Fall Festival 2013: Spooky Steed of the Bat

Supergirl rides the Spooky Bat!

Gracious... I bugs me that I have been so busy lately that I have not written in 30 days. I am still convinced though that my extreme schedule has slackened and mebbe November will be a better month. Interestingly, lotro did NOT have a "steed of the month", breaking a trend that had persisted throughout 2013. However, it is Festival time so we still get a steed for October!

Fall festival is perhaps my favorite of all the festivals. The quests are short, concise, interesting, and give decent rewards for the effort. If I get a free moment, I will write about fall festival soon. Do check out the always excellent guide at CSTM. Fall festival guide link is CSTM: lotro-fall-festival-guide-2013/.

I listed all the Fall festival goodies last year at the link, Fall-festival-goodies.
And, I wrote about some of the fun quests at Fall-festivals-end-and-a-new-beginning.
And the previous year 2011 had lots of pictures at Fun-fall-festival-friends.

On to the Horse!

There are two new horse items to obtain during fall festival 2013: the horse called the "Spooky Steed of the Bat" and a warsteed caparison called the "Spooky Caparison of the Bat". Each of the two costs 60 fall festival tokens.

Doing just the Haunted Burrow quests, you will net in the 24-28 range per day so if you have never been to festival, this may take a few days to get both. Or, you could go to other places (read the CSTM guide, link above) and get a few more, or you can do Inn League and/or Ale Association quests for tradeable badges, or you can use Mithril coins to just repeat quests you like more than once per day. Fall festival is really easy to pile up the tokens.

Spooky Steed of the Bat:
Here is the Spooky steed of the Bat. He has the same flame red eyes that the Mahogany Bay does.

Spooky Steed of the Bat

Here is a better view of the Spooky Steed of the Bat's red eyes. I'm gonna get you.... /boo!

Spooky Steed of the Bat has red eyes. Spooooooky....

Spooky WarSteed of the Bat - Default:
Here is the Caparison mentioned above that is for the warsteed. It is just the one piece: the caparison.

Ok, the black hide and hair is a bit spookier than default grey. It is kinda funny that I am just now noticing that the black emblem on the caparison is possibly a bat, hanging upside down. :)
Let's try a few more looks...

Spooky Warsteed of the Bat - Default

Spooky WarSteed of the Bat - Umber and Chestnut:
Ok, I don't do spooky. Lol. How about a fall-ish shade? Here is a matching of nice browns, umber and chestnut.

Spooky Warsteed of the Bat - Umber and Chestnut

Spooky WarSteed of the Bat - Black and Black:
Ok, this one is a closer approximate of the actual horse. It is black with the caparison dyed black as well. It is a sharp look.

Spooky Steed of the Bat - Black and Black

Spooky WarSteed of the Bat - Purple and White:

How about an anti-spooky? This is a more festive set in purple and white.

Spooky Steed of the Bat - Purple and White

Spooky WarSteed of the Bat - Yellow and Bay:
I went with something more vibrant, but still fall-ish, in yellows. I liked the Bay colored hide here so much that I gave in and got that Bay color set for this matching.

Spooky Steed of the Bat - Yellow and Bay

I hope you have a super and safe Fall festival! I shall see you soon. :)

(BTW: The cover picture at the top is Ered Luin blue with Black hide and ... offwhite,steel grey? hair.)

Steed of Michel Delving

Supergirl rides the Steed of Michel Delving

Time moves on... I didn't write about the Bounders and their project of building a new statue in Michel Delving yet. The short version... Bounder's tokens, from Bounder Bags, dropped randomly from landscape and instance mobs and awarded from certain quests (like festival quests), turn in 1.75 million for a server (at Michel Delving), and get access to Bounder stuff. 1.75 million went faster than you might think. Arkenstone was probably on the last half for servers achieving it a few days ago.

Anywho, what is important is that after the server unlocks the goodies, one can get stuff, including the lovely Steed of Michel Delving for 1500 tokens. The steed comes with a normal horse, plus 5 warsteed pieces: caparison, halter, accessory, saddle and leggings.

Here are some pictures; I will get them into the All the Steeds Gallery soon... :)

Steed of Michel Delving:
In Hobbit-y fashion, this horse is loaded down like a pack mule. There is food and drink for days on the back end of the horse. The standard horse is a reddish brown and white pattern and fancy hobbit decorated.

Steed of Michel Delving

WarSteed of Michel Delving - Default:
Here is the warsteed in default grey. An interesting thing that we have seen before is that this warsteed outfit does NOT dye. It is what it is. You can dye the hide though and I will show a few variations next. Overall, the default grey seems as fine as any. :) I thought the blondes match the gold outfit fairly well, but I haven't gotten those hide colors yet.

Warsteed of Michel Delving - default

WarSteed of Michel Delving - White:

Warsteed of Michel Delving - white

WarSteed of Michel Delving - White, no halter:
The halter matches the outfit well, but my horse wanted to let her hair down.

Warsteed of Michel Delving - white, no halter

WarSteed of Michel Delving - Dark Chestnut:

Warsteed of Michel Delving - dark chestnut

WarSteed of Michel Delving - Steel Grey:

Warsteed of Michel Delving - Steel Grey

WarSteed of Michel Delving - back left:
What does a bounder horse carry around? Let's see... on the left side, I see an iron pot, an hour glass, a lantern, 3 water skins... plus the cask and backpack directly behind the saddle...

Warsteed of Michel Delving - left side

WarSteed of Michel Delving - back right:
...and on the right side, I see an iron skillet, a smoke pipe, a rucksack, and a bag crammed full of veggies. At least we will cook and eat well, I suppose. 

Warsteed of Michel Delving - right side