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!

Steed of the Jester, and others

Thanks to all the commenters; I am still learning how to use computery things... Celeborn considered it verboten in Lorien. I recently learned how to make "commenting" easier on users visiting here, so let me know if it works! 

It’s time for a lil break from the dailies to have some horse-face time.

I like to see the google searches that lead people to Danania.net!

Because of my Update 7 comments, I’ve gotten several “Steed of the Jester” looks. Let’s start there.

Here is the “Steed of the Jester”. He is obtained via the flower quest “A Fist full of flowers”. The repeatable quest is found in Bree. The task is to collect many of 3 different types of flowers within an hour and exchange them for gift boxes which *might* contain a steed but probably obtains something silly like clothing dye. Of course, visit Casualstrolltomordor.com to learn details about the quest.


Things I've received from the boxes include dyes, lots of "Note of Affection"s, recipes for Tarts and flowers, the Jester, & a couple of Giant Flowers (like the one DanaArodel is holding in Lil Danas).

How many gift boxes did it take to get to the tootsie-roll center of the tootsie pop? For me, it was my 51st box. I had done 50 boxes the first 3 days, and the first box on the 4th day was the Jester. The two other winners I have asked: one only took 6 tries, and the other not many more. Your mileage may vary. Given some persistence, this steed seems very winnable.

The Steed of the Jester has a speed of +68% & morale of 250, similar to any other high end steed.

And certainly, the new Simbelmyne steed is the star of the Spring Festival from Hengstacer Farms. She is a fine grey with lovely turquoise dressing and barters for 2 race tokens, 40 spring leaves, and 200s.

Because it comes up a couple of times a week in google searches coming to danania.net, here is a picture of the Green Painted Skeleton steed. This one was from Fall Festival, only found in the lotro store. (He made an appearance ridden by Batgirl during the Fall Festival post @ Fun Fall Festival).

Update 7 Changes, RK changes

When I was younger, Updates would happen and I would be none the wiser. The update would be like a foreign language because I had no reference to understand. I have gotten a bit better at sorting through and figuring out what matters to me.

Now when Update 6 was released, it changed virtues and traits (Update-6-relics-and-virtues) and changed RKs significantly. I totally intend to explain those changes because it was really important and lots of people discuss (complain) about upcoming changes without revisiting the subject with actual data evaluation after they play it. Rest assured, I have data to show the RK changes of U6. J  However, I won’t post-mortem dissect U6 today.

Today, I want to look at Update 7 that is coming down the pike next. The way I read these Updates, I mentally classify changes as words (typos and such), minor fixes that to have things work like intended, and real changes that matter.

The entire release is an interesting read. I picked through it to note some of the most interesting things. If you want to read the entire thing (or are interested in classes other than RKs), CasualstrolltoMordor has a nice PFD right here (Update-7-bullroarer-release-notes).

Because there are too many words on this page and not enough pictures, here is a shot of the Stangard steed. For the low low price of 20 gold Anduin tokens, it can be yours also (Less-math-more-ponies). My next targeted steed is probably the Isengard Warhorse... we shall see how much longer that takes to save up the 99 Orthanc sigil fragments.

Summary of interesting things:

• "Fields of Fornost in North Downs gets a revamp, instance panel, group play level 30 – 75."     *Haven’t been there in ages.

• "Moria gets a revision."     *No new quests or consequence of interest at level 75.

• "Storm on Methedras New Skirmish."     *Will need to add it to skirmish table. (Fastest-skirmishes-marks-per-minute). Hopefully, it will be super and give reasonable marks for its length.

• "Star-lit Crystals for Legendary Items - available as loot from monsters. Up to 3 can be used on LI... displayed as star icons… will upgrade the DPS, tactical healing rating, tactical damage rating or shield use rank of your LIs & will upgrade any ratings based legacies as well as secondary ratings and stats."        *Well jolly that. Without new quests, there is less reason to go wandering looking for mobs and I am not known for “luck loot”; so hopefully, they will show up on AH. We shall see, and I'm sure it will be great. J

• "6th inventory bag will be made available as part of the Riders of Rohan pre-purchase."       * Want it. Must have it. Give it to me, my preciousss…

• "Relic change: Tactical Mastery was added to the Westfold Rune of Power and the Great River Rune of Power."    *See Update-6-relics-and-virtues - previously, it boosted Fate, Physical Mitigation (defense), and Physical Mastery (useful for non-tactical classes) and was inappropriate for a tactical class. I still probably won’t give up the “True Rune of the Two Trees” though.

• "The Jester horse jingle, jangle sound is now playing on the sound effects channel and not all channels."    * <06/01 EDIT: That horse has been located at Spring Festival; see him here @  Danania's Steed of the Jester >.

Photo break... It was a great Anniversary party. Danaszar, in party hat, bids you all Auf  Wiedersehen until the next festival... which might not be that far away since Spring is here and we aren't yet spring festing.

U7 Rune-keeper changes:

The released doc lists 17 changes to RK.

11 of them are just words, typos, and tooltips. They have no bearing on how a RK feels.

5 of them are fixes, mostly minor:

• The effects of Glorious Foreshadowing and Wondrous Foreshadowing will no longer stack

• Essence of Storm no longer increments Winter-storm on a critical hit.

• Winter-storm is no longer expended by an attack that is resisted or misses.

• Adjusted the trait set bonus for Calming Verse to boost movement speed +20% to match the tip.

• Fixed a bug where the Rune-Keeper skill “Ceaseless Argument” was not receiving the appropriate damage increase from the Legacy.

The lack of Calming Verse speed buff was annoying when first spotted with Update 6, but it looks like it is fixed currently even before Update 7 (at least most of the time). These five are not a big deal since they are revising to work “as intended”. Ceaseless Argument legacy is the only other one that is easy to spot as the Legacy will now be able to add +15% damage at maximum.

The last one, about the Riffler?:

• All Riffler of Writs class items should now grant increased Tactical Mastery, a reduction to Writ power cost, and the ability to nullify attunement shift while the Rune-keeper is attuned.

I had to go look up Riffler of Writs at the metalsmith since I don't use that one. So to recap, the new version has Tactical Mastery (all rifflers and chisels do), reduction of Writ power cost (if you are running out of power, we need to figure out why… this riffler probably isn’t the solution), and it has the ability to nullify attunement shift when casting writs. Yep, that is what it is supposed to do. It must also be a fix and not a real change. 

Danadelion sends a copy of all of the level 75 rifflers and chisels available for us to review, with the mention that any decent metalsmith can make these and are relatively inexpensive. So, don't get suckered into overpaying for something so easy to craft and so necessary for your RK-ness.

I will stick with the "Exceptional Superior Calenard Chisel of Lightning". It's simple, effective, and super. There is never a reason to change from it.