So I was doing the Epic quests with Lamvaethor, my level 49 Rune-keeper. I’m in Angmar and currently on Book 9. The instances of previous books are fairly easy with Inspired Greatness and even if the NPC takes some beating I can simply pop the Master of Writs, cast some Writs of Healing and continue DPSing. The skill must have been designed with suicidal NPCs in mind.

Now to the darkness: it’s nothing horrible, I’ve just been doing chapter 1 of book 8.

The quest used to send players into Carn Dûm to recover pieces of Golodir’s armour. With the soloification the quest now requires player to visit three of the eight towers of Barad Gúlaran in Nan Gurth. While doing the quest yesterday it occurred to me how fortunate I was never to visit Nan Gurth during night-time. I’d like to think of myself as a skilled navigator and I certainly don’t have any problem reaching most of the in-game locations simply by foot but navigating in this kind of darkness is beyond me. Despite that I have found the first two towers (Hill-men and Goblins) though I have died leaving the second. Finding myself revived in Myrkworth I proceeded to find the third tower (Dourhands). After nearly running into an Angmarim Elite Master and likely missing several others I simply did not see I found the tower and recovered the third piece. (During the quests you enter the towers and kill emissaries inside, IG automatically kicks in so the fights aren’t hard).

The pieces of Golodir’s armour (a sword, chain-mail and a shield) are damaged and so you need to get them repaired. I proceeded further with the quests only to find out that I’m stuck with the horrible darkness of Nan Gurth. Fortunately I only had to visit Esteldín and Rivendell and didn’t have to traverse any kind of wilderness. Still spooky though:

Esteldín

Rivendell

After the Sun rose I could only see a faint fog but I could tell the bug was still there. Nonetheless I have logged off by that time and restart will surely fix it. Now I’m only wondering what to do further. I will probably finish book 9 but I have done the rest recently with my Warden and I don’t want to repeat it so soon. I will probably start Volume II and head down to Eregion though I’m not in a hurry to enter Moria.

And yes that’s all

So, you may have noticed I haven’t updated the blog for a while. I haven’t gone to another game (Guild Wars 2 is not out yet ) but I have been studying for final exams that had fortunately earned me the bachelor’s degree (yay!).

Anyway, back to blogging and what I’ve been doing. First of all I’ve upgraded WordPress and deleted about 400 pieces of spam (in the very unlikely case that I’ve deleted a proper comment I apologize). And then I decided to write a post.

Winter Festival

Though I’ve been gone for two months I’ve logged in near the end of the Yulefest to try out some of the “amusement rides”. This was by far the best festival yet. The theatre was amazing – and I’ve been picked as a Protagonist the first time I stepped in and despite having little clue as to what I was supposed to do I succeeded. Though there really wasn’t many people around overall there have always been people in the G.L.O.B.E. and only once was the performance cancelled. Although it took some waiting (during which I completed all the stuff-throwing deeds) I have received all three titles and now I’m only waiting to receive the Thespian title, providing they fix it.

The Snowball fight was also nice but the problem was that not many people were around, 4 was the most participants I’ve seen, usually it was only me and one other, not really fun. I spent one day just throwing snowballs on some AFKers who stood near the event announcer, just within the range from the border of the field (which I couldn’t leave as it would fail the “hard mode”).

Since the announcement of the festival and the related house decorations I had one goal – a snowman army. The downside is that it doesn’t look like much since the hooks are spread too wide but here you go:

The Present and the Future

(Spoilers ahead of course!) Well, it’s only been two days I’ve been back but I was keeping an eye on LotRo in the meantime. Some mysterious relics have been scattered across Eriador so I set out to pick them up. I knew where they were so finding them wasn’t a problem, don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t know. Well one was revealed by Turbine and the location of another could’ve been guessed based on the fact that some new structure arose in Annundir. The one in Enedwaith I would probably stumble upon. The rest I probably wouldn’t have found. Anyway I’m really looking forward to what the devs have prepared for Q1, this form of “delivery” is much appreciated. The next update or book will be called Echoes of the Dead and it’s more than clear that we will be dealing with the Gaunt-lords once again. New instances are expected to pop out in the vicinity of those relics, the ones in North Downs and Oatbarton already have new structures near them. The one in Forochel has a chunk of unused landmass behind the gate at the end of Ironspan, some new ruins are floating in the air high above some ruins in Trollshaws and in Enedwaith there is this inaccessible ruin.

Enedwaith investigation

I’ve heard rumours that a small new part of Enedwaith is accessible south along the Old Way. They have proven to be true but you can acess maybe a third of that area since there are invisible walls all around. Now for the ruin, as you may have noticed there is a Gondorian ruin in the southern part of Enedwaith, currently inaccessible though there are at least two mobs inside. I’ve been looking all around and only found a back-door in the form of a “rabbit hole” leading to the side of the structure no entrance there either.

Towers of the Ruin

A look through the gate

Class updates

Another thing we know is coming in Q1 are the class updates, Minstrel dev diary was released yesterday, Burglar popped up just as I was writing this. I don’t play either of these classes but it looks good and I like how they are addressing things. Maybe the last update will concern Wardens? (or Guardians which would make me really sad since that is the third and last class I don’t play)

The rest of Q1 goodness

LIs revamped, Radiance gone, new instance cluster and a new raid. Looking really good although it will take at least a month till it arrives. Well, I still got some rep to grind and deeds to do. Volume II epic line gets revamped to accommodate solo play, another good thing though it will take some time for my alts to reach Moria.

Well, I planned for the post to be longer but I’ll cut it here, new posts will hopefully be coming soon.