The Ultimate LoTRO Newbie Guide - Part 4: Training, Equipment, and Statistics
by Cameron "Aelryn" Sorden
Table of Contents
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Finally! Lets Talk about Swords.
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One of the central goals of almost any MMORPG on the market today is to obtain cooler weapons and armor than the piddly sticks and rags your character generally starts out with. Lord of the Rings Online is no different in this respect-- you'll come across many neat items in your travels for your character to wear and use. Any time you hear someone talk about "equipment" or "gear," they're referencing these kinds of items that your character equips or wields.
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Pressing the "C" button will pop open your character window. You can look at lots of different things from here, but lets stick to the main tab for now. In this window you'll see a bunch of gray boxes and a few boxes with colored icons in them. On the bottom half will be a bunch of words and numbers. The boxes represent different parts of your character's body that you can equip items to. If they're colored, you have an item equipped there already. Hover over the icon to see the details of that item pop up on screen. You can equip or unequip an item by either right-clicking on it or dragging it to or from those boxes (into your bags-- press "I").
There are 19 slots total that you can equip items to, counting your crafting tool slot: most of your major body areas, two rings, two earrings, two hand slots, and a ranged weapon slot. Notice that you can equip a melee weapon (like a sword or club) and a ranged weapon (a bow or crossbow) at the same time and switch between them as needed. Also, your offhand slot (represented by a shield) isn't necessarily limited to shields only-- several classes can use the dual-wielding skill, which means to equip one weapon in each hand and fight with two weapons at once.
Finding and equipping new items is the primary way to increase your character's effectiveness in combat. That's because items are your primary way to improve your statistics, which brings me into the next section...
Statistics: Who needs live action when virtual dice rolling works fine?
The lower half of the character window is a list of all of your statistics. Statistics (or stats) are numbers which represent your character's natural abilities within the game world. Since you don't actually swing the weapons for your character, you also don't try to dodge or evade blows with the mouse... instead, the game figures out how good your character would be at any given action and approximates a number that illustrates that in the game. For example, you'll notice percentages next to the words "block," "dodge," and "parry." These are the chances that your character will stop incoming attacks in these ways automatically-- no input from you required.
You have five primary stats that almost all your other abilities and resistances are based on: might, agility, vitality, will, and fate. These correspond pretty much to what you'd expect. Might is physical strength, agility is quickness or speed, vitality is how robust and tough your character is, will corresponds to your power rating, and fate is...how... fateful you are. Yeah. That last stat was a little sketchy. What can you do? For an explanation of what these actually mean for you in game, you can hover the mouse cursor over them. In fact, that's a good idea to learn what all of those things on that screen do for you.
These stats go up as you gain levels and equip traits, but the primary way to increase them is through your gear (which often carry stat bonuses that get better on higher level items). Some stats are more useful for certain classes than others, so read up on your class to learn which stats will benefit them the most. If you're not sure, you can always ask us too.
Why Can't I Do Anything Cool? I'm Level 15 and I Still Only Have Two Attacks!
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A common mistake that many new players make in MMORPGs is forgetting to train skills. A silly convention from back in the dark days of gaming's infancy is the idea that you get new skills at certain levels. Really, it's not a silly convention-- but that's a discussion for another time and place. Anyway, the point is that every few levels you need to return to a trainer for your class and talk to them to learn new abilities. If you don't do this, you'll be limited to two or three skills that you start with and you'll be severely underpowered (since the game is balanced around characters that have all their skills for their level).
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You find trainers in different places depending on the town you're in. All the major cities have them, and many larger towns have a few as well. You can tell which one is yours because it's the only one that has a big floating circle with an emblem representing your class above it. You can buy your skills by right clicking on them and selecting the option to train. Skills get a little pricey as you start to approach level 20 or so, so make sure to save your cash-- you'll need it.
The next thing you have to do with skills is to put them on one of your hotbars. Your hotbars are the rows of boxes at the bottom of the screen which correspond to numbers on your keyboard. There are three invisible rows of hotbars above the main one, and you should use all of them (you get lots of skills and can also hotkey items, like potions). You can make the invisible bars visible by check a box under your options menu, and you might want to do that for easy access to your skills later.
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To place a skill on your hotbar, press "K" to open your skill window and left-click to drag an ability out of that list and onto a spot on the bar. After that, you can use the number associated with the box where you put the skill to activate it (or ctrl/alt/shift plus a number if it's not on the main hotbar). You can also left-click the skills to activate them from the bar if you feel like it.
Now that you understand how skills and equipment work, you know everything you need to know to be a useful member of a full-fledged group of players! Are you ready? Time to find out what playing an MMORPG is really all about!
(Continue to Part 5: Grouping 101)
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