Ales and Tales at Goldberry's Spring

Last night, I decided to go to an Ales and Tales meeting on the Landroval server. Since sis called and wanted to play together just in time for us to make it, we each rolled new hobbits on Landroval (I have a warden named Elimiera and she has a burglar named Pangiruk, a tribute I suppose to her Gladden characters) and ran as fast as we could towards Goldberry's Spring, the location for this week's meeting.

I was expecting maybe a dozen people to be gathered under the trees, but no, there were probably fifty or more people standing around in the clearing. Some were dancing, many were drinking, and all were having a good time. On the large rock under the tree, a band stood and performed, and that rock became the speaking platform for each performer as the night wore on. Some recited poetry, some sang, some played music. One elf even told a lovely story of the old days and the Two Trees.

All in all it a was a fantastic time to be had and I am looking forward to next week's meeting at the Plough and Stars Inn! I might even work up my hobbit courage and recite a poem of my own!

A Rifting We Will Go

I'm feeling a bit wordy, and my imagination won't let me sleep, so forgive me if this post is a bit more on the .... grandiloquent side than usual. This may quite possible turn out to be my longest post to date, so I won't blame you if you don't have the time, patience, or interest enough to read it. If you are looking for information on how to beat the Rift, what strategies you need, etc. You won't find it here. This is pure creative release for my own mind, to share my experiences while they are still fresh.

 Last night, the kin got together, all impromptu-like, to do a bit of Bogbereth farming. We killed her about twenty times, at least until everyone who wanted the housing trophy had one. Farming her was pretty easy, and we had the group and were in the general vicinity, so we figured, why not? Let's go to the Rift.

Now the Rift of Nurz Gashu is the old end-game content for lotro, back when the level cap was fifty and the player base still all knew how to play their classes. I had been to the entrance of it, once, but I had never actually been inside. After volunteering myself for Horn duty, I headed up that way from Gath Forthnir. Even though I had been to the entrance of the place before, I had never really realized how desolate the place was. I felt like I was riding through some surreal movie sequence or something. My imagination began to run away with me as I rode slowly up to the summoning horn. I could almost see little puffs of ash swirl up around Bainrhi's hooves as he worked his way across the ledge. The wind was utterly still, and there were no signs of life to be seen, except for the distant glows of campfires.

After what seemed like ages and ages, I found a camp, but it was not the one I was looking for. These were no Dunadan. These were orcs. Angmarim. Trolls. I threaded my careful way between them and continued towards where I hoped the friendly camp would be.

I finally made it. I summoned my kinmates to the camp, and we marched down from the cliffside to the abandoned arena. The one thought that kept flitting through my head, like some annoying insect, was the size of the place. What sort of place was this? Why had it been built? And where was the entrance to this supposedly horrible place?

The answer to that last question was soon answered, as the leader of our party rode his horse down into a gaping crack in the stonework. A small voice inside me laughed with the thought, at least now you know why it's called The Rift. A great crack in the earth. Then, another thought soon replaced it. What happened to open up this crack and reveal whatever horrors lie beneath it? I had heard horrible things about this place, about how difficult it could be. Even now, at fifteen levels above the intended level, I knew I was up for a challenge. This used to be end-game. The old Sammath Gul. Of course the creators of the game were going to make it as tricky as possible.

I watched my fellow kinmates enter the cave, one by one, and then, I rode down last, into the Rift. Murmuring to myself that I was about to die, I turned, just before entering, and bid farewell to the sunshine. As pitiful as the sky in Angmar is, I had a feeling it was going to be a while before I saw it again.

Inside was a gaping cavern, far larger than what I had been expecting. Truth be told, I had been expecting a tunnel, but no. This was something else.  Far away, I could see orcs and angmarim wielding picks. Were they mining? What was going on down here? What was this place?

We worked our way down ramps that looked none too steady and stopped before a small group of orcs and a massive troll. They were speaking, in their own harsh way, and arguing. I have come to learn that orcs argue a lot. Those with swords and shields rushed forward, and I hung back with the other archers, as was my place. We dispatched with the lot of them quickly, and relatively unscathed.

And that was the way of things for a long while. We would press onward, ever deeper into the earth, and the orcs and evil men fell before our blades. Eventually we came to an interesting scene - some extremely large giants, fighting a band of orcs. For a while we stood back, waiting to see how it would turn out, but then, with one mind, we rushed forward and assisted the giants in defeating the orcs. They thanked us and told us of some horrible creatures ruling over the orcs, and asked if we would help defeat them.  Of course we would. That's why we were down there, wasn't it? To kill bad guys?

