Official: Things I Wish I Knew Earlier!

[Romungus]

Or if you are in a (small) kinship or fellowship that doesn't mind, you can use /k ;loc or /f ;loc respectively.

Holy ****, this is the WORST advice ever! No one do this please! :P

[Carfilhiot]

Holy ****, this is the WORST advice ever! No one do this please! :P

Given the circumstances I described - a small kinship or fellowship that doesn't mind - can you explain why this was the worst advice ever? If you mean that someone in the kinship or fellowship (like you for example) would mind the traffic - then it's not a k or f that doesn't mind - QED.

[ArmyAunt]

I found a few things that could be clarified, or need to be corrected because of changes implemented in the Book 9 and Book 10 patches. Words or letters to be removed are red and words or letters to be added are green. Other comments are in blue. {Edit is in purple.}

USER INTERFACE:

9. Press Print Screen or F11 to take a screen shot. ~From Aellea


LOOK AND FEEL:

2. Under advanced Video Setting IU Settings, you can turn off helm, cape cloak, and/or shoes and other parts of your armor! ~From Dromiz Note: All players will see the changes, so hobbits; show those feet!


CRAFTING & HARVESTING:

3. When you dye something, you must unequip and re-equip the item to see the changes. ~From Sssnapdragon I dyed a whole set of armor & didn't have to do that.


LOOTING:

3. Shift+Right Clicking on a node will auto lookt a resource node without a pop up window! ~From B_Radr
**3a. Alternatively, you can right click any corpse/node without using the default "U" key. (You'll still receive a loot window using this method.) ~From Slave_to_the_wheek


GENERAL GAMEPLAY:
1. Holding down the right mouse button while moving left or right allows you to strafe. (Aside from the default Q&E) ~From Diggl

4. You can unlock special titleas by using emotes! Reference http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Titles ~From Missy There is also a very nice guide for the emote titles at http://www.thebrasse.com/game-guides/6.

9. Clicking on the ring on your quest log display in your interface will take you to that mission in your quest log. ~From Thorwen

10. Left clicking on the ring the quest tracker takes you to the entry in the quest log, but right clicking on it brings up a very useful context menu so you can remove the quest from the panel (or remove all), or set your LFF comment. It's very useful! ~From Zodiac

11. If you right click on the quest tracker "ring", an option to "Find others who have this quest" is displayed ~From CozyFlyer

9, 10 & 11 here are essentially the same information, perhaps they could be condensed into one & credit given to all three contributers.


PRO TIPS:

5. Gold farmers use /who to spam their victims. To stop them, open the social panel (CTRL+O) and click the "Annonymous" check box. Voila! No more gold spam. ~From Rook818

8. Grab all the quests in an area before heading out. sometimes you'll have to kill mob b to get to mob a. or you'll have 2 quests that involve the same mob. so you can get 2 things done at once. ~From nevikt

9. Destiny points are shared between all characters on one server! Any of your characters (level 10 or higher) on that account and server can play any of the Monsters. ~From pvthudson01 and Carfilhiot Monster play is now accessed from the character selection screen. You just have to have gotten one character to level 10 to enable the button.

10. The suppliers sell Bronze versions of all the crafting tools. These are far more durable than the tools you start out with, and do not have any duration or crit-penalties. ~From Forohir Vendors do have tools, but not bronze. Those are now made by metalsmiths, as are the iron & higher tools.

17. If you're an experienced player, you can skip the introduction and save you time. The quests you get when you skip will be in the orange area providing you enough experience to catch up. And you will merely be a level or two behind anyway. Less then 30 minutes work. And if you have gone through once before as a race of your choice, plan ahead and do the quests in order, for example, if your objective is to kill boars, and then walk over and retrieve an object then to another place to return the object and the boars are the furthest from your other objective, which do you think you will want to complete first? ~From Syko2517

19. Time in Middle-Earth runs 8x faster than real life - a complete cycle of day and night takes 3 hours. Night is shorter than Day. ~From Carfilhiot

20. There is no command or panel that shows an in-game clock. But you can use the moon and sun to estimate. They actually move in the sky, rising in the East and setting in the West. There are two time commands - /localtime shows the clock on your PC, /servertime shows the clock on the LOTRO realm host. Neither command pertains to in-game time. ~From Carfilhiot Days and nights are now broken up into more manageable bites. On the tooltip for the day/night indicator you will see:

• Day: Dawn
• Day: Morning
• Day: Noon
• Day: Afternoon
• Day: Dusk
• Night: Gloaming
• Night: Evening <----- Here's the one I left out /sigh
  
• Night: Midnight
• Night: Late-watches
• Night: Foredawn

There may be one more, but I can't think of it just now.

