Hi all,

Old LOTRO player (I date back to the SoA beta days) but only played sparsely the last 5+ years. I've played almost every class in the game to at least level 50 except a minnie. So with Mordor out, high elves, etc. I decided it was time and I made myself a high elf minstrel.

I'm totally lost. I'm only level 8 and I already have 8 or 9 offensive skills on my bar. Anthems, ballads, calls, codas, melee abilities. And no clue what I'm supposed to be doing. It doesn't matter at all now, as--let's face it--fighting landscape mobs in LOTRO at level 8 I could be punching them with my bare hands and probably kill them before they kill me. But presuming I'm going to level this character beyond a dozen or two levels, I am eventually going to have to start playing with some sense of strategy.

Is there any basic guide out there that explains how to make best use of this large variety of skills? I'm not even worried about group healing so much right now, at least in terms of theory (I've played a healing-specced RK so have some sense of that). I'm mostly right now focused on questing and developing good habits so that when (eventually) things get tougher, I'm not having to "un-learn" a bunch of bad habits in order to learn how to play the class right.

I've looked at the stickied thread at the top of this forum, but it seems mostly focused on the theory of how to heal in groups, not really explaining the intricacies and relationships between the various minstrel skills, which is really what I need right now.

EDIT: also, instruments? When I last remember playing LOTRO serious, I think there were only maybe 4 or so instruments. Now there are, what, a dozen? Is that purely cosmetic or do they "do" different things?

Thanks in advance...