Mission Accomplished

In my last entry, I talked about how Innocent would be going after the ‘Original Challenger of Saruman’ title, which is a title the first group to complete all challenge modes of ToO in one continuous run.  Subsequent groups can earn ‘Challenger of Saruman’.  We knew other groups wanted to go after it as well, so it was a bit of a race.  There were a couple hiccups here and there, but all in all it went quite smoothly.  Within 4 hours (including dinner break and other afks), we got our title!

 

The ‘Original’ team:

 

I’m feeling very done with ToO now, but we’ll have to go back a time or two to finish off the deeds for other members who were not able to be part of the run.  It’s a great feeling to have this all completed. 🙂

Victory at last!

My raiding alliance Innocent has spent many a night trying to defeat Saruman T2 Challenge Mode. (using the rings is one of my most unfavourite parts of the fight.  I always have to concentrate so hard when watching the order, otherwise my mind will wander off :P)

So many hours of easily getting through phases 1-4 easily only to fail a minute or so into phase 5.  There have been good times when we’ve made progress or beat T2, yet there have been some really low times due to it being such a challenging fight.  It was the only part of the Tower of Orthanc raid that we didn’t beat before the level increase.  But never did our determination to beat the old bastard waver.

We’ve kept on trying after RoR was released whilst people were leveling up.  Our gear wasn’t much better and it was still quite the challenge.  Don’t expect to waltz in at 85 and have ToO to be a cakewalk!  Whilst it’s bitter sweet to have done this post 75, Innocent finally prevailed and got Laurelin server’s first Saruman T2 CM kill!

This meant new horsie time!! Shiiiiiiiny! 😀 (though forgetting to turn graphics up to ultra high.. not so shiny, oops)

Impromptu meeting to show off our horses!  It’s a bit funny, they have synchronised colour changing. 😛

We also got a model of Orthanc (kin homes need more enormous yard slots!!)

It’s pretty huge:

The view from the inside is… interesting:

We were all really pleased and proud to have gotten this done.  Next up:  Original Challenger of Saruman title!

Saruman T2 Complete!

My raid alliance Innocent downed Saruman T2!  It was another server first as well.  It feels really good to have finally done this, especially since morale had been getting low.  We pulled it together, had some pep talks, and finally downed the old guy!  We had 3 deaths in the last phase so no challenge mode.  I still don’t know how we’re gonna get challenge mode done, but at one time T2 seemed pretty impossible, yet we’ve done it now.  So Saruman CM and Fire and Frost CM is all Innocent have remaining, plus going for the clear-in-one-go title. Congrats all!

Success!

After a fair few nights, lining up for a lot of tries at Shadow Challenge Mode,

many times purposefully wiping in order to preserve the challenge,

Innocent finally prevailed and conquered the challenge mode with a few seconds to spare!

For the first time I actually remembered to get a screenshot of the deed completion popping up on my screen. 😛  We don’t have a video unfortunately due to our camera man not raiding with us that night.  It was such a relief to finally get this done.  I was starting to feel like we were banging our heads on the wall.  It’s quite the stressful fight for an LM as well.  Also your pet won’t stay on the boss even when you take it off assist.  It makes me feel dumb when I notice my bear is sat in the middle of the room doing nothing!  The last thing I want to be paying attention to is if my pet is attacking the boss or not!  Anyway, Innocent is now 3/5 for the challenge modes, which is basically all that is possible until Turbine fixes the Fire and Frost and Saruman fights.

I also received my 3rd(!) first ager.  It’s sorta weird to have what feels like so many to me as never before have I been lucky enough to receive a 1st age token while it’s still currently the best in the game.  I decided to make my rk a new fire stone.  I lucked out with my legacies, but the base stats were a fair bit of a let down.  I don’t get why the devs do this.  You can see the difference between my new stone and my 2nd ager.  It’s going to be hard to give those passives up, but on the whole, the 1st ager is definitely better.  But seriously:  what rk wants agility or parry rating?  or how about might on an LM staff?  Why even bother having these useless things ingame, especially when it deflates players a bit after the elation of getting a new weapon?  Ah well, I’m certainly enjoying the higher dps and menacing tanks even more. 😉

We’re running around in what??

 Hilarious quote from a poster named mrfigglesworth on the official forums:

And please never make “AHHH I have to press the space bar while dodging exploding puddles of orc pee” a requirement of challenge mode. Ever. Again.

Did I mention I think acid t2 challenge is a stupid, stupid challenge idea? 

Now Acid wing will never be the same. 😛  I’ll always think I’m running around in orc pee….

I definitely agree about the challenge.  It is one of the stupidest ideas ever.

