Madness (and lots of loot)

This one is dedicated to a kinmate of mine. I'm sure he can recognize himself. 

Thanks for all the shinies!

On a different note - don't worry, everyone, I'm still alive, albeit slightly busier in real life and not that interested in raiding until 5:30 AM anymore. Perhaps I'll draw some more in the future. Who knows? Life is full of surprises!

Never forget

Hello, Helm's Deep, and goodbye, hundreds of thanes who couldn't save their own village consisting of 3 houses! 

Helm's Deep! When I started playing this game, I thought I'd perhaps see Rivendell one day, but I never thought that one day I'd end up running errands for Éowyn! It's amazing! 

Not only did the latest expansion add more horses and horsemen to the game, it also changed the way you pick traits for your characters, so you can spend skill class trait some kind of points on various traits instead of having to join GLFF to ask where the closest bard is. It's brilliant! And apparently it changed a lot of things for everyone. 

I really mean a lot of things. For example, minstrels can run around and kill everything with ease now. Well, admittedly they could do that before as well, but now they're even better! 

And wardens... uhh... they, uhh... got like... shinier stuff and... stuff...

... and guards just kind of look better than before?

Honestly, I could sit here all day and come up with amazing improvements for all classes. 

However, there was something that I was not prepared for. I knew the class changes were going to hit everyone and I was okay with it. That's how most MMOs do the whole "specializing for one role" thing, after all, and LOTRO has become a bit stale after all these years, so maybe some changes could make it more interesting again. Right? 

Well, let me give you a hint about what made me freeze in pure horror. 

The class that shocked me like that tends to shout a lot and claim they do all the work while the rest of the group slacks off.

They also tend to have a legendary item for every LI slot because they need their utility belts and buff sticks and all that.

I may have complained about that class before, but deep down I know it's my favourite class and I love it. I guess my love for that class also affected my preferences in other games - for example, in League of Legends I play support more than everything else because 1) I suck at dealing damage and 2) doing the little things that no one notices feels kind of nice. 

O captain, my captain, how I love you! I have two of them on Crickhollow, one on Landroval, one on Laurelin, one on Brandywine and there may be others that I have forgotten. Well, now imagine my shock and horror when I logged on, got the notification about having to respend the points on my legendary items and saw this:

Here's a little hint: those two are for buffing. Note the lack of buff legacies. 

AND THIS IS NOT WHERE THE MADNESS STOPS. There are no buffing skills anymore, aside from the morale buff and IDoME! No crit, no parry, no focus, nothing!

I... I always wished I didn't have those skills. I thought I would be happy, but I'm not. I feel betrayed, I feel like someone ripped my heart out and then stepped on it, I feel like someone cut my thumbs off, I...

RELENTLESS ATTACK, I LOVE YOU! :(

Untitled

Hey, isn't it odd that I decided to use Untitled as the title, so this post does have a title, even though the title says it doesn't have a title?
Sometimes I confuse myself.

Someone (you know who you are!) wanted me to post something, so I guess I'm here again.
I was very close to drawing a picture about how a hobbit friend of mine "helped her friends" in LOTRO the other day. It's very nice to have friends and everything, but surely getting drunk with festival NPCs and then throwing rotten apples at the bounders wouldn't really count?

That aside - from "aw come on, draw me something space-y, like a nebula or something" to "apple worms are so cute, so why don't you draw me one"...

Hey, who knows? Maybe LOTRO will give me some inspiration again when Helm's Deep finally gets released, whenever that's going to happen. I already heard rumors about some features that are probably going to give everyone a headache, so all hope is not lost yet.

My relationship with LOTRO

Lately I haven't really been able to bring myself to playing LOTRO seriously and for more than maybe an hour at a time. After all, there are so many things to do, games to play, people to meet, books to read and so on - how could I possibly find any time to go back to the things that I've already done a million times?

Yet something about Middle-earth keeps dragging me back. I don't know how or why. Sometimes...

Sometimes I feel like the ring verse is the best description of my relationship with LOTRO. 

One ring to rule them all, 
one ring to find them.
One ring to bring them all 
and in the darkness bind them.

I'm not the only one who suffers from that, right?
Right?...

Simply the best

Dear readers, more specifically the ones who have actively played LOTRO on a rather small server called Crickhollow!

Let me ask you this: who is the greatest player on our server, regardless of their class? Close your eyes and think about it for 30 seconds.

Done? Do you have the answer to that question? Good, good. Now I'm going to reveal the truth to you and you can compare your mental notes to the cold hard truth that does not care about your friends and kinmates, nor does it care about any popularity contests and petty fights on GLFF.
No.
What you're going to see now is the objective truth and if you disagree, then you're wrong and should close this window, shut your computer down and go for a walk to think about the meaning of life.