22. If you see someone shouting for a fellowship in the LFF Channel (or anywhere else for that matter), instead of asking them what their race/level/class is; open the social panel and type their name in the location area. You can also type /who playernmanme! ~From Temp3r and Carfilhiot

[Voxin]

Given the circumstances I described - a small kinship or fellowship that doesn't mind - can you explain why this was the worst advice ever? If you mean that someone in the kinship or fellowship (like you for example) would mind the traffic - then it's not a k or f that doesn't mind - QED.

It is a bad idea because you can simply type:

/t Carfilhiot ;loc

(assuming Carfilhiot is your character's name)

Then, all you have to do to repeat command is hit enter to get back into the chat window, hit the up arrow to repeat the last command, then hit enter again. If you have typed something else since the last time you entered that, just hit the up arrow until the command shows up.

Better yet, simply create an alias to send you a tell. This as simple as doing the following:

/alias [insert alias name] /t [insert charcter name] You are at ;loc

For instance, I use ;here as my alias name. So my character, Voxin, typed:

/alias ;here /t Voxin You are at ;loc

So all he has to do is type ;here instead of ;loc, and he gets the following output:

You tell Voxin: You are at 3.6S, 25.1W
Voxin tells you: You are at 3.6S, 25.1W

It does it twice because you are both the sender and receiver of the tell, but it does not spam anyone with your location.

There is simply no reason to spam any chat channel with your location. Using a tell to yourself only requires you to type one more thing, your character's name, than using /f or /k, and then using the up arrow to repeat it save you from even having to type that. And even that is unnecessary if you take a minute to create an alias to save you even having to do that.

[Hellgato]

It is a bad idea because you can simply type:

/t Carfilhiot ;loc

(assuming Carfilhiot is your character's name)

Then, all you have to do to repeat command is hit enter to get back into the chat window, hit the up arrow to repeat the last command, then hit enter again. If you have typed something else since the last time you entered that, just hit the up arrow until the command shows up.

Better yet, simply create an alias to send you a tell. This as simple as doing the following:

/alias [insert alias name] /t [insert charcter name] You are at ;loc

For instance, I use ;here as my alias name. So my character, Voxin, typed:

/alias ;here /t Voxin You are at ;loc

So all he has to do is type ;here instead of ;loc, and he gets the following output:

You tell Voxin: You are at 3.6S, 25.1W
Voxin tells you: You are at 3.6S, 25.1W

It does it twice because you are both the sender and receiver of the tell, but it does not spam anyone with your location.

There is simply no reason to spam any chat channel with your location. Using a tell to yourself only requires you to type one more thing, your character's name, than using /f or /k, and then using the up arrow to repeat it save you from even having to type that. And even that is unnecessary if you take a minute to create an alias to save you even having to do that.

Thank you! I didnt ever think of /tell'ing myself. This is going on one of my G15 'G' keys.

[Moogoo]

I don't know if this has been said yet... if so I apologize, but I didn't see it listed on the OP and I didn't find out about it until recently.

If you have a reputation above Tier 1 with any faction you can go to them to get cheaper repairs. Ex. I have Kindred with Council of the North. I have no reputation at all with Bree. I went to Bree and my repairs were 232 silver. I then ported to Gath Forthnir and my repairs were 180 silver.

NOTE: you do not have to have Kindred for this to happen. I believe you just have to be past the 1st tier. I am not sure if the higher your reputation the more the reduction in cost. Perhaps some one could test this out if anyone has varying lvls of reputation with various factions.

Yorael

[Beleg]

You tell Voxin: You are at 3.6S, 25.1W
Voxin tells you: You are at 3.6S, 25.1W

It does it twice because you are both the sender and receiver of the tell, but it does not spam anyone with your location.

If you use /t ~ ;loc instead, you'll only get one message (since ~ is not a real character).

[FoamHead]

If you use /t ~ ;loc instead, you'll only get one message (since ~ is not a real character).

