Yule Festival 2013: Wintertide Steed and more

Supergirl rides the Wintertide Steed

Fahoo fores, Dahoo dores,
Welcome Christmas come this way!
Fahoo fores, Dahoo dores,
Welcome Christmas, Christmas day!
Welcome, welcome fahoo ramus, 
Welcome, welcome dahoo damus,
Christmas day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp.

Yay! It is the most wonderful time of the year again.
That's right, it's Yule Festival time in Lotro.
and with it comes Yule Horses! 

Last Yule festival, 
showed off a fancy steed (wintry-yule-warsteed),
but could only be bartered by logging in and doing all of the quests on at least 9 of 20 days during Christmas... not a popular design choice (youll-yule-celebrate-2012),
And Yule festival before that saw earlier Frostbluff fun (youll-yule-festival-2011).

Guide: Your itinerary for this Yule festival 2013 as always is brought to you by Goldenstar; fabulous Guide-Maker of Middle Earth. (CSTM/lotro-yule-festival-guide-2013/). I won't repeat all of the details here; I just mostly show the pretty ponies. :)

There are not many "new" things this Yule, and that is totally ok. Sometimes, the familiar is a good place to be, especially since there are so many things for a newcomer to see. New things for 2013 include: horse, warsteed cosmetic, 3 cosmetic outfit pieces, and a title "The Bard". The horse costs 80 tokens, the warsteed costs 100 tokens, the cosmetics cost 135 tokens for all three total, and the title is acquired by doing things in the Frostbluff Theater (my title auto-granted as I logged in from having done everything in years past). 

All the Yule Horses! True or not, I am going to claim that the developers and decision-makers of lotro actively take advice from my blog as several of my top design changes have already come to pass... (Top-11-things-I-would-change-When-I-rule-Middle-Earth). #10 on that list was to make past festival horses available, where I wrote... "I recommend putting all applicable festival horses in the store each festival (those older than the previous year)".

A perfect solution was devised where you can now barter for all previous Yule horses near the entrance gate to Frostbluff! Thank you, thank you. I like this picture of all the previous Yule horses standing together. :)

All the previous Yule horses visit Frostbluff 2013

As the reality hit that one of my long lost horses was finally coming to the stable, it took me about 0.2 seconds to spend the 70 mithril coins to get him. :) Here is a picture of the 2008 Yule Festival horse that I have pined about in multiple articles through the years. As always, you can find all of the other horses in the "All-the-Steeds" section.

Supergirl gets her long lost Yule Festival Steed from 2008

Wintertide Steed:
The Wintertide Steed is the 2013 Yule festival horse. It is easy to acquire as it barters for 80 Festival tokens. As it turned out, I had enough left over tokens from last year to get the horse as I walked in the Frostbluff gate. If you are just starting out, familiarize yourself with Frostbluff, do all the quests, and you will amass a good pile of tokens each day.

The horse is a lovely dapple grey with snowflake pattern on his outfit.

Wintertide Steed

Wintertide Warsteed - Default:
The Wintertide "Warsteed" consists of the one warsteed cosmetic, the Wintertide Caparison. It is the same lovely snowflake pattern as the Wintertide Steed horse. I will show a few more color variations next. The pattern really pops and comes alive with a little color... of course, I do tend to be a bit Vibrant. :)

Wintertide Steed - Default

Wintertide Warsteed - Light Grey and Sea Blue:

Wintertide Warsteed - light grey and sea blue

Wintertide Warsteed - Charcoal and Black:

Wintertide Warsteed - Charcoal and Black

Wintertide Warsteed - Chestnut and Crimson:
I actually went with Black Chestnut hair and Dark Chestnut hide here to give it a little constrast. The crimson really pops, as do many of the colors.

Wintertide Warsteed - Chestnut and Crimson

Wintertide Warsteed - White and Evendim Blue:

Wintertide Warsteed - White and Evendim Blue

Thank you! Thank you for coming to http://www.danania.net/ throughout the year, even just to check up on me. It has been an interesting last few months... and I am excited to possibly have a smidge more time to write about the various things I want to write about in lotro! One thing to get out there quickly... you may or may not have seen that there IS a December steed of the month, the Steed of Withywindle. I do intend to show some pictures, hopefully very soon as December is more than half over. I also wanted to show off the West Rohan horses, and talk about virtues, the new trait system, RKs in the new regime (how to trait, new skills, etc), math updates, Big Battles, Helm's Deep... so many fun things. :)

Take care Free People of Middle Earth and i will see you soon. :)

1st Age LIs, Rohan healing rings, fans!

