A Guide to Level 100 on the Legendary Servers

A major update is nearing for the Legendary Servers of Anor and Ithil, with all level 100 content being released on December 16th, 2020. In this post, I want to give an overview of what to expect in the update and share some tips I have for players ready to advance to triple digits in their level as we journey to Gondor and Anorien!

This guide features many links to additional resources if you are interested in learning more!

2020-12-19 Update: Updated efficient leveling section based on the path I took.
2020-12-15 Update: Updated Morgul Crests information and some notes on gearing.

October 2020 Update - New Guides, Status, and WIP

Welcome to the first LOTRO Basics monthly status update post! In these, you will find a roundup of information relating to all guides on this site, including any new external guides linked to. For the October 2020 update, we will cover:

• New guides
• Originals
• External
• New Resources
• Status update
• Work in progress (WIP)

Of note:

• All class pages have been updated and I have searched for and added any new guides I have come across.
• I have also refocused my time into my YouTube channel and guides there since returning a couple months ago (this means original text guides here will be less frequent).

LOTRO Class Videos Guides and LOTRO Basics

While I have not had a new guide on LOTRO Basics for a couple weeks, I wanted to share some currently done video guides and progress on future ones! Below you will find a list of:

• New Guides
• Future Guides

Throughout this month I will be making updates to the website as time allows. The goals are to improve the ease of finding some of my latest guides that aren't directly posted here!

Most of my class guides can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Tl6WdlTDfDqYp8SqYHxm__NCFabD65I

New Guides

7 Rune Keeper Class Tips - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wzNURqaPiA

Rune Keeper Yellow Line Guide - Trait Analysis and Starter Build - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvV2UFzT3wM

Future Guides

For future guides, my priority is to cover classes not previously covered, or in other words, guides not covered in my "LOTRO Class Guides" playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Tl6WdlTDfDqYp8SqYHxm__NCFabD65I).

Please request any classes or guide series you want to see! Currently, my priority is:

• Warden/RK
• Beorning/Captain
• Touching up on all classes I am most familiar with
• Classes I play the least

To end this - again, I just wanted to give an update on what has been going on with guides. Hopefully I can get to working on updating this website within the next week and have semi-frequent posts again!

LOTRO Basics and YouTube

In this post, I want to give some information on my plans for this website (lotrobasics.com) and how I may still use it now that I will returning to content creation on YouTube soon. When I relaunched this website, I was surprised at the reception and popularity (even in the past couple weeks when I haven't been able to write guides due to moving). With that in mind and knowing I have fun writing these text-based guides, I would like to continue to continually update this site going forward in the future!

I talked about this in the LOTRO Basics About Video, but the difficulty is in deciding how to integrate topics that work for both videos and text, and how to make them complementary with but independent of each other. As usual, I am glad to hear any feedback on ideas for this going forward! If anyone is unfamiliar with my video guides content, some recent ones can be found in this playlist on my channel.

My current plan is to focus on YouTube, while still maintaining and working on the LOTRO Basics website. I will continue to make standalone guides on this website, but will include an additional standalone video for each guide and link them to each other. Some guides that would be easiest to continue this with is the 7 Class Tips series, Trait Analysis and Build Guides, and even the Full Class Guides broken down into sections.

The next step will be making videos of already existing guides on the website. After just a few of those are done, I will work on writing new guides and continuing where I left off!

7 Random Quick LOTRO Tips - Set 1

In this new guide series, I will be sharing some quick tips for the Lord of the Rings Online! The goal for each part is to cover 7 random, super short tips that I have found from my time playing LOTRO that would be beneficial for other plays to know! Some tips may be expanded on in full guides and will be linked with the tip.

Since this is a new series of guides I am testing out, I appreciate any feedback, especially on if it is helpful or not! I have also considered having more/fewer tips per post or making a dedicated page for "random LOTRO tips".

The First Set of 7 Tips:

1. How to swim faster
2. Frequently replace LIs while leveling
3. Filter lootboxes
4. Saving and loading UI
5. Instances for deeds
6. Focus on class deeds early
7. Set your virtues to "earning" early

LOTRO Tip: Customizing the User Interface - Resizing, Rearranging, Saving, and Loading the UI Layout

The Lord of the Rings Online offers a lot of customization of the user interface. In-game, you can resize, rearrange, show, or hide different UI elements. Once you find a UI setup you like, you can save the layout and later load it on different characters! In this LOTRO Tips guide, I will cover how to do all of this in the game:

• Showing, Hiding, and Resizing UI Elements
• Rearranging and Moving UI Elements
• Saving and Loading UI Layout and Settings

Character Roles in LOTRO and Which Classes Fit Them

In RPGs, a character's role defines what they do and how they contribute to group content and in-game encounters. In the Lord of the Rings Online, there are 4 main roles to fulfill - tank, DPS, heal, and support. In this guide, I will to discuss the roles in LOTRO and breakdown which classes and specs can fulfill them.

