So, I had no intention of making this outfit. Basically, I saw the Raven Mask while randomly browsing the Auction House out of boredom, and uh…approximately 30 seconds after seeing it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do for an outfit.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised I never made this outfit before. It would not be shocking either to find out if someone else has done this exact combination cause it just makes so much sense. Also, I apologize if the pictures are a little weird – my in game personal lantern has completely stopped working, and I wanted to take these pictures at night, so I’ve had to do some brightness correction after the fact
Also, turns out Raven LM pets are not super great to take pictures with. Considering they like to stand INSIDE OF YOU.
Exhibit A. What are you doing sweetie? WHAT are you doing??
That being said, I remember when I first started playing my LM and I got my first Raven pet, I was ecstatic. I didn’t have any cosmetic pets yet, so LM pets were all I knew about, and I LOVE birds. My Frost Raven went with me EVERYWHERE.
Also funny anecdote – I spent about 30 minutes going through all my toons trying to figure out who had the Cloak of the Raven – because I know I’ve had multiple copies of it over the years. Couldn’t find it anywhere, so apparently I’ve deleted them all or sold them, but after all that time looking, turns out I DID have it saved in my wardrobe. So…that was a lot of wasted time.
I also did not realize that summoning your Raven LM pet causes blue/purple mist and feathers to materialize everywhere. It might be because I haven’t used my Raven for a while, like since before I got a computer that could run the game at high res.
Outfit:
Head: Raven Festival Mask (white)
Shoulders: Light Nadhin Shoulders (black)
Back: Cloak of the Raven (grey)
Chest: Light Nadhin Robe (black)
Gloves: Light Nadhin Gauntlets (black)
Feet: Medium Nadhin Boots (default) – don’t really matter as you can’t really see them
Staff: Lainis
I finally made an outfit based around the cloak of the Ibis! I knew from the start I wanted to pair it with the robe of hopeful melody because of the similar bird like patterns on the chest piece, and from there the rest of the outfit sort of just fell together!
The rest of the outfit ended up being composed of other pieces from the Dol Guldur raid – the shoulders are from the hunter set, and the hands and feet are from the guardian set. The armors from that set seem to either be based around bird imagery or leaf imagery, so I picked the ones that were focused more on birds. The color scheme ended up being based on the shoulders, which have an undyable patch of dark brown, so I ended up dying everything else to match it.
I also got to pull out a warsteed set I’d never actually used before – the Elven Wing Set. I got it back when it was only periodically available, but never found an outfit it matched. UNTIL NOW.
It took some fiddling with the dyes to get the brown colors to match, but eventually I got it using burgundy dye for the warsteed.
Outfit:
Head: Hat of the Hopeful Melody (dark clay)
Shoulders: Far-Arrow’s Shoulders (lorien gold)
Back: Cloak of the Ibis (Dark clay)
Chest: Robe of the Hopeful Melody (dark clay)
Hands: Shield-Master’s Gauntlets (lorien gold)
Legs: Trousers of the Hopeful Melody (dark clay)
Feet: Shield-Master’s Boots (lorien gold)
Bow: Hunter’s Bow of the First Age (level 100)
Warsteed:
Head: Elven Wing Halter (burgundy)
Body: Elven Wing Caparison (burgundy)
Saddle: Saddle of the Forest Spring
Gear: Hunter’s Gear
So normally I don’t pay much attention to dresses, but I had some extra LP so I got some black steel keys, and low and behold what should I find in my lootbox but the dress of the Twilight Caretaker? So I figured, what the heck? I tried it on. Then I tried dying it. Then I fell in love.
Like, the colors you can get with this dress are so amazing, and I loved the feather/scale imagery. This outfit kind of just fell together randomly, but I love it so much.
There’s some clipping issues with the shoulders, but I actually don’t really mind it? the clipping just makes it so that you still see the feathers on the shoulder of the dress, so it’s kind of best of both worlds.
So, when I was making this outfit, I kept thinking of the blue lady in Evendim, Gwindeth. So I decided to pop by and visit her, and funny enough, she’s wearing the EXACT SAME DRESS.
So now I know why I kept thinking about her lol. Also, I love how LOTRO is giving us more cosmetics that we’ve seen NPCs wear. They have some of the coolest outfits, and I think it’s really cool we finally get to wear them.
So anyways, I hung around to dance in a waterfall for a bit. It was fun. And felt VERY Tolkien!
