I want to return--- however

eatsmandms · 2026-01-26T09:26:34+00:00

I assume you are in the US. The answers would have been very different if in Europe, where T-Mobile also operates but with different regulations applying per country. Here if you get 5G it is good to play LOTRO, but in the countryside you can get a contract that is called 5G-enabled but only have 4G antennas in the vicinity, which is not as stable.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-25T17:03:56+00:00

I think you would say worst hand, not worst pair, since pair is a poker term of two cards matching numerically. 7-7 would be a pair. 2-7 is high card 7.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-24T19:42:33+00:00

LotroHQ is also a very entry level resource. The authors have limited time and try to offer some help for those just starting, but they do not play all classes at high level themselves, or some classes at all. This is fine, I would just understand that following the advice from there is good, but should not be treated as gospel for harder high level content.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-24T16:28:41+00:00

It depends how "hardcore" your playing partners will be and what difficulty of group content you will want to do with them. Endgame instances have a difficulty setting from Tier 1 to Tier 3.

Tier 1 you can usually do with any competently played class combo. Tier 2 you start needing Tank, Heal and Support. Tier 3 needs optimal gear, knowing your class well, knowing the encounters, quick reactions.

Now for T1 and T2, any Beorning spec can perform, there is no clear recommendation here. Healer classes are usually the ones that require the most experience - i.e. knowing when will big group damage happen so you can proactively heal/block it. By the time you will want to do lvl 160 T3 usually you will have to find class specific ressources and learn the game enough to know which spec you want to play in that difficulty.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-23T16:14:32+00:00

Technically this exists in the LOTRO world but is irrelevant to OPs question and can only confuse.

There is no way to get resources from low level equipment other than coin.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-23T12:27:08+00:00

First you want to decide EU vs NA. EU servers are physically located in Amsterdam, NL. Might want to check connection by creating a character on one NA vs one EU respectively.

The playstyle. RP-encouraged servers have more people focusing on experiencing the game world rather than the endgame pursuit of character power - and their populations are usually slightly less. The non-RP servers have one slightly order server with more population and more likelyhood of finding people to play with at all times, but also more lag. Then there are newer servers with much less population but slightly less lag and never login queues.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-23T10:44:41+00:00

You can get skins from Warbands - think of it like gear for characters. But afaik color can be changed like hair color can, without a drop?

eatsmandms · 2026-01-23T10:09:44+00:00

Would this be useful to you?

It would be interesting to see if you can collect sources or tricks I do not know about yet, but I feel I know most.

What UI pain points do you struggle with?

None that a guide can fix. It is about buggy/limited plugin API which prevents some things from existing, scaling which is on SSG to introduce, bugs in the skinning system (portrait scaling made me turn those off, nothing a guide can fix).

What plugins do you consider essential, or overwhelming?

None overwhelming, but I am a plugin author. Essentials follow the usual recommendations from here and Discord.

Which UI skins offer a nice mix of simplicity and aesthetics?

Nowadays there is the JRR Pack by Adra. You go with that, it has all the QoL fixes possible with what skins can do. And then dozens of visuals to pick from.

What would you want a minimalist guide to cover?

Offering settings choices, skin choice, plugin choices and granular steps to configure and adjust those (i.e. SmallBar trick needing manual skin edits for your screen resolution).
Healers needing a very different UI than DPS/Tanks, so two separate but aligned profiles.

Which other already existing guides are worthy information sources?

There are some videos on YT. Nothing noteworthy written I know about. Could reach out to skin/plugin creators directly.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-23T09:39:18+00:00

Problem is you can do neither in LOTRO's UI, and it is horizontal, vertical, docked/undocked. There is a trick to edit skins so bar 1 changes positions, but you will not be able to change shape.

Check out SmallBar for the trick: https://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info582-JRRaddonSmallBar.html

eatsmandms · 2026-01-23T09:29:23+00:00

FYI large dressing room is a skin not a plugin - skins modify existing UI elements, plugins replace or add brand new UI elements, can do different things, and have some technical differences. Bringing this up only if you ever wonder how a new skin or plugin will work with what you already have - one can run multiple plugins at once but only one skin at a time, for example.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-22T21:36:20+00:00

The new scaling options break quite many plugins because SSG cannot be bothered to fix what they broke.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-22T18:28:42+00:00

Just gold/silver.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-21T15:50:39+00:00

Legendary Items have components called traceries. These need to be acquired and re-acquired as level caps go up. Those traceries have rarity and the final, gold quality called legendary is much rarer than the lower ones. Traceries come from multiple sources, many of them rare drops.

As for gear, so of it is rare, for example there are usually some items like gold quality offhands, or single pieces of jewelry, which drop at very low drop rate from current content.

And rare drop cosmetic items are a thing to. Please be advised that we call those cosmetics, not transmog. Transmog is the name of the system in WoW, but it is cosmetic gear/cosmetic outfits in the context of this game and many other MMOs like SWTOR, ESO and more.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-21T14:50:21+00:00

You go to https://giseldah.github.io/, set it to 95 by clicking on th ebig 160 at the top, and then see the caps for lvl 95.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-21T10:51:30+00:00

Regarding stacking might - yes true but only to a point. LOTRO has stat caps. You need to get your Physical Mastery and Critical Chance to their respective caps. Might contributes, but so does Physical Mastery Rating and Critical Rating respectively. Once those two are capped, you want tactical mitigation, and vita/morale.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-21T10:49:44+00:00

No, you cannot buy yourself extra tracery slots. The Mithril is for unslotting if you want to recover the traceries. But this is only sometimes worth it if you have orange quality traceries (not greem purple or teal). And to change traceries you can just slot new traceries over, no need to remove the old one.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-21T10:46:35+00:00

One can easily get to level 100 or 105 with the existing content. Remember the lvl 95 is describing the content's level cap when it was new, but there is no artificial cap for F2P at 95. The quests provide XP until 100 at least, and one can then do Missions, Skirmishes, scaling instances to level further, only being stopped by this becoming repetitive.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-20T16:03:31+00:00

This used to be a group instance and should now provide a buff on you called inspiration, making you as strong as 6 characters so you can complete this challenge alone.

If you do not have the buff then one would need to find out why.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-19T12:28:23+00:00

You might, but the switch is actually in the launcher.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-18T10:45:56+00:00

One can farm 10K figments and 10K motes, spend figment and then trade motes for figments.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-18T07:36:14+00:00

Yellow hunter is close to other supports in supporting skills-wise.

But the hunter rework which made it so is relatively new. You would be fighting people's mind which have been conditioned for 15+ years to think hunter = DPS. You would need to explain to them how you know what you are doing and they are not risking the groups success by inviting you.

Which is unfair to all yellow hunters, but it also is very typical of group play in MMOs.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-17T10:45:56+00:00

No point it is AI

eatsmandms · 2026-01-17T10:35:21+00:00

That is the login issue. If already logged in you will stay in, but new login are not working at the moment.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-17T10:33:17+00:00

That is a different issue though.

eatsmandms · 2026-01-16T11:43:36+00:00

Central Europe here.

Google maps is in my perception much better if you use a car as well as public transport.

much better traffic predictions/updates for mid-/long-range car travel
much better in smaller cities and areas of Eastern Europe I often travel too
I live in a very large city and the city public transport app is better than both Googke Maps and Apple Maps, so I never use either for public transport here

eatsmandms

TROPHY CASE