First off, apparently we’ve started a welcome back weekend that’s not only offering +5% experience bonus but also 100% discount to all stables!  That certainly will help me out as I work on my minstrel.  Also check out the full news post for all the details.

There’s also a new gold star repeatable quest available in the Mirkwood camp of Gathburz.  It isn’t a new quest, but the “Death from Below” quest is now repeatable such that there are I believe 3 repeatable quests per day I’ve found to farm the gold star emblems.  The nice part is that the drops required for the “Badges of Dishonour“ quest can be found quite easily in the “Death from Below” quest such that you can kill 2 birds with one stone.  The main usage for these items are the scroll of delving (+10 levels) and Beleriand damage scrolls in addition to the horse, port, cosmetic items, etc.

Also on the live boards, I couldn’t help laugh when reading this post from JWBarry on the Fords of Bruinen Skirmish.

Continuing with the armor comparisons I’ve done, Hakon continues to update his with not only shields but also non-legendary weapons.  Check out not only this post but also the thread in in general.