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Wednesday 1 August 2012

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       


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!

6 comments :

  1. Lol! Great story Ravanel... I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats! The ashamed and embarrassed picture says it all. :D

    Those hobbits are a silly bunch! How about You walk 10 feet that way and pick up your own bacon? And you fat Mayor are going to have a coronary if you keep eating like that. And you Party-goers... well, I guess you did get the memo about alcohol-poisoning and have gone sober.

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    1. Haha, I'm glad you liked it. And I totally agree about the hobbits. ^^

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  2. Every festival prior to this, I've grinded to get all deeds done and get everything I wanted. I did things enough to find hidden deeds, just in case. I've even completed most of the consumable deeds. But I think all will change this festival. This has left me a bit sad and deflated. :/ I'm not happy with the bugs, the luck-based fishing or the games that don't have enough items for people to collect and finish.. and those games being tied to Turbine points. I want to write about it on my blog, but I've been negative too often there as of late and that's no fun for others to read. (I'm entirely unexcited about mounted combat as well.. so I'm going with the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" idea.)

    But hey, SWTOR is going f2p (which could lessen its quality. I hope it doesn't.) I'll be starting up my free trial and then waiting for f2p hits. What server are you on?

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    1. I still have to check out the chicken stuff, but what you tell me doesn't exactly make me eager. Reminds me of those envelope quests in the spring. It was bad that everyone was exploiting it, but it was even worse that the chance was so low (especially with 1 day cooldown) that they were basically inviting you over to the store to get it there.

      I respect your decision not to write much negative stuff. I must say my farmer's faire experience wasn't so amazing (I failed all quests apart from one fishing quests) but hopefully succeeded at not sounding too negative about it. Anyway, I get what you mean.

      You checking out SWTOR is positive news, though. Have you already played before / do you already have any characters? I play on the Nightmare Lands server.

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  3. Awww, Wynniekins would like me to tell you that you're silly, Nemesis. What could be better than sit in the sunshine and fish for your dinner?! I have to say, and I know I'm in the minority there, I really love this festival. It really does take us away from all the questing and saving Middle-earth and let's us do mundane things and just enjoy the quintessential hobbit-ness. And as Wynniekins is a hobbit, she obviously loves it ;)

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    1. Ahhh that's it, I should just have started my LotRO life as a hobbit, then! ;-)

      Anyway, I'm glad to hear you like it. And I'm not sure if you're in the minority. I hear from many people that they love this festival. I guess some people are just more of a festival fans than others. I do make sure to try them out each time, though. :)

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