Steed of Winter Winds, Yule Festival 2014

Supergirl rides the Steed of Winter Winds

Wow. How about that; 2014 is nearly over. Did you get everything accomplished you intended to do? Was your journey through Middle Earth as satisfying as you hoped?

I have been having a great time! Timewise, I get drawn away by work and family and responsibilities and don't get to play as much, but when I do, it is always satisfying. I made all the festivals. I got all the new horses. I got most of the pets. I did all of the quests. I think I did all the new Deeds. Good times!

I need to update my To-Do list and get the All the Steeds Gallery caught up with all the horses that are written about on this blog. Soon, very soon. Thanks for continuing to come to the site!


Yule Festival 2014
Yule Festival is probably my favorite festival (Yes, I know I say that about most of the festivals!). My favorite things about Yule Festival are...

(1) Sack of Presents. I love running a simple quest and getting the presents. The presents include Marks, Medallions, Seals, Festival tokens, some cosmetic items, and the very rare Hobby Horse. I am still hoping and wishing for my Hobby Horse. Danaish got one a couple of years ago and I'm still envious (check out the Hobby Horse at the link below or in the Steed Gallery.)

(2) Easy and open. The quests are very easy. Like good festival quests, after you have run them several dozen times, you can do them with your eyes closed. I also like the wide open Frostbluff area with the open pretty wintry sky.

(3) Nice rewards. My favorite rewards from Yule Festival 2014 are the (a) Horse of course @ 80 tokens, (b) the Warsteed cosmetic @ 100 tokens, (c) the Pet Grims @ 75 tokens each, and (d) the Yule Sparklers @ 30 tokens each.

There are three Grim available: just "Grim" (it is the Snow Grim), Fire Grim, and Shadow Grim. Here is a shot of the Snow Grim.

Supergirl in a pointing contest with a pet Snow Grim

(4) Long duration. This Yule festival was set with about 4 weeks time to visit, which is great! As I type, there is still about 2 weeks left. Yule Festival ends Jan 13.

(5) History: I still remember Yule Festival before Frostbluff. It is great to go back and visit festival every year. :) Here are a few posts from previous years. There was a building storyline in previous years about my leading the Snowman Army slowly to a takeover of Frostbluff.

2013: snow-beast-steed
2013: steed-of-withywindle-and-hobby-horse
2013: yule-festival-wintertide-steed

2012: yule-festivals-end
2012: youll-yule-celebrate
2012: the-hobby-horse-lotros-100th-steed
2012: wintry-yule-warsteed

2011: youll-yule-festival
2011: fun-of-yule-past

(-) The downside: The only thing I don't care for about Yule Festival is that the Frostbluff storyline is depressing. The people don't want to work it, the mayor is thieving money, etc. We have come to an understanding though that it is another act, like the Frostbluff Theater. They pretend to be gruff and cheerless, and I pretend not to notice and just collect the rewards. It works, I suppose.


Enough about Yule Festival, let's see the Horse!

Steed of Winter Winds:

Here is the Steed of Winter Winds.
He has a grey spotted hide, white hair, and a lovely multi-blue caparison.

Steed of Winter Winds

The pattern has a nice starry look to it. Here is an overhead view, from slightly behind.

Steed of Winter Winds - from above and behind

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Default:

The Default Warsteed look is exactly as one would expect; it is the warsteed default grey. :)
Interestingly, the basic Horse has a nice matching saddle and the Warsteed cosmetic does not come with the saddle. The Caparison is a greyer blue than the shade of Indigo; there is no exact blue match on the color palette.

Warsteed of Winter Winds - default

Warsteed of Winter Winds - attempted Match to Horse:

Ha Ha! Here is my attempt at matching the Warsteed colors and patterns to the basic Horse. For this next picture I chose Spotted Hide - Grey, White Hair, and the Victory Saddle. Ok, the saddle is not an exact match to the basic Steed of Winter Winds, but it worked well. :)

Warsteed of Winter Winds - attempt to match the basic horse

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Evendim Blue and Black:

The Evendim Blue and Black is gorgeous. It is hard to go wrong with the blue shades on this horse. I took the picture from above to show off the fancy starry Caparison. It dyes well.

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Evendim Blue and Black

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Rivendell Green, Dark Chestnut, Blood Bay:

Here is the warsteed in Rivendell Green and browns: Dark Chestnut hide with Blood Bay hair. This is an elegant hunter look.

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Rivendell Green and Browns

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Crimson, White, Light Grey:

Here is the warsteed in Crimson with White hide and light Grey hair. Oooh, I like this one too. :)

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Crimson and White

Here is another shot of the stars on the Caparison. This one is wearing the Victory Saddle again.

