What’s happening - Some recent developments in my gaming

Video Problems
My Dell XPS system uses dual video cards for improved performance. It works great … as long as you have two working video cards. For a couple of months now, I’ve been getting a lot of distortion in my games along with red and green colored dots all over my screen. To experiment, I shut down my SLI and ran on one card at a time. Sure enough, one card is trash and the other is fine. So looks like I’ll need a new video card sometime soon. LotRO runs well enough on one card at medium graphics, but I’m looking forward to getting a replacement for my old Nvidea 7900.


Raiding
I went on a Rift raid last week with my kinship. We took down Thrang, the last boss before the Balrog. It was quite the battle, but we were victorious. Three minstrels seems to be key in that particular battle along with placing yourselves in the small alcoves by the stairs to avoid getting shot at. After Thrang fell, we looted him and he dropped the opal for the reward turn-in armor. And I won! Woo! Now my burglar is sporting his Rift armor head piece (which looks like a hood with a mask).

While I like the ideas LotRO has about in-game armor, I’m also thinking that it’s somewhat silly considering the Lore. Bilbo and Frodo, with a few exceptions, were dressed in coats, vests and other normal Hobbit clothes for their adventures. Bilbo only wore armor during the Battle of Five armies and Frodo, I think, only when he was trying to sneak to Mt Doom with Sam. Long story short, I’m looking forward to the Book 12 changes in appearance – one will be able to create a look for your character independent of the items they have equipped. Yeah, I’m a dork like that.


Dramaz
Last time I posted about a little blow-up my kinship had over some raiders and communication issues. Well, one officer is gone and a couple more people left the kin to form their own. The rest passed quickly and we’re back to doing our thing: having absurd amount of fun together.