Steed of Spring Gardens and pet Shrews!

Supergirl rides the Steed of Spring Gardens (dyed Rose)

Oh-ho! 2014 and another Spring Festival cometh! Spring Festival holds a dear place for me because it was the first event that was in progress when I arrived in Celondim those many years ago. At the time, I was such a noob; I had amassed 7 Spring Leaves for barter and had no idea how one could earn so many. I didn't realize that the quests were so repeatable and I could come back the next day and do them again! Live and learn.

This year's festival has many of the things that were available at previous spring festivals.
Here are a few links to previous Spring Festivals:
2013 spring-festival-goodies,
2013 spring-lussuin-warsteed & spring-festival,
2012 spring-shrews-shrews-shrews,
2012 steed-of-jester-and-others.

The new things for this year's festival include 3 new cosmetic outfits, the new horse and warsteed cosmetic, and pet Shrews! Oh yes, pets are in vogue apparently now, lol! There is one huorn from Fangorn (which I haven't gotten yet because I have been festivalling since Fangorn was released), 6 chicken from Hobnanigan's (hobnanigans-fun), and now 4 shrews from this Spring Festival. 

Shrew Pets: I'm still working on getting all of the shrews. They are random rewards. (1) The Spotted Shrew is a random drop from Flower Patch nodes while doing the Flower Quest, (2) The Plain Shrew is a random reward from the Shrew Quest, (3) The Dusty Shrew is a random reward from the Maze tweens Quest, and (4) The Large Shrew is a random reward from the Enormous Shrew Quest. As you may have read from me before, I am not a fan of random rewards. On the bright side, the rewards are "Tomes" that can be traded, so you can trade/sell/buy Shrew Tomes you want/don't want. 

I would guess that the Spotted Shrew is the easiest to obtain since you have several hundred chances at picking up Flower Patch nodes within the hour long quest, and the other quests are once/9 minutes, once/day, and once/9-min-if-you-win-enormous-quest. I neglected to take a picture of the two shrews I've gotten so far, so Danaish shows off her Spotted Shrew here. He looks very happy that Danaish always carries food on-hand.

Note that the pet can be renamed with the command /cpet rename <name>

Danaish with pet shrew Shrewish

Steed of Spring Gardens: Horse time! The horse costs 40 Spring Leaves. It is very easy to barter with a little time at the Shrew stomping area.
The horse for the 2014 Spring Festival is called the Steed of Spring Gardens. Good name. Here he is. He is a pretty dapple grey pattern.

Steed of the Spring Gardens

Warsteed of Spring Gardens (aka Trellis-weave) - Default: Breaking with tradition of naming the warsteed cosmetic similar to the actual horse, this spring's warsteed cosmetic is called "Trellis-weave". Yes, this is the one that looks like the horse. The one-piece Trellis-weave Caparison is very very easy to barter at only 20 Spring Leaves. Here it is in Default colors.

Trellis-weave warsteed (spring) - Default

Trellis-weave - Crimson, dark chestnut hide, black chestnut hair:
The Trellis-weave dyes very well so take your pick on which color you like. Here is Crimson with a few browns for the horse.

Trellis-weave warsteed - crimson, dark chestnut, black chestnut

Trellis-weave - Sea Blue, dun hide, liver chestnut hair:
Here is another look with lighter colors.

Trellis-weave warsteed - Sea Blue, dun, liver chestnut

Trellis-weave - Rose, light grey hide, steel grey hair:
Ok, I just realized that I didn't exactly go diverse between light and dark colors and kept gravitating to lighter colors, but they do look snazzy. :)

Trellis-weave warsteed - Rose, light grey, steel grey

Trellis-weave - Gold, sorrel hide, seal brown hair:
Oooh. Ok, yes, the Draigoch statue offset the picture nicely, but I do like the gold and sorrel and the seal brown hair which looks very golden! 