Warsteed of Winter Winds - Crimson from above

For more horse views by a great blogger, tune in to The Elven Tailor @ The Elven Tailor/ the-winds-of-winter.

I hope you had a great 2014; I look to see you again next year. Thanks for visiting the Supergirl of Lorien site!  :)

Steed of the Autumn Sun

Supergirl rides the Steed of the Autumn Sun

Hello again; I hope you are enjoying the Fall Festival!

Fall Festival started a couple of days ago and will last until November 2.
The events are the same as last year and there are a few new rewards, including a horse, a warsteed caparison, some festive outfits, and barter for essence reclamation scrolls, plus most every item offered at previous festivals. For all the details, visit CSTM at CSTM: lotro-fall-festival-2014/

Fall Festival is one of my favorites. The tasks are easy enough and go quickly. It feels the way a festival should, ... almost like quick booths at a fair. 

Here I will look at the new horse and some versions of the warsteed caparison!

Steed of the Autumn Sun:
The steed is aptly named! It is a bright red, orange, yellow themed steed and outfit with a festive fall design. It will be easy to remember this one for years to come.

The horse barter cost is 60 Fall Festival tokens, which is very simple to get by hanging out at the Haunted House area at the Party Tree.

Steed of the Autumn Sun

Steed of the Autumn Sun at the Party Tree

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - Default:
The Caparison is the only piece barterable for the Autumn Sun. It also costs 60 tokens.

The default grey version of the Warsteed of the Autumn Sun is kind of drab. The outfit is a shade of yellow, which is nice.

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - default colors

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - matched similar to the horse:
I tried to match the Warsteed color palette to the horse's colors. Interestingly, the horse has a nice saddle; you will need to find your own saddle to match the caparison. Many of the saddles look just fine. Here is where I ended up trying to match the basic horse.

Chestnut hide
Flaxen Chestnut hair
Light Saddle of the Entwash

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - matched colors to basic horse

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - Dark green and light grey:
The various browns, yellows, oranges, reds all look really good with this horse.
However, I wanted to try to few things different first.

Here is a green and light grey. You can clearly see the dyeable part of the Caparison.
This horse is shown with a basic Light Saddle of the Entwash.

Warsteed of Autumn Sun - dark green and light grey

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - Ered Luin and Black:
Bringing out the dark side... on this one, I went with Black hide, dark grey hair, and Ered Luin outfit, same basic Light Saddle of the Entwash.

Warsteed of Autumn Sun - ered luin and black

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - Yellow Mix:
The strength of the Autumn Sun set probably has to be how nice it looks in yellows, red, and various shades of brown. This one is one of my favorite mixes.

Autumn Sun caparison - default color,
Yellow hide,
Flaxen Chestnut hair,
Nightwood Saddle,
Leggins of Rivendell,
Victory Accessory.

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - Yellow mix

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - Yellow mix2

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - Mixed set:
The Caparison does work with many of the other pieces out there. This mix shows a few common pieces tossed together. :)

Autumn Sun caparison - default color,
Brown hide,
Minstrel's Halter,
Leggings of Thorin's Hall,
Burglar's Saddle,
Hunter's Gear.

Warsteed of the Autumn Sun - mixed set

Have a Super great Festival! 
I'll see you soon.  ~D

Steed of Bounty

Supergirl rides the Steed of Bounty

Hello again! It is time for Farmer's Faire 2014 and a new steed!

Do I like Farmer's Faire? On the one hand, it is a fun festival, one of my favorites, and fairly well laid out with good activities. On the other hand, the "golden egg" (for hidden deed) acquire rate seemed to have not improved since the first Farmer's Faire and the "Fishy, very Fishy" quest is still impossible to complete. I wrote about those quests in my Top 11 things I would change when I rule Middle Earth. Unfortunately, Sauron still has his revenge at the Faire by keeping the Fishy quest unbeatable. I still like the egg hunt also; I just have to move past the extreme odds of never winning a golden egg after hundreds of tries. The mushroom quest run is one of my favorite activities of all festivals.

If you want a great guide to Farmer's Faire, visit CSTM: Farmer's Faire Guide 2014.
Goldenstar notes two key points: (1) new stuff = horse, warsteed caparison, 2 cloaks , 1 robe. and (2) festival lasts from September 1 - 16. 

If you want to see previous Farmer's Faire steeds, look around the All the Steeds stable here at this site.

And for fun, here are my posts from previous Farmer's Faires:
2012 - Faire-hobbits-dont-get-drunk,
2012 - Steed-of-lore-master-farmers-faire-end,
2013 - Farmers-faire-2013-steed-of-plenty.

