Live from Carn Dum

Soooo last night I splurged and even though I needed to go to bed early cuz I have a hot date today, I stayed up an extra hour wiht my bros to explore the depths of Carn Dum. Interestingly it has some pretty original boss fights coupled with several been there done that ones.

The Helchgam fight is a fabulous one that I never want to do again (jk) I know I will though once book 12 comes out cuz then you get boss trophies and his tentacles are one of them. Its against a big tentacled monster in a pool of green stuff that kills you instantly if you touch the water. He has pillars around his lair that he has to pull down while you cut his tentacles off (very zelda esque) and I was healing behind or pillar to avoid line of sight with him but even if you hide from him behind the pillars he can get you with his sneaky tentacles unless the tank is keeping them busy. I give the boss design an A+ for creativity and a C- for desire to repeat it. Long boss fight plus you have to kill three master elite morrovail (harpy wenches) who will heal him during the fight, before you even start the encounter. However during the fight as he pulls down the pillar if you have really good dps you cna run down the length of the pillar before he tears it to pieces and end the fight and his life early before he ends your by sinking your battleship so that is interesting.

Some of the other bosses followed the typical lotro thing of summoning a gajillion adds and making everyones off-tanking responsabilities increase. I like the chaos and the challenge of boss fights in this game a lot more than wow but they do need to vary their formula for this a bit more. Carn Dum saves your progress for a while (2.5 days tops) cuz its freaking enormous. It used to be the final dungeon so when it was usurped in that role by Helegrod and then later the rift and the annuminasa instances, they had to take out half the bosses but its still huge.
We spent about 2.5 hours and got to the beginning of the fortress part and I got all my special parts to complete my minstrel epic crafting quests from CD.

I still need to hit Uru again, and pull some teeth from a few more worms in the Misties. Oooo anyways, I hit 50 for the first time ever and I have been playing (I am not very hard core, but I am determined) since, umm, a long time, beta actually. However I made this char sometime in the summer, so he hasnt been around that entire time. By the way my character is named Rumples Frumpet and he lives on Windfola if anyone cares :) My lvl 60 druid was Thallian and my lvl 60 gnommish warlock was Cauldron in wow on Wildhammer ages ago if anyone wants to connect me with bygone days. I tried out one of the Annuminas instances (the easiest one) a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed it even though the drops are pathetic compared to Angmar ones, the ambience is great and I like have to conquer the door area just to get into the instance. Kinda makes it more like a D&D dungeon and less like they are inviting you in to a disneyland ride.

I also like conquering stuff and killing pixelated crap for kicks and getting rep so that all contributes to it too. I'm very excited not only for book 12 but also the new area in book 13 and the expansion that will probably be following that if not book 14. Although, what I'm more interested in is where do they intend to take the game? What quality they are going to infuse it with to ward off the challenge from competitors and get beyond that and grow the population? We shall see (says in ominous voice) What do you think?