Well LotRO Book 8 was released today for the US servers so now my system is doing the download thing. Chances are I won't be able to login tonight. Then again a nice night relaxing at home and watching some movies doesn't sound too bad.
On a positive note, I couldn't sleep last night so I completed a few quests getting Geistig to 25. So hopefully when I log in I'll be able to start working on 26. I feel like I'm falling behind the other Kin members a bit.
So last night after taking Weathertop for a second time and getting halfway to 25, it was time to return to Bree and get in some serious crafting. Ok so AFTER getting into some serious crafting I decided to do some running around Bree. I'd seen a hunter running around on the roof tops and I really wanted to get up there. If nothing else it'd make for some great screenshots. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to get up there (though I tried lemme tell you) but I did find a door that I hadn't noticed before.
Talk about a fun weekend! So on Friday Night I trailed behind the Kin as we grouped up in a Fellowship to complete some of the Epic Quest line (aka the Book Quests). Safe to say it was pretty interesting stuff. Both the quests themselves, the members of the Kin roleplaying a bit as we went, and yep kicking butt once we got there. Here's the crew working on one of the quests. I'm of course at teh back with my happy healing rock trying to draw as little attention to myself as possble, while still making the group glow nice and green:
We have a couple folks in the Kinship that have played LotRO and other games at a more Hard Core pace so they know when it's time to start pounding on things and just how to do it. We had some solid strategy behind us as we cut through book 2 and the Kin members made their way into book 3. I'm lagging a little behind in that I spent a good part of the week working on crafting as opposed to leveling. I was able to keep up healing even though we were getting into content a little too big for my britches. Fortunately we did have a Minstrel with us because by the time we got to the end of the book 2 quests I was stretched pretty thin, even with a healing talent loaded and a lot of stat bumping traits equipped. Phew those are tough.
Though as the weekend bore on I was glad to see that as I level healing even became stronger. I'm really happy about that.
So I got a chance to get into one of the first LotRO instances tonight “The Great Barrows”. I approve of it, yeppers good and spoooky (extra o's for emphasis). I was also lucky enough to be part of an all guild run. Though we did run into some trouble here and there, overall we did really well. Though we had a Minstrel in the group I defaulted to heals as soon as I saw folks taking damage. It's like a knee jerk reaction for me. Fortunately we had a tank and a lot of DPS so having me working as back up heals went over really well.
So yeah, while I still spend the bulk of my time running with Savvy (which is the what I prefer regardless), I managed to get us both into a guild. It’s not a big guild, and it’s still pretty new, but it’s a guild with promise. So far the guild Leader and the Guild officers have taken a personal approach to recruiting via actually walking up to people that look promising and asking if they want to join a guild. Since my first guild invite was via an anonymous whisper, it was a little refreshing to have someone standing in front of me recruiting as opposed to a disembodied voice that’d noticed I’d picked a healing class via the /who settings.
At first I was a little worried about how well me and Savvy would fit in the guild. We’re not active role players, we just managed to roll on LotRO’s unofficial role playing server. I’d rolled there because Scary, Evil, and Nox my WoW guildies, had rolled there. So when I’d made Edhelgeist to test out the game (months ago) I naturally picked that server. Since I haven’t seen any of them online, it’s just been me and Savvy. Honestly, I’d probably would have stopped playing quite some time ago otherwise. It’s fun to have someone to run with that likes running up to check out some sweet views or do some cliff diving (*giggles*). Heh, so as you can imagine we aren’t typical hard core players, and we aren’t really role players either. I was sort of waiting for things to turn out like they did for Oforf in “The Noob Comic” when he joined his first guild (Link). Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the guild isn’t as heavy on the role playing as some of the guilds I’d looked into. So far the members are also really helpful, trading out recipes they can’t use and running with other guild-mates to complete quests. We even have a guild run set for Friday, which I should even be able to attend (with my night owl type scheduling).
I did ask if the guild had a website and since the answer was no, I volunteered to help get one set up. I figure if nothing else it’ll be a good way for each of us to post up our trade-skills and give us the opportunity to help each other out by crafting upgrades for one another as opposed to buying the stuff off the Auction House. Heh, maybe it’ll help us all save up for mounts a little faster.