Steed of Bounty - Default horse:
The basic horse costs 120 Farmer's Faire tokens. If you play the mushroom hunt well, you will have that amount in no time even without doing other quests. On a good run, I get about 62 tokens... for about 36 mushrooms. I see that the first week of the first festival in 2012 I was getting about 38 tokens per run, so I've gotten better over the years. 

The Steed of Bounty is a lovely dapple grey horse with a bright gold/yellow and green patterned caparison.

Steed of Bounty - default

WarSteed of Bounty - Default colors:
The warsteed caparison costs 120 Farmer's Faire tokens. Mentioned above, 120 tokens is really easy to obtain (and I enjoy the mushroom hunt while filling my pockets with tokens).

The warsteed cosmetic is a one piece outfit, just the Caparison. The cosmetic is the same coloring as gold outfit dye.

Warsteed of Bounty - default colors

WarSteed of Bounty - White hide, Red outfit:
Hmm, what to do with an outfit that has strong portions that are undyeable green... I went with Christmas! The white and red would make a lovely Christmas pattern. :)

Warsteed of Bounty - White and Red

WarSteed of Bounty - Black Chestnut hide, Ered Luin outfit, Sooty hair:
Ok, next. In this one, I went with darker colors. The Ered Luin Blue on the outfit is strikingly bold. 

Warsteed of Bounty - Ered Luin and Black Chestnut

WarSteed of Bounty - Dun hide, Forest green outfit, Bay hair:
Here I played to the green's strengths and went with the subtle green outfit and shades of light brown for the horse. That is a pretty good look.

Warsteed of Bounty - Forest green, Dun, Bay

WarSteed of Bounty - Flaxen Chestsnut Spotted hide, Crimson outfit:
Alright. I wanted to mix it up a bit. Here is Flaxen chestnut - Spotted hide and hair, with the Crimson outfit. It is certainly bold and wild looking with all those spotted freckles!

Warsteed of Bounty - Crimson and Flaxen Chestnut Spotted

Warsteed of Bounty - Giddy up!

WarSteed of Bounty - Crimson Mix Set:
For fun, here is a Mixed set based on the previous Flaxen Chestnut outfit.
This picture has 
Caparison of Bounty - Crimson
Light Halter of the Wold (Rohan quest) - Crimson
Captain's Leggings (store) - Crimson
Champion's Saddle - (store) - Crimson

Warsteed of Bounty Mixed Set in Crimson

Hobnanigans Fun

Hobnanigans Fun

This year is flying by... while I have read that lotro is not putting out "major" new content soon, I am very content with that as I can barely keep up with the minor content updates. Fangorn? Yes!... it is an update, but I think it came out the same week as the Anniversary festival, then as I was getting ready to go toward Fangorn, I got drawn in to a few raids and other activities, not to mention that the stat calculations were changed and I spent time playing with "new lotro math", plus there were new quests in Trollshaws to see (yes, they were for level 40-ish but I don't pass up any quests ever), and then along came Hobnanigans!

I will get to Fangorn eventually, but I wanted to recap some of the fun from Hobnanigans. It will be a short duration mini-event that pops up periodically (One rumor I read was a few days each month; we shall see). 

So, in short, it is a game of soccer (or hockey) where your team tries to boot chickens into the opposing goal. The game is setup to be 3v3 or 6v6. The field for 6v6 is slightly bigger than the 3v3 field. There were a few glitches that I'm sure will be worked on, but overall, it was addicting and lots of fun. It had some neat loot to barter also.

I didn't get many good pictures while playing, but here is one where the Game Hen (the chicken ball) decided she had enough and flew up and refused to come down. That did seem to happen a lot, especially during 6v6, undoubtedly something to be worked. Regardless, it was still fun hanging out with friends doing something that didn't involve dire situations saving the world. You can see that a few friends and I were in Red (see the R above the heads and the added red cloaks).

Game Hen has had enough whacking at Hobnanigans

Pet Chickens: Here is the chicken pen for chickens that can be bartered. There are six of them.

All the Chickens

Ok; the white chicken is reasonably easy to get. I won a couple of white chicken tokens plus enough Hobnanigans tokens to get that one. Friend Lyn also won a Red Chicken token. I didn't see any of the more "advanced" chicken tokens and clearly, this weekend wasn't enough for me to barter a more advanced chicken as the prices were fairly high.

Hobananigans - Chicken pet barter costs

So, I got a White Chicken. I'm no Loremaster so I'm not used to animals following me around. I can't imagine wanting that while questing, but while flying around town or at festivals... sure, why not. :)

SuperChicken and Danania at home

Cosmetic Egg-quipment: There were a few cosmetics that could be bartered. I'll always get all of the festival outfits and put them in our vault but given the other goodies to be had and my limited token supply, I passed on all of these.