That's a great tip to avoid the duplicate message, but I actually use the message to myself as a timestamp. Any time I want to track when something last occurred (e.g. time between spawns, etc), I just pop my "/t <myself> ;loc" quickslot button and the IM session for <myself> has the timestamp of the tell.

-Foam

[Voxin]

If you use /t ~ ;loc instead, you'll only get one message (since ~ is not a real character).

I suspect that it would not reduce the number of messages you get in that you should get an error message telling that ~ is not online or something like that. However, it will prevent the ding from the "incoming" tell you sent yourself, so I can see that as being an advantage. The only caveat I would add to that is that it is generally a bad idea in programming to create a workaround by intentionally creating an error. Eventually, someone will change the system to handle the error differently, which could create unexpected results for your workaround. It is not likely that this would ever cause a problem, especially since this is not technically "programming" anything. However, it is something to consider because sending yourself a tell would probabaly always work.

[atteSmythe]

Funny you mention that. The last game I played had an error message for attempting to send yourself a tell: Talking to oneself is a sign of impending insanity.

[Amonceleb]

Can you explain this one more?
2. You don't need to be at a vendor to lock items. Remap your keys to assign a short cut and select an item; then use the shortcut to toggle the lock. ~From Makkilmakkil

I noticed this thread came back to life as part of the "Newbie Toolkit", and seeing as I've only been officially in the game less than 2 weeks, I'm still a newb.

Someone please tell me how this works? I checked the keymapping and the Toggle Item Lock/Unlock was defaulted to Ctrl-T. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to get an item in my pack to lock or unlock. This would come in handy for locking those rare finds or resources "in the field" before you get to a vendor and inadvertantly sell them off.

I know once someone explains it, it's going to be one of those head-smack "DOH! Of course!" moments for me, but indulge me for the time being and just explain it. Mainly, how does one "select" the item for lock/unlock? I've tried pointing, clicking, dragging, putting it on my toolbar...no soap.

OH, and to whoever pointed out the ALT-F10 Torch toggle...bless you, my child! Works great in dark/dim areas...just enough light to see up to about ten feet in front of you, which is helpful and realistic.

[jaxe]

Funny you mention that. The last game I played had an error message for attempting to send yourself a tell: Talking to oneself is a sign of impending insanity.

HAHAH! Is the the original text adventure, Zork by Infocom, perchance? Does anyone remember those... ahh, the good old days.

Oh, here's my addition:

You can target the nearest node or item by hitting the DEL key - but did you know if you type /follow it will take you right to it? ;-)

[Hellgato]

I noticed this thread came back to life as part of the "Newbie Toolkit", and seeing as I've only been officially in the game less than 2 weeks, I'm still a newb.

Someone please tell me how this works? I checked the keymapping and the Toggle Item Lock/Unlock was defaulted to Ctrl-T. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to get an item in my pack to lock or unlock. This would come in handy for locking those rare finds or resources "in the field" before you get to a vendor and inadvertantly sell them off.

I know once someone explains it, it's going to be one of those head-smack "DOH! Of course!" moments for me, but indulge me for the time being and just explain it. Mainly, how does one "select" the item for lock/unlock? I've tried pointing, clicking, dragging, putting it on my toolbar...no soap.

OH, and to whoever pointed out the ALT-F10 Torch toggle...bless you, my child! Works great in dark/dim areas...just enough light to see up to about ten feet in front of you, which is helpful and realistic.

Alt + Left click the item, then lock/unlock it.

EDIT: Oh, and for some reason certain inventory slots wont work sometimes to select the item. If you have trouble being able to select it this way, move the item to a different slot. No, its not obvious at all, so give your head a break

[Amonceleb]

Alt + Left click the item, then lock/unlock it.

EDIT: Oh, and for some reason certain inventory slots wont work sometimes to select the item. If you have trouble being able to select it this way, move the item to a different slot. No, its not obvious at all, so give your head a break

Hey, what do you know about that!? It worked, just like you said! Thank you! You've saved me and my head from much needless wear and tear.

[Carthagenian]

Hi there

I have a tip for the list

When you do a Deed, and get a Trait as a reward, you have to go to a Bard to have it set up so it actually works, and you have to pick and choose because you only have so many slots for them. Also, going to the bard costs money.

[Amonceleb]

Not sure if this is a tip or just a technique, but I happened upon it while working my farming recently, and thought I'd share it:

When planting, I'll toss out about 4 seed scatters at a time. Each time the progress bar starts over, I'll rotate in place a few degrees. This offsets the crop square (which orients to the direction you're facing at the time the bar ends), which in turn makes it easier to highlight and harvest your crops.