So who is or was the greatest player of Crickhollow?

Thank you for attention.

References: 
1. Not bragging but I have been (LOTRO forums, retrieved 2013-06-29)
2. I can FLY!!! (LOTRO forums, retrieved 2013-06-29)


P.S.
Apparently I had two (*gasp*) typing errors in that comic. Thanks for pointing them out.

Miscellaneous drawings

Hello - is it me you're looking for?

I'm truly sorry for being somewhat busy in real life and not drawing anything anymore. Perhaps I'll get back to posting silly colourful drawings on a regular basis someday, but unfortunately it is not this day.

Nevertheless, here are some of the smaller things that I've made over the last few months.

A birthday card for a friend of mine.

A birthday card for another friend of mine.

... yes, another card and quite possibly my first one that has something in Estonian written on it?

Honestly, by now you should be able to guess what it is. 

This is me every day at 8:05.

Someone had a bad game in LoL and I tried to cheer them up. I think it worked. 

Just some bunnies drawn for someone's birthday, moving on...

Oh, me and my million ridiculous and confusing thoughts. 

Another birthday card with super massive owls on it.

That one was for Fergi!

Thank you for attention, I'll go back to doing festival quests on my (not so) secret alt now. Maybe.
We'll see.

Moose goes on an adventure

Just one thing before I go back to dealing with real life: it's amazingly hilarious when a kinmate of yours decides to log on when they're drunk.

Moose: dam it's embarrassing to say i cant rtemember how to ..... ahhh dammit i lost my train of thought
Moose: i guess it'd only be appropriate that i somehow get exactly what i'm looking for when i'
Moose: completely lost in the process of de.... ok nvm i cant ever keep my current train of thought relevsnt to what i'm saying

Moose: i dont even remember the boss fight and i have a crysta;?

What happens on Bullroarer... stays on Bullroarer

Or maybe it doesn't!

I went to Bullroarer this week to see what U10 is going to be like and Argendauss of Brandywine happened to be doing exactly the same thing. I'm just going to pretend that it was a huge coincidence and he did not log on to Crickhollow before that to ask me to join him.

I am happy to report that most armour sets seem to have decent set bonuses and stats, and they also look quite impressive in most cases. "And the new raids?" you might ask. Well...

A bit later we tried T1 with my captain, his warden and his friend who had a lore-master. The three of us managed to finish the instance at lvl 20. In a way. Kind of. Some parts of it.

*cough*

Rolling a warden is always a stupid idea

So once again, it's this time of the year - everyone's eagerly waiting for the new instances and hoping that there will be lots of shinies for everyone.

You, however, are a very practical person, so you waste no time on dreaming about shinies that will never drop. Instead of that you are trying to figure out who from your kin could fill which role to make sure that everything goes well for your group. After all there's still some time left, so if it turns out that you're missing something, then you as a very responsible kinmate can always level an alt and learn to play as quickly as possible, hoping that it'll be enough.

Finding out that all your tanks have quit should not come as a surprise because tanking is a fairly stressful and a very thankless job. "Alright," you think, "I tried a guardian two years ago and I did not like it, but wardens seem pretty fun, so I'll give it a go! What's the worst that could happen?"

Well, let me tell you this: it is a bad idea and here's why...

1. No one believes you can tank. 
I'm sure most wardens can come up with real examples from their tanking careers when at some point there was a person - or several people - who said something like, "What, are you trying to tank? Nnnnope, I don't think so. I know a guard who hit level cap yesterday, though, he can tank for us!"
Oh, the blind rage that every warden feels when the worst guard on the server gets to tank and they're forced to DPS in a raid...

2. No one believes you can DPS.
"What, are you trying to DPS? Nnnope, I don't think so. I know a champ who hit level cap yesterday, though, he can DPS and you can switch to your [class]!"
I don't know why people think that wardens can't do it because in my opinion nothing says DPS like a spear to the face. Also, JAVELIN TOSS LIKE A BOSS!
I don't know why it turned out like that, but it seems that I accidentally drew a gay vampire lord instead of a lore-master. lol oops?

3. Two wardens walk into a bar and confuse the hell out of everyone else, including wardens with different setups. 
That's probably one of the most annoying things about wardens because if you want to discuss your rotation with other wardens, then you have to check and double check to make sure that you're talking about the same thing.
Why can't everyone just stick to the standard 1 = spear, 2 = shield and 3 = fist setup instead of trying to be creative and coming up with all kinds of silly systems, such as R - spear, G - shield, Y - fist; brackets to denote masteries; that spshfi thing that makes my brain hurt and so on...

4. This class is not suitable for small children. 
It's also not for suitable mathematically impaired people, people who have issues with remembering stuff, overly sensitive people, people who don't like numbers, people who can't take criticism, people who don't perform well under pressure... and anyone else for that matter. Just don't roll a warden and you'll live a happier life.

