It really is. There are so many places scattered around the LOTRO world where you look up from the endless series of tasks and quests and suddenly it hits you…“I’m in Middle Earth! This feels like being in the books!”. So many times I’ve paused to just look around, soaking it all in, or smiled at the sight of a familiar NPC or location. The care taken in crafting the world is evident everywhere you look, and the game has an extended power and longevity because of it.
Well, it’s been so long since my last login that my characters have all been wiped. I’m not miffed though. I intended to start fresh anyway.
I’m impressed that my account info was even maintained at all.
While trying to figure out the Anniversary “wrapper” quests thing I went to Bree to the fireworks display. The announcer guy was shouting out what color fireworks to shoot off, so I ran over to the fireworks vender and bought a bunch of each color. Then dutifully shot them all off as directed. Kept waiting for some indication I had accomplished my part in the display but he just kept calling out orders. So I kept running back and forth to the vendor and buying more fireworks, never missing a single direction. This went on to the tune of a couple hundred silvers worth of fireworks with no end in sight. I eventually noticed the OTHER guy standing behind the announcer who appeared to be in charge. I went and talked to him and he gave me official participation status AND all the fireworks I needed to finish the performance (10, as it turns out). I hope the good citizens of Bree enjoyed my addition “bonus” fireworks display sufficiently.
Signed, a rather deaf and sooty hobbit.
Is there any way to make the UI larger? Setting the graphics to 4K makes the UI unreadable for these old eyes. I was able to set it to 4K after the game seized control of the display graphics when it was set to lower graphics settings. At 4K, everything works fine (except I literally cannot read the numbers on the UI).
Edit: Never mind, I found the UI scaler. Thank goodness.
I, on the other hand, am still kind of irked/sad they nerfed the Old Forest all those years ago. (Even though I was one of the people that was constitutionally unable to navigate it.)
The games originally difficulty I remember being much harder, and there was punishment/penalties for dying by way of increased dread.
In fact I remember dread playing a big role in certain places. Basically lowering your HP like Demon’s Souls souls form/Dark Soul’s curse status.
They dropped that mechanic from Moria onwards it seems. Only heavily used throughout book 1 Shadows of Angmar AKA OG LOTRO.
Good, sounds like a fairly player-unfriendly mechanic.
They experimented with another difficulty mechanic in Mordor which they also dropped afterwards but it still functions only in Mordor:
Shadow vs Light of Earendil.
Based on the amount of Shadow you deal less damage and the enemy deals equal parts more damage to you…unless you have Light of Earendil gear that has the stat. E.G 50 shadow vs 10 Light gear means the enemy deals 40% more damage and you deal 40% less… having more light does not increase your damage/reduce damage received. It only negates the Shadow effects.
Essential the gear is only needed to clear Mordor. Afterwards your character gets a permanent passive 80 LoE stat.
There is however at least one piece of content that still requires this gear which is The Abyss Mordor raid which has like 250 Shadow or something stupid high. So if you sell off your gear later you’ll need to craft or barter for it again in order to survive and beat this raid.
You could negate much of that with +Hope crystals. I forget what they were called exactly but I had stacks of +5 Hope doodads for post-death and for some instances. I was actually kind of bummed when that went away and those crystals weren’t worth anything anymore.
I still have my LoE gear, kept it in case I might need it.
I am pretty positive it is only needed for the single raid instance mentioned that has insanely high shadow.
The funny thing though is when I finally joined a group rounded up to actually run that instance, there was many crafters on hand to turn out gear for everyone in the raid that lacked it.
Yes. My first character acquired some because it was still a relevant mechanic back then. But not anymore. All subsequent characters never acquired, needed, or used hope tokens. They are for all intent and purposes, inventory trash.
The mechanic is now almost entirely defunct, found only in certain instances/book 1 content. No where else.
I am 1000% positive if you need hope tokens to pass some old book 1 instance content, someone will immediately send you some free of charge. (I still horde some for some reason)
So weird thing happened over the weekend. I had logged in on the 27th, updating my LOTRO install and all that, to get all of the Anniversary goodies. Played the game briefly that evening with zero issues.
