Snowflake

So I have been STRUGGLING to put together an outfit around the Cloak of Flurries. Like, REALLY struggling. This is…what I have come up with?

I have mixed feelings about it, tbh. From some angles, it looks amazing. From other angles, I feel kind of…meh.

And then some things about it are simultaneously great and awful. Like the shoulders I ended up using have this star-like metallic design on them, which is amazing. And in the center there’s a gem which can be dyed blue. Again, amazing. But they also have this flap of fabric that’s an undyable yellow color. Not so amazing.

The yellowish actually does sort of match the yellow tint to the tunic when dyed white, and I think thematically it works in that snow sometimes gets stained with dirt or whatever. But personally? I wish it was pure white. But I also LOVE the tunic, because it has these iridescent(ish) blue designs that really resemble the design of the cloak.

Also, I generally don’t like outfits with a lot of harsh lines, and this outfit is chalk-full of them. BUT, snowflakes are also frozen water crystals. If you’ve ever googled a snowflake up close, you know they’re not these smooth, curved things. They’re angular and full of lines and shapes. You can even see this on the Cloak of Flurries. So again, that works, it’s just a personal thing.

The shoulder designs also do really go with the tunic.

So yeah, in some ways I LOVE the outfit, and in others it’s just not QUITE right. It really comes down to the fact that I think the shoulders and the tunic are the perfect design, they just have some issues with dye. I did try dying the tunic belegaer blue to see if that would fix it, but it didn’t look quite right in my opinion.

Although, I don’t know…maybe it definitely looks cool…just maybe less like a snowflake?

It also doesn’t fix the problem of the yellow on the shoulders…I don’t know. Which do you prefer?

Anyways, I ended up choosing the boots because (whether dyed blue or white) there’s a leaf design on them that kind of shines, and looks a bit like a snowflake. Also the flurry cloak has leaves on it as well as snowflakes so it seemed to work.

Outfit:
Head: Mask of the Golden Forest Defender (white)
Shoulders: Shoulders of the Lady’s Foresight (belegaer blue)
Back: Cloak of Flurries
Chest: Heavy Hauberk of the Doomfold (white/belegaer blue)
Gloves: Shield-Master’s Gauntlets (white/belegaer blue)
Feet: Boots of the Shadow-Walker (white/belegaer)

Holly Princess

So I didn’t understand why they added yet ANOTHER white rabbit to the yule fest. And then I saw a close up picture of it. And I fell in love.

I mean, look how cute it is!!!!!

Okay, so there is an outfit here too, featuring this year’s new festival cosmetics: the shire holly set. I dyed it Rohan green to match the color of the holly leaves (instead of the lighter, mint-y color it came in).

I even did the warsteed to match!

But seriously, look at the BUNNNYYYYYY

So. Majestic. (And I’m not talking about the dancing elf)

Outfit:
Head: Shire Holly Crown (default)
Shoulders: Mantle of Shire Holly (rohan green)
Back: Cloak of Shire Holly (rohan green)
Chest: Gown of Shire Holly (rohan green)
Held item: Bunch of Holly

Warsteed:
Head: Shire Holly Head Ornament (forest green)
Body: Shire Holly Caparison (forest green)
Saddle: Shire Holly Saddle

Cosmetic Pet: YULE PRINCESS BUNNY

Ice Flower

This outfit takes advantage of a couple different yule fest outfit sets, as well as the belegaer blue dye that’s only available during the festival! Belegaer blue happens to be a favorite of mine, but its hard to come by, so I decided to stock up this time around.

This outfit also served as a great opportunity to showcase last year’s yule gala warsteed set. It’s really detailed – it’s probably one of my favorites actually.

I mean it’s SOOO pretty. Anyways, this outfit has actually really grown on me. Probably cause of the color, but also just the way all the leaf and flower imagery fits together.

This write up is basically just a bunch of pictures cause I love this outfit. That’s it.

Prepare yourself for way too many dancing photos:

This post is really self-indulgent. I don’t care. Happy new year everyone!!!

Also I just love the leaf design on the back of this robe. It’s so detailed.

Outfit:
Head: Ice Flower Crown (belegaer blue)
Shoulders: Gala-Worthy Shoulders (belegaer blue)
Back: Ice Flower Cloak (belegaer blue)
Chest: Ancient Inlaid Breastplate (belegaer blue)
Hands: Shield-Master’s Gauntlets (belegaer blue)
Feet: Shield-Master’s Boots (belegaer blue)
Staff: Amarthis

Warsteed:
Head: Yule Gala Head-Piece (default)
Saddle: Saddle of the Northern Herald
Body: Yule Gala Caparison (default)

Winter Winds

Another outfit I had sitting around for a while – I actually have used it since my very first Yule Fest back in 2015.