Here are the barter prices.

Hobnanigans - equipment barter costs

Chicken Housing stuff: There was lots of Hobnanigans housing stuff. There was so much I missed taking screenies of page 2. Here are several views of stuff.

Hobnanigans - housing stuff (part 1)

Hobnanigans - housing stuff (part 2)

I went with the most I could afford and got the Small Hobnanigans Field with White Chicken. It looks neat. :) Here is the field sitting at my house. You can gauge the relative size of it by the size of my guard dog sitting behind it. It fits a "Large Yard" space.

Small Hobnanigans Field with White Chicken

Hobnanigans Emotes: The chicken pet and the miniature housing item were good, but what I really liked were the Emotes. I will probably attempt to barter more emotes next time. There were a total of five emotes to be bartered.

I got the "Chicken Drive" Emote. Here is a shot of me whacking chickens at home in Falathlorn. Good times. 

Supergirl tries out the Chicken Drive Emote

Deeds and Titles: There are titles associated with deed reputation level. Top it out to become a Hobnanigans All-star. 

I am definitely looking forward to playing again with friends and making new ones at the next Hobnanigans Games. Keep a look out! 

Farmers Faire 2013: Steed of Plenty

Supergirl rides atop the Warsteed of Plenty

Farmer's Faire is here (from Sep 5 - 18 or 19), and there is no way I would miss it if I could help it!

This year, there are TWO new horses to obtain.

If you want to learn more about the quests, read CSTM's Farmer's Faire Guide. I mentioned lots of quest details and tricks last year at the inaugural Farmer's Faire with the story, Faire Hobbits don't get Drunk! and a critique at the end of the Faire. Overall, the Faire fixed the drunk hobbit quest, but made no progress to improve the "Golden Egg" or the "Fishy" quest/deed. As far as I know, the Fishy quest to not catch 50 fish before catching a bad fish has never been completed by anyone anywhere. That is stupid-bad odds.

Regardess, it is very easy to get Faire tokens. We do the "Manning the Market" quest which is to assist 6 customers within 15 minutes. It takes 7 - 8 minutes to do, and we get 6 Bounder's tokens bags for the 6 customers, plus the 24 Faire tokens. With the remaining time on the clock, we go over to do an Egg Hunt with random success, and the Mushroom Hunt which nearly always yields a high amount of tokens.

The new horses this year are the Summerfest Steed and the Steed of Plenty.

Summerfest Steed - the nearly-free horse: The Summerfest Steed is a must for everyone who can ride a horse. Even if you don't like horses, the price is so cheap you should not pass it up. The cost is 1 Farmers Faire token. Basically, if you just go over to the area, I think you get 3 tokens; so this is really a free horse. I have no idea why a horse named the Summerfest is at the Faire and not the summer festival, but I saw rumor that it was inadvertently left out of the festival. 

Go get your nearly-free horse. Here is a look at him. He is a fine white horse with grey hair and bright summer green and bright yellow outfit.

Summerfest Steed of the Farmer's Faire

Summerfest Steed of the Farmer's Faire smiling

Steed of Plenty:
The Steed of Plenty costs a bit more at 120 Faire tokens, so it might take a couple of days to get it. There is still time even if you haven't started so get enjoy the Faire! 

Steed of Plenty

WarSteed of Plenty:
The Warsteed of Plenty can be bartered also for 120 Faire tokens. The outfit is a one-piece only, called the Caparison of Plenty. For sure, this outfit is one for someone who really likes to have maximum effect from the outfit dye as every color is bright and sharp!

Here is the Default Warsteed outfit (which is Sienna), followed by a selection of different Warsteeds of Plenty in a variety of colors.

WarSteed of Plenty

Warsteed of Plenty - Forest Green and Black Chestnut:

WarSteed of Plenty - Forest Green and Black Chestnut

 Warsteed of Plenty - Evendim and Dark Grey:

WarSteed of Plenty - Evendim and Dark Grey

Warsteed of Plenty - Crimson and Red Roan:

WarSteed of Plenty - Crimson and Red Roan

Warsteed of Plenty - Yellow and Dark Chestnut:

WarSteed of Plenty - Yellow and Dark Chestnut

Warsteed of Plenty - Rose and Light Grey:

WarSteed of Plenty - Rose and Light Grey

Warsteed of Plenty - Ered Luin and Black:

WarSteed of Plenty - Ered Luin and Black

Overall, I really like this steed for its bold colors and subtle pattern and am excited to see it! Have a great Farmer's Faire. I'll be back soon to talk about Bounder's tokens, but until then, make the most of Bounder token collecting at the Faire!