screenshots, changes and superheroes?

So the New Year brought a change I wasn’t expecting.  The four of us ended up leaving our kin and we are currently on recruit status in a new one.  The new kin seems nice and is much livelier than our old one – I haven’t been in a busy guild since EQ2 🙂  I’m not going to say any more about it aside from the fact that although this wasn’t what we had wanted, it may very well turn out for the best.  Its just so nice to log on and have people there in kinchat!

We had an evening spent in my personal alt kin house (especially chosen and decorated for our littlun to play in) and ended up just chatting away on mumble and erm dancing on the stage for ages… I promised not to mention names…

I really must learn some dance moves

I was finishing up some deeds in the Great River and took this screenshot, which I just really like and am including for some screenshotty goodness 😉

Finally, your horse may have a secret.  A mild-mannered steed during the day:

but does he have an alter-ego?:

Batman?

Captain America?

Green Arrow?

Wolverine?

I don’t often equip a halter but I was trying one out the other day and thought he looked like Batman…  I would have done more if I’d had more colour packs – you may be grateful for that 😉

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2012 roundup

I usually do a roundup of my gaming activities around this sort of time, I suppose I may as well this year too 😉  The 22nd of this month will also mark the 4th anniversary of this blog.  Good grief – 4 years of wittering 😉  anyway, onto the roundup…

Team Orange wearing their spiffy orange outfits

MMOs
I am still having a lot of fun in lotro (especially with team orange), there are niggles (store + grind) but its where my friends are and its a visually gorgeous, lore rich game.  I expect to be spending most of my MMO time there in 2013.  The only other current contenders are EQ2 and Vanguard on F2P terms.  EQ2 just holds nostalgia and a superb housing / decoration system and Vanguard, well I’d just really like to explore there more.

Single Player Games:
Spent my other gaming time either in Skyrim or Minecraft.  Both great games and this year I will probably also play some Morrowind and I’ve just found Towns (on Steam) which is a fun, addictive, city builder.  There is new content for Skyrim on the horizon and talk of Dragon Age 3 to keep my eye out for too.

The Hobbit:
We went to see this yesterday.  We really, really enjoyed it.  Yes it is a bit long and the addition of Azog did seem a bit unnecessary.  Surprise shock was that I ended up really liking Radagast – bearing in mind I can’t stand Sylvester McCoy as an actor (he ruined Doctor Who for me :P).  As Radagast though, thought he was superb.  Looking forward to the next film.

We do also have Lego Star Wars and Lego Lord of the Rings to play on the PS3 with our littlun.  Both games are a lot of fun, though Star Wars is still his favourite.  We also treated ourselves to new 23″ WS monitors for the desktops, as I was sick of the UI clutter (MMOs) taking up most of the screen.  I cannot believe the difference it has made!  As well as the UI elements taking up much less space (proportionally as well as actually), its as though we have turned the graphics settings up a notch – wasn’t expecting that difference!

Happy New Year 🙂

you shall not…

PASS!

I ventured into Moria today, trying to clear up some old deeds and realised that the 2nd half of Moria has been revamped.  I had completely forgotten about it!  I started a quest chain with Svanr the dwarf and it led to this solo instance where you receive a memory or vision.  It was a pretty cool surprise and visually its simply amazing – I love the misty stone trees in the background.  I don’t know if this quest chain was in game before.

I love the adventure xp gained from crafting, if I’m honest I’d buy levels if I could…  I took my time levelling Eldaeriel and saw most of the sights of Middle Earth, its a bit daunting to face all that again.  It must be really off-putting to anyone who starts playing and has friends at cap.  Open tapping, auto loot and auto quests across the game is great and the great Bree-vamp is also very good.  I have started the very scrooge like grind for the Yule war-steed appearance, I don’t know if I can be bothered to go the whole 120 quests or not.  I am at 40 so far and I’m certainly not paying TP to reset the quests.

