So for those of you in twitter-land you probably know that I’ve been enjoying the Spring festival and have been quite busy.  The shrew stomping is a lot of fun and I took a couple videos of my successful runs through both the kill 10 shrews and the 1st to kill the enormous one.  One thing I’ve noticed is that many try to use normal AOE skills or lay traps to gain an advantage.  Tapping the shrew with damage doesn’t grant credit nor does it prevent someone else from stomping it – so there’s really no need to do that at all.  The first video is pretty tame as there weren’t that many online at the time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az4j8wCTOXk&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

This video is a bit more crowded and chaotic and notice that the enormous shrew did set off the hunter trap but I was still able to tag it 🙂

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEX7y_6ItAY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

One other thing to point out, the quest for killing 10 shrews actually has a couple of options.  The first time you do it there is only one quest giver, but either tied to successful completion of that quest of the enormous shrew you also get access to the “Practiced” and “Elite’ gardeners that reward you with more leaves.  So as soon as you can get those, I highly recommend using them as the quest is the same but with better rewards, and you can only have 1 active at a time.  The Leisurely Gardener just requires you to stomp 10 shrews before the round ends, the Practiced Gardener asks you to do it in a quicker timespan, and the Elite Gardener has a same small time window as the Practiced and in addition asks you to plant seeds to try and prevent the shrews in the first place.  Sadly I wasn’t paying enough attention to notice what the trigger was for those additional quest givers.

This 3rd video is my last run with the quest from the Elite Gardener.  I was a bit stressed at the end as I was short 1 shrew but I did luck out and have the enormous one spawn right under me 😉 so I got him too…

(edit – all three are up, just not finished getting all pretty)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=307zcWshkqU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

In addition to the shrews, I did finally complete the Bullroarer’s challenge and am now sporting a massive new weapon – my beer mug 😉

I ran both horse races successfully and amassed enough tokens to purchase both horses, here are the screen shots of them for those who are curious.  You’ll also notice the shrew statue and the beer mug in these shots, and the magical clover fields that can grow in snow 😉

Original Spring Horse

New Spring Horse - Blue-roan

There’s also a post on the forums about these horses as well and a twitpic from @KurganNazzir.

The Bree hedge maze is also back open, but after getting horribly lost a few times I’m pushed that off for a little bit later such that I can devote the appropriate time to it.  I still am missing the sinister keg and there’s also a Moria keg that I want to add to my house, so I’ll be working to get both of those here in addition to some of the other goodies from the vendors.

And finally this morning, I did check out some of the new Dwarven league starting from the dwarves there in Thorin’s Hall.  Apparently they’re not real happy with the Inn League monopolizing all the beer drinking and are plotting against them.   I stole some beer recipes but got sidetracked and haven’t done too much more to aide in their plot against the hobbits.  Not that I’m against the hobbits – but there’s nothing wrong with having more beer, right?

To my knowledge, it appears that the only way to get the leaves required for the items are the horse races (6 max per day), the hedge maze (quite a few different quests there), and the shrew stomping (max 10 per run, and it goes off just about every five minutes).  So if there are lots of things you want, better get your stomp on 😉