1st Age Legendary Items for level 85: Update 10 brought symbols for crafting 1st Age LIs for level 85. The symbols drop in Erebor Raids at level 85. When U10 released (03/06), the symbols would drop in T1 Erebor Raids. Turbine, deciding that was no good, pulled the plug on 1st agers in T1 for update U10.02 (03/20) and now they only drop in T2 Raids. While I gave it a shot, I was 0 for 44 T1 raid wins on receiving 1st Age symbols during the 2-week period. Sigh, rotten luck.

There are 3 ways to get 1st Age LIs:

• Random rare drop in T2 Erebor raids (and T2 challenge),
• Barter for it with Seals at the Skirmish vendor named “Legendary Items”,
• Buy it from the AH since it is not bound. Right now, they are occasionally listed on Arkenstone at ≈ 1000g, yowsa.

So, your options are T2 Raid persistence & luck, earning the seals to barter via many of the 3-person, 6-person, or raid instances and skirmishes, or having a fat barter wallet and fluid AH market. Instances earn 2 – 10 seals per run. As mentioned in the previous article, having a few people around to group with, you can pick your favorite instances and make a fun time of it earning lots of various loot and seals in a short time.

Occasionally, I am able to have time to Raid and my kinship gathers for a Raid once or twice a week, so Random rare drop is not out of the question… I’m just not holding my breath hoping for a lucky roll in a T2 raid win. I’m actually very thankful that we are allowed to barter such an item. In olden days, random luck was often the only option to get nice things. I consider the barter option a huge step forward for the game.

There are 3 different Barter prices at the skirmish vendor for a 1st Age symbol:

• Win on all three T1 Erebor Raids (Defense of Erebor T1 deed), then barter for 488 Seals.
• Win on all three T2 Erebor Raids (Defense of Erebor T2 deed), then barter for 427 Seals.
• With on all three T2 Challenges (Defense of Erebor Challenge), then barter for 366 Seals.

At this time, I do not know anyone who has won all three T2 Raids at level 85 or the Challenges though I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone show up with a post on youtube one day in the not too distant future. There are a couple of videos out there showing The Fires of Smaug T2 Challenge now. The T2 Lonely Mountain feels impossible, lol.

Here is what my “The Road to Erebor” deed looks like right now. It is worth a horse to complete the Meta-deed… so, it is on my list. Granted, it is on my “long-term” list, kinda like Tower of Orthanc and Dol Guldur level 85 T2 Challenge, both of which have horses that I need to acquire. Someday… someday…

Eswe’s new healing rings.

In the previous post for Update 10.1, I mentioned that Eswe had a couple of new Healer Rings (u10-rohan-rings-complete-hytbold-in-15)  so I wanted to show what they look like for comparison. Clearly, one is for Minstrels and RKs and the other one is for Captains. The RK ring takes the same Sage upgrade path explained in the post on Rohan Rings. 

Supergirl SuperFans!

I really am excited when people tell me that they are fans of the site! I hope I come across politely. Sometimes I am carrying on up to a dozen conversations at once so hopefully I say thank you and am cordial if we meet. :D

Here are two people I met this week:

Parnassica is leader of her kin and had kind words to say about the site. Thank you! Forgive me that I am not the best at taking pictures of hobbits… I often just get the tops of hobbit heads.

Arkandon was playing the part of “bird in a tree” when I flew out to Ost Guruth. I am amazed that people figure out how to climb up trees and on buildings. I am sure he will do great at “Ridge Racer” in Eregion when he gets there. ;)

Goldenstar and Merric talked about danania.net on a recent podcast (CSTM: episode190) and Tomrica transcribed it for me. It is quite the great situation when the lead in is that I am fans of my fans. Really though, I am of all my fans, just not all of them run a Mecca-site like CSTM, lol! Tsk, tsk… I’m going to have to remind Goldenstar what my name is… mebbe I will put it in my blog title and website name… oh wait… :D

Here is the transcription from that section of the podcast:

(in reference to the new store horse, steed-of-dagorlad and CSTM: steed-of-dagorlad-available-through-april)

G = Goldenstar & M = Merric

G: If she didn't tell me it was the sea blue color, I would have been like, oh ok... where's the color?  Oh and I should say that the color screenshots I got from Danica.  She is a blogger who sent me it.. and you can find it at... oh wait, it's not Danica...

