View Full Version : LotRO Summer Festival guide page 2: The Town Crier
by Shawn Schuster @ Massively
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We'll begin this tour with some helpful info you will need to navigate the festival itself. With Book 14, LotRO will introduce a new Town Crier system where players can talk to this NPC for interesting events that may be happening currently in Middle-earth. These criers are located in many of the main cities and are identifiable by a large purple flag above their heads, and on the map. Other important festival or event NPCs will also have this same purple flag above their heads. Once you talk to the Town Crier, they will give a brief explanation of what events are underway and how to locate them.
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For the Summer Festival events, all Town Criers will have the same events listed. The first four on this list are simply the names of the same festival in different regions, according to race. The last four on the list are specific events within these areas that give extra rewards. We will cover each of these in more details as the tour continues.
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There are several shared events and NPC vendors throughout all four of the races' festivals. They all may go by different names, but the objectives are the same.
Fireworks Vendor - Here you can buy a variety of colored fireworks to set off and help celebrate the Summer Festival. Each of these will also sell you a specific firework for that specific race, depending on which festival grounds you are currently on. You'd be wise to purchase all of these in every festival grounds, then turn them in to an NPC in the Bree Festival Grounds named Robert Greenverge. He will give you Summerdays Fireworks which are much more special than the other fireworks sold by vendors.
Pipeweed Vendor - Here you can buy the special pipeweed and pipeweed seed that is only available during the summer months.
Provisioner - This NPC sells special consumables and alcoholic beverages for those festival celebrations.
Scavenger Hunt - You will need to find five items for each of these Scavenger Hunt NPCs. The rewards for completing these quests are mostly pipeweed-related, so we hope you have a farmer handy!
Dance Leader - This is a fun little event that is an easy way to win some unique new emotes. You simply talk to the Dance Leader NPC and wait for the event to begin, which is every 20 minutes. Once the NPC says they're ready, you face them and watch their instructions. They will tell you which dance step to perform when they say something about dance one, dance two or dance three. These are all achieved by using the emotes /dance1, /dance2 or /dance3. Once the dancing is over, the NPC will walk back to their standing area, where you will speak to them once again and choose your special emote. You can repeat this dance contest twice with each NPC for each festival. So essentially, you can get eight new dance emotes to impress your friends and scare your family.
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So let's begin with the festival for Man: Summerdays. This one takes place just north of Bree, in the Festival Grounds. There really is much to do at this one, as there are all the usual events and much more. Surrounding the grounds themselves is a race track where the Bree Derby takes place. The objective to this is simple enough: run your horse around the track before the time runs out. You'll face several obstacles along the way including walls, shrubbery and water pits. If you've ever done the quest to obtain your mount at level 35, you'll notice that this one is substantially easier. Once you've beaten this derby, you will be rewarded with a token that you can then take to Cam Applewood who is just a bit farther north of the Festival Grounds. If you trade one of these race tokens, along with six summer festival tokens and a Receipt of Purchase from your previous horse, you can obtain either a Harvestmath Horse or a Lithe Festival Horse.
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Just south of the Festival Grounds is the Hobnanigan field where you and four of your friends can engage in a bit of chicken chasing. You can either join the Flying Feathers or the Steel Beaks to compete for the title. No, literally. If you win at this event, you will be esteemed with the title of either Chicken Chaser or Flying Feathers Champion.
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Now within The Shire, there are many parts to the Hobbit festival known as Lithe Days. These segmented events are spread all across The Shire from the Party Tree just north of Hobbiton, over to where Misty Bolger resides for the fishing tournament, all the way down to the area just south of Michel Delving for the only other horse race: the All-Shire Run. This race is very similar to the Bree Derby, with a few variations in the obstacles you'll face. Still, it's an easy race and well worth it, considering the eventual prize. Keep in mind that while you can run these horse races multiple times, there is a 9 hour cool-down period for your character between each race.
For the fishing tournament, you'll need to talk to Neddie Grub. He's located right along the river just to the east of Hobbiton. He will ask you to catch an assortment of fish from the different regions of Middle-earth. You'll need three Amberjack from Thorin's Hall, three Luillim from Celondim and three Drum from Breeland. Once you've caught these fish, you turn them in to Neddie for the reward of three Summer Festival Tokens.
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The main festival itself, up at the Party Tree is where you'll find the usual suspects, plus one very interesting fellow who will initiate you into the Inn League. Since this event requires an entire page of explanation of its own, you will find it on the following page.
