common words:
ost ~ fortress
garth ~ fortress

Ost Forod: Forod meaning North.  Fortress of the North.

Ost Guruth: Guruth meaning death.  Fortress of Death.

Garth Agarwen:  Agar meaning blood and (g)wenn meaning maiden.  Fortress of the blood-maiden

Ost Brandras:  Brand meaning lofty or high, Ras meaning horn (either of animals or applied to mountains).  Fortress of the High Horn.

There are many Osts scattered throughout middle earth, so I will intersperse these posts with some other types of constructed buildings or other translations.  They are also quite difficult to screenshot, given their size so apologies if some of the screenshots are not very good.

ooh matron indeed

I originally did this for our guild website but it makes me laugh so much I thought I’d share it here.  We went into deep delvings for a class quest update and came upon the end boss.  He really made us laugh because he stands there swinging his hammer as though it was a handbag

I did pop onto lotro last night and bankrupted myself buying a worn symbol to forge a second age bow (yayyay!) I got fairly crappy legacies on it which was… crappy  nevermind, I have the legacies I want on there now and they can be increased.  Hopefully we will be able to group up with our friend Aeowulf tonight.

I will have my champion outfit to share soon and hopefully will be back posting regularly soon

Head: Linen hat (crafted)
Body: Robe of Countless Stars (Dunland faction)
Cloak: Singed Cloak (drop from Moria epic instance)
Gloves: Heavy Cloth Gloves (crafted)
Shoes: Shoes of the Learned Stag (Dunland quest reward)

all dyed black

Planned posts:  

• hoping to get a dwarven runekeeper outfit posted on Friday (modelled and designed by supermodel-turned-designer Dimzad – screenshots by noted fashion photographer Eldaeriel
• updated spreadsheet for cook repasts (and possibly one for regen/trail food)
• elvish…. honest, I promise!!
• I made a new outfit for my champion which I’ll post next week
• some tips/useful info I’ve found on legendary items

see ya soon

I’m using Narajana UI as I like the uncluttered, minimalistic approach.  I group my skills into sets (e.g. short term buffs, ranged, melee, fears/stuns, pots etc) and I don’t use keybinds for skill use.  My favourite plugins are:

• Travel Window:  Useful for all characters, not just hunters
• Lotropad: The beauty of this plugin is that it can be used on all characters, i.e. all of your alts can see and edit the information you input.  Great for keeping track of crafting levels, resource needs, general useful info.
• Alt Inventory:  if you’ve stashed *something* in one of your alts bags *somewhere* or if you just simply want to check the amount of something an alt is carrying, this app is great
• Paged slots:  These are an additional 24 slots, which are setup with 6 slots per page.  I love these for things that I like to access often but I don’t necessarily need on a hotbar (e.g. buffs, horses, food, traps, tracking) I think I may use this for travel skills and pets (lore-master) on alts.
• Palantir:  I find this most useful for click to cure pots (self) rather than the health/power bars.

Quick install guide (full instructions are on lotro interface)

To install UI:  Download and extract files to Libraries>Documents>The Lord of the Rings Online>UI>skins

To install plugins: Download and extract files to Libraries>Documents>The Lord of the Rings Online>plugins

If you haven’t installed plugins before I recommend reading CSTM’s excellent guide.

Hope you found it useful

I lost Dimzad in the beautiful purple heather...

• books! readable and placeable in your home to create a library…  The devs have done a wonderful job creating new stories and tales to fill out our world, it would be great to read them.  They could be connected to quests (e.g. Vol 1 Book 2, The Red Maid, we could receive a book of her tale as a quest reward) or excerpts of the history of middle earth, details of place names, I suppose the list is endless).  I really miss my library in eq2… (library 1, library 2)
• an overhaul of the housing system.  At the very least, I would really like a main horse station just outside or within our neighbourhoods, but I would drool at the thought of the item limit being increased and the hooks being done away with.  My house looks so… characterless and empty  I do miss eq2′s housing capabilities but I would settle for those two
• female human walk.  I really wish they would re-animate that (I’m sorry but I am torn between embarrassment and fits of giggles as my poor rohirrim captain waddles off down the street looking just like my toddler when he’s filled his nappy… )
• more hobbies.  I’ve now discovered fishing and its perfect for moods where you just want to relax in beautiful surroundings (even if they are pixels!) and listen to music or podcasts.  So other hobbies would be fab…  I guess they could tie in the maps to a hobby system perhaps as well as being a deed, books could also be involved in a hobby somehow.  Painting…  I’m sure other people have much better ideas than me.
• kinship overhaul.  There are several thread about this on the lotro forums with some excellent ideas.

I know that none of this is end-game instances or raids and perhaps other things (like bug fixes ) might be more important, however, it is the social and play/rp aspect that people turn to while they are waiting for groups to start etc or when they just want a quiet yet social evening.  I know these won’t be on everyone’s wishlist

Steed of the Elf-Lords

We’re both now level 75 (yay!!), have just started the Gap of Rohan questlines and have been through the new Isengard 3-man instances.  We really need to gear up so our plan is to save up our marks, medallions and any seals that we might be lucky enough to get, finish the Rohan questline and epic book, save up our Cracked Rhi Sigils and then sort ourselves out with a mixture of faction, bartered and crafted gear…  As you can see I also completed the ambassador to the elves deed (max faction with malledhrim, galadhrim and rivendell) and got my lovely horse

The new instances are fun and we’re starting to get the tactics down.  Our biggest challenges so far have been Dragnakh (didn’t manage despite getting to the 3rd platform on our first two attempts and it went steadily downhill from there – first time in though), the final ent battle in Fangorn (our 2nd time in today was much smoother and quicker though) and the horrible fire orc bit in Pits (been in once).  I like our group of warden, hunter and runekeeper though

My lore-master is now at 45 and working on various bits and pieces (epic book for legendary, quests in Forochel / Eregion and the final 2 pages needed for the books quests).  She is maxed on cooking and rep

My other alts are all sitting around the 30s.  I like both the champ and the captain, though I don’t want to tank with either lol  They’ll probably stay as solo alts and may never see a high level.  Similarly my minstrel looks like huge fun but is sitting at level 21.  I don’t have enough time quite simply.

I’m away next week and I will try to get a couple of posts scheduled and once I’m back from hols I’ll start on the sindarin place names again.

Saruman's throne. I personally think it doubles up as a pipe organ and Saruman plays while the orcs dance. I'm thinking a cross between Captain Nemo and A Night on Bare Mountain (Fantasia)