Trellis-weave warsteed - Gold, sorrel, seal brown

Spring Festival lasts until June 3rd so there is plenty of time to get any horses you desire and possibly rack up some shrew pets, cosmetics, and other goodies. Have a great time and I'll see you soon! :)

Steed of Withywindle and a Hobby Horse

Supergirl rides the Steed of Withywindle

Hello hello! I am late getting this posted, but here are shots of the Steed of Withywindle, the December steed of the month! If this is the steed you desire, don't delay as it is scheduled to gallop from the lotro stable on December 31st. Visit all the other steeds at All-the-Steeds.

Also, don't miss the Yule festival which has a new horse with warsteed appearance and still has barterable last year's yule horse and warsteed appearance. And, for the collectors, Yule festival also has every previous Yule horse available for purchase at 70 mithril coins each. (Yule-festival-2013-wintertide-steed)

Oh yes, and one thing I didn't mention yet, a "Sack of Presents" is the reward once per day for doing at least one Yule festival quest. Personally, every day the lildanas and I try to go to Yule festival and do the "Empty Keg" quest since it takes less than one minute to complete. We get our Sacks of Presents (thank you very much) and move along (it takes about 20 minutes to cycle through all ten Angels, do one quest and get a daily present). The daily presents include things such as 150 marks, 500 marks, 30 medallions, 2 seals, 2-10 festival tokens, a couple of cosmetics, stat tomes, and Danaish got our favorite present, the very rare Hobby Horse! (All-the-Steeds/special-steeds-62).

Danaish rides the Hobby Horse - from Sack of Presents

So, there are lots of potential Yule presents this holiday season. May you find what you seek!
Here now is the December Steed, the Steed of Withywindle. :)

Steed of Withywindle: 
This Steed has an interesting colored hide, nearly pink. The outfit is greenish/yellow elven-style. Oppa! Next we will see what it looks like in a few different colors.

Steed of Withywindle

Warsteed of Withywindle - Default:
Here is the default colors. The outfit is indeed identical, and of course, the courser horse is default grey.

Warsteed of Withywindle - Default

Warsteed of Withywindle - Bay and Ered Luin:

Warsteed of Withywindle - Bay and Ered Luin

Warsteed of Withywindle - Red Roan and Crimson:

Warsteed of Withywindle - Red Roan and Crimson

Warsteed of Withywindle - Liver Chestnut and Forest Green:
This is the first time I have ever used hide color Liver Chestnut, lol! To me, it looks like a subtle blend between golden brown and green so I thought it complemented the natural greens of Withywindle. :)

Warsteed of Withywindle - Liver Chestnut and Forest Green

I hope you have a fabulous rest of the year. Y'all come back now. :)

Yule festival’s end, 2012

It feels like I wrote more about Yule festival than most festivals this year! the previous post listed a few more Yule links.

The clincher was that there were a lot of horses and warsteeds to talk about, which got the Steed Gallery fired up (all-steeds).

The lildanas always show up for festival, though the hobbit quadruplets usually stay home. This Yule festival however saw two very important reasons for them to come out.

#1 - Sack of Presents: Everyone who showed up to Yule Festival and did one quest got a sack of presents. It didn’t take us long to figure out that the sack of presents was worth camping out in Frostsbluff to get daily. Gifts we got from the sacks included Festival tokens, a special hat and cloak, stat tomes, Danaish got a hobby horse, and level 25 Danadalyn even won a Tarnished Symbol that she gave me to build my level 85 2nd age LI.

#2 – Festival Quest leveling: The quests were all considered as “on-level” quests. That didn’t do so much for me since I was at level 85, although the LIs all advanced with iXP for each quest. The lildanas were all level 25 or level 6, and never really leave the craft-halls except to come to festival. So, going to festival, it was like they were getting free xp for doing what they planned to do anyway. What a win! That reminds me, craft-leveling, I’ll talk soon about the joy of how crafters get xp just for crafting. J

A few friends: As always, festival is a good time to see people who you might not see often. Here are a few friends who I saw at Yule.

Bluepop has a sparkling good time at Yule.

Mysterixox and I wait in line for the Frostbluff Theater. Myst is the talent behind the Lotro Academy podcast Lotro Academy and thinks I am Awesome. J http://lotroacademy.com/?p=962

Aeronwy and I sport matching Fleet-footed Goats to stroll around the town of Frostbluff.

