LOTRO: Fairly hard

 

Having missed out on the amazing dress of last festival, I was determined not to make the same mistake twice and check out Farmer's Faire in time. So there I was, heading out for the small town of Bywater in the Shire. I always love to visit this region, as the weather is always good. Besides, it's always nice not to get battered by some evil Dunlendings for a change.

There were an awful lot of hobbits about in Bywater, the place was crowded with them. A kind hobbit lady offered me to give me goods if I would collect festival tokens for her. I wasn't very impressed by the gardener's outfits she had in stock, but oh dear, she had a flower circlet I had never seen before. I had to get that thing! She also had a mushroom table which made me curious, as I have many mushroom decorations in my house (I always thought the flower pots were a bit underwhelming). It became apparent that I should collect these tokens for her. This turned out to be harder than I thought.

First of all, I didn't read any festival guides, since I rather just go there and find out myself what's there. So I tried to help out another hobbit lady with the huge amount of customers she got. The customer I addressed gave me a shopping list of what he needed and I eagerly went looking for these ingredients. Ah, there I saw the apples he requested! No, that wasn't correct, he wanted to get them in the right order as well. Spoiled little brat, I tell you! So alright, I had to find him some meat first then. Although there was a table were food was magically spawning and disappearing, it didn't have any meat, and even though I turned the whole faire upside down, I couldn't find any there either. I'm terrible at finding things. Of course the timer expired and I was so ashamed that I didn't dare to show my face to the market lady again. The debacle made me feel as depicted to the right.

The bounders were happy to give me another job. I had to address drunken hobbits and tell them to take a break. "That's good," I thought, "I'm always good at tracking down drunken elves, so how hard can it be?" Very hard, I found out. I had forgotten that hobbits don't get drunk. Well, most of them, that is. They drink so much that they pretty much built up an alcohol tolerance. And when they say things like "May the hair on your toes grow thick and curly" they're not drunk, but that's normal hobbit etiquette. After ten minutes of frantically monitoring feasting hobbits, none of them had said anything silly (and by silly, I mean above the average hobbit sillyness). I gave up on this faire of horrors and went to check out the nearby pond...

...where a lot of people where testing their luck with the fishing rod. It boiled down to "fish 10-50 times and be lucky". One quest required you to keep on fishing increasingly hard fish without catching the "bad fish". There was a deed for catching all tiers, and I think that meant 50 times not catching the bad fish. Not really my idea of fun, as you could still catch the wrong fish after spending half an hour pressing the fishing button 49 times (or actually 98 times, one for throwing the bait out, one more for pulling the fish in). It turned out you could barter each pile of fish for festival tokens, which cheered me up a bit. 

I got loads of tokens, enough to get myself the flower circlet I longer for. My grinding tolerance is very low, so I don't think I'll visit the fishermen any time soon again. I visited Bywater again, failed some more quests and had enough for today. I still have to try out Sandson's Farm and stealing mushrooms, so I'll do that another time. A kinnie with a *much* higher grinding tolerance than I returned from Sandson's Farm with 400 tokens "left over" (he was trying to get some deed done), so that does sounds promising. The best thing was that he bought me the mushroom table (so nice of him!), so now I've accomplished everything I wanted from the faire already. I'm now ready to construct and wear my new summer outfit, as the one I was wearing today is a bit warm in the pleasant environment of the Shire. Still, I will present it to you before I put it off:

       Raven's outfit       

• Hat of Deep Lore
• Cloak of the Raven's Claw
• Mantle of the Beneficent
• Lore-keeper's Robe - evendim blue
• Fingerless Gloves - evendim blue
• Shoes of the Stone-student - evendim blue

I recently won the shoulder parts in a raid skirmish and I love their fancy look. They even cover the ugly cloak thingies on your shoulders (see second picture from above). This outfit is one of my favorites as it's colourful yet classy and it is raven-themed (the raven is my favorite pet). I think it's a fitting set for a lore-master and I always use my raven when wearing it!