Outfit:
Head: Hooded Mask of the Golden Forest Defender (sea blue)
Shoulders: The Beast-Keeper's Shoulderpads (sea blue)
Back: Cloak of the Dove (sea blue)
Body: Dress of the Twilight Caretaker (turquoise)
Been a while since I posted! This outfit was actually sitting in my wips folder – I think one day I’d been trying random combinations and found that the level 85 far-arrow jacket looked really good paired with the lesser defender of the west leggings. Anyways, apparently I took a screenshot, and after finding it I decided I had to complete the outfit.
Partner that up with some Nadhim cosmetics, and the rest kind of just fell into place (If you’re into LOTRO cosmetics you probably know that there’s a whole host of “bird/wing” related pieces out there that you can sort of fall back to when needed).
The warsteed outfit was also something that I was sort of working on. My only grudge against it is that the turquoise dye is slightly lighter for warsteed cosmetics than for character cosmetics, and given the nature of the two pieces this outfit was built around, I couldn’t really get away with using any other color.
So yeah, that’s about it. I wasn’t sure whether to feature this on my high elf champ or my high elf hunter, but ultimately my champ had the better warsteed cosmetics. Kind of sealed the deal. And since I can use my hunter’s Legendary bow as a cosmetic via the wardrobe, it was an easy decision.
Outfit:
Head: Heavy Nadhim Mask (white)
Shoulders: Shoulders of the Armoury (white)
Back: Swan Cloak (Turquoise)
Chest: Far-Arrow’s Jacket (Default/white)
Hands: Heavy Nadhin Gauntlets (white)
Legs: Lesser Defender of the West Leggings (Turquoise)
Feet: Hero’s Boots (Turquoise)
Warsteed:
Head: Sea-ward Head-piece (Turquoise)
Body: Sea-ward caparison (turquoise)
Legs: Sea-ward legs
Accessory: Accessory of regal revalry
Saddle: Saddle of remembrance
Winter is here! And while I hate the cold IRL, I love dressing up my toons in warm outfits in preparation for Yule Fest!
This first one is actually one I’ve had in the words for a long time, it just took a bit for everything to come together.
Ever since I got the Vestments of the Northern Sky last year I’ve wanted to use it in an outfit, but I just wasn’t sure how. I figured out pretty early on that I wanted to pair it with the cloak of the wise wanderer, but everything else was up in the air.
Anyways, I was playing around with ideas and finally decided to go completely bird-like with the outfit, and voila! Here we are 🙂
The real challenge actually ended up being getting good screenshots – I figured out I wanted to use the Misty Mountains pretty quickly, but the first few times I went there the weather was really too bad to shoot.
Eventually though the weather cleared, and I got the chance to show off my beautiful white Tundra-Eagle which has been my favorite LM pet ever since I first got it in game (admittedly eagles aren’t the most useful pet, but come on they’re so dang majestic!)
Although she did find a bit of competition 🙂
Still, it’s hard to say no to her, which is why I’m posting a bunch of pics with her because she just looks so pretty with ultra high graphics.
Good bird 🙂
Outfit: Head: Winged Circlet (default) Shoulders: Shoulders of the Precise Bowmaster (umber) Chest: Vestments of the Northern Sky (white) Hands: Gloves of the Great Alliance (default) Back: Cloak of the Wise Wanderer Feet: Apparently I had Medium Nadhin Boots on but since you can't really see the feet with this outfit, it doesn't really matter??
Warsteed: Body: Trappings of the Northern Herald (white) Saddle: Saddle of the Northern Herald Feet: Tattered Feathers of the Harbinger Mane/Tail: white
So I feel like the game masters in lotro and the devs and everybody etc. get a really bad rap from the players – or at least that’s what world chat is constantly telling me.
Anyways, I wanted to take this as my opportunity to personally express my gratitude to everyone who works on LOTRO and makes this awesome game possible. A lot of people complain about tickets and GMs, but in my experience they’re just really busy people who also really want to help you, something that isn’t always as easily accomplished as it is said.
For instance, a while ago I was running moria instances on my champ for deeds and LPs, and I ended up completing the mega moria deed or whatever that gives you the black nimble goat (or something…it’s a goat – that much I know). Anyways, I hadn’t realized I’d completed the deed until I got a message in chat saying “removing black nimble goat from your pending loot list.”