The warsteed outfit is new – I finally used some saved up mithril coins to get the caparison of winter winds. Unfortunately, it has the same shading issues that the hunter warsteed outfit has. It’s not a huge deal; there are just a few rectangular patches that don’t reflect light properly.

Outfit:
Head: Rune-Maker’s Hat (steel blue)
Shoulders: Mathom-Hunter’s Mantle (navy)
Back: Fancy Winter Cloak (ered luin blue)
Chest: Robe of Winter Winds (white)
Gloves: Heavy Plated Dunlending Gauntlets (steel blue)
Feet: Medium Nadhin Boots (steel blue)

Warsteed:
Head: Head-Piece of the Northern Herald (default)
Body: Winter Winds Caparison (white)
Saddle: Saddle of the Harbinger

Firefly

Another bug inspired outfit! This one was based on the Lothlorien Cloak of the Elder, which to me always looked like it had insect wings on it. That, coupled with the Mordor heavy armor pauldrons (which look like dragonfly wings to me) and I knew I had to make an outfit.

The rest of the armor is actually all Mordor crafted armor, with an emphasis on shimmery stuff.

Outfit:
Shoulders: Bolstered Pauldrons of the Doomfold (white)
Back: Lothlorien Hooded Cloak of the Elder (navy)
Chest: Heavy Hauberk of the Doomfold (navy)
Hands: Strong Gauntlets of the Doomfold (Ered luin blue)
Feet: Lithe Boots of the Pathfinder’s Artifice (navy)

Warsteed:
Head: Halter of Rivendell (ered luin blue)
Body: Caparison of Rivendell (ered luin blue)
Saddle: Saddle of Lebennin
Gear: Lantern of the Unearthed Kingdom

Waterbird

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

Lady of Lakes

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)

Queen of the Moon Moth

Okay, so I’ve been trying to figure out an outfit to go with the Moth cloak for SOOOO long. This summer it finally occurred to me that Galadriel’s gown from the Midsummer Festival looks an awful lot like a luna moth if you dye it bullroarer’s green.

It’s kind of amazing how much the color of the cloak changes depending on the lighting/reflection.

It took me a while to figure out what shoulders I wanted to use, then the obvious choice clicked into place. See, the Shoulders of the Lady’s Power (Champion Lothlorien raid armor) are LITERALLY shaped like butterfly wings. And moth’s look a lot like butterflies. So…yeah…Considering the dress makes it impossible to wear shoes or gloves, I only had to figure out a head piece, and the outfit was done!

It actually took a bit of work to figure out how to dye the warsteed outfit. I ended up using the burgundy dye to get the same sort of dark pink hue that the cloak has.

This also felt like an outfit where it was important to get photos in the day AND at night. Cause moths are often nocturnal, and the luna moth is particularly associated with the moon.

Outfit:
Head: Helm of the Lady's Power (Bullroarer's green)
Shoulders: Shoulders of the Lady's Power (Bullroarer's green)
Back: Cloak of the Moth
Body: Galadriel's Dress (Bullroarer's green)
Staff: Loremaster's Staff of the Third Age (Level 59)

Warsteed:
Head: Head-piece of the Moon Moth (Burgundy)
Body: Caparison of the Moon Moth (Burgundy)

Dragonfly 2

This started as an alternate version of the original dragonfly outfit I made, when I was still trying to figure out all the pieces. Eventually though I revisited the concept, and this outfit has been sitting in one of my RK’s outfit panels for the past couple years. I’ve loved it so much.

I like both versions of the outfit tbh, and they both revolve around the same cloak and similar shoulder pieces. This outfit favors a slightly lighter aesthetic as well as more prominent gold accents…um…I just like it.

I also really liked how this outfit paired with the default summer night’s warsteed appearance, which imo always had a very dragonfly-like look to it.

Outfit:
Head: Ceremonial Hat of the Written Word (navy)
Shoulders: Boulstered Pauldrons of the Doomfold (default)
Back: Cloak of the Dragonfly (navy)
Chest: Expeditionary's Heavy Hauberk (Belegaer Blue)
Gloves: Gauntlets of the Gallant Commander (black)
Boots: Potent Battle Boots of the Mark (Evendim Blue)

Warsteed:
Head: Yule Gala Head-Piece (default)
Body: Caparison of Summer's Night (default)
Saddle: Saddle of Lebennin

Swan Knight

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