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.

Apple stealing burglar

Apeljack has been adventuring around the shire and exercising his enmity of spiders and wolves. He has made level 15 so can claim a surname. A name that combines apples and burgling is scrumping, so Apeljack is now known as Scrumper. By way of demonstration here is a vid of an apple stealing sheep.

Floribunda hands her cooking pot to Apeljack

Floribunda is a Tinker and member of the Jewelers Guild. After making Great River gear for Grimberg & Apelred she thought she would have a go at a bit of Westfold cooking. She bought a few ingredients from the AH and started mixing away but then realised that her lowly level (21) meant she couldn't make anything really useful as the new recipes mostly need reputation she cannot hope to get without leveling up.

Sadly she realised she would have to give up cooking and let young upstart Burglar Apeljack (level 7) become a Yeoman so he could level both farming and cooking and join the Cooks Guild so he could craft some tasty morsels.

In the pic Apeljack is doing some high level campfire cooking, what a scamp!

In an epic weekend he leveled both farming and cooking to Westfold and made level 10.

The Burglar class seems to be a combination of 2 favoured classes, Loremaster and Captain so Apeljack may well get a bit more adventuring while he builds his rep with the cooks guild.

Florandir dusts the cobwebs off his staff

Florandir has been given the rare opportunity to venture outside the crafting halls and romp around Angmar and the Trollshaws mezing, stunning and rooting his way towards level 47.

Grimberg gets his 2nd age

Grimberg has completed the Great River epic quest line to get a Worn Symbol of Celebrimbor. Florandir has used it to craft a 2nd age war hammer and with liberal use of the Lotro Store it has been shaped into a mean weapon.

Metalsmith Folflorin and Jeweler Floribunda have crafted some guild Great River items to equip Grimberg with some of the best kit available to the casual adventurer.

Grimberg tested this out on a training dummy in Galtrev with the Combat Analysis plugin loaded and improved his DPS from 350 to 500. He reckons his healing output has gone up about 50%.

Apelred has also had a good set of gear crafted for him so they are all set to venture into Rohan when the gates are opened.