Team Orange have been busy, we’re all geared up (though improvements can still be made – most notably 2nd agers for myself and Aeowulf, c’mon Bugud!) and we’ve cleared the new instances on Tier 1 and will start tackling Tier 2 challenge shortly.  The new instances are stunning and a lot of fun, am looking forward to running them again.

Iorbar’s Peak

Webs of the Scuttledells

I have been completely slacking on the blogging front – usual combination of playing, being busy and getting cold after cold…  Perhaps the New Year will be better 😉

Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to you all 🙂

my war steed

I’ve named my war steed Celebel which translates from Sindarin as Silverstar or possibly Starsilver – I like either permutation.  Now I’m 85 I can equip the second age bridle (from the epic storyline) and I named that Caranor (red day) as I thought it was a highly appropriate name for the Rohan expansion, though the thought of naming a bridle was a little strange…

I caved and I bought one dye pack so that I could dye my horse a smokey black like my favourite normal horse (the Mirkwood reputation horse).  I would like to buy some dye packs for the caparisons (and I would dearly love the elven caparison set which seems to be currently unavailable) but those are way out of my price range for now (and I’m still hoping they may adjust the dye pack price).  It would also be very cool to have markings for your horse (such as a star or a blaze) but well, I guess there is enough to spend your TP on already…

Anyway, here is Eldaeriel and Celebel.  I’m using part of the Steed of the Hunter appearance.

 

ding 85!

Last night was a night of achievements for myself and Dimzad.  Our first was successfully boinging our way up Eaworth’s beacon (I did it on my 3rd attempt if you don’t count missing the very first beam :D)  I know a lot of people are having problems with this (not surprisingly) and the only real advice I can give is that I found it easier to jump on the outside edges rather than close to the tower wall.  oh and be ready with the s (back) key because I found I was over-jumping as a rule.

Beacon at Eaworth

I have a new outfit for Eldaeriel, I got fed up with wearing brown and the outfit is blue… very blue… I haven’t decided if its too blue yet  😛  We finished our 4 quests at Eaworth and headed over to Snowbourn (we’re at ally standing for The Wold, Norcrofts and Entwash Vale now) and we picked up the quest to fish for guppies…  We fished for ages until Jaedwyn passed on a top tip of looking for a small circle with tiny fishes, and we got our updates very quickly after that (I think there is a clue in the quest text but we managed to um ignore it ;))

Dimzad fishing outside Garsfeld

Oh and I got level 85 upon the hand in of that quest 😀  So I went off to Hytbold and I had enough tokens for 2 pieces of gear 😀  My plan is to get to Ally status with all 4 factions and do targetted rebuilding quests so that I can get 3 pieces of one set and 3 pieces of another set.  I decided that the stats were more important for me initially than the set bonuses and I can get those pretty quickly.  Once I have done that, I’ll continue working on faction and rebuilding and aim for at least one complete set.

We went off and joined in killing Bugud,  I think there were about 5 of us and it was a fun and quick fight as per usual.  Dimzad, the jammy little dorf, looted a tarnished symbol of Celebrimbor 😀  I got some marks and…. *rolls eyes* a banner…

I logged in Mallendis (now lvl 80) to clear out the shared bank, and then decided to kill Bugud on her too *just in case*.  So Mallendis and Dimzad started the Bugud fight, figuring that a few more ppl would join in soon.  Well aside from a burglar, they didn’t…  I was feeling quite squishy and slightly useless as over half of my attacks were missing him.  One epic (and long) battle later, we did kill him and I didn’t get a symbol 😉  Was a long fight but a lot of fun and I was pretty chuffed to have done it.  We’re very grateful that burglar joined in though!

was a good night 🙂

weekly screenshot: night and day

I’ve neglected the weekly screenshots lately so here’s two to make up for it 😉  The screenshots picture The Argonath viewed from the back with incredible skies and reflections – absolutely gorgeous!  Its harder to see in the Night shot, but they are taken from roughly the same angle.