More Meta-deed Completion

For a long time, I assumed Indy was forever doomed to be casual. I was never going to see the inside of anything tougher than Sword-halls. Then I started raiding, and I saw the insides of some very cool places. Progress was beginning to be had all around on meta-deeds of all sorts.

 Then I stopped raiding, for the most part, due to dropping my sub and getting out of the game for a couple months while I tested out SW:TOR, and in the process of leaving the game I got behind and all the rest of my kinmates are far ahead of me in content and raiding experience. Trying to get in runs now, being behind the curve, it's kind of hard sometimes to imagine ever having all of the meta-deeds finished. If they keep adding content fast enough, then perhaps I will never be finished and I will always have some sort of goal. Of course, as long as I have alts, I will have goals, but that is a tangent we don't want to go down just yet.

Tonight, with the dedicated help of my favorite tank, I managed to finish one of them, the Tempest of Dol Guldur. This one, while less intensive than say, the Moria or Angmar meta-deeds, still took a long time and a lot of work.

Now it's all paid off, and I finally have it finished. The default name was Moonlight, but I changed it to Ananlend, Sindarin for a very long journey. Indy decided to show off on the banks of the Great River Anduin in the new area of Thinglad just after sunrise. I know this sounds silly to all the non-gamers out there, but it was rewarding to finally see it, to ride it around. Felt like I'd accomplished something. Even if it was all pixely and not really worthwhile in the long run, I guess.

My only problem now is to decide what deeds to tackle next. I have pretty much run out of things to do duo or solo, and I'm getting into deeds that will take a goodly number of people to run. The more people something takes to run, though, the longer it will take me to complete the deed, especially when the deeds are ten levels old. No one wants to run that old stuff. For example, I have the Ost Dunhoth meta-deeds to do now. But no one runs Ost Dunhoth anymore, because it isn't cap anymore, and no one wants to waste time on getting raid gear when they're going to blow through those levels on their way to 75 anyways.

/sigh. Back to being casually anonymous, I guess.

The Loot Dropper

Those of you with the constitution to handle it, and especially those of you who need to work on your Angmarim slayer deed in Angmar (no? durr), will find this little tidbit to be particularly tasty.

In north-eastern Angmar, near Gath Forthnir, is the little nasty village of Bail Catharnakh. In the nook of one of the buildings, interspersed between angmarim, duvardain and gorthorog, you can find this charming little fellow - a Cargul.
As a level 50 mob (elite I believe) with 10k health, he's a bit of a hassle for lowbies, but if you're at level cap, you can get some decent loot off of him. He and his buddies all have a relatively quick respawn rate, and his friends go down without too much of a fight, the two archers and the one melee npc. The Cargul can throw out some fears, disarms, and silences, but other than that he's not too bad. Within thirty minutes of farming him, I had gathered, among various old level 50 weapons/armor/pocket pieces/jewelry, these prizes:

And also a "Tome of the Snake" cosmetic pet for my Loremaster - the only one I was missing :) I still have lots of characters who need the angmarim slayer deed, so while I'm working on it I'll be sure to catch this guy a few more times and see what else I come across.

Balrog Down

After weeks of trying and countless gold pieces spent in repair bills, I finally managed to down the balrog with an outstanding group.

The most amazing thing to me is that after all these dozens of tries and failures, where the group would wipe multiple times - on this go around, not a single person died. It was perfect. Textbook, in a sense.

Other than getting bugged out at the end of the fight and thereby unable to receive any loot ( insert sad panda face here) I gleefully ran back up to the surface to turn in the quest. This was the final step in gaining my Dunedain Warhorse, the first of my meta-deed mounts.

However, after turning in the quest, I was woefully surprised when my meta-deed did not update, and I did not get my horse either! In something fast approaching a fury (it is amazing how, when you play a game long enough, not receiving a reward, even a pixelated and quite imaginary one, can send one into confused and startled anger. Like a badger), I cried out to the gods on Olympus (aka the GMs) and asked where my horse was. I wanted my horse.

The GMs actually responded, and a certain +Ohtah+ told me to try relogging. I did so tentatively, but upon my return to the game I found a Dunedain Warhorse waiting for me in my inventory and a very satisfyingly complete Saviour of Eriador meta-deed.

So here is the much sought after horse, and while he is indeed rather ugly (the modeling of the head is the most horrific), I ride him proudly throughout Middle-earth, showing off my triumph and dedication to the game (and also my complete and utter lack of any meaningful activity, production, or social life).