The first half focuses on new players with an overview of character roles, while the second half covers the roles individually and which classes fulfill them and how.

7 Lore Master Class Tips in LOTRO

The Lore Master class in the Lord of the Rings Online has a versatile kit as a spellcaster - dealing damage, debuffing enemies, or providing utility. With the LM entry of the LOTRO Basics class tips guide series, we will break down the class to help you get started with it, improve your experience, and hopefully learn something new!

The goal of the LOTRO Basics 7 Class Tips series of guides is to help newer or returning players better understand their class and get started with them. For other guides in the 7 Class Tips series, they can be found at this page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/class-guides-and-resources.html.

7 Rune Keeper Class Tips in LOTRO

The Rune Keeper class in the Lord of the Rings Online boasts the unique attunement system, balancing between damage and healing as a ranged spellcaster. With the RK entry of the LOTRO Basics class tips guide series, we will break down the class to help you get started with it and improve your experience!

The goal of the LOTRO Basics 7 Class Tips series of guides is to help newer or returning players better understand their class and get started with them. For other guides in the 7 Class Tips series, they can be found at this page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/class-guides-and-resources.html.

LOTRO Basics - Recent Construction and Navigation Update

LOTRO Basics has gone under construction to improve navigation recently! 

Update 07/21/2020: Added mobile navigation back!

While I am mostly done with changing how the site looks as a whole, there may still be periods where the site is temporarily broken as I continue to try to improve the experience over the next couple days.

All guides and resources are still available at their usual locations, with the navigation links at the top now containing a better list of guides available and easy access to class pages. On the right sidebar, you may also navigate to posts by their date published. Under that, there's a list of search terms that each guide is labeled with to also help you find the guides you need!

Any feedback on the new formatting is appreciated, as I am trying to make LOTRO Basics as good as possible for the community!

LOTRO News: Update 27.2 Rundown - Surprisingly Big Changes to Gameplay

08/03/2020 Update: The beta has ended and the live patch for Update 27.2 is scheduled for August 4th, 2020 with a maintenance time of 8:00 am to 12:00 pm server time (EDT, UTC-4)!

For a "small" update, Update 27.2 for the Lord of the Rings Online, released August 4th 2020, brings some major changes to three key game mechanics along with some continued work on the Midsummer festival and new housing features in preparation for Rohan housing coming soon. To go with the Rohan housing and Storied Tales feature from Update 27, Helm's Deep is also being released on the legendary servers (Anor and Ithil).

For this post (the first in a potential new series on LOTRO news), I want to focus on the game mechanics updates and what they mean for the players. These three game mechanics see improvements in this QOL-style update:

• Interrupts
• Taunts
• Corruption Removals

Read the full patch notes for U27.2: https://www.lotro.com/en/content/update-272-release-notes

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Interrupts Buffs

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Interrupts stop enemy inductions, preventing them from using powerful abilities. In U27.2, classes will now have baseline immediate interrupts at level 20. This provides a few significant changes:

• All classes will now be able to instantly interrupt inductions at level 20 - some classes, like the Captain unlocked them at much higher level
• Some classes will have a greatly improved ability to interrupt, like the Warden and Hunter had interrupts but were difficult to use on time - now, they will be able to provides interrupts much more reliably.
• Because the interrupts are immediate, all classes will now have access to an ability to animation cancel with (read more about the animation cancelling game mechanic: https://www.lotrobasics.com/2020/05/animation-cancelling.html)

In terms of gameplay, this boils down to more reliability and ease of interrupting mobs!

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Force Taunts Adjustments

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Force taunts force enemies to attack you for a short duration (read more in tip #2: https://www.lotrobasics.com/2020/07/guardian-tips.html). In U27.2, many CDs and trait/LI boosts for force taunts have been adjusted. Notably:

• Beorning's taunt Thunderous Roar will now have a shorter CD, but their trait to give Biting Edge a force taunt will now make it's CD 10 seconds longer (previously 5 seconds). These changes helps Beornings use their large AoE force taunt more often, but their shorter CD one that hits fewer targets cannot be used as frequently.
• Captains will now have access to a new taunt - Elendil's Roar - from speccing into the yellow line (the old trait to make Blade of Elendil give a force taunt now boosts Elendil's Roar). Their old force taunt, Threatening Shout, is now available as a trait in the yellow. This will help Captain's maintain aggro better - one of the their few weaknesses as a tank.
• Champion's AoE skill from a trait in the blue line, Horn of Champions, will now have the force taunt effect. This will help tanking Champions hold aggro.
• Guardian's AoE taunt Challenge has a much shorter CD (60 sec -> 30 sec) - this buff will help tanking Guardians keep aggro of multiple mobs more easily.
• Wardens received no changes to force taunts, but did get minor changes to tanking with the defiance buff duration being increased to 32 seconds (up from 30 seconds). The defiance buff is gained from using Defiant Challenge, a skill unlocked in the second row of the blue line trait tree.

