Giants

Sounds like a sports headline or something. Well, some of those giants do have a mean *kick*…

So anyway, over on Landroval, Lennidhren is still working her way up through the levels and generally just has to cheer on her fellow Lonely Mountain Banders from a distance whenever there is a kin run of any sort of end-game instances. But Linett’s new kinfolk on Nimrodel, the Tinnu uin Galadhrim, have begun to venture into the stronghold of Helegrod, so finally I can say that I have experienced a raid. Last Friday was our first attempt (well, I think so. First I took part in, anyway) and it went well enough that we did it again tonight. It went a good bit smoother with experience this time, although we only did one quest in each wing to collect the Helegrod marks, instead of completing the whole raid. I do hope someday we’ll do the whole thing, just so I can see it, but it would certainly be a time-consuming endeavor!

Moo.

Long ago I posted about my new favorite mob, the Fiery Grims of the Flaming Deeps. Well, they have been superseded. Meet my new favorite mob – the Dun Ox.

Why am I so fond of this big guy? For one reason only: The highly amusing animation that occurs when Linett stuns him with a Light of the Rising Dawn. Usually the mob will just kind of stand there, with shoulders slumped if they’re a bipedal type, or in a crouch if they’re of the four-footed variety. Not this one. The Dun Ox performs a rolling-side-to-side maneuver that makes him look a bit, well, drunk, and cracks me up every time.

I tried to get pictures of the Dun Drunk Ox but this is the best I could do. Someone needs to shoot a video of it. Maybe I’ll figure out how…

Linett, Chicken-Friend

If only the game granted titles for the brave players who set out to escort little chickens on their travels across Middle-earth, Linett would now have the title of Chicken-Friend, or something of the sort. Last weekend (my, it takes me forever to write things up during the school year…) she was adventuring out in Enedwaith (more on that momentarily) when kin chat (did I mention Linett joined a kin? At Falathlorn Day a couple of weeks ago, she became a member of the Tinnu uin Galadhrim after visiting Tuiliel’s house with them and then having them over to Linett’s place as well) revealed that our young Jenikki was currently engaged in the series of Chicken play quests at Sandson’s Farm. Upon learning this, it was decided that our feathered friend could do with a skilled escort to see her safely to her next destination. So it was that Jeorl, Tuiliel, and Linett converged upon Evendim, where we found the brave little bird making her way toward Tinnudir.

Not only is Jenikki a quick little chick, she swims amazingly well no matter how waterlogged her feathers may be!

Busy Day

Arethryth has been keeping busy in the Lone Lands today, hunting down some Wargs with her Wardenly flair:

And continuing with the stargazing:

And here’s a lovely reflection of the moon in the river:

Besides Arethryth, Trumpkin the dwarf got to come out of hibernation a little…from level 12 all the way to 17!…mainly so he could craft things for the others, but then I ended up leveling him whilst collecting crafting materials, so that was nice and efficient. Here he is in his new bronze armour set, of his own making:

View more LOTRO screenshots on WeGame.

It kind of clashes with his beard, I’m afraid.

Ding!

I’m very lazy sometimes about leveling Linett. Though she’s my main character, she’s been ambling along through level 64 for quite a while now, while I’ve been rotating through the alts and otherwise amusing myself by putting off her final “ding”. Maybe it’s Peter Pan syndrome and I just don’t want her to grow up? Anyway, Volume 3 Book 1 threw so many Orcs and Angmarim and such in her path (not forgetting the huge chunks of XP for quest completion after recruiting each Ranger…) that she finally made it to 65 tonight, just as she finished slaying the last two Angmarim between her and Halbarad in Tham Umdur.

See the quest rings? Halbarad’s literally right around the corner waiting for her to turn the quest in. Neat timing, if you ask me, that she managed to level with the last two mobs in the cave!

Silver Lining Screenshots

Something’s slow tonight, whether it’s the servers or my own Internet connection, so as Linett made her way through the tunnels of Laenan for the first task of Volume 3, dispatching the Orc raiders there went kind of haltingly with long pauses sometimes in between attacks. Frustrating – until I realized that Linett and her foes were poised there – I mean – POSED there, just waiting for the photographer to get the shots she wanted. I couldn’t continue the fight while waiting for the lag to pass, but there was a silver lining to the time spent waiting. Time enough to rotate the camera view around to see something other than Linett’s new cloak, and get in position to fire off one of her flashier skills just in time to get a screenshot of it. Here are some results…

Linett, Champion of Eriador

Finally, thanks to spring break and Inspired Greatness, Linett has completed all 15 books of the epic story, Volume 1! I’m so glad I finally got to play through the whole story, because that was truly…epic.

(And now, the classicist behind the keyboard feels the urge to perform literary analysis along the lines of identifying what makes Narmeleth’s story so epic, and how the Shadows of Angmar epic compares to the standards like the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, and of course the Thebaid…yes, the Thebaid, I had to translate large swathes of it for a class, a couple of years ago. And I taught the Odyssey to my freshman English classes this year, and next year will be teaching the Iliad and various other awesome literature to two sections of Classical Literature, yay! But I think I will spare you the literary analysis for now, and go on to pictures…)

The rewards for completing Volume 1 are spiffy indeed. I love the horse (Linett’s amassing quite a collection of steeds, but mostly festival mounts, so the grey horse is a nice, elegant alternative to all those technicolor saddle blankets) and am very pleased with the cloak also! It goes nicely with the robe Linett picked up from whichever book was in Forochel, which she has now dyed umber to look like so:

More Spring Riders! Epic Lottos and Epic Flashbacks

Apparently the Valar of spring festivals loves Vanita and Linett just as much as Alduine, for several Springfest lotteries later…they too are riding cute neon-green-blanketed Springfest mounts! That makes one for each of my characters who are high enough level to ride it, so I’m done entering that lottery now. I highly recommend trying it if you don’t already have last year’s spring mount!

A Light from the Shadow

Linett acquired that elusive title tonight, so hooray for the soloability of Volume 1! She was stuck on fellowship quests back in books 5 and 7, finished them off as well as book 9, and is now heading into Annuminas. I’ve enjoyed the epic story thus far, but it will be especially nice to go through the whole thing later on with an alt, and do it all in the proper order and on-level….a level 64 Lore-master with Inspired Greatness just flies right through some of these quests. Which is fine by me, as I’d rather have an easy fight and an enjoyable story than to get frustrated by a too challenging fight. Plus it makes it easier to take screenshots of everything….

Elrond’s IMAX; and Linett, Inspired

As I mentioned in the last post, I was delighted with the part of the Volume 3 prologue, in Elrond’s Library, when he briefs you on all the Rangers you need to find. Because seriously, when did the Last Homely House invest in holographic technology?