5. Your fashion sense is tremendously important.
Come on, all your damage, healing and threat comes from dancing! You can't just walk in with your ugly dirty questing outfit and expect to be taken seriously in the warden community. It just doesn't work that way!
Just make sure you shine like a diamond and you should be good to go.

6. Die once during the fight and you might as well leave the instance to grow taters in the Shire.
It's very hard to pull aggro from a warden that 1) knows what they're doing, and 2) really wants to have that aggro. Some may say that it's even impossible... but what most people don't know is that once a warden dies - and it's bound to happen, just look at their ridiculous leather armour - they're pretty much unable to get their precious aggro back. It's just not going to happen. If your warden dies... may the Valar have mercy on your soul.
And perhaps they're kind enough to transform one of your hunters to a guardian.

7. Stun, disarm, fear = having a good time, having a good time!
Being disarmed means that you can only yell at stuff and being feared means you can only hit them in the face. Being stunned is probably the most unfortunate of them all because most wardens have a certain rhythm for hitting their basic builders and a stun messes it all up, often resulting in missed gambits and possibly even the hunter pulling aggro again.
That's like hitting the drummer when he's going, "One, two; one, two, three-" BAM!
The result is a dizzy drummer and a confused band.

So there you go, clearly you should not roll a warden. No need to thank me!



P.S.
It seems that Ward hit lvl 85 roughly 3 hours after I posted this. What a nice coincidence! This also means that all the amateur wardens on GLFF who thought that they are the best wardens on Crickhollow have to back off because  the boys are back in town.

Free symbols for everyone!

Dear Durchest,

thanks for making everyone so rich and the symbols so cheap!

Yours sincerely,
everyone

Attention, farming enthusiasts!

The Hoarhallow Farming Society is accepting new members! If you

• enjoy working outside in fresh air,
• are a proficient farmer (expert and upwards),
• are good at dealing with various pests that may attack your beautiful garden in Hoarhallow,
• are prepared to bring your own farming supplies,

then you should apply! Veteran farmers get access to improved tools that make farming easier than it has ever been before. They also get an adorable little badge that they can display proudly to let everyone know of their recent achievements.

What are you waiting for? Go find the hobbits in Hoarhallow and apply!

U9/U10

Last week Turbine announced their plans for update 9 (in December) and update 10 (in February)... and the raiding community responded accordingly.

1/6 for Sammath Gul, guys! Guys? Anyone? I can't be the only one who's looking forward to running that at lvl 85!

Blending in

I like it when people at least try to dress their characters reasonably. I don't think that wearing dresses in great battles is very practical and I don't think that using ridiculous dyes helps to hide yourself from unfriendly eyes... which is why all my characters look rather boring. I try to look like a normal citizen of Middle-earth.

It's okay to wear colourful dresses on special occasions, though! You can't go to a hobbit party (you know, pies and fireworks and beer and all that) with a dull brown ragged robe, it'd be silly.

But just think of it: how is a burglar supposed to blend in with the background if he or she is wearing a bright orange outfit in a forest? You can get away with red and orange and other bright colours if you're, I don't know, a ladybug or a strawberry, but for humans it's definitely not going to work.

Or how do you expect a dwarf swimming in yellow shorts to... errrr... I'm... not quite sure... how you could... I mean... I suppose you could... dye your beard green and... and pretend to be a huge... floating ball of seaweeds, but...
...
I have very mixed feelings about that picture.

Anyway, most of my characters have one or two silly outfits for festivals. However, my captain only wears black because I'm a roleplayer who has not come out of the closet yet and I like to think that she's a serious person who only does serious stuff. You can't yell and shout on the battlefield to motivate your fellows and expect to be taken seriously when you look like this:

"Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the world's ending!" is one of the things that you are definitely not going to hear from this person. Nuh-uh. No way. Never. Now if I get another horse, like my black heavy war-steed, and put some shiny armour on...

Yes! I am not afraid of anyone! I could fight anyone, no matter if it's an orc, a troll or a balrog! I could even face the trolls from GLFF in that outfit! I am so awesome! Riders of Rohan, to meeee! Yes!!!

... except no. I put my amazing black outfit on, got my huge black horse and went to Bree-town and that helped to put things into perspective.

Was it my unusually big horse? Was it my heavy armour? The huge two handed sword? My title? I will probably never find out, but someone definitely clicked on my character, walked up to me and still thought I was a man.

From now on I shall be known as Sir Tuljak the Strong.
/sigh

Fun times in Eaworth

Firstly, I'd like to say that the current "endgame" in Rohan is horribly dull. I can understand that it's mostly aimed at your average casual solo player and raiders with no life are a minority in a game like LOTRO... which is terribly sad because most of my friends happen to be raiders with no life and quite a few of them are taking a long break, since currently you can only quest and do skirm raids (booooriiiing!).