In terms of gameplay, this overall provides tanks with an easier ability to hold aggro with their taunts.

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Corruption Removals - A Hint to the Future?

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Corruption removals are abilities all classes have that remove corruptions, powerful buffs that some enemies can possess. Corruptions were added in the Moria expansion pack (level 50+) and continued to be a prominent feature in Mirkwood. After that, they have become more infrequently used and are a relatively rare sight in newer content.

In U27.2, all classes' corruption removals will be changed to being granted to you at level 20. They used to be unlocked at level 50 because the content where corruptions were was also level 50+. It seems odd that corruption removals would be changed to such a low level where there is no use for them.

I believe this is a possible hint towards the future of LOTRO. Later this year, Standing Stone Games (developers of LOTRO), is planning on implementing another legendary server, now that the first set has moved on to Rohan. This legendary server was planned to have additional dangers added to the game. Perhaps the new dangers will include corruptions - giving enemies powerful buffs that can only be removed by your corruption removal skills!

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If you enjoyed this guide or found it helpful, please consider supporting the content!

Subscribe or become a member on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Louey7

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Captain Red Line Trait Analysis and Build Guide

This is a Lord of the Rings Online guide on the red line specialization for the Captain, Lead the Charge. The guide covers an in depth analysis of the spec with:

• A background on Captain as a DPS for leveling and group support in the red line
• Detailed breakdown and analysis on trait choices
• Follow up with sample builds

Captain Class Page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/captain-class-guides.html

This guide was written during Update 27 in July 2020.

LOTRO: Captain Guide - In Depth Beginner's Guide and Class Overview

This is a Captain Class Guide for the Lord of the Rings Online, expanding on the introduction from the LOTRO Basics: Classes of LOTRO Guide. The guide is oriented towards new and returning players or those who want to learn more about the Captain. The goal of the guide is to:

• Overview the basics of the Captain
• Detail Captain gameplay, traits, and builds
• Discuss how the Captain fits into LOTRO and compares to other classes

Guide Written: Update 27, July 2020

Captain Resource Page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/captain-class-guides.html

All Class Guides and Resources: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/class-guides-and-resources.html

7 Captain Class Tips in LOTRO

The Captain class in the Lord of the Rings Online has a lot of different themes as a buff-based support class. With the Captain entry of the LOTRO Basics class tips guide series, we will break down the class to help you get started with and improve your Captain experience! If you are interested in a full guide to the Captain, I wrote one here: https://www.lotrobasics.com/2020/07/captain-guide.html.

In this guide, I will have 7 tips for the Captain class, covering gameplay, traits, builds, equipment, etc. The goal of the LOTRO Basics 7 Class Tips series of guides is to help newer or returning players better understand their class and get started with them. For other guides in the 7 Class Tips series, they can be found at this page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/class-guides-and-resources.html.

This guide was written and last edited during U27, in July 2020.

Warden Red Line Trait Analysis and DPS Build Guide

This is a Lord of the Rings Online guide on the red line specialization for the Warden, Recklessness. The guide covers an in depth analysis of the spec with:

• A background on Warden as a DPS and the red line
• Detailed breakdown and analysis on trait choices
• Follow up with sample builds

This guide is up-to-date with Update 26, last updated in June 2020.

7 Guardian Class Tips in LOTRO

The Guardian class in the Lord of the Rings Online has many different mechanics and skills that may make it seem daunting for beginners.With the Guardian entry of the LOTRO Basics quick tips guide series, we will break down the class to help improve your Guardian experience! 

In this guide, I will have 7 tips for the Guardian class, covering gameplay, traits, builds, equipment, etc. The goal of the LOTRO Basics 7 Class Tips series of guides is to help newer or returning players better understand their class and get started with them. For other guides in the 7 Class Tips series, they can be found at this page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/class-guides-and-resources.html

This guide is up to date with U32, in March 2022.

Warden Blue Line Class Trait Analysis and Tank Build Guide

This is a Lord of the Rings Online guide on the blue line specialization for the Warden, Determination. The guides covers an in depth analysis of the spec with:

• A background on Warden tanking and the blue line
• Detailed breakdown and analysis on trait choices
• Follow up with sample builds

This guide was updated during Update 28.2, in January 2021.

