The number of daily things I need to do in two of my favorite games keeps growing, yet my time to do them in does not, sadly. In LOTRO, I should be doing Hytbold dailies with my level 85 Lore Master, and, until recently, I’ve been pretty good about doing so. The two things that have changed that are: a) I can’t find any more things to fix in Hytbold, though I know there must be more; and b) Star Trek Online has started the Crystalline Catastrophe special event!
STO’s new event has us run an improved version of the old and horrible Crystalline Catastrophe encounter. The new one is actually winnable with a PUG (pick-up group for those of us who aren’t MMO aficionados) and includes lots of nasty Tholians to deal with, too. It is not particularly easy, as the Crystalline Entity can do lots of damage, especially after it finishes absorbing energy for the attacks of the players who weren’t paying much attention. I have to do it twice each day, once for my Fed Tactical guy and again for my KDF Engineer. It takes about 15 or 20 minutes and is pretty fun. The end goal is a big chunk of dilithium and more, so it should be worth it.
I’ve also been doing some of the New Romulus Embassy daily missions to get some Fleet Marks so I can help my moribund fleets progress in construction of the embassy and space station. Generally, those are short missions, the longest of which involves flying around the planet to scan for radiation, so maybe 6 or 8 minutes.
But now back to LOTRO, the 6th Anniversary Festival has started. I put a couple of my alts through the main festival quest line, but probably won’t do more. I have both of of the festival mounts among various mounts, and while I like the fireworks one a lot, the Anniversary mount isn’t my style. I do have some advice for players in the beer fight in Thorin’s Hall, though: stay in the arena after you get your points so others that aren’t as awesome as you can get their points too. There’s plenty of time to turn it in, so get knocked around a few times to help others out. I did that last night with my Hunter and I think the gesture was appreciated by a couple of people that hadn’t finished yet.
So I suppose this is a good problem to have – my favorite games are keeping things interesting with special events. Now if only I had more time!