I’m not gonna say it was a strictly easy process – I submitted a ticket that kept getting closed everytime I logged off because “your character has to be online to process this ticket,” but eventually after a few back and forths I got a response from a GM saying they had verified my completion of the deed and had sent me the goat in the mail.
And this brings me to the topic of this post: when the ered mithrin expansion was first launched, I bartered for the cloak of the wise wanderer using figments of splendor. And then, of course, as we all know, the Curator (the NPC who sold cosmetic stuff for figments of splendor) was announced to be a temporary fixture in the game and was removed. That then brings me to this fall, where I took a couple months away from LOTRO to focus on the transition to school, and when I logged in, alas, the cloak was missing! Now, after diligently searching for it, I figured I must have just messed up somewhere – accidentally deleted it, or, more likely, I mailed it to one of my alts and the mail expired while I was away. I was upset, but figured nothing could be done.
And then I was actually going to submit a ticket for something else, when I chanced upon the drop-down panel regarding missing/lost items, and I figured why not give it a shot? So I sent in a ticket. Turns out, of course, I had to submit the ticket with the character who had actually acquired the item – which I didn’t do. Then of course there were the other roadblocks of “your character needs to be online so we closed the ticket.” Eventually though, I got a response saying “we’re happy to inform you we were able to restore the item to your account,” and I got the cloak back! Now keep in mind that this item was almost DEFINITELY lost because of something I did. But they gave me another one! And honestly I was at the point where I thought I was just pestering them and was about to give up, because with the new update now live they’ve probably got tickets up to wazoo.
So all I’m saying is, let’s cut the GMs some slack. They’re getting tickets all the time, and still they’ll take the time to help you with your own trivial matters. I don’t think it’s actually as straightforward for them to help us as we might think, but they still give it their best shot. It think like all interactions, you’ve got to be willing to be persistent but also respectful of the fact that other people are dealing with other things.
I know the devs aren’t perfect, I know the GMs sometimes make mistakes. But come on guys, they’re working hard to give us this game we love, and I’m pretty sure they do really want to help us. So maybe we can all just try to have a bit more patience and be a bit more thankful for what they do for us? I’m sure we must annoy the heck out of them at times, like when I sent in approximately 5 tickets over one cloak 🙂
OUTFIT: Head: Winged Circlet (default) Shoulders: Heavy Nadhin Shoulders (default) Chest: Far-Arrow's Jacket (white) Hands: Heavy Nadhin Gauntlets (Default) Legs: Far-Arrow's Leggings (white) Feet: Threadbare Boots of the Dunland Healer (white/default) Back: Cloak of the Wise Wanderer Bow: Bow of the Khazad-Dum Vaults
Warsteed: Head: Head-Piece of the Great Alliance (white) Body: Caparison of the Great Alliance (white) Saddle: Saddle of Rivendell Mane/tail: white Coat: white brindle
My Swan outfit!! I kind of felt bad using the light nadhin robe AGAIN, but honestly there’s no better piece in the game to capture “Swanliness” in my opinion.
Once again the problem came down to the shoulders. I wanted them to be dark, but not too dark or else they wouldn’t fit with the lighter hues of the robe. I also wanted them to be somewhat prominent to add a darker flare to the outfit, but I also wanted to make sure they did’t cover the swan emblem on the chest.
I ended up going with the Embroidered Mantle of the Pathfinder’s Artifice – a doomfold crafted light armor piece. I wasn’t actually sold on it until nighttime came around in game and then I decided it was the one.
The cloak was a pretty automatic decision. I’ve been wanting to use the Cloak of the Autumn Wanderer for a while now and this gave me the perfect opportunity.
I don’t really have a lot to say about the outfit…I decided to take screenshots in the Rushgore since I knew there were black swans there. I figure there have got to be some others in game, but I wasn’t certain.
That white swan is actually my cosmetic pet since I couldn’t find any in the Rushgore and wanted the contrast.
Outfit: Head: Lesser Memory of the West Hat (black) Shoulders: Embroidered Mantle of the Pathfinder's Artifice (white) Chest: Light Nadhin Robe (black) Hands: Shield-Master's Gauntlets (black) - honestly these were just left over from the previous outfit and I decided they looked fine. Feet: Medium Nadhin Boots (black) Back: Cloak of the Autumn Wanderer (default/white) Staff: Lainis
So it wasn’t too long ago that I posted my outfit for the Lothlorien Sentinel. At the time something still seemed a bit off, and with my recent endeavors with the Nadhin sets, I feel like I’m finally able to polish it to a shine!
