LOTRO Festival Drinking games

Ok, whoever is the genius behind the LOTRO kegs needs a raise 😉  A previous version of this keg, the “Sinister Inn League Keg” which is obtained from the Spring festival in the Hedge maze would transport you to various places throughout Middle-Earth including places like the Giant’s Needle which is a tad tricky to get down from.

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So, to further clarify where these kegs come from.  The Sinister Inn League Keg comes from the Hedge maze and is a reward for the quest “The Green Challenge” obtained from Tob Sandyman, where you have to find a relic of the Inn League.  He’s standing with the rest of the quest-givers there at the entrance to the maze.  You first have to find the item, then find your way out while drunk.  There’s also the Inn League keg  that’s a reward for the “Bullroarer’s Challenge – Advanced” which has teleportation powers as well.  This quest is up in Brockenborings and may require you to do the quests at the Statue just NE of the horse point, otherwise the quest is further to the east.  This is the quest that requires you to way along the fence while drunk.  I believe the Sinister version is just a little more “un-kind” with the places it puts you as I tried the Inn League and didn’t go anywhere too bad – just a bit remote.  Both of these quests are repeatable, so you can do them again to either get the keg again, or for leaves.

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Well with the new festival they included a Moria keg version that is barterable for 12 tokens.  I ended up taking a few trips with the keg and each location kept on getting better.  By far my favorite is the spot in the Great Delving complete with a fire, sleeping bag, and empty glasses!  I took a quick video of 2 of these locations, including the drunken effect and some a bunch of screenshots.  I included some captions, but feel free to add your own 🙂

First a snap of my Kinship hall with all the kegs…

This is a shot from the regular keg, a nice pig hovel in the shire.

Here’s the video of the Foundations and Redhorn locations.

These next 2 are from the same location in the Foundations as the video above:

Possibly my favorite is this one in the Great Delving as there’s NO way to get here other then the keg.  So not only did the put these locations in they actually took time to build out little areas.

Here are a couple of shots from the Redhorn location:

As good as the Great Delving location is, the one in Nud-Melek has to be the scariest possible way to awaken from a drunken stupor.

Now how bummed would you be as a dwarf if you knew all this beer was out of your reach just above the 21st hall 😉

In addition to doing a bunch of drinking today, I did manage to finish off a couple of Spring Festival deeds on my Warden, so I was pleased with that.  I’ll probably continue the festival more throughout the time it is up but I’m not real sure how much I’ll do on my other toons.

LOTRO Spring Festival

So for those of you in twitter-land you probably know that I’ve been enjoying the Spring festival and have been quite busy.  The shrew stomping is a lot of fun and I took a couple videos of my successful runs through both the kill 10 shrews and the 1st to kill the enormous one.  One thing I’ve noticed is that many try to use normal AOE skills or lay traps to gain an advantage.  Tapping the shrew with damage doesn’t grant credit nor does it prevent someone else from stomping it – so there’s really no need to do that at all.  The first video is pretty tame as there weren’t that many online at the time.

This video is a bit more crowded and chaotic and notice that the enormous shrew did set off the hunter trap but I was still able to tag it 🙂

One other thing to point out, the quest for killing 10 shrews actually has a couple of options.  The first time you do it there is only one quest giver, but either tied to successful completion of that quest of the enormous shrew you also get access to the “Practiced” and “Elite’ gardeners that reward you with more leaves.  So as soon as you can get those, I highly recommend using them as the quest is the same but with better rewards, and you can only have 1 active at a time.  The Leisurely Gardener just requires you to stomp 10 shrews before the round ends, the Practiced Gardener asks you to do it in a quicker timespan, and the Elite Gardener has a same small time window as the Practiced and in addition asks you to plant seeds to try and prevent the shrews in the first place.  Sadly I wasn’t paying enough attention to notice what the trigger was for those additional quest givers.

This 3rd video is my last run with the quest from the Elite Gardener.  I was a bit stressed at the end as I was short 1 shrew but I did luck out and have the enormous one spawn right under me 😉 so I got him too…

(edit – all three are up, just not finished getting all pretty)

In addition to the shrews, I did finally complete the Bullroarer’s challenge and am now sporting a massive new weapon – my beer mug 😉

I ran both horse races successfully and amassed enough tokens to purchase both horses, here are the screen shots of them for those who are curious.  You’ll also notice the shrew statue and the beer mug in these shots, and the magical clover fields that can grow in snow 😉

There’s also a post on the forums about these horses as well and a twitpic from @KurganNazzir.

The Bree hedge maze is also back open, but after getting horribly lost a few times I’m pushed that off for a little bit later such that I can devote the appropriate time to it.  I still am missing the sinister keg and there’s also a Moria keg that I want to add to my house, so I’ll be working to get both of those here in addition to some of the other goodies from the vendors.

And finally this morning, I did check out some of the new Dwarven league starting from the dwarves there in Thorin’s Hall.  Apparently they’re not real happy with the Inn League monopolizing all the beer drinking and are plotting against them.   I stole some beer recipes but got sidetracked and haven’t done too much more to aide in their plot against the hobbits.  Not that I’m against the hobbits – but there’s nothing wrong with having more beer, right?

To my knowledge, it appears that the only way to get the leaves required for the items are the horse races (6 max per day), the hedge maze (quite a few different quests there), and the shrew stomping (max 10 per run, and it goes off just about every five minutes).  So if there are lots of things you want, better get your stomp on 😉

Updated Captain guides

So I know I haven’t played mine much lately nor really talked about him, but there was a new guide posted on the forums which has sparked some good discussion as well as a mention of an old guide being updated as well.  Here’s the link to the recent guide by Cithryth as well as the link to Elborigorn’s guide.  Cithryth primarily focuses on a grouping/raiding Captain while Elborigorn’s is a bit more inclusive to include all the roles a Captain might have to fill.  So, if you have or are leveling a Captain both treads are good reads for ideas a build suggestions.