You mean I actually have to work for it?

I'd forgotten how much work a festival in lotro can be, if you are as obsessive about collecting everything as I am.

Wait, let me back up.

A year or so ago, I decided to get both my Inn League and Ale Association standings to kindred. Getting both to kindred takes a good deal more work than just doing one or the other, as doing one will give you negative rep with the other. It was only through a delicate balancing act and several weeks of grinding dedication that I managed it.

By the time I was there, I had a couple stacks of the barter tokens for each faction. At first they seemed useless, but as Indy is unable to throw anything away, I shoved them in the vault and forgot about them. Until, that is, at the next festival, when I saw that these tokens could be traded on a 1:3 ratio for any festival token of your choice.

Suddenly, acquiring all those festival cosmetics and mounts was a piece of cake. I no longer had to grind out the quests and deeds to get tokens. Festival's started today? Okay, go to the vault, pull out a few Inn League or Ale Association tokens, turn them in for the appropriate festival tokens, aquire goods, done. That was it. I could usually accomplish all my festing in the space of five minutes, unless there was a new deed I wanted to finish.

Well, the Yulefest started last week, but due to the release of SW:TOR, I've been distracted. I just decided to log onto lotro today, and what would you know, but I'm all out of those IL and AA tokens.

So now, to acquire my new Yulehorse, I had to actually run quests, which isn't all bad since I still hadn't finished my Feast-beast title from last year, and there is a new snowman building quest/deed thingie. Thank goodness the festival will run until Jan 30th, because it'll probably take several days for me to get all the other cosmetics.

At least the new Yulehorse isn't that bad looking. Don't know what's on his head, but the rest of it looks good.