I went to login again over the weekend and the launcher runs, checks for updates (none), asks me for my username, password and server to connect to (none of which has changed), proceeds to the loading screens, then the SSG logo screen…then crashes to desktop. Just closes altogether, not freezing the computer or leaving behind an orphaned process, just closes.
After checking integrity of my files and updating my Geforce drivers (1050 Ti) and checking the installs of Microsoft C++ Redistributable (I have the proper ones installed) it still wouldn’t work. I read a forum post on the LOTRO forums about making sure you added the game back into your Geforce games list (in the Geforce management application under “Manage 3D Applications”. There was already an entry there for the client, but I went ahead and deleted and re-added it. Now it seems to work, but it asks me every time I start the game where to find the application (lotroclient.exe). It also seems to be running the 32-bit client, not the 64-bit one. If I point to the 64-bit client in the subdirectory for 64-bit, it kicks back an error.
WTF?! Anyone else seen this sort of client behavior post-update?
Guys I just started playing this but I am confused about the expansion packs. If I become a vip do I get the packs?
Welcome to QT3!
There is no need to go VIP to receive the vast majority of LOTRO for free. As of the 15th Anniversary Event ALL players, be they F2P, Premium or VIP, receive all of the quest content from both the base game and all of the expansion packs up through War of the Three Peaks (which means all you are missing is Gundabad, the latest expansion). You also receive all races with the exception of the Stout Axe Dwarves and all classes with the exception of Brawler (incl. with Gundabad). At this point, nearly the entire game has gone F2P. Certainly enough content to provide a brand new player with hundreds of hours of play without spending a dime.
NOTE : You need to have a character that is Level 2 or above and login to the game world by 3:00AM EST May 11th, 2022 to receive the Mordor, Minas Morgul and War of the Three Peaks content (as well as the Corgi pet and other 15th Anniversary goodies) as detailed here on the LOTRO site. After May 11th, the free content granted will only run up through Helm’s Deep (expansion prior to Mordor), however players granted the Mordor, Minas Morgul and War of the Three Peaks content during the event will NOT lose it after May 11th, it’s yours forever.
However…I do recommend spending a small amount, even if it’s just a few bucks on LOTRO Points from the store, as this will automatically convert your F2P account into a Premium account. There are several quality of life differences that come with Premium, and still more that come with VIP. This LOTRO Wiki page is very helpful in explaining the differences and has been updated to include the recent changes in content received.
So the short answer to your question is that as a F2P player you have everything you need to play for a very long time, but spending a small amount will get you some nice account-wide improvements as a Premium player. If you end up loving the game, VIP is a great way to show appreciation while receiving some very nice perks and bonuses monthly at the same time.
Upgrading to Premium is pretty much required if you want to play for a long while. You really need those fast travel routes.
I think I got to level 45 before I finally caved and got a month of VIP. Before that there was a huge amount of down time just traveling around. Evendim truly becomes Everswim. And when the epic quest keeps sending you back and forth across the width of Eriador, you’ll be begging for it.
I still remember all the time I spent traveling from Rivendell to the northern most ranger camp hidden in a mountain across the vast wastes of Angmar only to be sent immedately back to Rivendell.
The theft of time is real.
EDIT: Oops, totally elided the part where he was going to become VIP, so he does get all that stuff for included, yeah.
I don’t know why you refuse to believe this, but you do, in fact, get everything except Gundabad for free if you log in during the anniversary (ends on the 11th).
They aren’t just giving the Mordor, MM and TP Collectors Edition ‘stuff’ away, but the expansions too.
After the anniversary, if you didn’t log in then, then VIP’s have them added to their perks.
This was the reason to play a hunter back in the day. Don’t know how well that holds up today.
Hunter still has a embarrassment of riches in terms of class-based fast travel abilities.
You can fast travel to a campfire, to nearly all cities…on the top of the milestone ability every class has, and even then there is an escape ability to fast travel to nearest spawn circle.
It’s ridiculous when you consider all other classes save the Warden have nothing but milestone.
Hunter forevers. It has the pew pews and the teleporters.