Limmerien has finally been making her way through Gondor. She hit level 100 a few days ago, and has been enjoying her time in this region a lot, although she still has a lot to see. She’s currently helping the find folks of Tagrent, and will soon be making her way towards Dol Amroth. Good times!
Let’s hear some cheers for finally completing Busy Bee deed!
Shiny new cloak.
Limmerien on her warsteed in West Gondor.
A pretty little farming community in West Gondor.
Just having a pint at the Bird & Baby with my fox. His name is Mulder. He likes to hang out on the counter and scare Carlo Balgrove, the tavern keep. Mulder is pretty harmless though. 🙂
Logged into Lotro tonight and went to Landroval just because I hadn’t logged into those toons in a long time. Randomly stumbled upon a RP concert in Micheal Delving and ended up hanging out for about an hour. This reminding me of what I love about this game, people getting together in middle earth and having a good time! It’s funny how for so long I couldn’t go a day without either playing or thinking about playing, or reading blogs or listening to podcasts about Lotro. Oh those were the good old days.  Anyway I don’t know if this was a regular event or a random thing, but it really made my day. Here’s a couple screenshots I grabbed while I was there.
So I created a beorning. Her name is Limmer. As of this posting she is level 9, and hanging out in Combe. Pretty fun so far!
I finally uploaded some screenshots to my flickr so I can continue the 30 day picture challenge. More like the 12 month picture challenge in my case, ha ha! This is just part 1 of my house tour, I took so many screenshots I thought it’d be best to break it into a few posts.
Today’s challenge is Day 12 Where the heart is – a picture of your ingame home (kin or individual). I thought I’d expand this and highlight a few of my favorite things, and take you on a little tour of my humble abode. I’ll try to link as many of the items to their Lotro Wiki pages as much as possible, in case you want to get them for yourselves! My house is at 2 Long Street. It is one of the deluxe homes in the Bree-land Homesteads.
So the picture above is a view of my house and the front yard. On the right you’ll see the lovely Lorien Garden Gate. To the left of that you will see Caerog’s Arm. I know, sounds kinda gross, but once you’ve planted it in your yard it really looks nice, lovely flowers growing on it and such. Quite a lovely trophy for defeating CaerlĂ»g in The Water Wheels: Nalâ-dĂ»m instance. To the left of that you will see the Summer Hammock, it’s quite a lovely spot to while away the afternoon! In the back next to the house you can see the chicken coop. Here is a close up shot:
Isn’t it cute?
And here is a closer shot of the Lorien Garden Gate and Caerog’s Arm. They really do go nicely together, they both have pretty flowers on them! 🙂
In my next post I’ll take you inside!
A few weeks back I was questing in Eregion with a friend. We were kind of wandering near Hollin Ridge so we decided to do the hidden deed there, Ridge-Racer. To complete this deed you have to jump/run around the ridge til you get to the top. I often wonder how people randomly figure these things out, I never would have if I hadn’t heard of it before, that’s for sure!
If you’ve never done this deed, the first time it’s kind of tricky. I totally recommend this youtube video I found, which helped me figure it out. The first jump is definitely the hardest, basically you wanna jump from the top side down. I recommend watching the video a few times and then giving it a try, don’t give up if it takes you a few times. I’m not well known for my ability to do these kind of jumping tricks in games, like those Hytbold dailies in Eaworth where you have to run around on the wire or jump to the top of the beacon, or even worse, trying to get to some of those datacrons in SWTOR! This one was not too tricky though, if I could do it I’m sure most everyone else could too! The view from the top is great, plus you get a cool title, totally worth it! 🙂
Anyone else have any tips for accomplishing this deed? Have you done it before? Did you think it was difficult? Share in the comments!
Gladden completed the Bounder’s Bounty today, woohoo! 🙂
Sorry it’s been so long since my last post! I have been busy but things will be slowing down now that summer is winding down and I have a bunch of great posts planned including finishing up the 30 Day Picture Challenge.