I think 4 is about the limit tho...seems as though if you're not quick enough, you might lose one of your crop squares (it times out, apparently.) I've tried 5, and if you don't get the oldest squares first you stand a chance of missing one.

Hope this helps.

[NimTheRat]

Not sure if this is a tip or just a technique, but I happened upon it while working my farming recently, and thought I'd share it:

When planting, I'll toss out about 4 seed scatters at a time. Each time the progress bar starts over, I'll rotate in place a few degrees. This offsets the crop square (which orients to the direction you're facing at the time the bar ends), which in turn makes it easier to highlight and harvest your crops.

I think 4 is about the limit tho...seems as though if you're not quick enough, you might lose one of your crop squares (it times out, apparently.) I've tried 5, and if you don't get the oldest squares first you stand a chance of missing one.

Hope this helps.

You don't have to turn if you don't want to; just use the Delete key to select the fields, and the U key to harvest them. The limit on the number of fields you can have going at once depends on the crop (or, most likely, the tier of the crop)...some of them take longer to harvest than others, which affects the number you can harvest before they start timing out.

The things you learn, going to GM Farmer...

[atteSmythe]

You don't have to turn if you don't want to; just use the Delete key to select the fields, and the U key to harvest them. The limit on the number of fields you can have going at once depends on the crop (or, most likely, the tier of the crop)...some of them take longer to harvest than others, which affects the number you can harvest before they start timing out.

Does doing this guarantee that you select the first-planted field first? Because with the planting time reduction, you can plant at least 5 fields (as high as I've tested) with rotating before harvesting.

Personally, I rotate them so that I can queue the harvests as well as the plantings - just shift-click the visible corner of each field, and the actions queue.

[Magnarr]

Talk about handy! I was a level 50 before I knew these even existed in Lotro. A newer member of our kin described a guide for them on Warcry.com, although that particular guide can be a bit overwhelming. Anyway, I researched it for a short while and created a simple guide for others to use for the basics. You may view it here:
http://unitedraces.net/html/_alias.html


-Magnarr

www.UnitedRaces.net

[weekes15]

20. There is no command or panel that shows an in-game clock. But you can use the moon and sun to estimate. They actually move in the sky, rising in the East and setting in the West. There are two time commands - /localtime shows the clock on your PC, /servertime shows the clock on the LOTRO realm host. Neither command pertains to in-game time. ~From Carfilhiot

Don't know if anyone else uses this(or if someone else already posted this since I didn't ready every single one)...but you can also hover over the sun or moon icon on your heads up map and it will tell you your local time as well as an approximate in game time, ie, night-time foredawn, or daytime noon etc.

[lilchoo]

Suggestion for #22 using /who playername when somebody is LFF and you want to know their level/class/race. I've found this to be a poor way of finding the info. First, player names can be tricky to type correctly. Second, if they arent within 3 levels of you, you have to change the level ranges to 1 and 50 and re-click. Third if they are anonymous you still get nothing.

I just right click the name in the chat panel and choose Add Friend. Press O and go to your friends list, hey presto there's the info. Right click the name and select remove to clear the list.

[Gnarlo]

My slap my head like I could have a V8 moment happened yesterday, was crafting, and went down to click on how many swords I wanted to make, and highlighted the number between the two arrows by mistake... Wait, what is this? I can highlight the number and enter how many I want to make, instead of clicking the little arrowhead 20 or 30 or 75 times.....

Seven and a half months of playing, and I find this out now

[ArmyAunt]

My slap my head like I could have a V8 moment happened yesterday, was crafting, and went down to click on how many swords I wanted to make, and highlighted the number between the two arrows by mistake... Wait, what is this? I can highlight the number and enter how many I want to make, instead of clicking the little arrowhead 20 or 30 or 75 times.....

Seven and a half months of playing, and I find this out now

I'm not sure you could do that originally, though I don't remember which patch made the change.

[Beleg]

You can also just enter '999' or whatever, and it will change the number to be the maximum you can make at the moment (based on the materials you have).

[Voxin]

Funny you mention that. The last game I played had an error message for attempting to send yourself a tell: Talking to oneself is a sign of impending insanity.

Only if you are found arguing with yourself, and then, really, only if you tend to lose those arguments.