M: It's Dan-an-eee-ah... it's the Super-Girl of Lorien.

G: It's the Super-Girl!  I always just call her Super-Girl!  D-a-n-a-n-i-a.net is her blog.  So she was nice enough to send me screenshots of what it looks like dyed.

M: Yea... she's a biiiiiiig horse fan.  She's awesome.

G: Yea... yup.

M: She's a great blogger, if you are not following her, you need to follow her.

G: She's super nice, she was like, "Do you need a picture? Here you go..."

M: Yea.. if you are not following her, you need to - it's at D-a-n-a-n-i-a.net

My Note: I don’t know how to write in phonetics, but it is… Daaah-naaah-nEE-aaaah :)

Steed of Dagorlad

Steed of Dagorlad! While I do not know if “steed of the month” is the new mode for lotro, it has certainly worked out that way so far this year (steed-of-nightwood, steed-of-khundolar, steed-of-warden). For April, we have the Steed of Dagorlad in the lotro store! 

Many thanks to Goldenstar (CSTM: steed-of-dagorlad-available-through-april) for advising that one needs to look for the steed by name (type “Dagorlad” in the search) because at least as of last night, it was not in the mount area of the store where one would think he should be. And Yay! She posted a picture of me on this Warsteed for her article! Check out the link.

As always, you can see all the steeds in lotro right here at danania.net on the Horse Corral page, All the Steeds.

Let’s take a good look at Dagorlad!

Steed of Dagorlad: Here is the basic Horse.  He is a brown horse with black and chain link outfit and orange trim. Behind the saddle, he carries a sword and shield on one side and a pack of five daggers on the other side. We can see the dagger-side better in subsequent pictures.

Warsteed of Dagorlad: This is a shot of the Warsteed wearing the default colors on the Dagorlas cosmetics. The Warsteed set comes with Leggings, Saddle, Caparison, Halter (head), and “Accessory”. The accessory, in the Gear slot, is the shield, sword, and daggers.

Red Roan and default cosmetic colors: The sharp looking orange accents and armor inspired me to get a new hide color; I went with Red Roan. 

Red Roan with Sea Blue trim: The cosmetics do not dye much. Only the trim lines accept dye. I went with a Sea Blue on all the Dagorlad cosmetics to show off what dyes. That is a tough one that the saddle stays that orange trim. Do the other trim colors complement or clash with the undyeable orange?

Black with Yellow trim and Dagger-side: The dark halter and caparison do mesh well with the dark horse also; actually I think I like all the color horses. This shot shows what yellow looks like on the cosmetics. It also shows off the Daggers that are the opposite side from the sword and shield.

Black, no Gear, black trim: Ok, I think I found my winner. What I didn’t like above was the Orange trim. I’m sure it works awesome for some people, but I limit orange to citrus and summer clothes. The fix? Take the saddle and gear off, and no more orange. The Caparison looks sharp enough without the saddle. The gear still picks up some orange around the daggers so I dropped that as well. Now, the warsteed looks slick and lean!

Black giddyup pose: Here is the same look of Black trim on Black hide, no leggings, no saddle, no gear. The silver and its dressing still complements it well. And, at least today, I like this look the best. :D

Update - By Request: Here is the Black warsteed, black trim, wearing the basic Default Black saddle. I noticed several nice saddles in the various options, but this one is totally free and looks great with the Dagorlad set. :) Thanks for the suggestion Elahedor!

 

Steed of Nightwood

Steed of Nightwood is here! New month, new steed! I don’t know if this is Turbine’s new action plan to deliver a new store steed every month, but the Steed of Khundolar was released in February and ran the entire month, and now the Steed of Nightwood is released the first of March and will run the entire month. Does 2 months constitute a trend? We shall see.

I first saw this steed on CSTM @ CSTM: steed-of-nightwood-now-available. /bow to Goldenstar for always keeping the community informed on all things lotro. She would be a great marketing or community relations manager for Turbine.

Steed of Nightwood is a dark brown color with a light brown tail. His dressing is black and beige underlay, silver patterns, with a gold saddle. His leggings look more protective than most. They look like soccer shin guards. Here is the original Steed of Nightwood.

As a Warsteed, only the silver stripe patterns dye. With the black part of the dressing always staying black, this gives the steed a dark look. The Warsteed comes with its own special Diamond Banded tail. This next shot is the Warsteed of Nightwood. All dressing is undyed; I went with white hide to help accentuate the dressing. (Sorry, we were getting rained on during this picture; I’ll get a better one when I can.)