Till then, I’ll leave you with a few pics of my Lore-master Limmia. I have been playing her a lot lately. I’ve taken her from 43 to 54 in the past couple weeks! I’m going to try and get her to 85 before Helm’s Deep. I’ll update you on my progress!
Limmia with her pet rabbit
Limmia taking a swim with her linx and enjoying the view
Fashion fiend – your most impressive outfit.
I change my look a lot on my characters. It really depends on what I’m doing. In Forochel? Need a warm hooded cloak. Going to a festival? Need a pretty dress. Going to a raid? Need something more functional and serious, lol.
Here are a few of my favorites. I apologize I don’t have the names of the items, will update later with those when I get in-game.
Top left: One of my favorite cloaks dyed burgundy, if I remember right it’s a store purchase.
Top Right: Limmerien’s favorite hat, was a drop from an instance if I remember right.
Bottom left: A fun outfit that includes a yule scarf, fireworks backpack, light armour that was a drop somewhere in Dunland (or maybe a quest reward) and dyed red, and a red wizard-like hat, dyed red.
Bottom right: A pretty flower circlet and a rose-dyed festival dress.
This post started out as a reply to Knowfere’s post titled Lotro- A Love/Hate Relationship, but it got long and I decided I’d just expand it into a post on my blog instead, lol. This has turned into my longest post yet, and just a small disclaimer, I don’t quite have a photographic memory so some of the details could be slightly wrong or fuzzy. 🙂
And early pic of my rune-keeper Limmerien, probably around level 20 if I had to guess.
How I got started
I started playing the game in 2009, a few months before the Mirkwood expansion. I had never played an MMO before Lotro, and my gaming experience was pretty much limited to the Sims and old NES games, so at first I was just getting used to the really basic stuff, and only played off and on. At the time my husband also played the game, and he would help me when I was having trouble figuring things out (he had played since beta, but doesn’t really play anymore). Truth be told I would have never even started playing the game if he hadn’t introduced it to me and helped me a long while I was figuring it all out, which is funny now considering he doesn’t even play it anymore and I do.
It wasn’t til about a year or so in that I really got hooked, and I would spend hours playing on evenings and weekends (sometimes I still do). When I couldn’t play because I had to be at work or something I would often be reading about the game, listening to podcasts, etc. Â Unfortunately I didn’t get in on the Lifetime Account deal when I had the chance, but I’ve been a subscriber since I started playing.
Edbhard (pronouced Edward) my husband’s guardian and Limmenel (my hunter) in Carn Dum.
I had lots of fun leveling up my first character, my hunter Limmenel and exploring all of the areas in the game. She was at 65 for a while when 65 was the cap, and I got to experience some of the fellowship and raid instances a long the way, and after a while, at some point, I also leveled up my second character to 65, my RK, which then pretty much became my main. At that time my kin did not have a lot of folks interested in endgame raiding, so I didn’t really experience a lot of the content for that expansion, but we still did a lot of fun stuff together. I really began to make some connections and friends with the folks in my kin, planning events and such, and eventually becoming an officer.
A few of us from my kin (Creations of the Light) in the Spider Wing of Helegrod.
Being your typical altoholic, I’ve created a character for each class (so 9 characters!) on my main server and even a couple on Landroval for the RP events. I’ve organized “Ladies Night” events for the girl gamers in my kin to get together and play. I also started an alt leveling group in my kin that played together weekly leveling together and going through some of the old content (an idea I got from Goldenstar of CSTM fame). I love crafting items for new kinnies and helping them as much as I can.
Kora, Limm and Ril’s alts from our alt-leveling group, posing in Tinnudir.
Rise of Isengard
The leveling process from 65-75 was a bit of a challenge for me on my rune-keeper after about level 71. For some reason it was like the mobs got insanely more powerful and I was super squishy, I died all the time on stuff that was my level, when at 65 I felt invincible. It was a frustrating time to be leveling solo, but I somehow managed to pull through it (with some help from my friends and kinnies for sure), which was great because I did a lot of raiding at 75 (although disclaimer, my definition of “a lot” might be laughable to some real raiders, but it was more than I’d ever done).