Betzi and Danaszar brave the winter’s cold to run through the snow toward a snowball fight.

Lildanas: The lil-danas As mentioned, because of the Sack of Presents (and general good time of festivalling), the lildanas showed up for the party. Here are a few parting shots to close Yule 2012.

DanaClaus disappears just before Christmas, muttering something about checking lists and and working off cookie weight. Yule festival is one of his favorites.

Danaish rides her new Hobby Horse around Frostbluff like a hobbit on too much sugar and pipeweed.

DanaOnar, one of the hobbit quadruplets, grips a Spring fest giant flower in one hand and a new Yule mug in the other. She enjoyed the warmth of a Spiral Horned Cloak from one of the Sack of Presents.

Danadelion poses stoically with one of the snowmen who leans his head on her shoulder.

Yule Festival was a great time and we look forward to seeing you again next year!

The Hobby-horse, lotro’s 100th Steed

Danaish and I discussed whether the Hobby-horse is in fact a “horse”.

Since she won one in a sack of presents at Yule Festival 2012, she was clearly in favor of it. To be included in the Steed Gallery (all-the-steeds) though, I needed better information.

After careful consideration, the Hobby-horse rates as a Mount for one primary reason: it shows up on the Skills “Mounts” tab, the same as all the rest of the steeds. :D

The hobby-horse has one of the slowest speeds at +40%. …I mean, it is a stick with wheels after all, what did you want? Now, I could not imagine riding into combat on a Hobby-horse, when a well-dressed Warsteed is under me (look around the gallery link above or the site for lots of warsteeds: warsteed-cosmetic-looks, flying-warsteed, captain, victory-and-dol-baran, warden, wintry-yule-warsteed). However, for tooling around festival, it is certainly a conversation starter!

So, I bring you, the “Hobby-horse”, which has a certain irony as it is the 100th steed in the Gallery. 

As nice as Danaish looks riding around on a stick, the Hobby-horse is even more fetching when ridden by a hobbit. Tomeoric sends these two pictures…

In new Bree…

In Evendim…

Spring Shrews, Shrews, Shrews!

Hello hello! I know… you came looking for Ingolemo… but I have to get something off my queue.

Shrews!

Shrews... Shrews... Shrews... Exciting word, yes?

The Spring festival ended two weeks ago and I haven’t written a Spring festival wrap-up post! I will obsess over it if I don’t get it written. I was trying to think which festival I like most, and decided that I like all of them. I love the Haunted Burrow, and the Shrews & flowers, and summer fishing, and even Frostbluff (though the idea of stealing from people makes me sad, so I normally just eat too much food instead).

Spring festival holds a special place for me, because I arrived in Middle Earth during the 2010 Spring festival. As an elf, I started my adventure in Celondim, and I recall seeing the big orange message throughout Ered Luin concerning “Stomp-a-shrew in Duillond”. It took a bit to find Duillond and understand that a festival was going on, but I was hooked.

I’ve said it before, but it still rings true that festival is a great way to break from the routine and meet new people as well as celebrate with people you know. Spring festival was no exception as I got the honor of meeting a few people like Tomeroric, Cessy, and Llynthe.


Here is the most noble Tomeoric. He caught up with me in Duillond and said he actually recognized me from this blog! It is common to ask a fan for his picture and autograph, right? He graciously obliged for this photo.

I had to chase Cessy down into Moria, having missed taking her picture in Duillond with the shrews or flowers. (Note to self, remember to charge the camera each time I go out.) Cessy shows that she can work a Supergirl pose! Own it, girl! Watch out boys, Cessy is Fearless!

And, Llynthe! I was saying hello to people I pass on the street when I came across Llynthe. I was thinking... "she looks so familiar. did we do Foundry? no. Roots? no. Moors? no. Some older content? no." Llynthe is the famous writer of http://thehobbitsinthestories.wordpress.com/.

