The Ultimate LoTRO Newbie Guide - Part 3: Moving and Fighting

by Cameron "Aelryn" Sorden

Table of Contents

Welcome to Middle Earth!

You should now be standing at the entrance of the tutorial (an area designed for you to learn the controls and get your bearings). Look around on your screen for a box with instructions. If it's your first time playing, read each of these boxes carefully as they pop up. You'll be glad you did later when you need to know how to do something. After giving you basic instructions for moving around, the screen will tell you to talk to the character with the golden ring above their head. These rings indicate that someone has a quest for you, and you can also see them on your mini-map (upper right circle which gives a bird's eye view of the surrounding area). Make sure that when you talk to them you take the option to continue the tutorial and not the option that says "(skip tutorial)." If you skip the tutorial you miss out on a lot of easy levels and equipment and you also start at level 2 when most people are level 6 from completing the tutorial.

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I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about the actual controls of moving and fighting because the game explains those in great detail when you play through the first part of the tutorial (plus they're pretty easy to get the hang of). Turbine has actually done a fantastic job of explaining the game in this area and making it easy and approachable. What I will do is give you some tips to make you more comfortable moving around and also give you a quick overview of how combat works and some introductory level tactics discussion.

Remember that you don't need to use the WASD keys for movement if you're not comfortable with them. It's just the style preferred by many gamers. Poke around in the options menu and you can reassign them or see some of the other movement options. Some players use the mouse almost exclusively, although I wouldn't recommend it. To get a better view of your character, you can click and hold your middle mouse button (the scroll wheel on most mice) and move your mouse around. Right clicking and doing the same thing will allow you to quickly shift your viewpoint. Scrolling in and out can change the distance you view the character at. Mess with these for a while until you have the hang of moving and looking around. You'll be doing both a lot.

The Fine Art of Killing, Whacking, Burning, and Piercing

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After the introductory part of the tutorial you should have the basics of the game down. Now your real journey begins. While you may have dispatched a few bandits or spiders with ease, don't think you're a battle master just yet, though. Lets discuss combat a bit more. There are some things you'll appreciate knowing.

You probably understand the concept that you need to lower your enemy's green Morale bar to nothing before he does that to you in order to win, but that's not the only thing you should be concerned about. It's important to make judicious use of your skills and special attacks if you want to prevail in the long run. Use too many skills and you'll come out of fights with no Power left (the blue bar). Use too few and your fights will last forever. It's up to you to find a good balance that satisfies you. Read what each of your skills does carefully and watch how much power they take to use. Those costs increase as you level up, but they remain fairly constant as a percentage cost of your total power. In the early levels you don't have many skills yet, so you're generally safe using them as often as you need or want to.

Speaking of Power and Morale, remember that they return to you much more slowly in combat than outside of combat. Being "in combat" just means that there is a hostile monster which you've attacked or that's attacking you. You may want to take a few moments and rest after a particularly tough fight so that they can return to you. It usually only takes a few moments to get back to full, and you can use food to speed up the process if you desire.

Always be sure to keep an eye on your surroundings too. It's pretty annoying when an extra monster pops up in the middle of a tough fight. Some players keep the camera zoomed way out so they can make sure nothing is sneaking up on them. I like watching my fights up close though, so I just spin the camera around every few seconds and make sure I've got some room. If you do see a monster wandering towards your fight, don't be afraid to move out of the way a bit. Whatever is attacking you will follow you (unless it has ranged attacks, and even then sometimes it will still come).

If you're trying to actively avoid a fight, you usually can't just run through quickly and hope the monster doesn't notice you. You have to skirt around what's called their "aggro radius." This is simply the circular area surrounding a monster where they'll notice you and attack you if you enter it. It varies depending on the type and difficulty of the montser, and the only way to get a feel for it is experience. In practice, making a wide circle around something is always better than cutting straight past it and crossing your fingers.

With these tips in mind and a little experience under your belt, you'll be storming the gates of Angmar in no time flat.

(Continue to Part 4: Training, Equipment, and Statistics)

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