After the commotion with the orcs had died down and we had stopped for a bit to catch our breath around the giants' fire, something caught my attention. What was that off to the side? I ran over the the ruined archway and proceeded to view one of the few sites in lotro that have caught me quite by surprise.

What sort of place was this? Who were these fire-giants, the Eldgang? Had Tolkien invented this place, or was this one of the more fanciful (and frankly, strangely beautiful) places the game's creators had though up? But there is no rest for the would-be heroes, so I was soon called away from my sight-seeing to press onward with the rest of the group, ever deeper into the earth.

It soon became apparent that we were headed towards that great coliseum I had viewed earlier. Part of me was excited about the prospect of going there, but part of me still held a lingering fear. Deep places of Middle-earth usually hold ancient, evil terrors, and I had heard rumors that one dwelt here. A balrog. But he has no place in this story yet, for we were still a long way off from that coliseum.

We did battle with many more evil things, not the least of which was an orc named Zogtark and his many drakes. The drakes fell to the ground after we filled them full of arrows, and Zogtark was dispatched by the sword-carriers. We pushed through, and emerged through what appeared to be a promising door only to be met with frustration: We had come out too low, and now had to work our way back up toward the coliseum.

 
Letting my imagination take hold again, I wondered what the heat of this room would feel like, and how taxing it would be on our little band of heroes, both mentally and physically. The armor of the stronger ones would surely grow hot from the heat, and the air would dry out my bow and weaken it. In a place like this, how long could one expect to hold out and continue fighting? Some of my companions' clothes had even caught alight from stray sparks.

It seemed as though we had been underground for ages. The vast caverns had given way to small, tight corridors, and I longed for the sight of the stars. A clear night in the Shire. I wondered how much further we had to go. Even Moria, with all its twists and turns and tight places, gives way to the beauty of Lorien in the end. What golden wood was waiting on the other side of this darkness?

I began to think we had gone too far, surely we've gone too deep. Strange creatures, that looked at first as though they were trolls - but no. These were not trolls. I do no know what they were, even after leaving the Rift and finding the sky again. I have a feeling I do not want to know, with names like Shadow-eater and Stone-biter. Later, we found one that was named World-eater, but that is for later.

Eventually, we fought our way past the strange creatures and into the coliseum. I braced myself for the Balrog. But he was not there. Instead there was another of the Eldgang giants, and a strange creature called the Ever-seer. I was not looking at them though. I was looking at the place I was in. How many thousands of people could this place hold? I wondered, looking at the rows and rows of seats. A pity a volcano had decided to come up in the floor.

I looked below me, over the edge of the platform, and saw beautiful statues. Again I wondered who had built this place, and why. What were those stone kings put there to watch over, with their fire-bladed spear and their towering shields? What was inscribed on their shields? My elvish is a bit rusty. It was in this room that our group was put for the first time to a real test, and we failed miserably, I admit. But we got back on our feet, dusted ourselves off, and tried again.
This time we succeeded, and pressed onward, to what I still didn't know, but thoughts of the Balrog still held heavy in the back of my mind. We ran onward across a long stone bridge towards what appeared to be a fall of lava, cascading downwards from some great height. High above us the roof of the cavern stood, and for a moment I was thankful to be back out in the 'open' and away from those tiny tunnels. I laughed mirthlessly to myself and continued across the bridge with my kinmates. Far away I could see that ruined archway at the giants' fire, and I realized how far we had come. How much farther did we have to go?

At the end of the bridge we came to a great door, and going through it, I met with surprise an elf maiden. But this was no mere maiden. This was a warrior, so strong that it put my feats thus far in the game to shame. This was one of the Eldar. She pointed to a great door beyond us, at the other end of the hall, held shut by many great locks and seals, and told us the tale of how Thaurlach had been imprisoned here many ages ago by the Istari instead of being killed for what he had done to her people, and she had set guard over him for thousands of years, waiting for him to try and escape so that she could finally give him the justice he deserved. After assuring her that we would help her defeat Thaurlach, the Balrog (!!) she opened the great door with its many seals for us.

Not long after entering his prison chamber, something went horribly wrong and he broke loose from his chains. We fought valiantly, but in the end death takes us all, I suppose. It was only a matter of time. And so ends my story of the Rift. Maybe next time, when we've had a chance to catch our breath and re-summon our courage, we'll try again.