Let’s see some dyes!

For these first two shots, I will point out how hide color affects perspective.

Here is the warsteed with crimson dyed outfit and white hide. The halter has been removed to show off his mane.

Here is the identical warsteed with crimson dyed outfit and black hide. Ok, mebbe, it isn’t a huge difference, but I had to look twice to see that I hadn’t changed the outfit.

Because the caparison is black, I tended to like the darker hides with this outfit.

The green dyed outfit and black hide looks fancy.

The indigo dyed outfit and black hide matches me well.

While not normally a fan of the color, I thought sea green with white hide gave a distinct look.

I didn’t previously have black warsteed outfit dye but I got it to show off this horse. Here is the black dyed outfit with black hide. I had to go into black Batgirl costume to complete the ensemble.

Finally, here is the warsteed with puple dyed outfit and grey hide. He looks very royal! The purple came with black in the same pack so mebbe I’ll blend those colors into the photos more often. :)

As always, check out all the other steeds at All the Steeds here at danania.net.

Treasure Hunt, Bilbo’s Birthday, and CSTM

What a weekend I had! Since it was a change of “normal” pace from deeding away, it didn’t feel like I was as eventful, but looking back at all that happened I had so much fun! The festivals have been rolling in and next up is Fall festival starting now, so exciting!

Today, I will talk about the excitement of the treasure Hunt, Frodo and Bilbo’s Birthday, and visiting the CSTM Live Event.

Treasure Hunt:

Let’s start with the Treasure Hunt. I had written a different post about steeds which I will delay until next weekish. In that post, I mentioned my disillusionment about “random” drop steeds, preferring that they be bartered, even if the cost is outrageous. Then, Treasure Hunt is released, and yay, a bartered goat! Sure, it cost 1000 tokens, but if you really wanted it, the 1000 token mark was very achievable.

The lildanas and I went nuts at the previous treasure hunt in February, 2012. I think it only lasted a day, but we made the most of it. We had gotten everything there was to get, except all the steeds. True, we did take 8 home. I only got one though, the Treasure Laden Goat so I am in it to win it this time. Delion was still silently bragging about having won all three steeds during that February event (Less-math-more-ponies).

Dig, dig, dig. Just keep digging, just keep digging… la la la la la la la la….

Yay for Huge caches! I think we won a steed about 1 out of less than 10 huge caches. I do like that the event restarts almost immediately after the previous one ends. It really keeps things moving!

Wins! Of course, all the steeds show up here on danania.net on the page All the Steeds.

Cave claw masked horse for the win!

Time to take him out flying.

Treasure Laden horse… win! (I still don’t like random winning. However, like most of the “random” wins for me, so much of it is about persistence. You do not even want to know how many hours I treasure hunted between last event and this event. OMG. Thankfully, I really really enjoy the Treasure Hunt.)

Treasure Laden goat! Ok, I had the goat last time, but he was feeling left out of the show. Hey, I think someone is following us… Aegthil is that you?? They’re always after me lucky charms…

The goat is a bit wide for me, so I threaded my leg through the saddle edge. Some might see this as a design flaw, but I am sure that is the way it is intended.

Threanody reports for duty to take over digging. Good luck hobbit! (I ride the Dunedain War-horse in this shot.)

Nimitar doesn’t miss a beat or a festival. If it is there to do, he will be there. He and Danaish wait patiently to be granted more picks to try their luck. (Nimitar rides the Nimble Black Goat).

So many people showed up at the Treasure Hunt! With the lack of things actually going wrong (see Farmer’s Faire and Summer dwarf races), I think this is a success!

Ytanya is excited about her “prospects”. Surely, there is a steed token in there for her?

Danaszar meets a Domesticated Green-back Cave-claw. It is so cute you could just /hug it. If you hug them all, you get a lovely title and complete the deed. Yay deeds!

Of course, the lildanas have their own pet cave-claw at the Angels house. (draigoch-statue-lil-danas-moving-day) We opted not to get another one right now just in case they might fight and leave the yard a mess. Turns out, the neighbors wouldn’t mind so much. We took a walk around and discovered that 76% of our neighbors were deadbeats that were locked out of their own homes, including all of the other kinhouses (one of which has gone into foreclosure and is up for sale). Go on, roam the neighborhood Trained cave-claw!