It is a bit mind-numbing during the Spring festival, but I liked the collecting flowers quest! It is peaceful to roam the countryside collecting flowers, lol! The rewards for collecting flowers were… really lame, hehe. Of course, the only good thing to come out of it was the Steed of the Jester (Jester), which is just a matter of luck, and I got enough Huge flowers that all the hobbit quads could have one. If I was the boss, I might change this quest to reward spring leaves or marks. Even I, who really enjoyed it, couldn’t imagine collecting even one more flower after about 4 hours of it during festival.

Danadalyn (with Cave-claw Masked Steed) paid a visit to the Hobbit golfing statue in Brockenborings. On the "Bullroarer’s Challenge", it takes a bit of patience, steely determination, and nerve to “just go for it”, but the lildanas all got the fence walking done and spring deed completed. That is a fun one. J

"When I grow up, I want to be just like Danaszar!" 
Indeed. Me too little hobbit quest guy. Me too.

Love the festival maze. The only downside is that one can only do it about 4 times a day for collecting barter leaves. I think Danaclaus was more interested talking to the Wandering Elves than actually mazing.

 It is a good place to run crazy, have a few Dire Beers, scold some naughty tween hobbits… Good times.

Symbelmyne Spring horses for all. It suited Danaish quite well as she prepared for a ride across the countryside.

My love/hate part of the festival is the "consumables for deed". If you use 300 of a certain consumable, you will be allowed to do that specific action as a skill. For example, this spring's consumables were the Doom-shrooms and D.R.A.G.O.N. I totally love setting a goal and achieving it, especially with these consumables.

What I Hate though... I deal with the fact that the consumables take many festival tokens (ex. spring leaves), typically about 180 tokens per 300 consumables. However, the really bad part, which is on my top 5 least favorite things in lotro... is that the consumable has a 5 minute Cooldown. With some of the ones in the past (youll-yule-festival), they were on the same CD timer. Fortunately, the spring ones were not, but we still must wait 5 minutes between uses. At best, that is about 25 hours of throwing tricks at other people. AND... they do not advance while in a raid, and they do not work in the Ettenmoors. 

So, you have to be (1) somewhere with people, (2) not in the moors, (3) not in a raid, (4) be willing to continue to throw obnoxious things at people as often as the CD timer expires. I need to make buttons for "/thank you for helping me with my deed" and "sorry I had to hit you. again. with a doom-shroom". My goal is to finish the 300 by the start of summer festival, so I can get more things to throw and wait on long CDs.

Here is one of my victims getting a face full of of exploding shroom and dragon fire.

Alas, spring festival only happens during the spring (or in lotro’s case… early summer). I will see you again next year Mr. Shrew.

Finally, here is Danaszar in her Anniversary hat, Yule robe, riding a Dusk steed, in front of the Angel’s Draigoch statue (draigoch-statue-lil-danas-moving-day). It doesn’t have anything to do with Spring festival, but it was a nice picture and I told her I would post it.

I’m already excited for Summer festival! It must be coming up soon-ish!

Happy 5th Anniversary, lotro!

Happy 5^th Anniversary to lotro!

And Thank you all for visiting Danania.net! Last Friday, the site saw its 10,000th visitor, which is absolutely amazing to me as the site is right at 2 months old. Thank you! спасибо! 谢谢 Danke! Salamat! Bedankt! Merci! Thanks, eh?! (...to my Canadian friends).

There is so much excitement in Middle Earth and the Anniversary party is in full swing! It is such a hit that the party's end has been extended from April 30 to May 9.

I have been having a great time and I hope you are also! Often, when festivals start, I rarely leave to do anything else. This time my friend Lartessa set up a Helegrod run and I couldn’t pass that up (still need to kill Thorog, but at least now I am eligible to open the Dragon Wing when the opportunity presents itself), and Nimitar organized a visit to Ost Dunhoth and I had never had the opportunity to see much of that and we totally ran the tables (I got some good pictures for another post).

However, today’s post is about the Anniversary party.  Since the previous horse post went over so well, we will have more horses today. J

First of all, when planning to maximize fun, I always visit party planner Goldenstar at  casualstrolltomordor.com  . I would say I just visit for the highlights, but in reality I study and absorb everything she posts like I am preparing for the medical boards.

