LOTRO: A precious clasp

An acidic delusion

Last night was raiding night with my kin. We were ready to take a deep bite into Acid T2. The group was looking good, that is, we only had one lore-master and one burg, but we had three guards to make up for that. Only... it didn't exactly work out as intended.

While we took down the Acid trash on T2 the previous lock and had some good tries on the boss, it just didn't want to work this night. I'm not even sure what was going on. We had experienced people, good DPS... you name it. Do you know that feeling? One night you take down Lightning T2 Challenge and Fire & Ice T2 in one go, the other night you're banging your head against the wall and don't know what's going on. This night fell into the second category.

It's not that much to be ashamed of... right? I mean, look at those freaking things, they got three eyes!

Oh precious clasp

With the upcoming lock reset in our minds, we decided not to bang until our brains fell out, so we resorted to T1 instead. The only downside for me (personally) was that I still was needed on my lore-master even though my rune-keeper has been needing to complete the T1 deed for acid and shadow for months now. Soon the vent chatter filled with remarks of typical high standard. This approximately went as follows:

Upon Shadow T1:

Player 1 (tank): "Hey guys, I just activated the fight so I'm going to tab out."

Player 2 (quasi-shocked): "What?! I mean, nooooo, you can't do that!"

The raid watches as Saruman starts a pep talk to his soon-to-be-lost minion and, after what feels like ages, slowly dodders off to his tower. Yes, you should think hey had fixed that. But no, it was actually working as intended. Aargh.

And a few minutes later, after Bukot lost some illusions (and his life):

Player 1: "<Player 2> , would you mind healing up there?"

Player 2 (rune-keeper)'s vitals suddenly show a distinct lack of morale.

Player 3: "<Player 2> just jumped off the tower, man!"

This is no source of concern, though.

Player 3: "Don't worry, I know he bought 1h FAIL immunity from the Store..."
"Wasn't that obvious?"

It might not sound as a surprise that our Saruman take-down wasn't flawless. On our first try, one of the tanks decided to crash right when the last phase started. On our second try, we were so deluded by our one hour fail immunity that we bluntly forgot to pop our wtf-skills and big heals alltogether when that same phase started. We realized this when we suddenly had two dead tanks, one dead healer and someone running around with nine Sarumans after him. This was a moment of fun though, as I could go crazy on dazing Sarumans all around me. My moment of glory arrived when I could root almost all of them with Cracked Earth, because they were finally neatly grouped up. Stated like this, it sounds like I saved the day, but this was not the case. Everyone kept their heads cool and, last but not least, we got that 1h fail immunity...

This time we made it, and I got my favourite reward:

... a free lift from Gwaihir, the giant eagle! Really, I cannot resist that feathery thing of cuteness. Especially when it just saved me from certain death. Nevertheless, we also got a more mundane reward: our kin's first clasp! We figured the whole fight out, killed Saruman (T1) as first of the server... but never got a clasp. Ordering everyone to wear that lucky horseshoe surely did the trick, and our guardian could go home in a very happy mood.

30% off Coupon

Last but not least, as I was told by my raid-mates, you should use a coupon if you plan to buy something at that filthy Store. It's only valid these coming days, but you'll get 30% off for whatever item you pick. Just place your order in the snail basket, go to the purchase window and enter the following code:

30LOTRO

Be fast though, I heard it expires on Thursday.