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Getting into the exclusive Inn League is no easy feat. You'll need to ride a horse, read a map and navigate The Shire all while becoming increasing drunk in the process. The best advice we can give to you initially is to learn your way around The Shire before you start. Also, if you don't have a horse yet, this will either be amazingly difficult, or not possible at all. The objective of this event is to run from inn to inn, drinking tons of alcohol and not falling over, proclaiming your secret love for Aragorn, or heaven-forbid, Legolas. It is very important to note that once you begin this quest, the following quests in the chain are all timed, and there is no taking a break in between. So make sure you have a good 15-20 minutes before you sit down and dedicate yourself to this ultimate pub crawl.
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You start the initiation by speaking with Ailward Chubb, Inn League Member, near the Party Tree. He will tell you to drink six of the cups of alcoholic beverages on the table before him. Once you've done that, he will tell you to run off to The Plough and Stars Inn.
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This Plough and Stars is located within the Brockenborings. You'll need to enter and find the Inn League Member inside to drink 6 more cups of cider or mead.
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From here, you will be directed to the Golden Perch Inn, all the way in Stock. The drinking will continue with six more pints, and you'll just begin to see the effects of all that alcohol on your screen as it waves back and forth ever-so slightly.
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Next, you will be directed towards The Floating Log Inn in nearby Frogmorton. Notice the blurry screen yet? Just wait, it gets much worse. You'll drink six more pints inside and from here be directed to The Green Dragon Inn.
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The Green Dragon Inn resides a hop, skip and a stumble away in Bywater, where you'll find Fulk Proudfoot waiting for you inside. It's about this time that you notice clicking on a pint becomes increasingly difficult. Which one do you click on since each one has a twin? Hint: it's the one on the left. After downing six of Fulks pints, you'll be pointed towards The Ivy Bush Inn.
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The Ivy Bush Inn, located just inside Hobbiton is your second-to-last stop on the road to pukesville. If you can find the door, you will need to drnik six more pints with the passed-out Moonlight Sandheaver. He will then direct you to your final stop: The Bird and Baby Inn.
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The Bird and Baby Inn is located in Michel Delving, just down the hill from the Mathom Society house. Once inside this establishment, you might feel a sense of panic as your blurry-screened double vision can't seem to find an Inn League Member, but don't fret. Ioco Underhill is located in a back room, behind the bar, passed out among a few barrels of mead. After you drink the last six pints, he will reward you with increased standing with the Inn League and a special title: Inn League Member. Once the headache wears off, you can stand proud with your new title. Congratulations!
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Continuing on with our tour, we take you to the Dwarven festival known as Summerfest. This takes place in Thorin's Hall, in the underground cave area. If you're not familiar with the layout of Thorin's Hall, you may find yourself lost initially. When you first enter the hall, run past the large statue into the next hall. Take a left towards the large waterfall, but as soon as you see stairs going down, take those. Descending into the underground area, you'll turn to your right and see an open room, whee the inn and festival area is located.
There is also a dance leader here for your Dwarven dance emotes, a fireworks vendor, a pipeweed vendor and a scavenger hunt NPC named Ambi. His quest is fairly easy, as most of the ingredients you'll need are in Thorin's Hall itself. The list of items he needs is in your inventory, so you will need to right-click that list and solve each of the riddles to find his items. There are no other special events in Thorin's Hall besides these. We're guessing the Dwarves are too busy sleeping... er, working to do much else.
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On the final leg of our tour, we bring you to the Elven festival known as Festival of Enedhin. This one is located between Duillond and Falathlorn in Ered Luin. It is almost identical to the Dwarven festival, as the events and vendors are almost exactly the same.
You will notice a male Elf crouched down named Lalfor. He has a scavenger hunt quest for you to find items very similar to those of the Dwarven NPC, but these are located within these Elven lands. After you complete this quest, return to Lalfor and he will reward you with recipes and seeds to grow some of the very exclusive summer harvest pipeweed.
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This brings us to the end of our Summer Festival tour. If you were around for last year's festival, you'll notice the vast improvements made since then. If this trend continues, and the promises from Turbine that there are more exciting events for the future, you may just see what could be the very best in-game holiday events ever produced in an MMO. With LotRO's strong lore-based foundation, we're all very excited for what's to come.
Also be sure to check out our complete gallery listed below, which showcases this year's Summer Festival.
Gallery: LotRO Summer Festival Gallery (http://www.massively.com/photos/lotro-summer-festival-gallery/)
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