One of the best things about the Anniversary festival is obviously the fireworks. Middle Earth has had fireworks before but nothing on the scale of what came with the Anniversary party.

Here is a shot of me visiting the Methel stage in the Shire. The funny thing is, it seems like I’ve seen that stage before when I quested through the Shire as a much younger elf, but that has been so long ago...

I wanted to ask my friend Gandalf about it, but he seemed preoccupied, like his mind was elsewhere. He muttered something about hidden hobbits, but it was drowned out by the blasts and flash of fireworks around us. So we just stood and enjoyed the festivities.

One of the Anniversary quests, Firework Explorer, takes you on a tour to launch fireworks and bring festivities to other parts of Middle Earth, which earns the title “Firecracker”. The most far-reaching place is Elrond’s house in Rivendell. That is an easy leap for a Supergirl but was no small task for the lil danas. Fortunately, there are kind hunters and captains around to help out. Memyr delivered all the lil danas safely to aid in the spreading of party cheer.

OMG! Memyr, why are you on one knee in front of Danaszar?? <blush, omgomgomg> 

Whew, just lost a contact lens?

When Danadelion saw Rivendell for the first time, it brought back memories of just how lovely it is. Imagine fighting through the Trollshaws, hurriedly crossing the Ford of Bruinen, arriving at Rivendell, and finally seeing this breathtaking sight?

We had a great time at the beer brawl! There are three versions: Beginner (1 token), Intermediate (2 tokens), Expert (3 tokens). As long as there aren’t 50 people in the arena and you aren’t being targeted specifically to fail for some reason, the Expert version is totally achievable, gives the most tokens, and leads toward a deed which awards the title “Battered, Bruised and Contused” for 25 expert wins. For hitting others 200 times in brawls, you can earn the title “Clubber”.

When you win on Expert, you glow for 3 minutes in the glory of your victory. Danadalyn wears her glow proudly.

When you launch 50 fireworks of one color, you get an Anniversary token. When you launch 50 fireworks of all 6 colors, you earn the title of “Master Blaster”. DanaClaus was having good fun whacking people around and working toward the Master Blaster title. The interim between brawls is a good time to launch fireworks.

Macswife was one of the first people I met who had the /toast emote from the Lost Invitations quest. Ok, so it isn’t the most flattering picture. Lol. It is funny and the emote is a good one.

Even the lil dana hobbits get into the act. Danaarodel, the “keeper of dana outfits”, dressed up in a green imp outfit complete with oversized flower from the spring festival and did a lil toast-ing herself.

Danaish was the first lil dana to get a steed from the Lost Invitations. Here she is riding the “Steed of the Dusk Watch” (aka Warden’s steed). It has very nice leather-embossed tack.

It took a bit, but I also got the Lossoth steed from the Lost Invitations. The picture isn’t the best; I was mostly asleep when I took it and it was a black horse in the dead of night (Note: If you are awake, wait til daylight to take better pictures.)

Definitely, one of the best things about festival time is that it brings people together, some of whom you otherwise don’t see often. Here is a shot of my friend Jastirria who I had not seen in ages. When I was a level 48 noob, Jas was the one who pointed out that I had to go get a Legendary Item (even though I had no idea what it was or where to get one) and came and picked me up out of Forochel and drop kicked me into the Gates of Moria. Some people and events you never forget. Thanks Jas.

Danadelion actually won a Steed of the Champion in the champion’s lottery! This steed is the first and only steed we have ever won in the lottery. Of course, I went and bought one for myself, but I’m not catty and will let Delion have her moment in the sun. Like the rest, it is a beautiful horse. :)

In the “can’t have too many steeds category”, we all went and got our Anniversary steeds. The new one is the Fireworks steeds. It actually does randomly shoot fireworks out the saddle pack.

The 2011 Anniversary steed is the white garbed one.  For fun, I scrolled back 9000 pictures  and pulled last year's picture out of archive to show the steed. That day, for that picture, I tried on the 2011 Anniversary clothing that I had borrowed from my friend Sparowen. (Yes, I probably should have taken off the red gloves…)

Alas, time to go to sleep and dream. May your festival spark and pop and your dreams be pony-filled.