If you know me at all and the way I play lotro, I am a complete shutter-bug, and am constantly taking screenshots, sometimes of completely pointless things. This post, if nothing else, should be evidence of that - that I managed to take all these pictures and more in the middle of a twelve-man raid. Maybe that has something to do with my dying so many times. Who knows?

The Sims 3: Ambitious?

The new Sims3 expansion pack, Ambitions, was released today, and after the UPS man was kind enough to bring it straight to my door, I loaded it up to see what had changed. I mean, after all, with this expansion EA was supposedly finally giving us the option to see our sims while they were at work. We could supposedly have complete and total control over our sims 24/7 - for whatever that's worth, anyways.

After loading the expansion and fiddling about with the new bits for a while on my legacy family, I decided that the family I had been playing had way too many children, and way too many ghosts. I knew it would take forever before I had a sim high enough in the "Ghost Hunter" profession to catch them all and leave my house ghost-free, therefore my only option was to start a new legacy. I'm crazy. I know.

Since I don't play by the official legacy rules (point-keeping, etc) I decided to put my new family in the new city of Twinbrook. Only problem is, they had no money, so they had to buy a cheap house in the swamp on the poor side of town.

To compensate, I had my legacy founder get a career as a stylist at the salon in town. Ooh! One of the new jobs! I can control her at work! One of her first customers was this fellow, who only wanted some new formal-wear to celebrate his recent job promotion. That was it. New suit. I was to leave his horrible hair alone. *shudder* I am beginning to learn, through several botched jobs and unhappy clients, that when they tell you what they want, that is all you are to do. No more, and no less.

When she was not working, my founder would head upstairs to the drafting table and work on new sketches (which so far I have found have absolutely no effect on her abilities/performance as a stylist, but it is a nice touch). It also seems that her artistic abilities have little to do with the outcome of her sketches other than the fact that as her painting skill increases her sketches have moved from pencil/charcoal to colors, possibly paints. I don't know. I think I'm putting way too much thought into this.

I also found that the new careers are salaried jobs, that earn sims a certain amount of simoleons per week (with added bonuses earned per job completed, I suppose as some sort of commission), while the original jobs are still wage jobs, earning per hour. I have yet to determine which is more profitable in the long run.

My founder's husband I had join the Law Enforcement careers, one of the original careers in the game. This, to my disappointment, I saw had not changed at all. Apparently it's only the NEW careers that can be controlled. All the original ones are still off in the land of whoknowswhatsit. And so, for the first time, TS3 falls flat on a promise (that of complete and total control) but I'm sure it's for a reason. I mean, if I had the max limit of playable sims (eight) at a time and was trying to control all of them at work at the same time, each at a different job, I would probably go crazy and quit the game. EA doesn't want me to quit, so I suppose that's why they made the game the way they did.

Work and gameplay issues aside, I am enjoying some of the changes in the home. My favorite, in a sort of ironic way, is the new laundry feature. Before, when sims would change clothes or get in the shower or go swimming or anything, their clothes would magically change to whatever was needed. Now, when they change, there is a little pile of clothes on the floor. Which they then have to pick up and put in the hamper. When the hamper is full, they have to wash the clothes, and then either put them in the dryer or hang them out on a clothesline (gasp! Just like IRL!!!! Only, irl I don't do the laundry, and it just keeps piling up). Of course, the more appliances you have in a house, the more chances there are for things to go wrong, like the little episode pictured above. My poor Sean was trying desperately to keep the thing under control (at one point he actually had the option to "subdue" the washing machine, which required him to then hang onto the thing in terror while it jumped and shook like a thing possessed). 

Most all the other elements of the game remain the same, but then I have still only dabbled at the surface of Ambitions.  Babies still look adorable playing with blocks on the turtle table, and there is still no weather (give me seasons, EA!!!) but I am still just as addicted as ever to the game.



 On a side note, I think the game's randomizer when it comes to generating styling jobs can be a bit too random at times. I received a notice that a Coy Jones-Brown wanted a complete wardrobe do-over to celebrate being hired for a new job. I get to the house of the client, ring the doorbell, and who answers, but this guy, my client.  A child. A very, very, creepy looking child. What kind of town is this Twinbrook, that they hire children? And what is in the swampwater, to make them look like that?