    - updated background and builds sections and fixed display issues.

7 Warden Class Tips in LOTRO

The Warden is considered one of the most difficult classes in the Lord of the Rings Online to get started with. The goal of this LOTRO Basics quick tips series of guides is to help newer or returning players better understand their class and get started with them. With the first entry, we will tackle the tricky Warden to help improve your Warden experience!

In this guide, I will have 7 tips for the Warden class, covering gameplay, traits, builds, equipment, etc. For other guides in the "7 Class Tips" series, they can be found at this page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/class-guides-and-resources.html

This guide is up to date with U27, in July 2020.

During the past few weeks, I have run into issues with Blogger frequently switching formatting and how the html/CSS displays on the website. The migration to a new system was recently finished and, for some good news, I will now be able to make more frequent and consistent content!

Most recently, I published a Beorning Class Guide, which will be the last post that uses the old formatting system. Later this week, I plan to publish a Warden guide that will kick off the new planned series of guides called "7 LOTRO Class Tips". All of these new guides can be found in the Class Guides and Resources page. This will be the first post showing off the new formatting in full form.

A large advantage of the new format will be more frequent guides and content for the community. However, I first plan to migrate all of the old pages to the new system. To give a preview, I have updated the Beorning Class Guides and Resources page, and will follow with that formatting on the rest of the classes. I will also give another sweep to add any new guides I find along the way!

While the migration happens, I appreciate everybody's support as this project continues to come to fruition and becomes a main community stop for LOTRO guides, resources, builds, and information content! In the meantime, I will post updates on my Twitter account.

If you find the content on LOTRO Basics helpful and enjoyed it, please consider supporting the site!

Subscribe or become a member on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Louey7

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Louey_7

LOTRO: Beorning Guide - In Depth Beginner's Guide and Class Overview

 

 

This LOTRO class guide focuses on general aspects of the Beorning class, expanding on the overview from LOTRO Basics: Classes of LOTRO Guide. The goal of the guide is to cover:

• An overview of the Beorning
• Detail Beorning gameplay, traits, and builds
• Discuss how Beornings fit into LOTRO and compare to other classes

 

Guide Updated: 2020/05/04 – Published!

Beorning Resource Page: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/beorning-class-guides.html

All Class Guides and Resources: https://www.lotrobasics.com/p/class-guides-and-resources.html

 

How to Use New Coupon Code for Free Quest Packs in LOTRO! (and Expansion Quests Sale)

The Coupon Code

LOTROFREEQUESTS

Standing Stone Games, developers of the Lord of the Rings Online, recently announced a coupon code that can be used to unlock all quest packs currently in the game for FREE and a sale of expansion quest packs for just 99 LOTRO Points each (6 of these for a total of 594 points). The coupon code is now available and the expansion quests sale is now live!

The Code: LOTROFREEQUESTS

This is a limited time event, the coupon code and expansion sale will last only until August 31st, 2020. I highly recommend using the code, no matter what type of account you have. If VIP, if your subscription runs out, you will at least always have all the current quest pack content in the game. Also, I even suggest if you have ever slightly considered making a second account, to go ahead an do so and use the code for all the free content on a new account(s)!

Below is a step-by-step guide for how to use the code to get all the free content and how to find the expansion packs! At the end of that will be the complete list of quest packs and expansions on sale.

LOTRO Animation Cancelling Game Mechanic Guide - Maximizing DPS and Attack Speed

 

In this guide, I have a quick tip on animation cancelling in the Lord of the Rings Online. This method of combat allows you to increase DPS, quickly finish skills, and potentially smoothen gameplay.

 

This guide has three parts:

·    Overview on animation cancelling with video examples

·    Class-by-class animation cancelling abilities

·    Closing notes

 

In this guide, you may notice the use of the words “ability” and “skill”, these refer to the same thing and are used interchangeably.

 

Guide to the Classes in the Lord of the Rings Online

The Guide is up to date with: July 2020 (Update 27)

Latest Changes to the Guide: Fixed formatting issues. Note: this guide was made with an old formatting system. I plan to make a new guide for 2021 with updated formatting and a new, long-lasting home page!

Latest major class changes: Update 27.2 brought changes to some gameplay mechanics. Read more: https://www.lotrobasics.com/2020/07/u27.2-rundown.html.

 

This is a resource for the classes in the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). While primarily focused on new players, the guide may also serve more experienced players looking for more knowledge on their class or other classes (and perhaps how to share their own information). The goals of the guide include:

·       Information – Contain up to date information on all of the classes in LOTRO

·       Guide - Directing players on a class you may enjoy based on playstyles and fantasies

·       Resource/Database - Provide an informational base of all classes in a single page, for easy viewing and reference, including links to resources for the individual classes