However, you can do some of those quests with your friends and/or kinmates to make them more entertaining.

Guess who couldn't get up there fast enough and had to wait until someone else bought a summoning horn from the LOTRO store (that'd be me). Also, guess who fell like 20 times and landed outside the city walls twice (yup, me again). 

I saw at least 3 deaths in Eaworth that were caused by that tower. 1) Someone missed a jump (perhaps because Jara pushed him?), 2) someone jumped on Moose and accidentally fell off, and 3) Moose didn't aim for the river when we all decided to jump down. 

Final score:

Beacon of Eaworth: 3+

Citizens of Middle-earth: 0

Until next time!

To Rohan!

So a lot of people have had the chance to chill out with the Rohirrim for about a week now. Sadly I have been busy with not throwing stuff at other people in real life, so I could not play as much as I wanted to play, but I have seen just enough to know how it is.

The landscape is really nice, I really like my new horse, hunting warbands is a good way to kill time and the music is amazingly beautiful... however, not everything about Rohan is that great.

Q: "Hey, random male blonde man! If you could use five words to describe your homeland, what would those words be?"
A: "Dire. Our mission is dire."
(dammit, voice actors with repetitive lines!)

On a completely unrelated note - you can buy a new cosmetic item for dwarves from the LOTRO store and it's amazing. In case there are people who have not seen it yet - here's End with his pimp outfit (and my thoughts about his newly created dwarf alt).

Stay classy, everyone!

Welcome back, End!

... yeah, maybe I should've posted that a week earlier, but I don't think he'll mind. We're glad to have you back with us, noob.

Why no one should ever roll a captain

I'd like to apologise for not posting anything in the last few weeks. I have been busy in real life.

I've always thought of myself as a hunter but in the last few months I have mostly been raiding and doing instances on my... captain. It's not really that surprising, considering that we lost our regular captains in late winter due to some rather unfortunate circumstances. And since Dz disappeared mysteriously some time ago, our group now usually gets their buffs from either me or Ve.

At least now no one can question the necessity of taking me to our raids. It's quite nice. However, if you're a cappy, you probably know that there are some downsides to playing a super awesome support class.

So here are a few things that always annoy me when I'm on my captain.

1. After a wipe everyone but you takes a short break.
You, of course, are not going anywhere because there is some serious buffing to be done and you might as well do it while everyone's AFK to not waste anyone's time. It's even more fun when you're the only captain in your raid!
(Look at that, I can't draw a straight sword anymore. I have a curved sword. A curved. Sword.)

2. People don't understand that there's a max range for everything.
It's probably quite annoying from the healers' perspective as well, but nothing - and I mean nothing - beats having to switch between groups a million times just because someone didn't realise they weren't close enough to get motivated and then whined because they weren't buffed. Well, whose fault was that?
Ohh, you found a way to climb on top of that lamp post. How interesting! Could you come back now and let me give you your crit buff?

3. No one actually waits for buffs.
Sometimes I feel invisible because I shout and yell and scream at everyone else, yet they pay no attention to me and run off before I can even pull my amazing buff dagger out. It makes me sad.

4. You need a million weapons.
Did you think you could get away with having just one emblem and one weapon? lol nope! My poor captain has 5 fully maxed legendary items and I'd still like to find a decent 1H sword for healing because I found an amazing shield at some point and would like to use it for something (although I guess my current main sword is already good enough for healing). Unfortunately I think it's not going to happen before Rohan, /sigh.

5. Your raid leader will never leave you alone.
Dear raid leader, you're talking to the whole group, yet apparently 11 people get "etc" and I get everything else. I know it's because my big skills are actually pretty significant, as opposed to "RKs, use that group bubble thing" or "hunters, you should... pew pew more, I guess", but it's still unfair. Stop picking on me! D:

6. Scary thought: 20 wipes x 12 people x 2 buffs per person = 480 wasted buffs
I tend to get very frustrated if people wipe the group for moronic reasons. OH, I WONDER WHY. Stop dying, guys, or next time you'll all get 5% Motivating Speech from me instead of the usual 10% because I'm sick and tired of going "crit... crit... crit... parry... crit... oh god, someone wanted focus... crit... switch me, please... motivate... switch back... crit... crit..." so often.

So the next time you receive buffs from your group's captain, please think of all the pain we always have to endure. Thanks!


In other news: we beat ToO shadow T2 3 weeks ago, Lofarr and Blue joined our kin (oh cookie cookie cookie!), my warden hit lvl 75 a couple of weeks ago and Sato got addicted to running Dungeons of Dol Guldur over and over again. Hooray juice!