NEW LORE-MASTER

Traveling around Middle Earth with my Elf Hunter and my Hobbit Minstrel I have been envious of characters with pet bears. So why not create one? Here is my new character. A human Lore-Master.

She is not yet out of the introductory zone. In this picture she is riding the free 24 hour horse that comes with the introductory blue gift pack.

The picture was a little dark, it seems to be night quite often when I play. I have enhanced the picture to include it here.

Pet bears are weapons. Lore-masters command them to attack enemies. This means that you can stand back and be protected or you can fight multiple enemies with  bear at your side.

You can also get stuck together in the same spiders web, which makes it a little less lonely although I don’t speak bear yet.

STUCK IN A WEB

For the first few quests of the game I had a lot of fun directing my bear to attack wolves, spiders, dwarfs and other enemies. He was always there to protect me and attacked everything that made an aggressive move.

But then came the bear quests. Here is a picture of my bear killing another bear.

So why is this a problem? I’m really not sure but I didn’t like the idea of using my pet bear to kill others of its own kind. And yes I know it’s a game and killing virtual animals hadn’t effected me so far. But this made me feel uncomfortable.

At the end of the quest we returned to the hunter’s lodge to tell them how well we had done. In one of the rooms there were some huge dead bears on the floor. There I am with my bear looking at corpses of his friends and relatives. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken him with me.

We turned to leave and on the wall above the door a trophy. A bear’s head. My pet sat down and stared at it. I’m sure he howled.

A change of scenery

Feeling uncertain about my new choice of character I returned to my hobbit and thought a change of scenery would do me good. As I was able to take up a hobby I chose the only one available – fishing; bought myself a fishing rod and went to find a calm place to try out my hobby.

Here I am on a river bank next to a rock trying out my new skill. Fishing isn’t too difficult, it’s all about timing. At low skill levels the miss rate is quite high but I managed to catch a goldfish, some smelt and a lot of weeds.

FISHING.

Of course my peaceful fishing afternoon couldn’t last and a wandering bear attacked me. I was taken by surprise and didn’t think to change my fishing rod back to a sword, even though it was on a hot key for just such an occasion.

When the bear attacked I automatically drew my lute.

Here I am then fighting off a bear by beating it with a lute and a fishing rod.

BEAR ATTACK

Here is another shot of me wielding lute and rod. I survived the experience by coming to my senses and playing him a ballad, and screaming – end of bear.

FIGHTING A BEAR WITH A LUTE AND A ROD.

Time for a skirmish

Having had enough of bears for one day I decided to return to being an elf and try a Skirmish. I have a Soldier that I can control rather than a bear. But first to turn in my first Hunter quest and do some shopping, empty my pockets etc.

Ah! and some new headgear as a reward for being such a good hunter.

A BEAR HAT

Someone is having a laugh, I’m pretty sure of it!!