Acid T2 CM

Big congratulations to my raid alliance, Innocent, for completing challenge mode of the Acid Wing in the Tower of Orthanc.  I didn’t sign up last night as I was pretty tired and knew I wouldn’t have the patience for that wing.  (I really don’t like it and I find the challenge so silly.)  Though on our site one of the leaders was kind enough to mention the suggestions and tips I gave in alliance chat, as I was able to watch everything on my boyfriend’s screen. 😀  Thanks Essy! 😀 *hugs*

I was present for our first T2 completion and we’re quite proud of the fact that we don’t burg stack.  I’m also continually amazed by the champ who main tanks a lot of the bosses for us.  This fight is always particularly hard for him given people really need to go all out on aggro.  I dunno how he does it!  Anyway, everyone worked hard and coordinated well and finally got it. Grats again all. 🙂

The video! 

Falling apart

Lotro has returned to nice looking raid armour after the mehness of Ost Dunhoth armour.  There are some exceptions here and there but it was the first time I felt no need to win armour on multiple toons mostly because it looked pretty.  Of course stats are nice too. 😉  I quite like most of the Isenguard armour though I wish it would have had more variation between the classes like the Dar Narbugud or Barad Guldur armour did.  I’ve earned 5 pieces on loremaster and champ now, but I discovered a somewhat disturbing bug when my champ finally donned all of her armour.  It’s literally turning her into pieces!

When I display the chest armour a large gash appears under her jaw:

Then when I display the trousers, a gap appears on her waist:

This is one of those things that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. 😛  It’s a pity as I was really looking forward to wearing this armour.

In regards to other things falling apart, the past weeks have been a bit tumultuous in Lotro for my boyfriend and I.  We’ve found ourselves in a new kin.  Whilst we didn’t want to leave our old kin, we’re grateful to be in our new one and surrounded by kind and fun people (who we were already raiding with anyway as our former kin went kaput in regards to raiding).  I suppose not a lot is different for us as the kin was so dead and we were doing the majority of our grouping up with people outside of kin. But it’s not easy to chat with some former kinnies anymore which is sad as I know we’ll slowly lose touch without the ease of kin chat. But, to reference a quote I read a little while ago: “Destruction breeds creation. If something falls apart, that leaves room for a new beginning.”  So this is my mindset.  🙂  Instead of dwelling in anger and frustration, I’ll focus on the new friends I’ve made and the fun we’ve had, like completing the server 1st kill of Shadow Wing t2 a few weeks ago! woot!

Latest Outfit

After the ugliness that was OD and Draigoch armour, Turbine has returned to the nice-looking raid sets. I think a lot of the Isenguard raid armour looks quite nice. I’ve yet to get the LM robe as it’s the worst piece of the set and I’m working on getting my 5-set bonus for a 35s blinding flash. I’ll grind out those seals to get the teal robe as I think it looks a lot better than the purple-set robe. And of course my champ would love the chest and leg armour pieces as well, but she’d need to complete Saruman and grind the seals as well. I’m sure she’ll get it at some point.

I’ve started to incorporate some Isenguard raid pieces and I feel I’ve come up with a nice non-dress caster outfit! 🙂

All Black Dye aside from head which I’ve not dyed.
Head: Hat of Deep Lore
Shoulders: Shoulder Pads of the Iordur (Loremaster Tower of Orthanc teal set)
Chest: Breastplate of the Lady’s Power (Champion DN set)
Gloves: Gloves of the Iordur (Loremaster ToO teal set)
Legs: Trousers of the Iordur (Loremaster ToO teal set)
Shoes: Memory of the West Shoes (Loremaster Ost Dunhoth t2 set)

I also have to share this screenie as I think it looks cool. I didn’t end up using it for armour pictures as the arm does cover the chest armour.

One of these things is not like the others

Two well dressed elven ladies, then well, um… a man with an interesting choice in fashion. The LM Helegrod hat is always a great source of laughter and amusement. 😛

Also funny capture of the birds. Looks like they’re having a fight!

I got to see a bit of the new raid last night. It was fun, but the fear wing boss is pretty damn hard. 😛 The Endless Stair was really feeling endless last night with all the running up it we kept having to do. ^^

Not so cannon

Spoilers ahead! You’ve been warned!

So I saw a video of the new raid’s boss (final boss I believe). (and meh can’t figure out how to embed a youtube video, sorry :P)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FBcyt8RvFw

It looks pretty darned awesome. But the thing is… Durin’s Bane is supposed to be dead already. 😛 And Gandalf was the one who took care of it. Anyone who’s been to Zirakzigil can see the corpse laying there, yet some how it’s back for us to fight? Riiight. Though some of the dialoge is asking if we can stand against that which smote the wizard, which obviously didn’t happen. So perhaps there’s some trickery going on there.

Oh well. At least it looks badass enough that hopefully I can get over my purist tendencies. 😛