LOTRO's Summer festival 2016 in pictures

Just one more day and Lord of the Rings Online's Summer festival is already over (4 August). I never used to be such a fan of festivals in MMOs, but as I get older and undoubtedly more boring, I find myself strangely attracted to them. This Summer festival offered pretty new rewards (making to the total amount to pick from absolutely overwhelming) and cute new quests. I'll walk you through them with this Summer festival 2016 photo report.

One of the new quests involves carrying around ice for the hobbit ice cream industry (this, apparently, is a thing). Of course, like a good trucker, you need to let elderly hobbits and cats pass rather than run them over with your delivery. It is hard to miss, because a huge text pops up on your screen and hobbits and cats are marked with a flame above their heads; nevertheless, some players have done so and reportedly had to use /stuck to get out of the root they received as a reprimand.

I love how the developers thought it through by adding ice tongs to hold the ice with. You can't see them very clearly  on the picture above, but they're there.

Apparently hobbits are either too dumb or too stubborn to use the ice tongs; they just hold the ice itself. Perhaps they just withstand cold very well? You also get a very interesting result when picking up the ice with a fishing rod equipped. Yay for bugs.

Talking about bugs, or graphical glitches, if you will: minstrels with the dissonance stance active fish up very interesting meals, as you can see above (no that isn't the sun, it's a fish with a halo).

Traditionally, fishing is one of the highlights of the Summer festival. I'm not a great fan of the hobby myself and it's not a very time efficient way to get tokens, but at least I had fun taking nice pictures of Ravanel while doing it. The dress she is wearing in the pictures is the Short-sleeved Summer Dress from the 2011 edition of this festival. I remember it well, because it was my first year with Conrad and got him the tunic to go with it (so romantic, haha).

Flying kites is one of the other new quests of this year's Summer festival, and I love it. It's super cute, easy and the best part: you can get one for your character to run around with at all times! A large chunk of my time went into gathering enough tokens (you need 75) to get one.

I got the Steed of the Summer Sea (new this year) for my minstrel Ravenwe, as it fitted perfectly with her turquoise outfit. There's also a cloak to go with it.

I also spent some time getting the Cloak of Nárië (available since 2015, but I was slacking then) for my hunter. The green part dyes beautifully and I think it fits the class perfectly.

For the hobbits among you, don't forget you can earn the title "Pie-eating Champion" at the Bree-land festival grounds. (Okay, every race can get this title, but it's just so darn appropriate for the little buggers.) A tip: focus on the gooseberry and apple pies (in that order): they can be taken in the fastest. The rhubarb pies are the absolute worst.

The vast majority of my summer festival tokens went to star-lit crystals, though. You see Ravanel applying one on the picture above - a very underwhelming animation, I know. I'm really happy that I've maxed out the DPS on my imbued staff now. The book will probably have to wait until the autumn, but I'm already happy there's another way of getting the crystals than doing epic battles.

Finally, if you find yourself just a few tokens short of a reward you really want, it is worth checking the more remote festival areas, such as Thorin's Hall, the Bree festival grounds and pond, and Duillond. They offer fishing, horse races and "search item" quests. And while you're at it, you can check out those gorgeous frills that were added to Ered Luin recently (see above).

Conclusions

Overall, I quite liked this Summer festival. The new quests are cute, there is a lot to do and there are many cool rewards. The only downside was that the bird kite (which is absolutely gorgeous) and two of the dyes can only be purchased with mithril coins, but there's enough other sweet stuff to collect. And although it isn't possible to just 'quickly grind' tokens, as it was with the Anniversary event, at least this means the questing is more varied.

What Summer festival goodies did you procure? Anything you're planning to collect last-minute?