Ithilien Savant

This past month, I've been slowly taking a second character through Eastern Gondor and collecting the cosmetics I missed on my first pass, due to a lack of inventory space. Luckily, the skin used by the Robe of the Five Rivers (along with most Eastern Gondor quest gear) can be obtained from multiple quests. I may be behind the times, as other players have already featured this robe, which can be found here and here, but I wanted to give it my own spin and pair it with an old, hard to acquire staff--Forvengwath's Despair and create a unique appearance. It's not often I use purple in my outfits, as it can be a highly saturated color, but matching the staff made it necessary. I wouldn't have expected sienna and purple to go together so well either! At least this served as a nice break from the green-themed outfits I've published lately.

Scaled Scourge

This week's entry began with an overwhelming question: "What cosmetics have I NOT used?" For starters, I've avoided most of the crafted gear after level 65. That's when gear skins started deforming the bodies of our characters. I also haven't put any of the Eastern Gondor gear to good use. I've been reluctant to use a good portion of the Helegrod and Rifts armor sets. I've often ignored the Draigoch sets, since I can rarely get them to mesh well with gear outside the sets. Suffice it to say, the list was extensive. It boils down to personal tastes, but those tastes, in retrospect, have been restrictive. Taking a chance, I settled for some pieces I've either rarely seen worn by anyone in LOTRO, on the cosmetics thread of the forums, or by fellow bloggers.

Captain's Arm

Exactly as the title says, this outfit was based upon the Captain's Arm, an incredibly rare weapon looted from Castellan Wisdan's chest at the very top of Barad Gúlaran. I farmed for this over a month, running that particular dungeon five times a day, at least three time a week. Even though it's easily soloed at 85, the drop rate is infinitesimal. LOTRO also tends to lock players out of instances if too many are entered within an hour. Given those circumstances, this was, and still is, one of the more painful halberds to acquire.

Whispers of Forodwaith

The Forochel Epic quest reward, the Breastplate of Voima, has finally seen some use. Would you believe it's been sitting in Nathrien's vault since early 2011? I've held on to this for so long because it's a unique skin from the Shadows of Angmar. It probably would have continued to collect dust had I not found it's counterpart leggings, Golubadanir, while deeding in Angmar. I honestly wasn't sure what I could create with the set, but I gave it my best.

Twilight Bladebearer

It pleases me to be able to play LOTRO, as intended, once more. Whatever was done in the past week or two server-side has corrected my issues with the game. Lag is gone, as well as the large ping and loss values, and the characters that were parked in housing instances were finally freed from their virtual confinement. I'll finally be able to sit down and create more blog-worthy outfits again!

In the meantime, I've only had one character free to roam around Middle-earth. Seeing how little I could actually do, I started making my way through Central and Eastern Gondor for the first time. What I didn't expect was the inclusion of the Dawnless Day, a time in which Sauron used smoke and fumes from Mordor to conceal the sun from most of Rohan and Gondor. Although this particular event lasts only five days in lore, LOTRO has made it seem dreadfully permanent. Even though I've only gotten to Bâr Húrin, I can't take much more of the atmosphere. It's difficult to spend so much time in a gloomy area when most LOTRO's landscape consists of clear, cheerful skies and lush vegetation. (I often rush through Angmar and Mirkwood for similar reasons.) In light of that, I was compelled to make a colorful outfit before I return to the doom and gloom of Eastern Gondor.