Fangorns Edge & Pits of Isengard

Colzarak, Zeshac and Grimberg finally managed to get together to attempt some of the Isengard 3 man instances - I did say we were casual!

We chose Fangorn's Edge as the easiest of the three to try and did a bit of reading up. This didn't stop us wiping out on the first crossing, not a good start. But remarkably we went on the defend all the Huorns and only loose 1 of the Ents in the chaos of Ents, Trolls and Orcs that was the final fight.

Now we had time to spare so decided to 'have a look' at the Pits of Isengard with no idea of what to expect. Strange stacking sickness affected our vision and a plague a Limrafns punted us into oblivion. Not sure what caused the Limrafns to appear so we peeled the mobs off the tank one at a time from then on.

The whip wielding Zaberz flung us around for an exciting ride, nobody ended in the sludge.

And so we eventually stumbled across Ironarm the final boss, could we make it 2 out of 2? The punting Limrafns appeared again and with limited ranged attack we just had to suffer the punts and damage and heal through. Grimberg got an on defeat heal from them so that helped a lot. And yes we defeated Ironarm and completed 2 on level instances in one session, unheard of!

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I suspect Riders of Rohan will prove a bigger draw for a while but I hope we can complete the third of the 3-man instances sometime soon.

Skybreaker a bit too tough

 Level 49 Loremaster Florandir tried to get the better of the very tough shard dropper Skybreaker but could not quite manage to keep the fight under control and failed when the big Drake was on about 9k. Fun trying though.

Sunset over Malenhad

 

Evening sun in Malenhad waiting for Skybreaker to show up.

Florandir tested in Goblin Town

Florandir the loremaster felt his staff was a little dusty after being in the cupboard for a long time so he needed a good challenge to sharpen up his skills.

So at level 47 he set off for Goblin Town to try and solo all the way to Gollum's Cave so he could make a sketch for Bilbo.

Working his way to the Slave Pens was good practice for his mez & root skills. He summoned his eagle for the good flank rate so he could try a 'flank & tank' tactic using Wizards Fire. He also expected a few defeats so the eagle rez would come in handy (and it did).
 
Flank and tank worked well and Florandir got good experience of the timing of cracked earth root and blinding flash duration to manage the fight. He tried alternatively starting the fight with the eagle and then doing a mez pull. The mez pull meant Florandir did not have to worry as much about breaking mez with AOE skills so preferred this approach.

The eagle rez was tried as an aggro wipe after running through a crowd to avoid some fighting. The eagle was set to passive, then run through the crowd to a safe spot, let them kill you, eagle rez, mobs all run back. This worked some times but others times the eagle seemed to aggro mobs that the loremaster didn't so was not around for the rez. Good job he had a stack of revive scrolls as backup.


A vital piece of advice from fellow loremaster Aeshac about Air Lore healing the pet as well when using Wizards Fire after a flank served Florandir well as he adventured deeper and encountered the level 50 signature Goblin Town Soldiers (GTS). The eagle would survive the whole fight to allow use of mez then Inner Flame healing when down to 1 mob. Florandir managed to defeat 1 GTS plus 2 normals and 2 GTS using this technique.

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A final sprint towards Gollum's Cave ended in defeat as Florandir's level 48 was too low to enter the Great Goblin's Den and shake off his pursuers. A revive, Wisdom of the Council and sprint down the right tunnel found Florandir at Gollum's Cave where battered, bruised and much the wiser, he could finally achieve his objective and make a sketch for Bilbo.

Florandir enjoys adventuring with his pets so looking forward it is worrying that pets DPS/abilities have not scaled well to L75 (see this post).

Lost Temple - Grimberg the Tank!

The Flaming Halflings managed to get together to take a long planned trip to the Lost Temple. The party of L75s was Runekeeper Zeshac, Champion Colvedui, Hunter Findo, Captain Grimberg and rubbing the sleep from his eyes Captain Stuball. Not exactly a 'classic' fellowship.

After the Champion got in a spot of bother while tanking Grimberg was asked to tank - a new experience for him. Fortunately he did not have to compete too much with Hunter Findo for aggro as there were plenty of rot maggot larvae and other delightful denisens for him to burn up.

We had a bit of bother with Ferndur and wiped. Second time, as soon as Ferndur summoned anything we stopped all DPS on him and Grimberg kited until all the adds were dealt with, this proved the winning strategy.



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Bilbo's Birthday - Battle of the Five Cupcakes

 The 22nd September is a triple celebration, My Wedding Anniversary, Bilbo's birthday, and Apelred's Adventures birthday, the blog is 4 years old today.

So I am celebrating with such delicacies as cup cakes, black and white pudding, ale and cider among others.

Gazing into Galadriel's Mirror I will guess how old the blog will be when we finally get to witness the Ring being destroyed. We are currently at book 2 chapter 9 The Great River. That is 21 chapters in 5 years. There are 35 chapters to go until we get to Mount Doom. That means at the same rate there is about another 8 years to go until Mount Doom and about 2 more to The Grey Havens.

So I predict the blog will be 12 years old by Mount Doom and our toons will be level 300!

Here are my black & white puddings for the feast in case you wondered what the in game food looks like. The recipes are the same except the black pudding includes blood.








And for refreshment we have the battle of the goblins. Wychwood breweries special version of Hobgoblin, called King Goblin versus Thatchers oak aged cider Green Goblin. A delicious contest!

Grimberg finds Stoneheight

The Flaming Halflings fancied trying The Lost Temple but Grimberg hadn't done any of In Their Absence. Tormay and Crowthorn helped Grimberg with Northcotton Farm but time was too short to attempt Stoneheight as well. Grimberg decided to venture up to discover the location alone. And then he popped his head inside, chatted to the locals, killed a few Ruffians and Wolves. Emboldened he took on Gundul and his 2 wound dealing henchmen but didn't manage the fight well and went down. He rethought his plan and went full dps on the henchmen and kept his archer alive for longer, this did the trick. The other boss fights with Búbhosh-grat and Dale Truitt were more straightforward and Grimberg walked away with a nice stack of ixp runes feeling very pleased with himself.