Getting ready for the Tower of Orthanc.
Basically this all came about because some time around or before when the RoI expansion came out my kin joined an alliance on our server with a few other small kins, and suddenly we had enough players seriously interested in doing end game instances and raids. In my mind that time and endgame content was like the golden age for my kin & alliance as we did a lot of raiding and played together. I’ll never forget the night we beat Saruman for the first time, it was so exciting!
Lilareth, Limmerien and Kinleth posing after completing Sarumon’s Ring in the Tower of Orthanc raid.
Riders of Rohan
Fast forward to the RoR expansion. I’ve not played as much during this expansion as I had previously, and there are a few reasons for this. One being real life, everyone knows how that goes. Another main reason is that the end game stuff just has not appealed to me much at all. That’s not to say I don’t like the expansion, I do think it’s a beautiful area and there are some interesting story lines, and I have enjoyed the warsteeds, but for what ever reason the raids feel more like a grind than ever before, and I just don’t have the interest or time to do that grind. And don’t even get me started on Hytbold, it was an interesting idea, and I like it in theory, doing quests to help rebuild a town, that is cool, but it was like pulling teeth to get me to grind out all the rep and repeatables. I just didn’t have the drive to do it, in fact it was just this week that I finished kindred with the Sutcrofts to get my final piece of that armour.
A beautiful view.
Another reason I just don’t play Lotro as much as I used to, is the amount of connection/lag/just plain trouble I’ve experienced since this expansion hit. Before RoR I was able to easily run the game with my graphics at high, and rarely had disconnection problems, but since, I can barely run the game on medium, most of the time I run on low or very low, and currently I am having so many problems even logging into my main character that I just want to scream. I’ve submitted a support ticket and have been trying to get to the bottom of this for almost a month at this point and nothing seems to be working. It’s so frustrating not be able to play your main character, I gotta tell ya. It’s like a cruel joke. Oh, is this is your favorite? Ok, you can’t play it. Now some of these problems could be caused by my computer, or my internet service, or Turbine, but in the end it just means I don’t play as much because of the frustration factor. Sometimes I think, you know, maybe I’ll just go play Swtor, it’s free to play now and I don’t get horrible lag over there or maybe I’ll go play Rift… and those games are fun for a while, but they aren’t Lotro. I like Swtor and Rift, but I love Lotro.
Boo!
And while I’m airing grievances, I also feel some of the same frustration many others feel about the game- like prices in the turbine store; silly hobbit gifts that just give me more crap than any thing worthwhile to fill up my bags, how grindy some of the stuff feels- I could go on but I won’t.
Kin party and our traditional run to Trestlebridge to jump off.
Ultimately I still love this game, flaws and all. One of the things that is keeping me tethered to Lotro is the friends I have made in my kinship and alliance, some that have even turned into real life friends. And it’s not even about tackling the hardest raids or achieving something amazing (although that is fun), some of the most fun nights I’ve had are just hanging with my friends deed grinding in Moria while chatting in vent.
Limmerien in Lothlorien.
The other thing that I just love about Lotro is the setting and the stories-Middle Earth. I love being able to walk around in the Shire, to go to Lothlorien and see the golden wood, hang out in Bree and have a pint at the Prancing Pony. I also love the festivals (for a few days before the grind gets boring, ha ha), I love all the pretty horses and making my character a new outfit (I am a girl, after all, lol), decorating my house and being interested in photography in real life I also really enjoy taking screenshots in-game. Basically I just love Tolkien’s works and being able to experience and “live” in that world on this level has been priceless to me and will probably keep me around as long as the game is around.
Well, that’s about it for now. If you’ve made it to the end of this rambling, far-too-many-screenshots post I’d like to thank you for reading and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Limm Games 