Cosmetic Challenge - Wilderness Scavenger

Last year, in October I believe, I was challenged by a friend and former LOTRO player to devise an outfit revolving around the Jacket of the Fist-way (or any of its identical cousins) from the Warden class vendor at the Ox-clan Camp in Nan Curunir. Naturally, it had to be one of those pieces that dyed oddly. If you've ever worked with any T1 Tower of Orthanc gear from the Ox-clan Camp, you'll have noticed that all the pieces dye a muted color due to a greyish-blue base. If you didn't know that, now you do! I had become so frustrated with that centerpiece that I put this outfit aside for a while. Unfortunately, I had almost forgotten about this outfit. If it weren't for me recently cataloging creations that I've never used or had no intention of using, I wouldn't have resumed working on this almost a year later. 

Luciana, my dear friend, this is dedicated to you! Hopefully you're still checking out this blog : )

It's not very often I'm deliberately challenged to create an outfit using a specific color, let alone a specific piece. There had been significant difficulty in selecting the gear necessary for this. It involved trips to distant corners of Middle-earth, scouring the cosmetic banks of all thirteen characters, and repeated ventures to the skirmish camps. Once I had settled on a color scheme using sea blues and various shades of brown, I had to find a way to overcome the clipping the Jacket of the Fist-way caused--namely in the neck and shoulder region. Who would have thought that I'd be combating clipping around the neck with the clipping from another piece? The Lesser Arrow of the West Helmet has a billowing base below the face mask that masked the clipping between the neck and shoulders. On top of that, it allowed me to hide the violet in the Shoulders of the Mighty verse, which would have upset my intended color scheme.

Considering the majority of pieces came from the Dunland region, I thought it would be appropriate to select a cloak from the same region. Between the various animal cloaks and stitch-like patterns from quest rewards and world drops, I couldn't find anything suitable. I remembered having the Silky Cloak of Salvation at some point because an earlier outfit on my Warden featured it. Sadly, it was one of those pieces I accidentally threw away, thinking there was a duplicate on another character. Luckily, one of my characters hadn't completed the Dunbog, so I was able to snag it once more. It's a shame this is a once per character, one-of-a-kind cloak.

Thanks for reading this! And, in my cataloging efforts to make room for more outfits, I've discovered a few more compilations from late 2010 and early 2011 when I had begun to dabble in outfitting. I hope to put those up in the near future!

Head: Lesser Arrow of the West Helmet (Sea blue, Ost Dunhoth Hunter armor barter)

Shoulders: Shoulders of the Mighty Verse (Umber, Moria Minstrel class barter)

Back: Silky Cloak of Salvation (Sea blue, Dunbog quest reward)

Chest: Jacket of the Fist-way (Sea blue, Ox-clan Camp T1 Warden class barter)

Hands: Ceremonial Doom-hunter's Gloves (Sea-blue, Rift skirm camp cosmetics vendor)

Feet: Boots of the Fist-way (Sienna, Ox-clan Camp T1 Warden class barter)

Bonus Pic: This outfit looks especially beautiful at night!