Free Range Chickens! Sept. 7th

[Bolderbrook]

Want to sport one of the most coveted titles in all of Middle-earth? Sure you do! Be one of the scant few to be able to call yourself Snozzbozz Winklewipes, "Crosser Of Roads"!

On September 7th (happens to be a Friday) (also happens to be Crickhollow's AND Second Breakfast's Eighth Anniversary) Second Breakfast member Naurfin will be guiding as many Chickens as wish to come along on the most epic journey a chicken's ever taken! The "Free Range" Chicken Session Play takes your doughty fowl on a tour through almost every corner of Eriador, re-visiting every animal (or Wizard) that you've encountered on all the lead-up runs, PLUS finding the elusive Chicken Stones!

This is truly a test of speed, stamina and the occasional need to play dead. The run will PROBABLY take 6 hours or so (with breaks roughly every hour to attend to necessities), but has to be completed in less than 8 hours. Though it's possible to complete all of the other Chicken Sessions without an escort—or at least it was about 4 years ago when Celbrethion did it—trying to go for such a long ways without once getting too close to some chicken-eater is so near to impossible that there's no air between the two. Hence, having a level 115 Hunter like Naurfin—who can not only neutralize pretty much anything with one shot, but ALSO knows the route—will give your feathered self the best shot you could hope for at attaining the title.

The run will start in late morning, Server Time (exact time still to be decided) with the hope of finishing up by late afternoon/early evening, and is open to the whole server's chicken population.

Even if you've never done any Chicken Sessions, there's still time to get ready! Talk to Wald Sandson at Sandson's Farm in the Shire, an get pecking! =)

WHAT: Free Range Chicken Session Play

WHERE: Meet at Sandson's Farm in the Shire

WHEN: Sept. 7th, Late Morning (Server time; Probably 11:00AM, to be confirmed later)

YOU MUST HAVE COMPLETED ALL THE PREVIOUS CHICKEN SESSION PLAY OBJECTIVES! https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Chicken_Play

[Cordovan]

Awesome.

[Bolderbrook]

Two weeks to go! BUT!.... there's an issue here. In scouting/verifying the route, I have discovered that the "Chicken Stone" at Bag End is... not there. I submitted a bug report about a week ago, and when 22.5 came out, I hoped that this would be fixed. Unfortunately, there is still no Chicken Stone at Bag End. I have found a LOCATION for the stone on a spoilers thread, which I believe to be accurate, but I do not know if leading the chickens to that spot will actually count (i.e., the NODE is still active, even though the GRAPHIC is not present). If this is broken, then spending 6 or 7 hours on a quest that cannot be completed would be a Thing That Is Not Good.

Can anyone (looking at you, Cord) confirm that chickens that cross the correct spot WILL get credit for finding the stone at Bag End, even though there is no stone there? If not, I may have to call the whole thing off...

[Alchemilla]

Two weeks to go! BUT!.... there's an issue here. In scouting/verifying the route, I have discovered that the "Chicken Stone" at Bag End is... not there. I submitted a bug report about a week ago, and when 22.5 came out, I hoped that this would be fixed. Unfortunately, there is still no Chicken Stone at Bag End. I have found a LOCATION for the stone on a spoilers thread, which I believe to be accurate, but I do not know if leading the chickens to that spot will actually count (i.e., the NODE is still active, even though the GRAPHIC is not present). If this is broken, then spending 6 or 7 hours on a quest that cannot be completed would be a Thing That Is Not Good.

Can anyone (looking at you, Cord) confirm that chickens that cross the correct spot WILL get credit for finding the stone at Bag End, even though there is no stone there? If not, I may have to call the whole thing off...

Hi, I just tried it, the node still works (the deed-log showed that I'd discovered the Bag End Stone). Looking forward to Friday.

[Rugongrod]

Sounds good I will have a chicken at the ready. Just say Bok Buck Uck Bawk.

[Bolderbrook]

EXCELLENT!

Anyone interested in coming along, report to Sandson's Farm at BEFORE 10AM Server Time (an hour earlier than stated above to help any EU folks that might want to go). Come as your regular character NOT AS A CHICKEN. While some folks might feel that a Voice connection of some sort would be a good idea, I feel that, in the spirit of the Chicken world, there really should be no communication between Chickens and Escorts, other than what can be done with non-verbal signals. The Chickens, of course, should all be in a Fellowship or Raid, and can establish their own chat channel or use Voice communication amongst themselves if they choose to.

Naurfin is your main guide and escort, and is a Level 115 hunter, easily capable of one-shotting ANYTHING in Eriador. She will be being Followed by Lisbit, a Level 55 Captain, who will be trailing her own Archer. So there will be plenty of firepower. What these characters do NOT have is much in the way of Stealth Detection, so it will be up to the Chickens to use their enhanced Stealth senses (in round robin fashion, perhaps) to avoid Stealthed creatures. The Chickens should stay with Lisbit and her Archer who is along mainly to take out anything that pops up from Stealth.

Communication: I am willing to entertain any sort of coded messages, but it seems to me that simplest is best. If for ANY reason the Chickens need Naurfin to wait while some difficulty is resolved, one or more chickens should catch up to her and jump up and down. She will then wait until the Chickens again start jumping, and then start off again.