So I know it’s kind of soon to “revisit” this outfit, but this is my blog so I make the rules. Besides, it’s not like anybody actually reads this blog anyways 🙂
I will keep this post shorter though, just cause I don’t have as much to say and the outfit isn’t exactly new.
OUTFIT: Shoulders: Heavy Nadhin Shoulders (default) Chest: Lesser Blade of the West Breastplate (white) Hands: Heavy Nadhin Gauntlets (default) Legs: Lesser Defender of the West Leggings (white) Feet: Lesser Cry of the West Boots (white) Back: Cloak of the Swan (Lorien Gold)
So here’s my follow-up to the previous post, completing my tour of Nadhin armor sets. This time I decided to feature the heavy armor, although I decided to stick with my LM for the model.
I’ve held off on featuring the chest-piece for a long time – I haven’t even had any toons wear it for long in game. The truth is, I just think it looks a bit clunky and unflattering, but I’ve decided to try my best anyways as a fun(ish) challenge.
Don’t get me wrong, the chest-piece isn’t without its virtues – the details are quite nice, and the swan motif is really cool. The heavy Nadhin gauntlets and shoulders are also very unique pieces. The boots aren’t anything we haven’t seen before – they’re basically a reskinned version of the medium Wildermore boots – so I decided not to feature them.
Also I apologize if my writing is kind of clunky in this post – to be honest I’m not really feeling it. It’s posts like these where I wonder why I have to write at all – why can’t I just post pictures and the list of items I used? I suppose there’s no reason why I have to…it just seems like the precedent.
The warsteed outfit I used is also the same one I featured in the last post, just dyed white instead of indigo. Maybe I’m getting sloppy…maybe I just liked the look too much.
I also used another bird cloak – this time the cloak of the swan, available in the LOTRO store. It was on sale when I got it, but it’s normally available for 295 LPs I believe – which isn’t actually all that hard to amass if you go deeding for a bit.
I actually used the light Nadhin hood here – I almost used it for the first outfit but decided to save it for the second.
I still think head pieces are optional though.
OUTFIT: Head: Light Nadhin Hood (white/default) Shoulders: Heavy Nadhin Shoulders (default) Body: Heavy Nadhin Armour (white) Hands: Heavy Nadhin Gauntlets (default) Feet: Threadbare Boots of the Dunland Healer (white/default) Back: Swan-Cloak (default)
WARSTEED: Head: Halter of Bree (white) Body: Sea-ward Caparison (white) Saddle: Saddle of Bree
So despite having access to all the Dol Amroth cosmetics for a VERY LONG TIME, I’ve somehow never seemed to use any of them except for the medium set.
So here’s the light robe. It’s actually quite flattering, but it does have a very distinctive appearance. It’s definitely not one of those casual looks, but I decided my LM could rock it anyways.
And yes – that is my Lore Master. I decided to change up her hair style for the look, opting for a shorter pulled back cut compared to her normal long locks. She’s actually wearing my RK’s hair-style, which is why I decided to clarify WHO exactly was modeling the outfit.
I honestly don’t have much to say about the outfit, other than it did FINALLY give me the perfect opportunity to use the light shoulder pads of Faramir’s Faithful. But in all honesty I haven’t had a lot of time or motivation for the game lately. I’ve been super preoccupied with real life at the moment, and Spring Fest has done little to keep me engaged. I always forget that it’s my least favorite festival in LOTRO…I normally love them, but Spring Fest is always just so boring IMO.
Anyways, I plan on doing another outfit based on the heavy Nadhin armor, and I also have a spring outfit in the works (although that one has been giving me some problems – I just can’t seem to get everything to fit cohesively).
The war-steed caparison is from the Sea-Ward set, barterable during the Anniversary Fest. It’s not explicitly stated anywhere, but it’s obviously a nod toward the Dol Amroth faction given the wings and the boat – not to mention that the default color of the caparison is that sea-blue color you see so often on the banners there.
OUTFIT: Shoulders: Shoulder Pads of Faramir's Faithful (black) Chest: Light Nadhin Robe (default) Hands: Gloves of Solitary Thunder (grey) Feet: Threadbare Boots of the Dunland Healer (default/white) Back: Cloak of the Raven (default/white)
WARSTEED: Head: Halter of Bree (Indigo) Chest: Sea-Ward Caparison (Indigo)
LOTRO Adventurer 