Finally, the star of the show has arrived. Here is the Harvest Brew Goat, the barter goat of the Treasure Hunt. Ok, this goat only has +62% speed, but it just might be the cutest goat I own (don’t tell the other goats). He is in the top ten goats for sure. Lol! I love the theme, and the stine on a stick out in front of it is a neat touch.

Emotes!

The Treasure Hunt emotes are some of my favorite! There are 6 available during the event, and thankfully they are at least Bound to Account. It would have been great had the Steeds also been Bound to Account, but they are in fact, Bound on Acquire. The 6 are: rich, counterfeit, inspectgem, pan, dowse, coinflip. Thankfully, I got them last time, so I had less things to think about while hunting for my steeds.

I am /rich! No doubt about that. Rich in friends. A sappier Supergirl would say these gold coins are just representation of blessings falling on me. (Aim your /heave over there…)

I check to make sure that the coins in my steed's pack are not /counterfeit (lilhobbits, don't put things in your mouth without washing them, that is a good way to get germy... that, and visiting the Foundation of Stone, very germy place.. Bring sanitizer).

You are getting sleepy…  /dowse. You are now under my control…

Oh Arkandon, don’t you know that these jedi mind tricks don’t work on Supergirl? I am not the droid you are looking for.

Yes, yes… I spy a diamond in the rough. Let me /inspectgem that for you.

Frodo and Bilbo’s Birthday

After Goldenstar, Frodo and Bilbo are two of the most famous hobbits in Middle Earth. If Frodo ran a site like CSTM (http://cstm.mymiddleearth.com/), he would be better known, but I digress.

Since it was Frodo and Bilbo’s birthday, I flew out to Rivendell to wish them well. Frodo snookered me into assisting him deliver a present to Bilbo, who was only like 100 meters away in Elrond’s house. For fun, I will lay out how the conversation went.

Meltera met me there so that we could celebrate birthdays together. Mebbe the Bagginses will have cake. Or pie. I like pie. And chocolate. Dark chocolate. Fudgey dark chocolate. with pie. Mmm... Where were we? Oh, yes.. let's go wish happy birthdays.

Hello Frodo! Happy Birthday! I would have come yesterday, but I had to dig up Treasure Laden steeds; you know how it is.

Frodo replies with asking me to visit Bilbo.

Mae Govannen, and Happy Birthday to you, Bilbo. Here is a present from Frodo.

Bilbo replies by asking me to deliver a present to Frodo. You know, he is standing in the next room? Oh fine, I will deliver it.

Hello again Frodo. Here is a present from Bilbo.

You want me to go tell him thank you… for you? You know, he is just across the hall? Le sigh…

Hiya Bilbo. Frodo says thanks. You are welcome. You have a present for me on your birthday? Hobbits are interestingly odd people. J You should walk across the hall and see Frodo some time. He has a neat ring that he wears on a chain around his neck.

Bilbo gave me the choice of receiving a toy flute or a toy dulcimer. They play a tune that lasts a couple of seconds and… that is it. It has a 30 minute CD. It is the thought that counts, right? J

CSTM Live Event

I got to enjoy the CSTM Live Event on Saturday! It turns out that CSTM was recording their weekly show but added on a streaming video while they were doing it. I usually fly across the spatial abyss into Landroval once a week or so to check fan mail and visit whoever happens to be around (thank you so much to all you who leave messages there J) and found my friends Tomrica and Goldenstar both in Bywater. It was great timing since CSTM was in the middle of their show.

As I headed to Bywater, there was quite a crowd and I found Tomrica waiting for me at the back. The poor thing won’t be able to see with all these trees standing in the way. I got a chuckle out of just how many hobbits there are around here. Yeah… I don’t make it to the Shire enough. Hobbits, hobbits everywhere.

It was a great gathering. It seems that if you get enough of the Lonely Mountain Band together, it is like a bring-your-own-party. I got to meet several lovely hobbits, including the hobbit-gnome Anthemisi and her dancing friend Carica.

Tomrica and Goldenstar pose for photos and autographs at the Green Dragon. These last two shots were taken by Tomrica, who is a most excellent photographer.

The Lonely Mountain Band hobbits ride a team of goats collected from the Treasure Hunt. Tomrica is out front, followed by (L-R) Galspi, Elyita, Carica, & Anthemisi.

How can you not smile seeing a line of hobbits riding goats?? That is so cute. Lol!