Here is the Route that we will follow:

Sandson's Farm

Stone At Mathom House

Stone at Bag End

Stone in Annuminas

Stone in Gwindethrond

Longbough

Stone in Ost Forod

Nest in Oatbarton, Port to High Moors (NOTE: Naurfin and Lisbit cannot, of course, use the nests to travel; at every Port, the Chickens will need to wait until their Escorts get back to them)

Stone in Rivendell

Roheryn (at stables)

Stone at Gloin's Camp

Stone at Helegrod

Nest At HIgh Moors, port back to Oatbarton

Old Sally

Fox

Maggot's Hounds

Stone at Brandywine Bridge

Cow

Stone at Bombadil's House

Stone at Othrongroth

Wink the Cat

Stone at Prancing Pony

Horse at Hengstacer's

Nest at Trestlebridge, port to Duillond

Stone at Duillond Stable

Stone at Kheledul

Lynx Mother

Stone at Thorin's Halls

Nest at Duillond, port back to Trestlebridge

Stone at Fornost

Stone at Gatson's House

Stone at Esteldin

Aurochs Yearling

Nest on Island in Nen Harn, port to Malenhad

Stone at Tyrn Lhuig

Stone at Aughaire

Stone at Lehma Koti

Nest in Malenhad, port back to Nen Harn

Grey Squirrel on island in Nen Harn

Snicken

Stone at Forsaken Inn

Stone at Weathertop

Radagast

Stone At Last Bridge

DONE!


As previously mentioned, Bio Breaks will occur ROUGHLY every hour (conditions permitting) and will last NO LONGER than 10 minutes. If all the chickens are gathered around Naurfin in 5 minutes, she'll set out then. Breaks will be signaled by Naurfin sitting down, at which point the clock starts running. Chickens not attentive by the 10 minute mark will just have to catch up on their own.

[Torathon]

EXCELLENT!

Anyone interested in coming along, report to Sandson's Farm at BEFORE 10AM Server Time (an hour earlier than stated above to help any EU folks that might want to go). Come as your regular character NOT AS A CHICKEN. While some folks might feel that a Voice connection of some sort would be a good idea, I feel that, in the spirit of the Chicken world, there really should be no communication between Chickens and Escorts, other than what can be done with non-verbal signals. The Chickens, of course, should all be in a Fellowship or Raid, and can establish their own chat channel

I hope to be there. Just letting you know that chickens can't be in fellowships, which are called "groups" in the session ui. IMs work.

[Bolderbrook]

All right, I only remember being able to communicate with the other chickens on the run. If Grouping doesn't allow this, then (at least, according to LOTROwiki: https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Chicken_Play_Guide) ...

Custom Chat Channel
Recommend joining a custom chicken channel once you enter session play. For those that don't know, custom channels can be used across the entire server. They are not bound to the region you are currently located in. This allows you to communicate with any other chicken session players that are currently out and about in middle earth, provided they have also joined the same custom channel.

To join a custom channel type "/joinchannel <channel name>"
The easiest name to remember and use I feel would of course be chicken, so type "/joinchannel chicken"
Remember, you will have to rejoin this channel every time you enter session play.
Also recommend joining the custom chicken channel while on your main characters. This channel can be used to coordinate runs and alert other players of the route you will be running shortly. It can also be used for chicken session discussion and help without cluttering up the often overused custom glff, gooc, and gtrade channels. Lastly, it will be a fun way for the chicken session players to mingle, as most avid chicken session players are a small but fun group of players.

So maybe that's how we did it. But this is why I want everyone to report in their non-chicken characters, so we can get this type of thing settled before starting out

[Bolderbrook]

Bad news... I logged in two characters as Chickens, one on a VIP account and one on an F2P account, and made a User Chat channel that they both joined. So far so good. When the second one joined, I got the message that there were now 2 players in the channel. BUT! When I tried to type anything on EITHER character, I got the message, "You haven't played this character for long enough to use this chat channel."

APPARENTLY, in U22.2.2, restrictions were placed on "global" chat channels (because of gold spamming), that do not allow Premium players to use them until Level 10, and F2P players until Level 20. However, there are not supposed to be ANY restrictions on VIP chat. And yet, my VIP account got the same message about not playing the character long enough. SO, perhaps the Chickens need their own Discord channel for voice chat, or something. I use Discord occasionally, but do not know how to set up a new one; and this would not allow chickens without microphones (has anyone ever used the phrase "chickens without microphones" before?) to add their comments, though they could hear warnings, etc.

While I still feel that the Chickens shouldn't communicate directly with the Escorts, I think it would be unwise and unfortunate for the Chickens to be unable to talk amongst themselves. Perhaps the IM channel allows this, to some extent, but I haven't used it much, and it still seems as though one would have to target each Chicken individually in order to talk to them. I don't think you could talk to ALL the other chickens at once in that channel. But I could be wrong about that, I suppose.

Discord now has an overlay for LOTRO, but from what I've seen it's not very conducive to chatting AND playing at the same time.

[Commander2012]

Have I missed this? I had internet issues and have a feeling I will never ever get this quest done. Is there any likelyhood of this happening again?

[Alchemilla]

Have I missed this? I had internet issues and have a feeling I will never ever get this quest done. Is there any likelyhood of this happening again?

I do hope there'll be another opportunity. I was there but a very mean Angmarim made fried chicken out of me in Annuminas.

[IkeIllmore]

Late I know but many thanks for the efforts for our escorts Naurfin, Lisbet, Maeviros, Froderol and Gryffs, not to mention Artur and Reodbog. Myself (Vethlo) and Master Pontin got our "Crosser of Roads" titles.